Mad Dog Moonlight by Pauline Fisk

sailors came from, and they shrugged and laughed and said nowhere in particular. Both talked at once, as tight together as a pair of barnacles on a hull. Their tales were tall but, they insisted, had all really happened. Whales, coral reefs, pirates, treasure islands, even mermaids – they’d seen them all.
    â€˜You mean you’ve really seen a mermaid?’ Mad Dog said.
    â€˜Of course we have,’ the man sailor said. ‘And lots of other things as well. You wouldn’t believe what’s out there in the world.’
    It was a long evening, but no one wanted it to end. For a few hours round the fire, they all knew what it was to be torn apart by hunger, beaten by the sun and bound by frost. They were all hung about with icicles, longing for a homeland and a journey’s end.
    â€˜But there
is
no journey’s end,’ the woman sailor said. ‘That’s what we’ve discovered. All horizons lead to new ones, all discovery to even more.’
    Mad Dog shivered. The woman sailor’s words had amagic about them that set him drifting off. When he returned to himself, he found Aunty clearing away cocoa mugs and talking about mundane things like going to bed. The evening was over. Mad Dog wanted more, but the sailors said there was always another day.
    Everybody slept late next morning but, as soon as Mad Dog got up, he was on at the sailors to tell more stories. They promised they would later but, in the meantime, they had a boat to repair and Mad Dog and his family had a service to attend in the big town church.
    This was a solemn occasion to commemorate the damage done by the storm and those who’d fought so valiantly to save lives. The entire town, it seemed, turned out and the church was full. The harbour master sat at the front, along with his team of volunteers, and the men and women from the rescue services and the mayor and mayoress. The vicar preached a sermon about surviving nature with the help of God, but Mad Dog wriggled all the way through it, his mind fixed on the sailors, wanting more of their stories, not this worthy sermon.
    When they returned home, however, the sailors had gone. Mad Dog knew it the minute he stepped through the door. The smell of sea salt had gone too, and so had the metal trunk and all the things that had been drying out. All that remained were the porcelain cups, with a fifty-pound note tucked inside one of them, along with a letter written in fairy handwriting.
    Aunty tried to read it, but the writing was so small that she even had a struggle wearing glasses.
    â€˜
You’ve been brilliant,
’ she read at last. ‘
Thanks for
everything. Boat repaired – at least as good as we can get it for now. Tide right. The sea calls. Sorry we don’t have the time to say goodbye. We’ll never forget your kindness to us. Please keep the cups. A little something to remember us by. And the money’s just a gesture really, to cover costs. What you did for us can never be repaid.
’
    The sailors hadn’t even signed the note, or left a forwarding address. Aunty screwed it up. You could see how offended she was that they’d gone off like that. She even screwed up the money and went to chuck it in the bin.
    But Uncle wouldn’t let her. ‘That’s life,’ he said. ‘They’ll have meant no harm. They just weren’t thinking. Besides, when could we afford to throw good money away?’
    He flattened out the money and stuck it in one of the cups for when they needed a bit of spare cash. Aunty put them on the top shelf of the kitchen cabinet, where she kept things she never used. In the days and weeks that followed, she never talked about the sailors again or the strange way they’d come bursting into their lives. You’d have thought she had forgotten them, and Uncle had as well.
    But Mad Dog thought about them all the time, and wondered who they were.

7
The Aged Relative
    Some people burned