Deadly Sky (ePub), The by David Hill Page A

soyeux!
’ Next second, two … four … eight other tiny figures were clustered around Darryl, touching his hair and exclaiming. ‘
Soyeux! Oui, soyeux!
’
    The women teachers called them to sit down again.Everyone was smiling. Principal Kara was going ‘Shhh! Shhh!’, but chuckling as he did so. Mrs Davis had gone pink from laughing. The teenagers giggled.
    ‘Lannya say your head – no, your hair – is so soft,’ one teacher smiled at Darryl.
    His mother laughed. ‘His head is soft, too, sometimes.’
    Darryl said nothing. Had he looked a total idiot? For some reason, he didn’t care.
    They found their way back to their lodge, keeping to the shade of the trees. No pigs this time. Chickens pecked and raked among the leaves. It was only 11.30, but the sun was too fierce to glance at, and when they emerged into the open it felt as though someone was holding a heater above their heads. Ahead of them, the sea dazzled and the white sand glared. ‘Imagine it in midsummer,’ went Darryl’s mother.
    ‘No, thanks,’ he replied.
    Lily had lunch ready. ‘We eat early all times. You don’t mind?’ Little red tomatoes; white cheese; oranges; chopped-up coconut; a fruit that looked like a melon and tasted so brilliant that Darryl found he was eating with his eyes shut – and juice running down his chin. ‘Mango,’ Lily smiled. ‘We grow many. Eat more.’ Darryl did.
    ‘How is the school time?’ Lily asked.
    Mrs Davis smiled. ‘Alicia was so good. She and the others gave the most wonderful presentation about Mangareva.’
    Lily looked proud. Then: ‘She talked about the bomb?’
    Darryl nodded. ‘Yeah.’ Actually, she can’t
stop
talking about it, he thought.
    Now Lily shook her head. ‘All the time since her father dies, she blames the nuclear. She even say our boats have to sail too far to fish now, and are being damaged. Perhaps….’ Lily paused, then smiled. ‘Next Sunday, she fly to Tahiti, to find about working for the tourism.’
    ‘Can you see the tests from here?’
    As Darryl spoke, his mother frowned. ‘Lily might not want to talk about it, Da.’
    ‘No, it is all right. When the biggest test come, we see light way down on the edge – horizon. Like a fire under the sea. Napoleon, he climbed our mountain with friends to watch. They see red lightning rush up into the sky. Then we all hear
BOOM!
Like a great rock slams down. And a hot wind blows across our island. Alicia’ – Lily shook her head – ‘she call the bomb names; she says someone must stop it.’
    ‘She is a very strong girl,’ went Darryl’s mother.
    ‘We want her to travel, to speak about our island.Her cousin—’ Lily stopped for a second. ‘You hear Napoleon leave this morning? He go to help clean our island’s government office. A person has thrown red paint on it.’
    ‘Red paint?’ echoed Mrs Davis.
    Lily nodded. ‘A silly person. Someone does not like government.’
    Darryl said nothing. He was remembering the protest in Tahiti, and the red paint like blood on the ambassador. And he was remembering Raoul.
    Lily smiled. ‘What will you do for this afternoon?’
    ‘I need to prepare for tomorrow’s church group,’ Mrs Davis said. ‘And I’m going back to talk with Principal Kara and Noah.’
    ‘You will sleep?’ Lily asked Darryl. ‘Many people sleep in the afternoon.’
    Darryl blinked. ‘No way!’ As the women laughed, he added, ‘I’m going to explore.’
    ‘You must climb our mountain,’ Alicia’s aunt told him. ‘A path goes all the way. I give you a hat, because the sun is so … you say “angry”?
Non
, “fierce”.’
    She lifted down a straw hat wide enough to cover two people. Just as well none of his friends was around to see him, Darryl decided.
    ‘You’ll need sunblock, too,’ his mother went. ‘There’s some on the table by my bed. You can—’
    Darryl was already heading for the door, andignoring her. ‘See ya later.’ As he set off down the path towards his room, he