Angel Creek Read online

  Sally Rippin was born in Darwin, but grew up mainly in South-East Asia. Her novel Chenxi and the Foreigner was inspired by her time as a student in China. Now Sally lives in Melbourne, near the Merri Creek, where she writes and illustrates for children of all ages. Sally has over forty books published, many of them award-winning. She and her family spend a lot of time down by the creek, but have yet to spot an angel. She feels sure it is only a matter of time.

  sallyrippin.com

  ANGEL

  CREEK

  SALLY RIPPIN

  The paper in this book is manufactured only from wood grown in sustainable regrowth forests.

  The Text Publishing Company

  Swann House

  22 William Street

  Melbourne Victoria 3000

  Australia

  textpublishing.com.au

  Copyright © Sally Rippin 2011

  All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright above, no part of this publication shall be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the publisher of this book.

  First published by The Text Publishing Company, 2011

  Cover by WH Chong

  Page design by Susan Miller

  Typeset in Bembo 12.5/17.5 pt by J & M Typesetting

  Printed and bound in Australia by Griffin Press

  National Library of Australia

  Cataloguing-in-Publication entry:

  Author: Rippin, Sally.

  Title: Angel creek / Sally Rippin.

  Edition: 1st ed.

  ISBN: 9781921758058 (pbk.)

  Target Audience: For primary school age.

  Dewey Number: A823.3

  In memory of

  Mikaël Rohan

  the third musketeer

  10.7.1996 – 16.11.2010

  Contents

  1 the apricot tree

  2 something in the water

  3 a place to hide

  4 nonna

  5 christmas

  6 a silver heart

  7 the bullies

  8 trapped

  9 keeping secrets

  10 the broken wing

  11 the storm

  12 finders keepers

  13 that boy again

  14 small comforts

  15 the hospital

  16 the bad thing returns

  17 the dark, the light

  18 the power of wishes

  19 a white feather

  1

  the apricot tree

  There were only two things Jelly liked about the house on Rosemary Street: the creek that ran behind her back fence and the apricot tree.

  Perched in the tree’s wide branches, high above the garden, Jelly could see the whole world and nobody could see her. Since they had moved house, this had become Jelly’s secret place. Here nobody bothered her except for the birds.

  She gazed up through the shivering leaves. Pale stars glittered in the darkening sky and a huge yellow moon hung on the horizon. It was Christmas Eve. It should have been a perfect night. But Jelly was in the wrong garden in the wrong neighbourhood—perhaps even in the wrong family. Below, her parents were laughing with their new neighbours like they were having the best time in the world. Like they didn’t care one bit that they’d dragged Jelly ten suburbs away from all of her friends. Even though she spoke to them almost every day, the calls only made Jelly feel worse. Tonight everyone was meeting up. Everyone except Jelly, stuck in this tree on the other side of the city. She might as well have been on the other side of the world.

  She picked at a piece of bark and glared at their new house, a falling-down old weatherboard with blistered paint and sprouting gutters. Behind her, Nonna’s granny flat squatted gloomily among the ragged rose bushes. Even the fairy lights her mum had strung all around the garden couldn’t brighten Jelly’s mood. She stretched and sighed. If she peered out over the back fence she could see the place where everything dropped away into blackness. There, in the dark, flowed the Merri Creek. From her place in the tree, she liked to imagine she could smell the cold, muddy dampness, hear the gulping of the water over the stones and the crick of the summer frogs— imagine she was someplace else.

  ‘Hey!’

  Jelly’s dreaming was interrupted by a voice calling from below. She peered through the apricot leaves and saw her cousins, Gino and Pik, staring up at her. Pik was chewing on his fingers as usual, his sooty black hair sticking up everywhere. Gino’s legs stuck out of his shorts like chopsticks. Every summer he shot up like a bean sprout, and now he was taller than Jelly, though he was a year younger.

  ‘Hey,’ he called again. ‘Aren’t you supposed to be looking after us?’

  Jelly frowned. She swung down through the branches, landing in front of the boys with a soft thud.

  ‘You’re nearly as old as me, Gino. You can look after yourself.’

  Gino glared at her. ‘Mum and Dad said you’re in charge. And besides, I don’t want to get stuck with Pik and Sophia on my own.’

  Jelly didn’t want to get stuck looking after Gino’s baby sister either. ‘I hate these stupid Christmas parties,’ she said, lobbing an apricot into the vegetable patch.

  ‘Me too.’ Gino kicked at the dirt.

  ‘Me too!’ said Pik.

  Jelly glanced over at the back fence and drew closer to the boys. ‘We could go down to the creek,’ she whispered. ‘That is, if you dare?’

  ‘Cool,’ said Gino, grinning.

  ‘Cool,’ said Pik, but his voice came out as a squeak.

  ‘You sure, Pikky? It’ll be dark down there,’ said Jelly.

  ‘I’m not scared.’

  ‘There might be monsters,’ Gino teased.

  Pik glanced up at Jelly.

  ‘Nah, only birds and frogs down at the creek, Pikster. Come on, we’ll climb over the fence behind Nonna’s flat. She’s in the kitchen. No one will see us there.’

  Jelly slipped away from the fairy lights into the gathering shadows at the end of the garden.

  They crept through Nonna’s vegetable patch, ducking between the tomato plants lined up like rows of watchful soldiers. When they reached the fence Jelly pulled Gino and Pik into the small dark space behind the granny flat.

  ‘A kid drowned in this creek two years back,’ she warned them. ‘Our neighbour Maureen told us. He was playing in the drains and the water just came rushing down.’ She paused for added drama. ‘They never found him again.’

  ‘Cool,’ Gino said in a low voice.

  ‘Cool,’ said Pik, sticking his fingers back into his mouth.

  Jelly grinned. ‘Sure you don’t want to go back to the house, Pikky?’

  Pik shook his head.

  ‘Come on then,’ she said, and swung herself up and over the fence in one swift movement. The boys followed.

  On the other side of the fence it was dark and there was no one around. The party seemed miles away, drowned out by the rushing water and the whispering of the shaggy peppercorn trees. They stood still for a moment, their backs against the fence, waiting for their eyes to adjust to the moonlight. In front of them the bank plunged towards a muddy walking track, which ran all the way along the creek. Jelly shimmied down the crumbling embankment, then beckoned to the boys.

  There had been rain in the last few days and the creek was flowing fast. All the rubbish from the suburbs was pushed up onto the banks or caught up in the reeds. They followed the creek, prodding at the tangles of plastic and string, searching for any unexpected treasures.

  A little way downstream, where the main road crossed the creek, the track split in two. They stopped. One path sloped up towards
the bright lights of St Peter’s Road; the other ran alongside the creek as it flowed through a tunnel, and was swallowed by the dark. At night the tunnel yawned blackly, like the mouth of a beast.

  Jelly turned to her cousins, a smile creeping across her face. ‘Shall we go in?’

  ‘Nah,’ said Pik. ‘Let’s go back home.’

  Gino’s eyes narrowed. ‘You scared?’

  ‘Of course not!’

  ‘Then let’s go.’ Gino pushed past Jelly to lead the way.

  The smell of pigeon poo and rotting weeds was stifling in the muggy air. Pik put his hand over his mouth. ‘Stinks,’ he said, gagging. He hovered in the entrance of the tunnel, where the lamps from the street above cast reassuring pools of light. Jelly followed Gino into the dark.

  ‘Can you see?’ Gino whispered.

  ‘Sort of.’ She could just make out scribbles of graffiti along the sloping walls. Budge woz ere and JZ rulz and a painting of a small yellow bird with a red beak. She ran her fingers along the ragged bluestone as Gino ventured into the darkness.

  ‘Hey, Jel, look at this.’

  She walked to where Gino was peering out over the black water. ‘I can’t see anything. What is it?’

  ‘Over there.’ Gino pointed. And then Jelly saw it: a pearly smudge of white against the gloom.

  ‘Looks like feathers,’ Gino said.

  ‘Maybe it’s a bird,’ said Jelly, ‘caught up in all the rubbish. Poor thing.’

  ‘I want to go back now,’ Pik called. Jelly and Gino ignored him and crept closer to the edge of the creek, over the sticky mud and slimy rocks, to see if the bird-thing was alive.

  ‘Is it moving?’ Jelly whispered.

  Gino shrugged.

  From where they stood, it looked like it was trapped behind a large rock jutting out of the water.

  ‘Let’s go and see.’ Gino stepped into the creek.

  ‘Gino…’

  ‘It might still be alive.’

  Jelly hesitated, then rolled up her shorts. If her dad was here he would’ve done the same thing. He was always rescuing birds, and bugs and other creepy-crawlies. And Gino was already halfway to the rock, the water rushing past his knees. She didn’t have a choice.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Pik called. ‘I’ll tell.’

  Jelly glared at him. ‘Just stay there, Pik. We’ll be back in a minute.’ Then she stepped into the cold water, and the mud oozed between her toes. ‘Wait for me, would you?’ She waded after Gino.

  The water wasn’t deep but the current was strong, and it pulled at her legs. She grabbed at the reeds to steady herself. When she looked up again, Gino had reached the rock. She watched him climb onto it and peer over the edge. Suddenly he reeled back, his arms like windmills.

  ‘Jelly,’ he gasped. ‘It’s not a bird!’

  2

  something in the water

  Gino slid off the rock and lurched back through the water. On the bank Pik started to bawl.

  ‘What is it?’ Jelly called. ‘What did you see?’

  ‘Go look yourself.’ Gino voice was snagged with fear.

  Jelly’s heart thumped. All her instincts told her to turn back—back to where the Christmas lights beckoned and her mum and dad were laughing, unaware that she had slipped out into the night. But, despite her fear, something pulled her forward, on towards the thing in the water. She had to see it for herself. She climbed up onto the rock to gaze into the dark water on the other side.

  There in the shadowy depths was a pale, pale child with glass-like eyes that stared up at her, and long white hair that billowed like clouds. It rocked gently under the water, a thin white dress caught up around its knees. And it had wings. Great white feathered wings like a pelican’s, one of them bunched up and tangled in river rubbish.

  Jelly felt her heart slide sideways. ‘Wait.’ She realised what she was seeing. ‘Gino, Pik, come back.’

  She heard them stop.

  ‘What is it?’ Gino called.

  Jelly looked back at the creature. It was still there. Her eyes hadn’t been playing tricks on her. ‘You won’t believe this,’ she said, laughter bursting up through her chest. ‘I think…I think we’ve found an angel!’

  The angel watched her with frightened eyes. Little bubbles floated from the corners of its heart-shaped mouth and popped on the surface of the water. Its hands curled open and closed like seaweed. Jelly perched on the rock and bent forward to free its wing. But when she pulled at the knotted shreds of plastic, the other wing came thrashing out of the water.

  ‘Hey,’ she said. ‘Keep still. I’m trying to help you.’ She stroked the tangled wing feathers and the angel stared back at her, goggle-eyed, its peaked chest palpitating like that of a frightened bird.

  The boys were hovering at the mouth of the tunnel.

  ‘Come and see,’ Jelly called, but Pik pulled away from Gino and crouched against the ragged wall.

  ‘Stay there,’ Gino said, and splashed through the water.

  ‘Shh,’ Jelly said as he approached. ‘You’ll scare it.’ She watched him as he peered over the rock, his eyes widening.

  ‘A real angel.’ He smiled.

  ‘I know. Can you believe it?’

  Gino nudged the angel gently with his toe. Its body stiffened and its fingers curled. ‘What’s an angel doing here? In a creek?’

  Jelly shrugged. ‘Its wing’s all caught up. I think it’s stuck down there.’

  ‘I want to go home,’ Pik wailed into the darkness. Gino turned. ‘I told you if I let you come with us you weren’t allowed to act like a baby, Pik.’

  ‘We can’t leave it there,’ Jelly said. ‘It might die. Or something might get it. A fox or something.’

  ‘What would a fox do with an angel?’

  ‘I don’t know, Gino. Hold it still and I’ll untie the wing.’

  Gino recoiled. ‘How about you hold it still and I untie the wing?’

  ‘It doesn’t have germs.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  Jelly sighed and pushed up her sleeves. The angel watched her with its spooky eyes. She inched her hands forward, then grabbed at an ankle. The angel slipped easily from her grasp.

  ‘It’s all right,’ she cooed and stepped closer. The angel was the size of a small child but skinny as a pile of sticks. This time she caught it around the chest. The angel writhed, trying to get free, its spindly legs kicking up out of the water like rudders.

  ‘Hurry, Gino. I don’t know how long I can hold it.’

  Gino made a grab for the tangled wing. As he touched the feathers the angel’s head burst out of the water. A terrible sound like the squeal of metal filled the tunnel.

  ‘You’re hurting it!’ The sound was unbearable. It took everything Jelly had not to drop the angel and cover her ears.

  ‘Hold it still.’ Gino pulled frantically at the strings of coloured plastic.

  ‘I’m trying,’ Jelly said. But the angel was as slippery as a fish.

  Finally Gino pulled the last piece of plastic from the damaged wing. The angel was free. It stopped screaming and hurtled forward, clasping its arms and legs around Jelly’s waist and pressing its wet face into her neck. Jelly let go of the angel, but it clung to her, its bony fingers digging into her back.

  ‘It’s got me! Get it off! Get it off!’

  Gino splashed around, darting his hands in and out.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Jelly yelled. She tried to pull the angel off herself, but it only clung on tighter.

  Jelly’s mind was fizzing. She sucked in a mouthful of the clammy air and concentrated on slowing her breathing. She began to calm. That was when she noticed. The angel was trembling. Its whole body was quivering. ‘Hey,’ she said, stroking its matted hair. ‘We won’t hurt you.’

  The angel buried its face in her neck, grunting and snuffling like a rabbit.

  She looked at Gino. ‘It’s frightened, that’s all. Poor thing.’

  Gino’s eyes rolled white in the dark. ‘It looked like it
was trying to eat you or something.’

  They stood in the rushing water listening to the angel’s whimpers and Pik snivelling in the dark. When the angel was quiet Gino put a hand out to touch its wing. The angel flinched, and buried its face deeper into Jelly’s neck.

  ‘Is it heavy?’ Gino asked.

  ‘No, it’s really light. Must have hollow bones. Like a bird.’ She patted its hair again. ‘Come on then, little one. Let’s get you out of the water.’

  The angel’s thin dress had soaked Jelly’s clothes and its squeals still rang in her ears. She hitched it up and they waded to the bank. Pik had fallen quiet. His eyes were enormous, his fingers back in his mouth.

  ‘Don’t be scared, Pikky,’ Jelly said. ‘Look what we’ve found. It’s an angel. A real angel!’

  ‘Can you fix its wing?’ Gino asked. ‘You fixed that bird’s wing that time, remember? That cockatoo.’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Jelly. ‘I guess so. But what if something comes back for it? Its mother or something?’

  ‘It can’t fly,’ Gino pointed out. ‘It might die if we leave it here. Besides, you don’t want anyone else finding it, do you?’

  ‘No!’ said Jelly. The word burst from her: she hadn’t even known she was going to say it. ‘All right. We’ll look after it till it gets better, then we can let it go again.’

  Gino grinned. ‘Where are we going to keep it?’

  ‘We can’t take it back to my place. Nonna would freak. And you sure can’t take it back to yours. Remember what Sophia did to your terrapins?’

  Gino pulled a face. ‘Don’t remind me.’

  ‘We’ll have to find somewhere safe to hide it near here,’ she said.

  ‘Where?’

  ‘I don’t know. If we were at my old house I’d know plenty of places.’

  ‘If we were at your old house we would never have found the angel. It’s not like there were any creeks around there.’

  ‘True.’ Jelly hitched the angel up and walked out into the open air. She had to admit that occasionally Gino could be quite sensible.

  After the dark of the tunnel the moonlit night seemed as bright as daylight. Jelly looked down at the angel, which had settled into her arms like a baby. A smile split across her face. If only her friends could see her now. She couldn’t think of anyone who had found anything as special as this. She couldn’t wait to see Stef ’s face.