fredbassett | Fic, Whispering Island, Part 1 of 8, Stephen/Ryan, 15

Title : Whispering Island, Part 1 of 8
Author : fredbassett
Fandoms : Primeval & Enid Blyton’s Famous Five books
Rating : 15
Characters : Stephen/Ryan, the Kirrin family and dog.
Disclaimer : Not mine, no money made, don’t sue.
Word Count : 17,620. This part 2,071.
Spoilers : None
Summary : Stephen and Ryan get the chance to spend a weekend on a private island off the south coast.
A/N : 1) Many years ago

rospberry asked for a crossover with the Famous Five and since then,

lukadreaming has been a tireless cheerleader for this fic.

rospberry’s birthday seems like the best day to start posting, so I hope you both think it’s worth the wait! And happy birthday, Ros! 2) With many thanks to

fififolle for a very speedy and brilliant beta. 3) This takes place in my Stephen/Ryan series, after the events of Crow on the Cradle but before Entente Cordiale. It can also be read as a standalone. No prior knowledge of the Enid Blyton books is needed as I have somewhat advanced the ages of the Five for the purposes of this story. The setting is taken from the book ‘Five have a Mystery to Solve’.

The late evening sun glinted on the surface of the water, reflecting the light of an evening sky shot through with crimson and orange. Shadows were already lengthening around them as Ryan parked the car in front of a large, semi-detached house overlooking the bay. He had hoped to arrive several hours earlier, but a long tailback on the M4 had put paid to those plans within an hour of them leaving the ARC.

The house was owned by a friend of his, invalided out of the Regiment, who now ran an outdoor pursuits centre concentrating mainly on canoeing, climbing and ‘coasteering’, which as far as Ryan could tell consisted of making near-suicidal leaps from rocks into the sea in an attempt to complete a route around otherwise inaccessible sections of the seashore. He’d tried it a couple of times and it had been fun, but he didn’t particularly like sweltering inside a wetsuit, although seeing Stephen half-naked and wet did generally make up for an excess of neoprene and cold water.

Wilf had left a set of keys under a plant pot in the front garden – not the greatest form of security, but as there were at least 30 pots of various shapes and sizes it wasn’t quite as daft as it had first sounded. However, it did bring home rather sharply to Ryan that he knew bugger all about plants.

“Hart, what’s a sodding dahlia when it’s at home?”

Stephen paused in the act of stretching like a cat and pointed into the middle of the forest of pots. “The orange things over there, I think. My gran had a garden full of them.”

Ryan picked his way through a riot of blooms to a large pot containing assorted flowers almost the same colour as the spectacular sunset. As Wilf had instructed, the key was covered by gravel under the earthenware pot. The keys to the garage would be inside the cottage, hanging from a hook in the meter cupboard. The house was large and airy, with a glazed porch around the front door and a double garage at the side. Wilfrid Layman was away for a week visiting an elderly relative and had been more than happy to lend them his house – and, more importantly, two of his kayaks – for the weekend.

As it was already approaching 7pm, Ryan was tempted to say to hell with their original plans and stay overnight in the guest bedroom, but Stephen was already looking longingly at their intended destination, the large island in the bay, and Ryan didn’t want to do anything to disappoint his lover.

Within half an hour of arriving, they’d packed two kayaks with what they needed for two nights away: a small tent, bed roll and sleeping bags (all in waterproof containers), along with food for two days and a bottle of scotch for drinking beside their campfire. Ryan had been most impressed when he’d discovered their local supermarket sold quite a decent blended whisky in plastic bottles. They also had a large ginger cake, carefully packaged in its own plastic box, courtesy of one of the women in the ARC canteen, who had developed a soft spot for both of them that generally manifested as spoiling them rotten with cake.

They were well-practised in travelling light, but even so the kayaks were fairly full by the time they had finished packing. They had been careful to distribute the weight evenly, but the twin red kayaks would still ride quite low in the water. Wilf had warned them about the currents in the bay. On a receding tide the water would exert a strong pull out to sea, and on an incoming tide would be hard to paddle against. The traffic problems had upset their timing by several hours, but as far as Ryan could tell from studying the water and consulting the tide tables through an app on his phone, the tide had not yet reached the turn. They carried the boats down one at a time to the water’s edge, crossing the road outside Wilf’s house and making their way across a mixture of sand and pebbles to the sea.

A few families were still playing on the beach, despite the fact that the sun had almost sunk beneath the horizon. A large, hairy brown mongrel came running across the sand to Ryan and Stephen, tongue lolling from the side of its mouth as the dog’s unusually long tail swung from side to side. The animal came to a halt in front of Stephen and looked up at him out of intelligent brown eyes.

Stephen reached out with one hand and let the dog sniff it. He was promptly favoured with a wet lick and more tail wagging. Ryan watched as his lover stroked the dog’s head and scratched behind its ears. They both liked animals and he knew Stephen would love to have a dog to accompany him when he went running, but with their jobs, having any animal companions was out of the question. A piercing whistle brought the dog to its feet and without a backward look, it bounded away across the beach.

Ryan took his lifejacket out of the kayak and pulled it over his head, adjusting the straps so that it was a reasonably snug fit. They had changed into shorts, teeshirts and plastic shoes in the cottage, so launching the kayaks was easy. Wilf had left a map of the island for them in the cottage, so they knew where they needed to aim for. He’d also marked the areas of the shore they had to avoid. The island was well-protected by rocks that came dangerously close to the surface of the water at low tide and even in shallow craft like theirs, they would need to exercise caution.

The island was strictly off limits to casual visitors, as various signs along the edge of the beach proclaimed, although according to Wilf, they didn’t do much to keep determined trespassers at bay. The owner, a very old and extremely rich aunt of Wilf’s, had given permission for them to spend a couple of days on the island and Ryan was keen to see it for himself after the descriptions he’d heard of Wilf playing there as a child. From what Ryan could gather, his aunt had bought it cheap many years ago after some scandal involving the former owner and an art and antiquities smuggling ring and it had effectively been left to Wilf to manage the island for her.

Ryan’s paddles dipped in and out of the water, propelling the kayak across the low waves with ease. A few metres away, Stephen was doing the same, his dark hair standing up in damp spikes, his face open and relaxed. Whispering Island was drawing closer by the minute. Ryan consulted the map he’d memorised and adjusted his course slightly, calling to Stephen to do the same. He didn’t want to risk tangling with the rocks. The island seemed to be mostly covered with trees from what he’d seen through binoculars on the shore. It played host to an old, ruined castle, testament to a Victorian gentleman who’d clearly had more money than sense. Since he’d died, the castle had gone to rack and ruin and according to Wilf, little more than the stonework was now left standing.

“Looks like we’re heading in the right direction.” Stephen gestured to what appeared to be a sandy beach overhung by a low, rocky cliff and tall, dark trees. “That’s exactly as Wilf described it.”

“Then that means we’re coming up to the rocks now.” Ryan scanned the water carefully for any sign of waves cresting on rock. He thought he could pick out some disturbance in the water about ten metres to their left, so he set a course to avoid them, with Stephen dropping back behind him so they could proceed in single file.

“If you took your teeshirt off I’d have a better view,” Stephen called.

Ryan flipped him the finger without bothering to turn around. The water was starting to churn slightly and he needed to concentrate. He was no stranger to water after a brief secondment to the SBS some years ago. In addition, he still canoed as often as time allowed as it was a sport they both enjoyed, but it was a couple of years since he had taken a kayak out to sea. The huge bay was deceptive, very much a trap for the unwary. The water might look calm, but the currents were fierce and it would be all too easy to come to grief on the rocks or be swept out to sea. Fortunately, the intelligence he’d received from Wilf had been good and in the space of a few minutes they were past the rocks and running with the tide towards the small cove.

They hauled the kayaks out of the water and made sure to take them well up beyond the line of driftwood and flotsam that formed the high tide mark. According to Wilf, friends of his had once forgotten to do exactly that and had ended up stranded on the island. It was an easy enough mistake, but was one that Ryan had absolutely no intention of making.

It was dark under the shadow of the trees. They both fished out LED head-torches from their packs rather than blunder blindly around the slippery rocks. With a waterproof pack slung over each shoulder, Ryan made his away through the trees with Stephen at his side. They’d both memorised Wilf’s map and had decided to head for a clearing not far from the cove, where they intended to set up camp. They had enough water with them for the night and Wilf had assured them that they could draw as much water as they needed from the well at the castle, so they could replenish their bottles the following day.

They’d only taken a few paces into the trees when Stephen stopped and tilted his head to one side, listening. Ryan immediately followed suit. The light breeze that had been at their backs as they’d paddled away from the shore was rustling the branches of the trees, making an almost eerie whispering.

‘Shooey, shooey, shooey…’

“Not hard to see where this place gets its name from,” Stephen said. “It sounds like a bunch of kids whispering behind someone’s back.”

‘Shooey, shooey, shooey…’ The leaves rustled in the breeze and their unearthly chorus continued unabated.

“Or the lads in the rec room after a night on the piss.”

Stephen grinned and together they made their way along a rough track that had been marked on Wilf’s map. The clearing they were heading for was close to the ruined castle, but all they intended to do for the moment was pitch their tent and have something to eat. They’d have plenty of time over the weekend for exploring.

The trees had obviously been growing for some considerable time. They looked to Ryan to be a mix of oak and beech, and in places, dark tangles of rhododendron bushes clustered thickly around their boles. He could see the trees thinning slightly ahead and guessed they were about to reach the clearing. As they walked, Ryan cast his eyes from side to side, scanning for threats as he always did when exploring somewhere new, in a habit engrained in him both by his military training and his current secondment.

The rapidly fading light cast shadows everywhere, but Ryan certainly wasn’t expecting to encounter a grotesquely elongated human-like shadow across his path as he emerged from the trees. He stiffened, throwing an arm to one side to alert Stephen to possible danger. For an instant, instinct took over and Ryan reached for a non-existent weapon before reminding himself forcibly that he was on a deserted island off the south coast of England, not somewhere in Helmand Province or Somalia or any other hot-spot of his acquaintance.

He turned to face the figure and stared into a pair of disconcertingly sharp eyes, set in an unnaturally pale face. The sharp glint of blood-red in the gaze forced him backwards a pace and he heard Stephen’s sharp intake of breath.

A prickle of fear danced lightly down Ryan’s spine and he tensed, ready for action.

The figure stared back at him, a faint smile on its unearthly face.

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Fic, Whispering Island, Part 1 of 8, Stephen/Ryan, 15

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