Jude Reid’s lyrical debut middle-grade novel is inspired by the wild places and magical folklore of Scotland. When Second World War bombs start falling, twelve-year-old Eilidh is evacuated to family on on a remote Orkney island, where she starts unravelling the darkly dangerous magic of the island’s lighthouse. This extract is when these supernatural elements start to cross her path…

The Nightkeeper’s Apprentice
by Jude Reid
published by Floris Books

It had been one of those long, dreich, wet days. The rain had stopped, and the clouds had just been clearing when Eilidh had fallen asleep, but it was so bright when she woke up she knew straight away that something was wrong. For one awful moment she was back in Clydebank, but this light was nothing like the burning sky. Instead, it glowed through the gap in the curtains a bright greenish-blue that put her in mind of the glowing hands on Dad’s watch.

She swung her legs over the side of the bed, stepped out onto the bare floorboards and opened the curtains, her skin tingling with excitement. The lighthouse wasn’t lit – it never was – but for the first time she had seen, the door stood open, spilling the yellow light of an oil lamp out across the courtyard to mingle with the bluegreen glow.

A sudden noise from the parlour caught her attention – footsteps, creaking over old wooden boards. Eilidh opened her bedroom door just a fraction and pressed her eye against the gap. The parlour door was open, and in the gloom she could just make out Magnus standing, leaning over the fire, taking something from the box on the mantelpiece. Metal chains jingled in his hand as he lifted it and brought it to the light.

Eilidh kept her eye pressed to the crack in the door, hardly able to believe what she was seeing.

It was Dad’s watch, and Magnus was stealing it.

She pushed the door, hard. It swung wide open and slammed into the wall hard enough to set the pictures wobbling on the walls. Magnus spun round, his eyes as wide as a startled hen, and shoved his hand into his coat pocket.

“Give me that back.” Eilidh stepped into the room and held out her hand, anger burning like a fire in the pit of her stomach. “It’s not yours. It’s mine.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“My dad’s watch.” Her voice was shaking. So was her hand. “Give it back.”

Magnus’s mouth set into a hard line. “Your dad should never have taken it. It belongs here on Mirk Skerry.”

“It’s his. And he gave it to me.” She lunged forward, hoping to catch his wrist or at least his sleeve, but he was too quick for her, darting sideways out of her reach.

“Give it back, you thief!”

“I’m not a thief!” Magnus sounded almost as upset as she was, as if she was unjustly accusing him of something he hadn’t done. “I’m not stealing it. I’m just—”

He stopped, his eyes going wide and the blood draining away from his cheeks. Eilidh stared.

“You’re just what?”

“Shut up. I need to listen.” He wasn’t loud this time, but the sharp edge to his words made Eilidh snap her mouth shut. In the silence that followed, she could hear what had startled him. An eerie singing was coming from outside the cottage, high and mournful, the sound setting the hairs prickling on her head. It put her in mind of the seal-song she had heard on her first day over on the boat, but this was louder, stranger, sadder.

“What is that?”

“Go back to bed.” Magnus barged past her, out of the parlour and straight for the cottage door. Eilidh scurried after him and managed to put one hand on his sleeve, but he shook her off so roughly that her hand nearly crashed into the doorframe. “It’s Nightkeep business, all right? It’s nothing to do with you!”

“‘Nightkeep’? What do you mean?” He ignored her.

“I live here too, you know!”

Magnus stormed out into the night. She followed him, then stopped on the doorstep as the world opened up around her.

She’d never seen anything like it. The whole sky was lit up in ribbons of colour – blue, green, yellow, all rippling like waves across the horizon. The stars burned like lanterns, clear and sparkling freshly polished diamonds. The sea stretched out below her, smooth as glass, but the longer she looked, the more she noticed the water catching the brilliant dancing lights, almost as if it was their source, and the sky its reflection. The air tasted sharp and clean, the sea and the sky so wide it seemed like one step would send her soaring out amongst the lights forever.

Eilidh shook her head, trying to clear her thoughts. Magnus had already crossed the courtyard, heading out past the lighthouse onto the wild heath beyond. She stepped forward, then jolted to a stop as a sharp rock pressed into the bottom of her foot. She wouldn’t get far without shoes on, or a coat, either. Tears of frustration prickled in her eyes, and she wiped them angrily away.

Fine. If Magnus thought he could steal her things and get away with it, he’d have another thing coming. She’d go and find Aunt Rhona – even if she was in the tower – and tell her what had happened, make her tell him to give it back and—

A dark spot in the water caught her eye. She blinked away the afterimages of the lights and focused on the black shape. At first she thought it might have been a whale – there were whales off Mirk Skerry, Aunt Rhona had said if she was lucky she might see one, but it was too big for that, and it carried a light of its own, this one glowing gold against the rippling sea. A bell was ringing out over the water, and her stomach lurched as she realised what the shape was. It wasn’t a whale out there in the darkness.

It was a ship.

The Nightkeeper’s Apprentice by Jude Reid is published by Floris Books and will be released on 19 March, priced at £7.99.