The Exiles

crumbly, as if it had just been dug. Piles of shabby looking bracken, perhaps left out to air. Beneath the holes was a terraced-shaped mound, made from the soil excavated by generations of hard-working badgers. Ruth hung over a trail of footprints leading through the newly dug earth, drawing a picture of a paw mark in her notebook.
    ‘Coming in a minute,’ she said without looking up.
    ‘They’ve all gone,’ said a voice from the earth, and Ruth saw the top of Phoebe’s head sticking out of one of the holes.
    ‘There’s nothing in this one,’ said Phoebe, ‘I’ve looked!’
    ‘Get out!’ exclaimed Ruth, yanking up her little sister by her arms. ‘Barging in like that! Serve you right if they bit you! Rude pig! Come on before they explore the cave without us.’
    ‘They can’t,’ said Phoebe complacently. ‘I’ve got the candles.’
    The sheep track widened and became a path, and the path curved round to join an overgrown track that led up to the quarry from the main road.
    ‘That’s the way the wagons came,’ Graham told them. ‘My grandad can remember when it was still used. It’s not been worked for years now though. You better watch out for vipers here; it’s a bad spot for them. Grandad remembers someone getting bitten up here once.’
    ‘Did they die?’
    ‘She did. It was a little girl, and her dad was so upset that he waited up here with his shotgun for four days and nights until he got the snake that did it.’
    ‘How’d he know he shot the right one?’
    ‘ ‘Course he knew!’
    ‘What about something to eat?’ asked Ruth, ‘and what about the cave? Where is it?’
    ‘Show you after dinner,’ said Graham, ‘if there’s anything left fit to eat after Naomi’s finished sitting on it.’
    ‘I’m only leaning on it,’ said Naomi, wriggling out of the knapsack straps. ‘It’ll still be all right. Look and see.’
    Graham reached for the bag and began pulling things out. ‘Packet of chocolate biscuits. Box of sandwiches. Hang on –’ he paused to take one apart ‘ – meatloaf sandwiches.’
    ‘I’m not eating that one now,’ interrupted Phoebe.
    ‘Bag of cracked boiled eggs,’ went on Graham, ignoring her, ‘bag of squashed tomatoes – you must have sat on them – pork pie, cut into chunks … what’s this?’ He unfolded a damp brown paper parcel. ‘Oh, bag of bent bananas.’
    ‘Bananas are naturally bent,’ said Naomi. ‘Anything else?’
    ‘No,’ said Graham, feeling around. ‘Oh, yes, five flat packets of crisps!’
    ‘We always squash our crisps before we eat them,’ Rachel told him. ‘It makes them last longer.’
    Half an hour later the contents of the rucksack, both squashed and solid, had almost disappeared from view.
    ‘I never thought we’d get through that lot,’ commented Ruth.
    ‘Never should have without Rachel,’ said Graham. ‘Don’t your jaws ache, Rachel?’
    ‘No,’ said Rachel vainly, as she sat with the last hard boiled egg in one hand and the last apple pasty in the other, taking alternate bites.
    ‘Mine would,’ said Graham, stuffing rubbish into the knapsack. ‘We’ll go and look at that cave in a minute, if you like.’
    ‘I’m too full to move,’ said Phoebe.
    ‘What did they used to dig here for?’ asked Rachel, looking round at the overgrown sides of the quarry.
    ‘Slate,’ replied Naomi.
    ‘May have been slate,’ said Graham, settling his head more comfortably on the rucksack full of papers and banana skins. ‘May have been slate. Or gold or diamonds or pearls.’ He yawned.
    ‘What’s that place down there?’ asked Ruth, pointing to another small village visible on the coast beneath them.
    ‘Nothing of a place,’ said Graham, opening his eyes again. ‘Proper dump that is.’
    ‘It looks just the same as our village.’
    ‘It doesn’t,’ said Graham, ‘they’re right queer folk there.’
    ‘Why?’
    ‘Never stop asking questions,’ thought Graham. ‘Never a minute’s peace!’
    ‘Why are they queer folk there?’
    ‘Why are they?’
    ‘Graham?’
    ‘They grow that much barley,’ mumbled Graham through his dreams, ‘and they talk that broad.’
    The girls glanced knowingly at each other and then sat in silence, watching Graham’s mouth slowly open wider and wider.
    ‘Not yet,’ whispered Naomi.
    Graham snored.
    ‘Now!’
    Very slowly and carefully they got to their feet and tiptoed away until they were out of danger of disturbing their guide.
    ‘We’ll find it