Young Storykeeper Volume III

248 | STORYKEEPERS VOLUME III AGE TWELVE | 249
ELLA AT THE LIGHTHOUSE
Ella loved lighthouses, she loved how they
towered over the sea and the way they led
sailors home. This was helped by the fact
that she lived in one with her mother off the
coast of Mayo.
Ella’s father had died a few months
previously in the Easter Rising. She and her
grieving mother Kathleen now had to run the
lighthouse. They didn’t have much money
even before John died and now they were
really struggling.
Their lighthouse was small but cosy. On
the top floor, there was the lookout room,
with windows all around, a huge light and an
old foghorn.
Every day at dawn, Ella went for a swim
in the sea. John had taught Ella and her big
brother Seán how to swim when they were
little. Seán had left nearly two years earlier,
he’d joined the army to fight in the war. John
hadn’t want him to, as he was only sixteen.
They’d had a big fight and Seán took their
boat in the middle of the night and left. They
hadn’t received a letter from him in almost
a year. Kathleen had never been the same
after Seán had left and now her husband
was dead; she was devastated.
After her swim, Ella made breakfast for
her and her mother. It usually was eggs from
one of their frail hens and some bread, but
sometimes Kathleen was too sad to make
the bread, so it was just eggs.
After breakfast Kathleen went up to
the lookout room and Ella went down by the
rocks with John’s fishing rod and she tried
her best to catch some fish for dinner. If she
was lucky they might have mackerel that
night, if not they had a few potatoes.
Their land was too rocky to grow
anything, so they had to buy potatoes on
the mainland. Ever since Seán had taken
the boat, though, Ella had had to make the
treacherous journey on a homemade raft.
After fishing Ella would do a bit of
sewing and knitting as Kathleen had given it
up after John died. Ella was very good at it
and she made garments to keep the family
warm during winter.
After sewing, Ella would join Kathleen
up in the lookout room and would do some
maths and Irish and chat. Ella didn’t go to
school on the mainland anymore, not without
their boat.
Kathleen would do the washing and
the dishes if she felt able to after their lunch
of cheese and bread. After that, Kathleen
would prepare their small dinner. The two
would chat for a little bit before Ella went to
bed at nine o’clock.
Kathleen didn’t go to bed until much
later, maybe midnight. Before she went to
bed, Kathleen always checked the post box
in hope for a letter from Seán, but there
never was one. Ella tried to keep her hopes
up, but she’d heard about the horrors of the
war.
Each night Ella listened to her mother’s
soft sobs. Each night Kathleen thought about
her hard-working daughter who wouldn’t live
the life she deserved, stuck in a lighthouse
with her sad mother and the hens. Kathleen
wished things could be different, but they
weren’t. That was just life.
Ciara Doherty
Co Roscommon
THE GOLD DIGGERS
I’m one of the twelve lighthouses in Ireland,
but I think everyone can agree I’m the most
unique. I’m called St John’s Point. I have
black and yellow bands as my design and
am 40 metres tall. I have been based in
Dunkineely, County Donegal since 1844,
when George Halpin Senior built me.
You can have a sleepover in one of
my cottages, Ketch or Sloop, which is quite
cool. Loads of people come and see me and
I can nearly always see people when they
are out in the ocean fishing or sunbathing on
a yacht. My job is to guide people on boats
and yachts at night with my big light that
reaches 25 miles in every direction. It’s cool
to see people having fun or catching fish but
I don’t always have a nice view.
Quite often, when people are messing
around in the ocean, they can get caught
in a wave or cut themselves on rubbish that
people carelessly throw in the water. When
I look out on the Atlantic Ocean every day,
I hope to see everything running smoothly,
but we all know that’s not how things work.
One day two teenagers went out on their
family’s fishing boat to search for something
that could make them millionaires. GOLD…
They had been reading a book and it said
that there was gold in the Atlantic. They
were young and ambitious so they believed
it. I would see them every day of summer
searching a different section of the ocean
until one day they didn’t leave. I thought they
had found it and were trying to collect it up
until I heard sirens, one of them had nearly
drowned but luckily a man out on a speed boat
saved him. The boy wasn’t badly affected;
he just had to rest for a couple of days. He
and his cousin were back out searching a
couple of weeks later. His parents told him
to stop looking, but he strongly believed it
was there. They took more precautions after
the accident.
A week later, they were putting
down their hook but couldn’t, they had hit
something hard and it wasn’t sand. This had
never happened on any of their journeys, so
they started jumping up and down because
they thought this was it. After weeks of their
parents telling them to stop, or that they
were wasting their summer on something
that wasn’t true, they had found something.
They quickly got two hooks and lowered
them down to try and pull it up a bit.
Once they lifted it up, they put it in
the fish net and pulled it up. It was a big,
rusty box, it looked like it had been there
for decades. Nothing was on it apart from
a surname on the front, in cursive writing it
said, Thornton. There was no keyhole, so
they just opened it and saw… THE GOLD!
Cara Davidson
Co Antrim
THE LIGHT AT THE EDGE
I am tall and grand
My light shines on the sea and land
In the night I am such a pretty sight
For the top of me glows with such a brilliant light
The boats search for me
When they are sailing at sea
When they have spotted my light
They are filled with delight
A lot of the time I have coloured stripes
And my colours are colours that everyone likes
My colours could be red or yellow
With black and white, I yell or bellow
I feel as if I’m at the edge of the world
Watching the sea tumble and seeing the clouds
swirl
Sometimes I’m old and part of history
So people come almost every day to visit me
So when you are stuck at sea in the dead of
night
Just look for me and you’ll be alright
Please don’t worry, I assure you
And to anyone out there who looks for me too.
Sorcha Curtin
Co Dublin