Grade 6 English Paper 2

Text for Section A, an extract from Gullstruck Island by Frances Hardinge

Gullstruck Island is inhabited by various tribes, including the Lost and the Lace.

***

It was a burnished, cloudless day with a tug-of-war wind, a fine day for flying. And so Raglan
Skein left his body neatly laid out on his bed, its breath as slow as sea swell, and took to the
sky. 5

He took only his sight and hearing with him. There was no point in bringing those senses that
would make him feel the chill of the sapphire-bright upper air or the giddiness of his rapid rise.

Like all Lost, he had been born with his senses loosely tethered to his body, like a hook on a
fishing line. He could let them out, then reel them in and remember all the places his mind had
visited meanwhile. Most Lost could move their senses independently, like snails’ eyes on stalks. 10
Indeed, a gifted Lost might be feeling the grass under their knees, tasting the peach in your
hand, overhearing a conversation in the next village and smelling cooking in the next town, all
while watching barracudas dapple and brisk around a shipwreck ten miles out to sea.

Raglan Skein, however, was doing nothing so whimsical1. He had to take his body on a difficult
and possibly perilous journey the next day, and he was spying out the land. It was a relief to see 15
the world plummet away from him so that everything became smaller. More manageable. Less
dangerous.

Scattered around the isolated island of Gullstruck dozens of other minds would be adrift. Lost
minds, occupied with the business of the island, keeping it functioning. Scrying for bandits in the
jungles, tracing missing children on the rises, spotting sharks in the deeps, reading important 20
trade notices and messages long distance. In fact, there might even be other Lost minds
floating near him now, indiscernible to him as he was to them.

He veered towards the mountain ridge that ran along the western coast, seeing the individual
peaks emerge from the fleece of clouds. One such peak stood a little proud of the rest, its
coloration paler. It was Sorrow, the white volcano, sweet, pure and treacherous as snow. Skein 25
gave her a wide berth and instead veered towards her husband, the King of Fans, the tallest
middlemost mountain of the ridge, his cratered head forever lost in clouds. For now the King
was docile and hazy with the heat, but he too was a volcano and of uncertain temper. The
shimmering air above his slopes was flecked with the circling forms of eagles large enough to
carry a child off in each claw. Villages on this coast expected to lose a couple of their number to 30
the eagles each year.

But these eagles would have no interest in the little towns that sprawled below. As far as the
great birds were concerned, the towns were just more animals, too vast and sluggish for them
to bother with, scaled with slate and furred with palm thatch. The muddy roads were the veins,
and bronze bells in white towers tolled out their slow, cold heartbeats. 35

For a moment Skein wished that he did not know that every town was really a thriving hive of
bitter, biting two-legged animals, full of schemes and resentment and hidden treachery. Yet
again the fear of betrayal gnawed at his mind.

We will talk to these people, the Lost Council had announced. We are too powerful for them to
ignore us. Everything can be settled peacefully. Skein did not believe it. Three days more, and 40
he would know if his shadowy suspicions had flesh to them.

There lay the road he would travel over the next few days. He scried it carefully. Even though

© UCLES 2023 E/S7/INSERT/02

 3

he had left for the coast quietly and with haste, there was always a chance that news of his
arrival had outstripped him, and that enemies lay in wait.

And it was no mean task, spying out ambushes and surprises on this coast of all coasts. 45
Everything about it reeked of trickery and concealment. There were reefs beneath the water of
the bay, betrayed only by the foam fringes on the far waves. The cliff-face itself was a labyrinth.
Over centuries the creamy limestone had been hollowed and winnowed until it was a maze of
tapering spires, peepholes and snub ridges like sleeping lions. So it was all along the west
coast of the island, and it was this that had given the Coast of the Lace its name. 50

The tribe who lived here nowadays was also known as ‘the Lace’, and they too were full of ins
and outs and twists and turns and sleeping lions pretending to be rocks. You never knew where
you were with the Lace.

Glossary
1
whimsical: playful, amusing

© UCLES 2023 E/S7/INSERT/02

 2

Section A: Reading

Spend 30 minutes on this section.

Read the Text in the insert, and answer questions 1–11.

1 Look at lines 3–5.

(a) What figurative technique is used? Tick () one box.

simile

oxymoron

hyperbole

onomatopoeia

[1]

(b) The writer also uses sibilance.

What effect does this create?

[1]

2 Look at lines 6–7. Why is there no point in Raglan Skein taking his sense of touch with him when
he flies away?

[1]

3 Look at lines 8–13.

What grammatical structure does the writer use at the beginning of the first sentence?

[1]

4 People from the Lost tribe are able to experience sensations from different locations all at the
same time.
Give one quotation that tells the reader how they do that.

[1]

5 The writer uses however (line 14) to introduce a contrast between the third and fourth paragraph.
Explain what this contrast is.

[2]

© UCLES 2023 E/S7/02

 3

6 Look at lines 18–22. People living on the island face dangers on and around the island.
Give one example.

[1]

7 Look at lines 23–31.

(a) Most of the paragraph is made up of complex and compound-complex sentences.

Why?

[1]

(b) The writer uses commas in this paragraph in two different ways.
Tick () two boxes.

before direct speech

between subordinate clauses

before and after extra information

between items on a list

after a time adverbial

[2]

8 Look at lines 32–35. The eagles see the towns as living creatures.
Give a quotation that tells the reader this.

[1]

9 Look at lines 39–44.

(a) Raglan Skein sets off on a journey the next day.

What is the purpose of this journey?

[1]

(b) Give evidence from the text that tells the reader that Raglan Skein’s journey will take longer
by body than it has taken him by his senses.

[1]

(c) Give a three-word phrase that means ‘were hiding, ready to attack’.

[1]

© UCLES 2023 E/S7/02 [Turn over

 4

10 (a) Look at lines 45–50.

Give one three-word phrase that means ‘a difficult job’.

[1]

(b) What are the main dangers for a person arriving on the Lace coast by boat?
Give two ideas and support each idea with evidence from the text.

Evidence: ambushes and surprises / trickery

Idea: you might be attacked
and concealment

Idea 1 Evidence 1

Idea 2 Evidence 2

[4]

11 Look at lines 51–53.

(a) Here refers back to the previous paragraph.

Give one more adverb that does this.

[1]

(b) What do you think the Lace people are like? Give two ideas and support each idea with
evidence from the text.

First idea:

Evidence 1:

Second idea:

Evidence 2:
[4]

© UCLES 2023 E/S7/02

 5

Section B: Writing

Spend 30 minutes on this section.

12 Raglan Skein arrives safely on the Coast of the Lace. Write what happens next.

You could write about:

• how the Lace people treat him

• whether his shadowy suspicions about the Lace people are correct
• the outcome of their meeting.

Space for your plan:

Write your story on the next page. [25 marks]

© UCLES 2023 E/S7/02 [Turn over

 6

© UCLES 2023 E/S7/02

 7

© UCLES 2023 E/S7/02