I lean against the railing and gag. Water and bile pours out of my mouth.
Reader turns at the sound of my retching. “Juliet, you are ill? Is it the sun sickness?”
I know those symptoms: a hot head, dry mouth, a bleeding rash on the skin. I touch my forehead. Not sun sickness: it’s the choppy sea playing pat-a-cake, pat-a-cake with my stomach.
Cries come from the mast: “I hear you, old man. I hear you.” Gollum’s voice is hoarse. “You’re going to have to untie me. The girl’s hurt. She’s useless. The storm has blown us far from home and you can’t sail this sloop without me.”
“That boy. He is still on board?” Reader moans. “And he says you are hurt. This is bad news, Juliet. I am old and there is little strength in these feeble bones of mine.”
It’s true that Reader and I are as much use as a pair of gloves to a fingerless Reject. I grip the rope around Gollum’s throat. “I could toss you overboard. It’s something I’d enjoy more than anything. But I’ve hurt my shoulder and we can’t sail without your help.”
Gollum arches an eyebrow at me. “Why should I? What’s in it for me?”
Reader groans. “Foolish boy. You must help us, otherwise we will bob around this terrible sea until our water and food runs out. That is if the next storm does not take us to a watery grave. Do you understand me? And when we reach the shores of Mangeria, you will go on your way and leave us in peace.”
Gollum closes his eyes and is silent for a few moments. “Okay. It’s not like we’ve got a choice. So let’s all play nicely until we get home. No tricks – I’ll be watching. Now get these bloody ropes off me.”
“Let the rascal go, Juliet. Then he must bind your shoulder before we set sail.”
The Reject will be watching me, but my eyes are sharper. I untie the knots around Gollum’s hands and feet, and loosen his neck from the noose.
He shakes himself free. “Water, where’s it?”
I point at the hatch and a few minutes later he returns, wiping his mouth.
“You said there was food, Cow-Eyes, and there’s sacks of the stuff. I’ll be eating all of it before we get back home.”
Nicolas stocked the galley with dried mango and banana and strawberry and pumpkin smuggled from The Laboratory. It was for our journey together.
“And from now on, matey, you must call me Captain Gollum.” Gollum salutes me. The cap on his head is embossed with gold braid and bears the emblem of the Guardian of Justice and Peace. He has changed out of his rags and is wearing Nicolas’s shirt and a pair of his trousers. How dare he!
“Take those clothes off,” I hiss.
“They’re mine now. Fit for a captain.” Gollum struts on the deck. The shirt hangs loosely and the trousers are held up by a piece of rope. “Come, let’s have a look at that shoulder of yours.”
I pull my shoulder back and stand upright while he rips canvas from an old sail.
“Strip. I need to see what I’m working with here.” Gollum has a hard glint in his eye.
I take a deep breath and fix my gaze on the two devil horns on his forehead. I yank off my dress and stand naked in the warm air. Nicolas is the only boy who has ever seen me without my clothes, or touched my skin. And now this Reject.
He stares at my bare chest and colour rises in his face. He touches my shoulder and feels along the bone above my chest. The skin on his fingers is rough, but he probes gently.
“It’s your collar bone. I’ve seen the same kind of injury on the Pulaks.”
The Pulaks of Mangeria are harnessed in pairs and pull taxis squashed full with passengers. Most of the Pulaks are not able to serve in their trade for longer than seven years. Then they are taken to the Reject dumps, broken and crippled.
Gollum knuckle-taps along my bone. “You’re lucky. Those poor buggers never get a chance to heal. This isn’t such a big deal. In a couple of months the bones will knit good as new.” He stands behind me for a moment, and then laughs. “So, you’re just a smelly old drudge! The Machine decided you’d wipe Posh kids’ arses and scrub their floors.”
I fold my hands over the numbers at the base of my spine. I am no longer a drudge – the mark on my spine is dead. But this boy will always be a Reject, a nothing. He was never meant to be anything.
He twists the canvas around my back, immobilising my shoulder. He makes a sling and straps one arm against my body. He pulls on my dress, leaving my other arm free.
“Come now, Captain Gollum,” I say. “You must set sail away from the sun. And tonight Reader will tell you how to plot a course home by the stars. I’ll go below and cook some food. You can trust that it will be most tasty.”
And when I can manage this sloop on my own, I’ll poison you and watch you rip your guts to ribbons, vomiting to death. You won’t have the chance to sell me to the Locusts when we get home.
“Yes, of course I trust you, Drudge.” Gollum laughs.
The days drift into each other, a pattern of unrelenting sun and vicious storms. The sloop is tossed between the wind and towering waves in a spiteful game that often blows us off course. Some days there is not a whisper of a breeze, and the seacraft bobs stagnant in a sea smothered in a mass of plastic.
Plastic bottles and packets and containers for as far as the eye can see on the dead sea. Bubbling blankets of plastic mush. Rotting green and black and yellow, a lifeboat for the flies that feast on its trapped filth.
Back in Mangeria, everything is made of plastic. The air smells of plastic. My food tastes of plastic. When I sweat, my skin is coated with abnormally shiny beads. And here on the sea we are besieged by the old world’s plastic legacy.
On these calm days, we take the oars and try and free the sloop from the prison of plastic. But it is useless. So we wait for a wind to rise and fill our sails.
I have made it my duty to cook breakfast for Gollum at sunrise when he ends his evening shift. Boiled oats, a spoonful of spit and a sprinkling of spite. The food is ready for him on deck once he has set the sloop on its morning course, and is done washing himself.
Under the blistering sky, he scrubs his hairy body with our precious water, singing bawdy songs that infect my ears. He keeps his captain’s cap on when he bathes, never removes it. During the long, hot days, he sleeps restlessly, sprawled out over the hatch to the galley where our supplies are kept – a rat guarding its food.
If I surprise him while he is washing, he never covers himself. He does not care if I see him – his scarred back, legs all knees, thin body. It has grown in terrified spurts and formed weirdly in places. When he catches me looking at him, he sings even louder. He is more Savage than any person I have known. I envy his defiance. Mine is sapping away with the endless days on the sea.
He eats with a ferocious appetite, shoving food into his face with dirty fingers as though he suspects someone might steal away his bowl before he is finished. “Is there any more porridge? A slab or two of mango? You can’t expect your captain to only eat banana for breakfast.” His stomach is never full.
I
