a hungry rat.
Gollum watches me, eyes peeled like boiled eggs. He wears a waist harness even on the calmest days, and a life jacket for just-in-case. When he eats, he insists that Reader takes the first mouthful.
“Taste this, Master Reader,” Gollum says. “Has Drudge overcooked our meal? Again?”
I wait, and watch him too.
One day he will slip up. And good riddance to him.
Reader continues, ignoring my snort. “I do not doubt my books or our young captain. But I wonder sometimes whether the world has changed. Whether the waters that rose after the conflagration swallowed up the lands that used to exist.” He scratches his forehead. “Or perhaps when the earth flipped on its axis and carved the moon in half, it rearranged the stars in the heavens. Or maybe, just maybe, Juliet, we are looking at the sky from a different hemisphere. Could it be that our world has actually turned upside-down?” Reader sighs. “It is a conundrum, my Juliet, and I have no answers.”
Fear rises in my throat. I am trapped on this sloop with my burden, sailing into a void with a blind old man and a filthy Reject. I should never have trusted Reader. I should have chucked him overboard months ago. He is a useless sack of old dots.
“Could it be, old man, that you have got us hopelessly lost? You, and our fine captain. Could the conundrum be that both of you don’t have a clue what you’re doing, and that we’re going to sail around on this terrible ocean until our teeth fall out or we die of thirst and starvation?”
I sink onto the deck. We will never get back home. Nicolas will believe that I abandoned him forever. And unless we find new land, we will die. Maybe there is only a sea of nothingness, and we are chasing the ghosts of lands that died hundreds of years ago.
The setting sun paints the sea flaming orange and bright pink, harsh brushstrokes against the black canvas. A flash of silver breaks though the surface. Then the ripples on the water settle back into their fiery tapestry.
“Tonight I will have to tell our captain that I fear my books have failed him. That we are lost.” Reader presses his hand over mine. “We will make a new plan, Juliet. We will not give up.”
I pull my hand away from Reader’s and screen my eyes against the glare of the setting sun. There it is again. A flash of silver breaking the water. Now a spear of grey carving a path towards the seacraft.
Stories of terrible sea monsters are told by the Mangerians to keep the residents of Slum City from venturing across the ocean. I never believed their lies, but my eyes do not deceive me. Something is moving in the water below.
Gollum joins us, picking the crust of sleep from his eyes. “Did I hear the beautiful words ‘stewed’ and ‘mango’? Or was it a dream?” His eyes brighten when he sees the bowl on the crate. He stands at the railing next to me and hawks a throat full of phlegm into the sea. “Before I went to sleep this morning I found a book in your library, Master Reader. It has pictures and words, not just dots. Maybe we could read it together tonight? I think I’m up for it.”
Reader claps his hands. “I brought a couple of Juliet’s favourites. The one with the pictures? Yes, that must be Peter Pan. It is about a boy who flies. And a pirate captain who sails a seacraft much like ours called the Jolly Roger. I think you will like it a great deal. We can read it together, my fine captain.”
Master Reader and my fine captain. Reading my book. Mine!
“The Jolly Roger. It’s a good name for a seacraft. From now on my sloop is the Jolly Roger.”
His sloop. How dare he!
The Reject wipes his mouth and rubs his hands down his trousers. Nicolas’s trousers.
I strike his face, knocking the captain’s cap off his head. “I forbid you to read my book. You are nothing. You have no right!”
Gollum grabs my hand. He leans into me, his other hand a fist. I pull back, shielding my face with my arm. Waves thrash. A face appears from the sea, a pink and grey maw edged with rows of dagger teeth. I scream. Gollum hauls me back as the monster throws itself against the seacraft.
I stand on the deck shaking like a past trader as Gollum picks up his captain’s cap and pulls it onto his head, cocking the angle.
“This is the second time I’ve saved your skin, Drudge. First from the storm.” He holds a finger in the air. “And now from a monster.” He waggles two fingers at me. “Next time, I own you.” He stabs three fingers inches from my face.
I smack away his hand. There will not be a third time. No one owns me. My heart reeling, I lean over the railing and scan the sea. A silver blade cuts through the waves, circling the boat. A grey-and-white snout, two dead-black eyes looking back at me. It sinks below the water and is gone. Tiny waves knit together, repairing the rip in the sea.
“What is it, Juliet? What has occurred?” Reader scrabbles in vain on the deck for the bowl, which was tossed off the crate. “A freak wave? My captain, what was that?”
“It was a monster.” My voice is a whisper. “I saw it, old man. It’s true what they told us: monsters still live in the sea. It came out of the water and tried to attack the boat.”
Reader claps his hands and his face cracks in a foolish smile. “There was something alive in the water? Describe it to me. Please, Juliet. Paint it with words so that I will also know what it looks like.”
I tell Reader of the grey knife that sliced through the waves. The rows of jagged teeth in a cavernous mouth turned down in a sad grimace. The shiny grey-white body and tiny dead eyes.
“It is a shark fish! One of the oldest sea scavengers. Tell me, Juliet, how big was it?”
I stretch my arms as wide as they can go. Of course Reader cannot see me. “Two metres at least.”
“Rubbish! Another three metres.” Gollum strides across the deck. “At least twice the width of my Jolly Roger. And I nearly touched the beast. I was so close, I could have punched it.”
The old man gasps. “It must be the Great White. The prince of shark fishes. A great killer. They were hunted for generations before the conflagration. It was assumed they had died out along with the whales and the seals, long before the old world came to an end.”
Gollum’s eyes search the ocean as it sucks the growing darkness from the sky.
“My captain, Juliet, this means everything. Our seas are not barren as we thought. The Great White eats other fish. It would not survive if it was alone. There must be more creatures, other fish that this beauty feeds on.” Tears trickle down Reader’s cheeks. “The sea is alive. Perhaps it also hosts dolphins, or mermaids. Tonight we will celebrate.”
We linger for a while and watch for more signs of life, but the sea remains dark and silent as the sun disappears below the horizon.
Reader is like a small boy who’s found a nest of chicks. He cannot stop chattering. “I knew it, Juliet. Did I not tell you there was life away from home?” His words swim in spit, drown in his mouth. “Who knows, perhaps we will discover a lion, the king of the jungle. Or maybe a rhinoceros, with its magical horn. I have read about these animals, seen pictures in books, many years ago, before my eyes darkened.” He wipes the specks of saliva off his chin and giggles.
Gollum’s
