to the sky, humming only sometimes. I steered the Jolly Roger behind the Great White. It swam a few metres ahead and sometimes turned back to nudge us along.
Now the men hand us bowls of food and I force myself to pause between each mouthful. The orange vegetable is warm and fibrous, coated in sugar. It tastes good, like pumpkin. Gollum attacks the food with his fingers, pushing it desperately into his mouth.
“Slow down, boy,” Commander says. “Let the food settle for a few minutes. There’s lots more butterynut where this came from.”
Butterynut! A beautiful name for this vegetable.
Commander refills Gollum’s bowl and smiles at me. “We must keep you healthy.” Her blue eyes crinkle at the corners. The cracks tell of someone who has laughed too much. Or cried.
I finish my food and drink more water. I am swallowed by weariness. My eyes close and I sink back onto the sand.
“Come, you can sleep later. Someone is impatient to meet you. This is the first time in more than two hundred years we’ve had visitors from across the sea,” Commander says.
I hear a loud noise and a large metal machine on wheels pulls to a stop at the edge of the sand.
Reader cowers. “Where am I? What is making this noise? Juliet, what is this thing? Describe it to me.”
Commander hears his question and laughs. “Ah, at least one of you has a voice. It’s called a Land Rover. Or sometimes a Landie. It’s built to run off solar power and carries people long distances over rough terrain.”
“Of course, of course. I have read about the motor vehicle!” Reader’s face is pink with excitement, his weakness forgotten. “In the old world they were powered by petroleum. They had no need for the Pulaks. And now you say the vehicle is fuelled by the sun? How extraordinary!”
Back home, The Machine also gets its energy from the sun. So do the lamps and cooling units in the Posh homes, and the lights that flicker in the streets at night.
Commander takes my arm and we climb into the back of the Landie. Two of the men lift Gollum and Reader onto seats next to me. The Landie makes a noise like stones rattling in a pipe. It jerks and then lurches forward, bouncing over the sand. Reader clutches his seat, his blind eyes big, pink gums chattering in his mouth. Time travels with us along the bumpy roads until at last we stop.
Outside, purple mountains surround us, but there is nothing else in sight. Only grey earth. Commander taps her ear, mumbles into the cuff of her shirt and the earth opens. A metal box emerges and a door slides open.
“The lift will take us underground,” Commander says.
Gollum stumbles back. “No. I’m not going underground. Not underground.”
Commander picks up Gollum as though he were a doll and heaves him over her shoulder. One of the men carries Reader and the other hustles me into the box after Commander. She presses her thumb against some numbers on the side of the box and we move down, down, down.
I touch Gollum’s shoulder. He is trembling, his skin covered in sweat. We continue our descent until it feels as though we must have reached the bottom of the world.
The box jerks to a stop and opens onto a corridor. Two men with guns stand at a door. Their eyes widen above their masks when they see us.
“At ease, Peacemakers,” Commander says, and ushers us into a room.
She calls them Peacemakers, but they have the appearance of the Locusts at home. There is no peace in those cruel blue eyes.
The room is brightly lit and sparsely furnished: there is a desk, a few chairs and a couch. A mirror lines a wall, making the room seem larger than it is. The floor is covered in a plush white carpet and a giant screen dominates one of the walls. Pictures of people working in a garden move on the screen. They are in the room with me. But on the screen at the same time. It is magic only a wizard as powerful as Gandalf could conjure.
A man – not Gandalf – rises from a chair. His nose and mouth are unmasked but most of his face is hidden under bandages. I have seen faces like this before at the Beautiful Like Me Beauty Parlour in the pleasure quarter. The Posh like to roast their skins brown on the beach and then bleach them white with acid. Sometimes the acid is too strong and it takes weeks of bandages to heal. Sometimes the bandages stay on for good.
The man stares at us with blue eyes spittled with white flecks. “Thank you, Commander. Your men can place the old fellow on the couch and go.” The door shuts behind us and the Peacemakers take their places inside the room. “Please sit,” the man says.
Gollum sways, then collapses on the carpet. I shift Reader’s feet to the side and perch on the couch. Ready to leap up and run if things get tricky.
“Are we prisoners?” Gollum says, scowling at the Peacemakers at the door.
The man laughs. “You’re our guests! And most welcome.” His mouth is a set of large, perfect white teeth – not one of them dares to squabble for room the way mine do. He lowers himself carefully into the chair opposite the couch and, with a stifled grunt, crosses his legs. He leans back and folds his hands. They are the hands of a wrinkly past trader ; the white skin is sprinkled with grey hair and brown spots.
“Let me introduce myself. My name is Charles Gilby-Gold. I’m a member of one of the founding families of this community. They call me Shepherd, sometimes Chuck – we are most informal here.” He chuck-chuck-chuckles, a strangled noise that ends in a wheeze. “I’m intrigued to hear all about you. Where you are from, how you came to be here.”
Gollum’s mouth is clenched. Reader trembles beside me and murmurs: “Juliet. Speak, Juliet. I have no breath.”
My cow-eyes are peeled, my gob-hole is buttoned.
After an awkward silence, Shepherd clears his throat. “I can see you are a little shy. Perhaps I should go first, and you can repay me the courtesy later. When you feel more at ease.”
As he reaches for a glass of water, a white shape rises from the plush carpet and leaps onto my lap. I jerk back, pressing myself into the cushions. Shepherd hisses and clicks his tongue.
“My old cat, Hector. He obviously senses your fear. Cats do, you know.”
Hector is nothing like Alice’s Cheshire Cat in Reader’s picture books. His fur is white and plush like the carpet, but sticky under my fingers. He looks at me with yellow-green eyes – the colour of the gooey entrails of a cockroach crushed under foot. He claws my lap and releases a foul smell. I do not know if I like cats.
“If Hector is quite comfortable, may I begin?” Shepherd puts down the glass of water and clasps his hairy white hands. “Many years ago, a cartel of wealthy men came together. They acquired this piece of land and built a place of refuge for their families beneath the ground, a bunker that could withstand the onslaught they knew was coming.”
His voice is sweet and mellow, like the wine my former Master liked to drink, aged in barrels for hundreds of years. It made his face red and his temper bad.
Shepherd continues. “The Cartel recruited skilled people who would ensure their survival. They settled here and waited for the end of days.”
I watch Shepherd as he speaks. His tongue
