The Skeleton Coast Read online

  ‘Are you sure that’s what you want?’ Pod asked, slightly disappointed that she didn’t want to share a cabin with him.

  ‘Yes,’ Blossom said decisively.

  So that question was settled.

  They spent a single day in the little Gantuan port town where they’d come to collect Annalie. They had seen no sign of Beckett’s ship, but they knew it could not be far away; they had to hope no one had spotted Annalie or the Sunfish and reported them to the Admiralty. But they could not sail immediately for Sundia; the journey ahead of them would be long and there would be no help along the way, so they had to make sure they were fully provisioned before they set sail again.

  Sundia was located in the Outer Ocean, one of the largest and emptiest oceans in the world. It stretched from the east of the Brundisan continent, and extended a third of the way around the globe until it struck the west coast of Dux. The Outer Ocean was huge and empty, with only a few small island groupings in the north and Sundia grandly isolated in the south. It was famous for having wild and terrifying weather, especially in the south, where huge winds circled the globe with nothing much to slow them down, whipping up giant waves and tempests that lasted for days, or so the story went.

  They didn’t expect to encounter much traffic on the way to Sundia. There was little reason to cross the Outer Ocean unless you were going to Sundia, and since their borders were closed, few people made the attempt. The Admiralty patrolled the edges of the Outer Ocean, on both the Duxan and Gantuan sides, but they did not patrol the Ocean itself. It was too big, too empty; there was little in the way of shipping to protect, no pirate bases, no island nations. Just water. Lots and lots and lots of rough, stormy water.

  No wonder early sailors had called it the Desert Ocean: sailing into it was like sailing into a desert, where there was no land, no people, no supplies, no help. Many ships had vanished there. It was this uncomfortable fact that had once given the Outer Ocean its other name—the Ocean of Monsters—and had given rise to stories about terrible beasts that lived in it: enormous sea monsters who rammed ships with their armoured heads and sank them, or huge slimy things with tentacles that wrapped their suckery arms around boats and dragged them down to the depths.

  Modern exploration had made the ocean more navigable, less terrifying, banishing the tales of shipbreaking monsters to the realms of fantasy; and the discovery of Sundia—a strange paradise, vast and abundant, isolated from the rest of the world—had transformed it from a place of death to a place of possibility. But even so, the crew of the Sunfish knew they were sailing into some of the most remote territory they had yet encountered. And Sundia itself was almost as much of an unknown.

  ‘I did see a cool vid once about the Sundians,’ Essie said. ‘They were originally from the Moon Islands and they made boats out of reeds and just sailed around the world until they got to Sundia. And once they got there, they didn’t see anyone else for like a thousand years—or five thousand years, I don’t remember exactly—and then explorers from the north came, and it all got quite bad, and there was some kind of war…Anyway, the Sundians believe in sea gods, lots of different sea gods, and when the Flood happened, they thought it was the gods’ judgement, and that’s when they stopped letting foreigners in.’

  Blossom’s ears pricked up at the mention of the sea gods. ‘They know about the sea gods there?’

  ‘I think they invented them,’ Essie said.

  ‘So what do you know about their defences?’ Will said. ‘Why is it so hard to get in there?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Essie said. ‘I’ll see what I can find out.’

  While Pod and Will went ashore for supplies, Essie loaded all the information she could find about Sundia onto her shell. She found old tourist guides and maps, information about Sundian politics and religion, and infrequent news reports that emerged from the isolated nation. When the others returned, she gave them some of the highlights.

  ‘The Supreme Leader of the Sundians says the sea gods will protect their shores against foreign aggressors,’ Essie read.

  ‘Does he say how they do that?’ Will asked.

  ‘Not really,’ Essie said.

  ‘If they’ve only got made-up gods looking after them, this might be easier than we thought,’ Will said.

  ‘Don’t say that!’ Blossom snapped.

  ‘Say what?’ Will said, genuinely confused.

  ‘That they’re made up! You’ll make them angry!’

  Will looked at her for a moment in disbelief, then said: ‘Personally, I’m more worried about defences I can see, like patrol boats and guns, but okay. Sorry, sea gods.’

  Blossom did not look pacified, but she said nothing more.

  They began their long journey south, spending every quiet moment working on their plans.

  Sola Prentice, the last of the scientists, lived in a place called the International Bio-Archive and Research Co-operative—or the Ark, for short. It wasn’t on any of the tourist maps, but it appeared on one very detailed pre-Flood government map. The Ark was the most remote place they’d tried to get to so far, even more remote than Sujana’s little house in the mountains of Norlind. It was located in the vast arid desert that lay inland from Sundia’s south-west coast, which was the most remote part of the remote island nation. The cities and old tourist attractions had been clustered around the north coast and down into the east; the south-west, for reasons they would soon discover, had never been particularly attractive to visitors.

  ‘It looks like there’s only one road in and out,’ Annalie said, studying the map. A line led from the dot that was the Ark to another dot on the coast.

  ‘I’m not even sure it’s a proper road,’ Essie said. ‘It’s only a dotted line.’

  ‘And this map was made forty years ago,’ Will said. ‘Who knows what’s there now?’

  ‘If people are still living there, there must be some way to get there,’ Annalie said.

  ‘We can’t exactly rock up and ask them for a lift, though, can we?’ Will said. ‘We’re not even supposed to be there. We’re going to have to find a way to get there under our own steam.’

  ‘It’ll be a long walk,’ Annalie said.

  ‘Through the desert,’ Essie added.

  They all stared at the dotted line for a moment.

  ‘Maybe we’re overthinking it,’ Essie said. ‘We think Spinner’s still there, right? We can just contact him and he can get us picked up.’

  They all thought about the many times they’d tried to contact Spinner, and failed.

  ‘I think we need a Plan B,’ Will said.

  He spent a lot of time looking over the documents Essie had collected, studying the terrain, looking at pictures. Something he saw gave him an idea, and after that he spent all his spare hours up on deck, making something.

  ‘What are you building?’ Annalie asked.

  ‘It’s just an idea,’ Will said.

  ‘What sort of idea?’

  ‘You’ll find out when it’s done.’

  The only person who didn’t have much to do was Blossom. Pod had hoped she’d look for some way to pitch in and help, as he did when he first joined the crew, but Blossom didn’t seem to feel any need to work. She idled through the days, napping, dozing, staring into the water, chatting to anyone who was available, and teasing Graham. Sometimes she disappeared under the curtain they’d set up for her—if it hadn’t been packed away for the day—and played quiet games on her own. They’d hear her voice murmuring away, but she got very cross if anyone tried to find out what she was doing. In some ways, she was ferociously protective of her privacy. Pod was very embarrassed by her refusal to help out and began nagging her, but it had absolutely no effect. She could not be shamed. Words and guilt bounced right off her.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said to the others. ‘I don’t know why she’s being like this.’

  ‘Maybe she feels like she’s done enough work for a while and she wants to have a bit of a holiday,’ Essie suggested.
/>   ‘But she should help,’ Pod agonised. ‘It’s not fair on everyone else.’

  ‘What would she help with?’ Will said. ‘She doesn’t know how to sail or fish or do anything useful.’

  ‘She could learn,’ Essie pointed out.

  ‘Eventually she’s going to get bored,’ Annalie said. ‘Maybe we can find her something to do then.’

  But Blossom showed no sign of getting bored enough for that.

  Despite all the dire reports they’d read about the Outer Ocean, its many dangers and its horrible weather, the first part of their journey was trouble-free, except for one thing. Things began to go missing.

  First it was a seashell Annalie kept in her cabin. It wasn’t valuable, but Spinner had given it to her, and she liked it. One day it was there, the next day it wasn’t. Annalie thought it might have fallen on the floor, but a search of the cabin failed to turn it up. It seemed like one of those annoying things that happened: innocent. Accidental.

  Next thing to go was a little mug shaped like a dog. It had been given to Will when he was a little boy, and because it was indestructible, it remained part of the galley crockery—until it wasn’t.

  Then Will discovered a spare reflector panel for the biggest solar cell was missing. This was a more serious problem; although the component was small, it was important, because if the panel failed and could not be replaced, it meant their biggest solar cell was out of action. Will knew for a fact that they had had a spare when they left Gantua; he’d checked it before they went on their last supply run. Now it too was missing from the locker where it was kept.

  No one thought to connect these annoying absences until Essie’s shell went missing. Essie turned the cabin inside out looking for it. Then she checked the boys’ cabin and every locker in the saloon. The shell was nowhere to be found. She asked everybody in turn if they’d seen it, even Graham. But no one had.

  ‘What could have happened to it?’ Essie asked, almost in tears. ‘It’s nowhere!’

  ‘It has to be somewhere,’ Will said. ‘There’s nowhere it could have gone.’

  ‘Then why can’t we find it?’ Essie wailed.

  ‘Something weird’s going on,’ Will said. ‘These things going missing. The reflector. Your shell.’

  A thought occurred to him then, and it occurred to the rest of them at more or less the same time. Pod turned bright red. Then he went and stuck his head under Blossom’s curtain. ‘Blossom, are you sure you don’t know where Essie’s shell is? It’s very important that we find it.’

  Blossom looked back at him with an expression of consummate innocence. ‘No. I don’t know where it is.’

  At that moment, all of them became convinced that Blossom had been stealing from them. And none of them had the faintest idea what to do about it.

  Annalie beckoned to the others and moved them all upstairs.

  Graham said what everybody was thinking. ‘Thief!’

  ‘We don’t know she is,’ Annalie said, striving for fairness.

  ‘Easy enough to find out,’ Will said. ‘We go down there and see what she’s hiding under that curtain.’

  ‘We can’t!’ Essie said.

  ‘You’re okay with letting her keep your shell?’

  Essie was not. ‘We need to find a way to do it without embarrassing her,’ she said. ‘We’ve got a long journey ahead of us.’

  ‘Bugger that,’ Will said. ‘If she’s stealing from us, she’s got bigger problems than being embarrassed.’

  ‘Let me do it,’ Pod said. He was mortified by his sister’s behaviour. ‘I brought her on board. I’ll fix this.’

  He went downstairs again, anger and embarrassment competing for the upper hand. How could she do this? To his friends? To him? Who had she become in the years they’d been apart? He didn’t recognise the girl who’d returned from the cruise ship. And he had no idea how to handle her now.

  Will would have gone in all guns blazing and started rifling through her things. But Pod had a feeling that such a thing, once done, would be hard to undo. So he knelt down at the edge of the curtain and said, ‘Blossom? Can I come in?’

  She peeped out at him, like some bright-eyed, rather bitey creature peering from its burrow. ‘Why?’

  ‘I need to talk to you.’

  Not taking no for an answer, he eased in under the curtain.

  ‘You need to give it back,’ he said, trying to sound calm.

  ‘I don’t have it.’

  ‘Yes, you do.’

  She was silent for a moment, assessing him. Then she opened the locker that had been emptied for her and took out Essie’s shell.

  Inside, many objects had been carefully arranged on what he realised was the pillowcase she’d brought with her from the Blue Water Duchess. He saw the dog mug, the solar reflector and another shiny spare part they hadn’t yet realised was missing. There were more things too, some of it cheap junk (a plastic jewel, a tiny notebook with a pink pen attached by a chain), some of it clearly very valuable (a personal electronic music player, an expensive-looking ring with real stones in it). He realised these must have been stolen from the cruise ship. Then he noticed there was a little girl’s doll, with a bright mane of hair and huge blue-green eyes, a tiny waist and impossibly long legs, standing at the centre of all these treasures. At once he understood what he was looking at: it was a shrine to the Lucky Lady.

  ‘Where did you get all this stuff?’ he asked.

  ‘I found it.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes,’ Blossom said savagely. ‘Rich people leave stuff behind all the time. They have so much, they don’t even notice it’s missing.’

  ‘You took this from the guests? Wouldn’t you have gotten into big trouble for that?’

  ‘Only if you got caught,’ Blossom said with a glint in her eye. ‘But I didn’t steal it. I found it.’

  Pod didn’t really believe her, but he suspected she half-believed it herself, or had said it to herself enough times that it had begun to seem true.

  ‘What about these?’ he said, pointing to the things she’d acquired on the boat. ‘Were these lost?’

  Blossom made a sullen face, but said nothing.

  ‘You can’t steal their stuff,’ Pod said. ‘That’s rule number one.’

  Blossom nodded, not meeting his eyes.

  ‘I mean it. Not even little things. Not even if you think they’ll never ever notice. Are you listening?’

  ‘Yes!’ Blossom said crossly.

  ‘Do you promise?’

  ‘Yes!’

  Pod hoped he could believe her. ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘Can I take these?’

  ‘They’re offerings!’ Blossom protested. ‘You can’t take back an offering!’

  ‘Which is worse,’ Pod countered, ‘taking back an offering, or giving the Lady something which isn’t yours?’

  While Blossom was still thinking about this, he scooped up the missing objects.

  ‘Some people have so much, and other people have nothing,’ Blossom burst out bitterly. ‘It’s not fair!’

  ‘I’ll tell you what’s not fair,’ Pod said, beginning to lose his temper. ‘It’s being here on their boat, eating their food, never lifting a finger to help and then stealing from them.’

  ‘I never asked to come here,’ Blossom shot back.

  ‘But you are here,’ Pod said, ‘and you can’t do stuff like this. Not to my friends. Not to me.’

  Blossom looked at him defiantly, but her chin was starting to quiver. ‘You care more about them than you care about me.’

  ‘That’s not true,’ Pod said.

  ‘This is just like being back on the ship,’ Blossom said bitterly. ‘Someone’s always taking your stuff away from you.’

  ‘It wasn’t your stuff!’ Pod said, for what felt like the millionth time. Then he thought about what she’d just said. ‘Is that what used to happen on the ship? People would take your stuff?’

  Blossom nodded. ‘Anything good you got, someone was always trying t
o take it away from you, unless you hid it real good.’ She paused. ‘Stealing was a big crime. Get caught stealing, they’d put you off the ship, send you to jail. Sometimes they did dorm searches in the middle of the night. Tore everything apart looking for stolen property.’

  ‘Did they find any?’

  ‘Found all sorts of things. The other girls said security did it to take all our stuff for themselves. Sometimes people just did it for revenge—snitch on someone you didn’t like, get them into trouble, get them sent off the boat.’

  ‘That’s terrible,’ Pod said.

  Blossom shrugged, then looked at him, defiance mixed with fear. ‘So what are you going to do to me?’ she asked.

  Pod was baffled by the question. Then he realised she meant was he going to punish her. ‘Nothing,’ he said.

  ‘You’re not going to send me away?’

  ‘Why would I do that? I risked my neck to get you back.’

  ‘Maybe now you wish you hadn’t,’ she suggested, her voice wobbling.

  Pod felt a twist of sorrow and guilt. ‘You’re my sister,’ he said. ‘Getting you back is all I’ve thought about since the day they took you.’

  Abruptly, she put her arms around his neck and hugged him fiercely. Slightly surprised, but relieved, Pod hugged her back. ‘Tell them I’m sorry,’ she said in a harsh whisper.

  Pod went back up on deck and handed out the missing objects.

  ‘She won’t do it again,’ he said. ‘She’s sorry.’

  ‘Why did she do it?’ asked Essie.

  Pod thought for a moment about how to explain it. ‘Cruise ships,’ he said finally. ‘Lots of poor people locked up with lots of rich people.’

  ‘We’re not rich,’ Will said. ‘Except for Essie. She’s rich.’

  ‘Don’t tell her that,’ Essie said with a grin.

  Pod looked embarrassed all over again.

  Annalie felt sorry for him. ‘She just needs to get to know us a bit better,’ she said. ‘Let’s forget it ever happened.’

  Graham makes a contribution

  Nothing more did go missing, and the weeks that followed were marked by a series of storms which made for some less-than-pleasant sailing. But the strong winds that brought the storms also helped them on their way, and one day they came unexpectedly on their first sign that Sundia was close by.