The Castle in the Sea: Quest of the Sunfish 2 Read online

  The pirate leader pursed his lips. ‘What did they look like?’

  ‘It was my brother and my friend,’ Annalie began eagerly. ‘He’s about my height, brown hair—’

  She broke off; the pirates were laughing.

  The pirate leader smiled smoothly, a tattooed coil of wire contorting on his temple. ‘They’re probably dead,’ he said coolly. ‘Which leaves me with the question: What do I do with you?’

  Annalie felt a cold, slithering feeling go down her neck. Of course: they would get no help for free.

  ‘We came here because we’re looking for someone,’ she said. ‘His name’s Dan Gari.’

  ‘Who?’ the pirate leader said, with studied indifference.

  ‘He’s an old friend of my father’s and I’m pretty sure he lives here. My father’s name’s Spinner, and he shipped out of Port Fine with one of your crews a little while back, headed for this island.’

  Although the pirate’s expression barely shifted, Annalie knew she had his attention. ‘Did he, now?’

  ‘I happen to know he paid a lot of money for his passage. There’s more where that came from, if you help us.’

  ‘Help you with what, exactly?’ He ticked it off on his fingers. ‘Fix your boat. Find this—whatsisname you think lives here. Look for your missing friends. And track down your daddy? That’s an awful lot of help. And help is expensive.’

  ‘I know,’ Annalie said. ‘But we’re good for it.’

  The pirate leader studied her for a moment. ‘What’s your name, little girl?’

  ‘Annalie.’

  ‘Pleased to meet you Annalie. My name’s Wirehead.’ He paused, then said, ‘I don’t think you quite understand your situation. I already have you, and I already have your boat. So you’re not in a position to ask me for anything.’ He gave her a genial smile. ‘But because I’m an honest gentleman of the sea, I’m willing to give you a chance to buy your boat back. If you are good for it, as you say, then, all well and good, you can go about your business and we’ll see about those other little tasks. If not—well . . .’ He paused, his smile silky but menacing. ‘That’s another conversation.’

  Wirehead flicked a glance at his associates. ‘Find them a bunk.’ Then he turned back to them with a smile. ‘Welcome to Dasto Puri.’

  Afloat

  Held up only by his life jacket, Will rode the storm for such a long and terrible time that afterwards he could not really tell if it had been hours or days. The waves that had seemed impossibly huge from the boat seemed even more vast when he was right down there in the water. Over and over, the waves surged up beneath him, thrusting him upward; over and over, they broke over his head in mountains of fizzing white, and he dropped again, down the face, down and down until it seemed he would plunge right down to the bottom of the ocean. The constant churn was so nauseating that more than once he found himself retching, but it had been ages since he ate; his stomach was empty, and all he produced was bitter acid, which burnt his mouth even worse than the salt, leaving him ill and aching. But still his jacket held him up, and although the water kept smashing him in the face, knocking at his mouth and nose and demanding to be let in, somehow he managed to keep the breath in his body and the water out of it, and so the storm did not quite manage to drown him.

  Then at last the storm rolled on its way and left him behind.

  Will floated, so cold he had stopped shivering long ago. Grey sea around him, grey sky above. No boats, no mountains, no seabirds. Not so much as a hint of land on the horizon, not that he could have swum to it even if he could see it. His limbs were numb. He could barely move them. All he could do was float and keep breathing.

  I’m still in the Moon Islands, he thought dazedly. If I’m lucky, there’ll be an island.

  He thought of Pod, thrown overboard by his pirate captain. He had floated on an empty container until he landed on a rock and found rescue. It was the sort of thing that happened in the Islands.

  I wonder if Annalie is looking for me, he thought. He told himself that he’d come looking for her if their positions were reversed. But would I? he wondered. She doesn’t know if I’m alive. She wouldn’t know where to look. She could search for days, or even weeks, and never find me.

  Better face facts, he thought. There’s no way she’s coming. I’m on my own.

  And this was such a terrifying thought he could hardly bear it.

  Still he floated. He was very thirsty now. Hungry too, probably, but thirst dominated. He could no longer feel his fingers. If a shark tried to eat me, he thought, I’d never feel a thing.

  He slipped into a half-dream, gazing up at the sky, his mind filled with incoherent and disturbing thoughts. Then something crossed his field of vision and snapped him out of it. It was a seagull.

  Seagulls don’t fly far from shore, he thought. There must be land nearby.

  Fully awake now, he struggled to move his limbs, to stir himself around in the water, to see if he could see where the bird had come from, and to try and steer himself in that direction. But he could barely signal to his limbs; actually swimming was clearly no longer possible. But somehow he managed to twist himself around, and that’s when he saw it: land!

  Desperation gave him a fresh burst of energy. Swim, stupid arms! he urged himself. Kick, legs! Feebly, they stirred. He chose his best survival stroke and struggled on. He had no idea what the land was or what it held, but it was land, and that had to be better than being afloat. He knew he couldn’t survive another night in this water.

  He swam, with limbs that felt like jelly, trying to get a better view of the island ahead. Through the bobbing waves he could see that it had a few trees on it—green trees—which meant that it had not been completely ruined by salt. It might have fresh water, or food, or maybe even people. But then he noticed something else. The island was moving very fast. When there was only open ocean to look at he had not been aware of it, but now that he had a point of reference, he realised that he must be caught in a current.

  If he was not careful, he could be swept right past the island without ever reaching it.

  A sob of anguish burst from his throat and he struck out again, willing some strength into his arms. He could not let himself be swept away, he simply could not.

  Of course he remembered now that one of the hazards of archipelago sailing was the currents. The islands didn’t have to be all that close together to have powerful currents and tides running between them.

  Will struggled on, his arms dragging, but the current was too strong. It pulled him carelessly along the length of the island as if he was just another piece of kelp ripped up in a storm. The trees sailed away from him. He could see the end of the island approaching.

  He swam—

  He swam—

  He passed the end of the island.

  The current dragged him on. The island receded into the distance. He had missed it.

  Despair flooded in, and with it, exhaustion. He slipped into darkness.

  Ashore

  Will woke suddenly, surprised into semi-consciousness by pain.

  But it was a pain that only registered dully. Something was rasping against his legs. He peeled open his eyes, just as a wave broke over his face. Again, that rasping, scraping feeling.

  He had landed on something. Rocks. Gritty sand.

  He looked around him, dazedly taking in his surroundings. The current had deposited him in a cove—more of a rocky elbow, really, but a sort of cove.

  He was in shallow water. His legs were dragging across the rocky bottom—that was the painful raspy feeling. He got himself to his feet and staggered up out of the water, stumbling and sliding over the rocks, until he was safe on dry land.

  Slumping back on the sand, he took stock of where he was. By some miracle, he had washed ashore on an island in a long, narrow inlet. But perhaps it was not such a miracle: he saw that he had washed up in a kind of sea trap that caught vast quantities of the junk that circled the oceans of the world: bits of old rope,
buoys and nets, a million broken things. But there were things that might be useful too: he saw plastic sheeting, long spars of timber, some quite big containers which would come in handy to catch rainwater.

  Water. He needed water. Right now.

  Will heaved himself upright, shucking off his life jacket with fingers that trembled. He crossed the sand and began to look through some of the heaped piles of stuff, focusing his attention on the junk that was higher than the tideline, hoping some upturned container might hold some precious rainwater, left over from the storm. He got lucky; he found some that did not taste too funny, and it went down so fast it barely touched the sides. He looked around for more, and that’s when he saw it.

  Something orange. A familiar shade of orange. A life jacket. And there was something in the life jacket—a shape, sodden, with long wet hair, tangled in debris.

  Essie.

  His heart almost stopped. She wasn’t moving, and the gentle shore break was sluicing over her in a way that filled him with dread. He crept down to her, picking his way through the shifting junk, afraid of what he might find.

  He turned her over, lifting the wet, clinging hair from her face. Was she unconscious, or dead? Her skin was wet and cool, and he feared he had found her too late. He put a hand on her neck and couldn’t feel a pulse, but he could hardly feel his own hands. He put his head beside her mouth and thought he felt a faint stir of breath. He put his head to her chest. The waves were loud, but he could sense the knock of her heart, still beating. She was alive!

  He disentangled her from the branches and ropes and plastic crap, then dragged her up onto the shore.

  ‘Hey, Essie, can you hear me?’ he said, hoping his voice might wake her.

  It didn’t. He wanted desperately to help her but didn’t know where to start. He squatted beside her, trying to think of the most useful thing to do next. Go and look for help? Find water? Build a shelter?

  His eyes returned to the epic tangle of debris piled up at the narrow end of the inlet. It was enormous; almost geological. He thought that if anyone actually lived here, they would surely have picked it over for treasure. He could see valuable objects on the quickest glance, just sitting there, waiting to be removed. Instinct told him this island was uninhabited.

  Water, then. He needed to find more water. And build a shelter.

  Then, hopefully, she would wake. And they would think about what they were going to do next.

  Castaways

  Essie wandered back into consciousness, queasy, groggy, sandy, and devastatingly tired.

  She could hear the gentle wash of waves. Above her, something blue. Pinpricks of sunlight peeked through. It rustled and flapped. A plastic tarp.

  She sat up, confused and frightened. She had no idea where she was or how she had come to be here. But where was here?

  She heard a shout and saw a figure running up the beach towards her, outlined against the sundazzle. She froze—people who ran at you on islands usually had bad intentions—but then her brain caught up with her eyes and she recognised Will.

  He flopped down beside her, grinning madly. ‘You’re awake!’

  ‘Where are we?’ she asked. Her voice was salt-scoured.

  ‘I dunno. Some island. What are the chances, huh?’

  It was all coming back to her. The storm. The waves. She had been swept off the Sunfish and into the open ocean. ‘Why aren’t we dead?’

  ‘Life jackets,’ Will said, ‘and luck.’ He picked up a plastic container sitting next to her and held it out. ‘Here. Bet you’re thirsty.’

  She drank it all down in a few gulps, then realised. ‘Oh. Should I have been rationing that?’ ‘It’s okay,’ Will said. ‘I know how to make more.’

  If she’d been listening, this would have struck Essie as surprising. But she was not really listening. ‘Where are we?’ she asked again.

  ‘I dunno.’

  ‘You must have some idea.’

  ‘I don’t carry a map around in my head,’ Will said.

  ‘So, we’re lost?’

  ‘Yeah, I guess so.’

  Panic was rising up in Essie. ‘So how will the others know where to come look for us?’

  ‘The others?’

  ‘Annalie. Pod. They’re going to come and look for us, aren’t they?’

  Will scowled. ‘I wouldn’t count on it.’

  ‘But they have to. They wouldn’t just abandon us.’

  ‘They probably think we’re dead,’ Will said. ‘If I were them, I’d assume we were goners. And you know,’ he continued, ‘there’s no way of knowing whether they even made it themselves. If they lost control and a wave got them—’

  He didn’t finish the thought, but it had brought back for both of them the memories, terribly fresh, of the boat plunging and skidding down near-vertical drops, harassed by waves bigger than buildings.

  Essie stared out at the sunshine sparkling on the water, feeling lost and alone. The ocean had never seemed so vast and hostile, even though today it was blue and tranquil (pretending to be friendly, she thought). There had been plenty of times on this adventure when she wished it had never crossed her mind to run away from school with Annalie—when they were escaping from submarine pirates or taking fire from Admiralty marines—but all those other times, the four of them had been together, and their own little boat had been nearby with the promise of escape. Now she was lost, a castaway, in a watery labyrinth; her best friend was far away (if she had even survived), and probably believed she was dead. No help was coming. All hope was lost.

  Essie put her head down and burst into tears.

  ‘Oh, don’t do that,’ Will said uncomfortably. ‘We’re going to be okay.’

  ‘How can you say that?’ Essie sobbed. ‘We’re going to be trapped here forever!’

  ‘No, we’re not,’ Will said. Although his face was contorted with worry, when Essie looked up at him she could see his irrepressible energy already burning through. ‘I’m going to get us out of here.’

  ‘How?’ she said.

  ‘I’ll think of something,’ Will said. ‘We’re going to be okay. I promise.’

  And as unlikely as it seemed, Essie felt she could almost believe him.

  Exploring

  ‘The first thing we’ve got to do is find water. And for that we need plastic.’

  Will was wrangling plastic from the pile of junk. The first piece he found disintegrated as he tried to extract it—a lot of old plastic was like that—but eventually he found a piece that was still in good shape. He coiled it up carefully, and carried it, along with a few other useful things he’d found, down towards the water.

  He laid the plastic out flat, measured around it, then set it aside and began to dig until seawater began to seep up into the bottom of the hole. He positioned a container in the middle of his hole, laid the plastic sheeting over the top, and secured it carefully with rocks, shells, and lots of sand to ensure a good seal, placing one final rock on top of the plastic, directly over the container. The seawater seeping up into the hole would be heated by the sun and turn into water vapour; this would condense onto the underside of the plastic surface, and drip down its sloping face into the container as fresh drinking water.

  ‘This is a solar still. It makes fresh water,’ he explained as he dug.

  ‘Are you sure this works?’

  ‘I know it does. Spinner taught us how to make them. We used to practice living off the land sometimes when we were on holiday.’

  ‘Doesn’t sound like my kind of holiday,’ Essie said. ‘Have you explored the island yet?’

  He shook his head.

  ‘Maybe we should,’ Essie said. ‘You never know—there could be a shop on the other side.’

  Will let out a little bark of laughter. They set out to explore.

  The island was not much more than a high spine of rock rising out of the ocean, crowned with a healthy covering of trees and shrubs. A narrow strip of sand over rocks lined the cove side; they followed this strip o
f sand to see where it went. The island rose up steeply above them, foliage wound tightly around the rocky ground, making it seem virtually impenetrable.

  ‘There’s plenty of things growing here,’ Essie remarked. ‘Do you think that means there’s water?’

  ‘Might just mean it gets a lot of rain,’ Will said.

  ‘I wonder if there are any animals here?’

  ‘There’s birds in the trees. Might be having roast seagull for dinner.’

  ‘How does seagull taste?’

  ‘Not too good, apparently.’

  The island ended in a rocky point, which they clambered around. When they emerged from the shelter of the island, they were hit by a strong breeze, which Will quickly realised must be the island’s prevailing wind: it had sculpted the trees artistically. Rocks eventually gave way to another thin strip of beach, long, gently curving, and largely uninterrupted. They walked along the beach together, staying on the wet, hard sand. No footprints interrupted its length. No ships showed on the horizon.

  ‘We’re going to have to build a proper shelter aren’t we?’ Essie sighed.

  Will nodded. He felt exhausted just thinking about it. ‘And find food.’

  His stomach was so empty it felt like a small animal was trying to eat him from the inside. He turned to look up at the trees rising above them, wondering if there was any chance there might be something edible growing up there—and stopped in his tracks.

  ‘No way!’ Will said softly.

  There, rising above the trees, was a castle.

  The castle in the sea

  It had what looked like battlements and, above that, a tower.

  ‘What is that place?’ Essie said, astonished.

  ‘It looks like a castle. Let’s go check it out!’

  An old, overgrown track led up the hill to the castle, which stood on the highest point of the island, looking out to sea. They stepped out of the trees into an open courtyard where the paving stones were gradually being pushed aside by weeds and tree roots.