The Skeleton Coast Read online

  The guards were not in a mood to be patient. ‘Time’s up!’ the guard shouted. ‘You got to get out of there! It’s dangerous!’

  ‘Where do you reckon the hatch is?’ Pod asked Blossom. He ran the torch beam over the distant wall of the hold, but it wasn’t strong enough to pick out any detail. Another load came slipping and slithering down a chute.

  ‘We’re going to have to lock the door!’ the short guard shouted. ‘You’ll be locked in there!’

  After a moment, they heard the clank and grind of the door being closed and bolted.

  ‘This is it,’ Pod gulped. ‘No going back now.’

  ‘What do you think it’s going to be? Get free? Or drown?’

  Pod looked at Blossom, surprised. In the weak torchlight, she didn’t look frightened at all. If anything, she looked excited.

  An alert sounded, a loud, terrifying honking sound. The rats bolted, all travelling in the same direction, scurrying up the rubbish and away. Far across the hold they saw a hatch slide up. ‘Quick,’ Pod said, ‘let’s try and get to it!’ Just as they were renewing their efforts to scramble across the garbage, they heard a new sound. An engine started up. There was a clank and a clunk, and then the wall behind them began to move.

  They climbed frantically across the garbage, trying to stay ahead of the wall as it moved inexorably across the hold, pushing all the garbage towards the open hatch. If they got caught up in that growing wall of filth, they could be crushed and smothered under the weight of it. They scrambled forward, panic making them clumsy, sinking into the garbage. The open air and the smell of the sea was tantalisingly close, but the garbage was mounding up behind them like a tsunami. Blossom slipped and started to disappear under the garbage. Pod reached out and pulled her free, and they dragged themselves the last few metres towards the hatch.

  ‘It’s too far!’ Blossom cried, looking down at the drop to the garbage barge below them. It was easily ten metres down.

  Pod looked behind them; the wall of garbage was getting bigger and bigger and it would collapse on them at any moment. ‘Jump!’ he cried, and yanked her.

  They jumped—

  They fell through the air—

  They landed on soft bags of rubbish which burst wetly beneath them, breaking their fall.

  Pod grabbed Blossom as soon as they’d landed and they rolled out of the drop zone, creeping to the edge of the huge barge as the sliding pile of garbage grew to a torrent.

  ‘Someone’s going to see us for sure,’ Pod said.

  ‘We should hide.’

  They found some broken bags and draped them over their heads, peering out through the gaps. Blossom looked at him from her dark cocoon of plastic like a bright-eyed creature looking out of its burrow. ‘Now what?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Pod said. ‘Let me think.’

  The garbage chute was on the ocean side of the Blue Water Duchess, but even so, the dock was probably only fifty metres away. If either of them knew how to swim, they could have simply swum ashore. But that wasn’t an option. He couldn’t see anything on the barge that they could steal to help them float ashore, and there was always the risk that someone from the Blue Water Duchess might spot them and have them arrested and taken back to the ship.

  He turned to look at the bridge of the barge. The crew were in there, but no one seemed to be looking in their direction. He hoped that meant no one had seen them drop.

  Above them, they heard a new sound: the outer hatch on the Blue Water Princess was closing. Radio voices scratched and rumbled from the bridge. The idling engines began to spin. The barge was leaving.

  ‘Where does this go?’ Blossom said.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Pod said. ‘We’ll just stay on it till we’re clear of the ship. Then we’ll get off.’

  ‘Okay,’ Blossom said. ‘How?’

  But he didn’t yet have an answer to that.

  The barge pulled away from the ship. Pod hoped it would motor somewhere along the side of the harbour, but to his dismay, it turned and headed straight out toward the mouth. Wherever the barge dumped its load, it wasn’t anywhere nearby. He hoped the garbage men didn’t just take it all out to sea and dump it there.

  ‘I think we need to get off this thing,’ he said. ‘And soon.’

  He looked around, hoping for inspiration. The barge was moving at quite a clip and they were headed for deep water, the land receding rapidly into the distance. They had no hope of swimming for shore. What if they jumped overboard near another boat and signalled for rescue? But there were no other boats berthed nearby. They were travelling up a wide shipping channel; it was not a place for swimmers to be, especially when they were swimmers who couldn’t swim. Big ships could run them down without ever seeing them.

  He heard a shout. He turned; a crewman had appeared from the bridge. They’d been seen. The crewman was clambering along a catwalk, moving purposefully towards them.

  ‘They’ll make us go back!’ Blossom hissed.

  Desperately, Pod looked around for something, anything, that would help them escape.

  A marker buoy floated not too far off, marking the edge of the shipping lane. It wasn’t much, but it was afloat. ‘Jump!’ he said in desperation. ‘Make for that thing!’

  ‘You know I can’t swim!’ Blossom cried.

  ‘Jump!’ Pod shouted.

  He leaped, and after a moment, Blossom leaped after him. He scrabbled in the water, paddling frantically until his fingers brushed something solid. He grabbed for it—it was the rope holding the buoy in place—and held on, breathing a sigh of relief, but then Blossom landed on him, a clambering, panicking wild thing, pushing his head under as she struggled to stay on the surface. Pod almost lost his grip on the rope as he tried to right himself, Blossom fighting him in her fear.

  ‘Grab on to the buoy!’ he spluttered. She floundered and fought until she managed to get a hand onto the buoy, then wrapped her arms around it, and only then did she relinquish her grip on him.

  Pod turned to see what the barge was doing. To his relief, it was moving on, although the crewman was still standing there watching them.

  Pod gave him a half-hearted wave, not sure what else to do. The crewman crinkled his brow, shaking his head, but made no further move towards them. The barge continued on its way.

  Pod watched it until he was sure it was not coming back for them, then tried to work out what to do next. He scanned the harbour, and to his huge relief, spotted the Sunfish lying at anchor. It was still a long way away but they were at least on the right side of the shipping channel. Now all he had to do was get there.

  ‘I wish this thing had a motor,’ Blossom said.

  That gave Pod an idea. ‘We’ve got legs,’ he said.

  Using his pocket knife, he cut the rope holding the buoy in place, turned it toward the distant shape of the Sunfish, and began to kick.

  It was not easy and the buoy did not steer very straight, but slowly and patiently, Pod kicked the two of them and their buoy towards the boat. Just as he was thinking he could not go on much longer, something splashed near him.

  It was a life preserver. He looked up and saw a wonderful sight: Will standing on the deck, holding the other end of the rope.

  ‘Who wants to go first?’ Will said.

  The Lucky Lady

  Pod scrambled onto the deck. Blossom had climbed up ahead of him and was standing on the deck of the Sunfish, looking around her. She turned to him and said, ‘This boat is really small.’

  ‘No it isn’t,’ Pod said, embarrassed, in case Will had taken it as a slight.

  ‘It is if you compare it to a cruise ship,’ Will said, unconcerned. ‘But it’s big enough for us. I’m Will.’

  ‘I’m Essie,’ said Essie, smiling at Blossom encouragingly. ‘I’m so excited to meet you!’

  Blossom blinked at them both uncertainly. ‘Hi,’ she said.

  ‘Pod stinks!’ Graham rasped.

  Blossom’s eyes widened. ‘Is that a talking bird? What else can
it say?’

  Graham ruffled his feathers. ‘Anything it wants,’ he said haughtily.

  ‘No offence, but you do pong,’ Will said. ‘What happened?’

  ‘Maybe we should have a shower,’ Pod said, ‘and then we can tell you the whole story.’

  He took Blossom down to the heads and turned the shower on. ‘Do you want to go first?’ he asked.

  ‘Sure,’ Blossom said. She shucked off her clothes and stepped under the water. After a minute or two she opened her eyes again and noticed Essie’s shampoo and conditioner. ‘Can I use these?’ she asked.

  ‘I guess,’ Pod said.

  She mixed them both together and lathered herself with them all over, making fragrant clouds of bubbles. When she was about to pour out a second round—which would have emptied the bottles—Pod called time. ‘I think you’re clean enough now,’ he said.

  Reluctantly Blossom got out of the water and Pod stepped in, washing the garbage stink out of his hair and from under his fingernails until he was clean again. Then he quickly rinsed his clothes out too.

  When he stepped out of the shower, Blossom was still standing there wrapped in a towel. ‘I’m not putting that thing on ever again,’ she said, prodding her discarded uniform with her toe.

  ‘Maybe Essie has something you could borrow,’ Pod said.

  He called up the stairs for Essie; moments later she appeared. ‘Of course you can borrow something,’ she said.

  She took Blossom into the cabin she shared with Annalie. Neither of them had brought a lot of clothes with them, but what they did have was stashed in a locker. She began looking for something that might fit Blossom, who was lean and lanky like Pod, but Blossom had already seen what she wanted.

  ‘What about these?’ she asked excitedly.

  She pulled out the sparkly jeans and top Essie had been wearing the night she and Annalie ran away from school. Essie hadn’t worn them for a while—the sequins made her feel too conspicuous, and the jeans had been a bit hot for the Moon Islands—but it had been one of her favourite outfits once, and besides, the jeans were designer, and expensive. ‘Oh—’ she said.

  But then she saw the look of longing on Blossom’s face, and thought about how she’d feel if she was a recently freed slave, and she said, ‘Well, okay. Sure.’

  Blossom looked gleeful. The towel dropped to the ground. She began to get dressed. Essie left her to it.

  On her way out, she told Pod, ‘We got the ransom money. We need to go back to Brundisi to get Annalie. You’d better tell Blossom we’re leaving.’

  ‘Okay,’ Pod said. He got an uneasy feeling as he wondered how to break this news to his sister.

  Soon Blossom appeared, ready to show herself off. ‘How do I look?’

  ‘Fancy,’ he said.

  She drew closer and lowered her voice, even though the others were up on deck and could not hear them. ‘Those people,’ she said. ‘Who are they?’

  ‘I told you,’ Pod said. ‘They’re my friends.’

  ‘But did they buy you or what?’

  ‘Of course not!’ Pod said. ‘Actually, they rescued me. My last master was a pirate, and he threw me overboard. These guys found me in the middle of the ocean.’

  ‘Serious?’ Blossom said.

  ‘Serious,’ Pod said.

  ‘So now you work for them?’

  ‘We all work together.’

  Blossom’s brow knitted. It still wasn’t quite making sense to her. ‘So who’s their master? Whose boat is this?’

  ‘It belongs to Will and Annalie’s dad. He’s missing, and we’re looking for him.’

  ‘I thought the girl’s name was Essie?’

  ‘It is. You haven’t met Annalie yet. She’s Will’s twin sister.’

  ‘And where is she?’

  ‘She was kidnapped by pirates.’

  Blossom’s eyes narrowed. ‘Pirates?’

  Pod could see he had some explaining to do. Briefly he told her the story of Spinner and the search for the scientists, their ill-fated trip to Brundisi, and the kidnapping of Annalie. ‘Now we’re going back for her. But it’s all going to be fine, I promise.’

  ‘Are they rich?’ she asked eagerly.

  ‘No!’ Pod said.

  ‘Then why did the pirates kidnap her?’

  ‘I don’t know! All I know is we have to go and get her back.’

  ‘Wait—we?’

  ‘Yeah,’ Pod said.

  ‘You’re going back to Brundisi? Are you crazy?’

  ‘We have to get her back,’ Pod said.

  ‘They’re going to kill her,’ Blossom said. ‘Then they’ll take the money, take the boat, and kill you.’

  ‘No they’re not,’ Pod said, although this scenario had certainly occurred to him.

  ‘You can’t go to Brundisi,’ Blossom said. ‘It’s too dangerous. She’s his sister, let him go.’

  ‘We’re all going,’ Pod said. ‘We’re a team.’

  ‘I’m not going,’ Blossom said.

  ‘I can’t leave you behind,’ Pod said.

  ‘Of course not!’ Blossom said. ‘You’re staying right here with me. Hey, you got papers? How hard d’you think it would be to get a job here?’

  ‘I can’t stay here with you,’ Pod said. ‘I have to go with the others and get Annalie. They’re counting on me.’

  For a long, terrible moment, Blossom stared at him, her eyes growing huge and wide. ‘But—you came to rescue me.’

  ‘I know I did. And now I’m taking you with me.’

  ‘To be killed by pirates?’ She was horrified.

  ‘It’s going to be all right, I promise!’ Pod said helplessly.

  Blossom’s eyes were bright with tears. ‘Why take me off the ship if you’re just going to take me somewhere even worse?’ she demanded.

  Her look of betrayal pierced him. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I guess I didn’t really think it through. But ever since you went away on that first boat I’ve been looking for you.’

  ‘You mean the Blue Water Princess?’

  ‘Yes! One day we ran into the Princess and me and Essie snuck aboard. That’s how I found out they’d moved you to the Duchess. And when I saw the Duchess was here I couldn’t believe my luck. It’s like I was meant to find you.’

  Blossom’s expression altered. ‘Do you think she made it happen?’

  ‘She?’ Pod was confused. For a moment he thought she meant Essie.

  ‘The Lucky Lady,’ Blossom whispered.

  Pod was surprised. In their first job together they’d been part of a crew of young people who were sent down into flooded underwater places to search in the dark for salvage. The other kids believed that the world was ruled by sea gods, who controlled the oceans, and the Lucky Lady, who protected the people who ventured into the water. The Lucky Lady had miraculous powers and could save anyone if she chose to; under her protection, no disaster could touch you. But the Lucky Lady was capricious and her whims were mysterious; her favour could vanish as easily as it was given. As a child, he’d believed in the Lucky Lady with the ferocity of someone who needed to believe there was something in the world that could keep him safe. Now he was not so sure; but the idea of her still appealed.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Pod said cautiously. ‘Maybe she did. All I know is, this was my chance, and it might be the only one I ever get. I had to come and find you. Even though the timing isn’t great.’

  Blossom shot him a sidelong glance, still rather accusing, but he hoped she might be gradually softening. ‘Timing’s terrible,’ she said.

  ‘I promise I’ll do everything I can to keep you safe,’ Pod said. ‘And so will the others. They’re amazing people. You’ll see. They’re the best friends I ever had in the world.’

  ‘Apart from me,’ she said.

  ‘You’re more than a friend. You’re my sister,’ Pod said, and felt something wobble inside him.

  ‘The only one you got,’ Blossom said, ‘and don’t you forget it.’

  They were
both silent for a moment.

  ‘So,’ Pod said. ‘What do you think?’

  She looked at him challengingly, her eyes as sharp and bright as the sequins on her top. ‘One: if you get me killed by pirates, I’m going to haunt you so bad it’s not funny,’ she said. ‘And two: after we find this girl—and her dad—can we find somewhere to live?’

  ‘Sure,’ Pod said.

  ‘Can it be Violeta? I always wanted to go to Violeta.’

  ‘Okay,’ Pod said. He had never heard of Violeta and had no idea where it was. ‘Does that mean you’ll come?’

  Blossom shrugged, her old fearless self again. ‘Where else am I going to go?’

  The end of the east

  ‘So where’s Blossom going to sleep now that Annalie’s back?’ Will asked.

  The Sunfish had only two cabins; before Blossom’s arrival, the girls had shared one and the boys had shared the other. The cushions on the benches in the saloon could be removed to make a bed on the floor, but who would take the bed on the floor?

  ‘Let Blossom sleep on the floor,’ Will said. ‘Last in, last to a bed.’

  ‘You can’t make her sleep on the floor,’ Essie protested.

  ‘I’ll sleep on the floor,’ Pod said. ‘I don’t mind.’

  ‘But then where will Blossom sleep?’ Essie asked.

  ‘She can share with Essie and I’ll share with Will,’ Annalie suggested.

  Neither Will nor Essie was thrilled by this idea.

  ‘Ask her where she wants to sleep!’ Graham said.

  Pod turned to Blossom. ‘Blossom, who do you want to share with?’

  Blossom’s answer came instantly. ‘No one.’

  ‘But do you mind sleeping on the floor?’ Annalie asked.

  ‘Where?’

  They looked around. Annalie pointed out a spot that was more or less out of the way, although floor space was not exactly at a premium. ‘How about here? We could put a curtain up for privacy at night, and we could empty a locker for you so you could have somewhere to put your stuff. We’d have to pack it away during the day though.’

  ‘Okay,’ Blossom said.