Shipwreck Island

by Struan Murray

  ‘But not destroyed, Ellie,’ said the bandaged creature. Its voice was like two voices speaking together – one a child’s, the other deep and ancient. ‘Never destroyed. I’ll always be here for you, when you need me.’

  ‘I don’t need you.’

  ‘You need a friend, don’t you? Seth is so happy with his new friends. Though … ah –’ the child breathed deeply in satisfaction – ‘you’d prefer he didn’t have any friends apart from you, wouldn’t you? Oh, Ellie, and I thought I was the monster.’

  ‘Be quiet,’ Ellie hissed.

  A wet gurgle bubbled up from the child’s throat. It sounded nothing like human laughter. ‘I’ve missed you, Ellie, how I’ve missed you!’

  The act of laughing seemed too much for it, and it fell against the wall, fingernails scraping paper as it struggled to stand.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ said Ellie. She wanted to cry, but refused to show any weakness in front of it.

  ‘You can’t hide your sadness from me,’ it said, pointing to her head. ‘I’m right in here with you. Who else knows you as well as I do? Anna knew you a little, I suppose, but you left her behind on that evil, rotten island. Brought me with you, though …’

  ‘If I could have it the other way round, believe me I would,’ said Ellie.

  ‘This island, though, it’s almost paradise, isn’t it? And this Queen, why, I hear she’s a Vessel, just like you.’

  Ellie clenched her fists inside her pockets. ‘The islanders say you’re afraid of her.’

  ‘Rumours,’ said the child. ‘You think maybe she can rid you of me? Destroy me, even? But who will you talk to then? Seth? He’s moved on to better things. Ahh … but this Queen. You think she’ll be your friend? You think she’ll be wise, creative, thoughtful. Like you, I suppose? Is that what you think, Ellie? That she’ll value you, respect you. Praise you. That’s what you want, isn’t it? Praise for little Ellie. Praise Her!’

  ‘Shut up.’

  It smiled. Its teeth were tiny and pointed like a piranha’s. ‘Poor, clever, brilliant Ellie. No mother or brother or Anna to tell her how good she is, and now no Seth, either. And if you’re not doing good … then you’re doing badly. And who knows what could happen if you’re doing badly? The last time you were doing badly, why, you almost died.’

  ‘Because you almost killed me!’ Ellie spat.

  ‘Go ahead, waste your time. The Queen can’t help you. You cannot destroy suffering. You cannot destroy me.’

  ‘Leave me alone.’

  The child hugged itself. ‘Oh, I’ve missed hearing you say that! Takes me back to our old adventures. Remember when I threw Hargrath in the sea, and you thought I’d killed him? But he just keeps returning to chase you, doesn’t he? I guess something really drove him insane. Say, why not ask me to kill him for good this time?’

  ‘No more wishes,’ said Ellie. ‘I beat you. We’re done.’

  ‘We are not done. You need my help, or someone is going to die.’

  Ellie growled. ‘You can’t kill anyone. I haven’t made any wishes. You don’t have any power.’

  ‘True, I can’t kill anyone right now. But people have a habit of dying anyway.’ The child bared its pointed teeth in a hideous grin. ‘This person very soon.’

  Ellie’s heartbeat picked up. ‘Who?’

  ‘No, not dear Seth,’ said the child. ‘A miner, trapped underground, and soon to be consumed by a fire.’

  Ellie shook her head. ‘You’re lying.’

  ‘Oh … so you’re just going to let him die, then? That’s so like you.’

  ‘Nobody is dying,’ said Ellie.

  ‘Why would I lie? Ask me to save him – if he’s not really in danger, I won’t be able to save him, and I won’t gain any power. You win either way.’

  ‘I’ve never gained anything by asking for your help.’

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry – was it you who rescued Seth from on top of that bonfire?’

  ‘Leave me alone!’ Ellie cried.

  ‘Nobody else here can help you.’

  ‘That’s not true,’ said Ellie, struck with an idea. She looked the child in the place its eyes should have been. ‘There is someone else, and he’s always with me.’

  The child’s smile dropped.

  ‘Not him, don’t do that.’ It pawed at Ellie’s arm. ‘Please, you need me. That man is going to –’

  ‘Finn,’ Ellie said.

  Hope flared in her chest as the memory of her brother filled her mind: his bright green eyes, freckled face and kind smile. A golden warmth blossomed out to her fingertips as she remembered sunny afternoons in a rowing boat, and evenings playing board games in the orphanage. As she remembered the moment her brother had saved her life, and broken the Enemy’s power.

  The child hissed and fell on its front, unleashing a high-pitched squeal and a roar like an avalanche both at once. Its body curled up tight, then tighter still, folding in on itself. Vanishing to nothing.

  Ellie leaned on her cane, feeling both elated and exhausted, like she’d been laughing too hard. She allowed the embers of happy memories to glow a little longer in her mind, idly reading the papers on the wall. One stood out.

  Dear Luis,

  You are the most annoying brother, and the most loved.

  Dora

  Ellie smiled.

  There was an angry chime as a bottle spun towards her across the paving stones, kicked accidentally by a man thundering along the paper-covered passageway. He was pale and frightened and there was grey dust in his hair and on his clothes. He shot past Ellie without looking at her.

  Ellie watched him vanish round the corner, then walked cautiously along the passage in the direction the man had been running from, listening for sounds from the streets beyond.

  ‘Help! Help! Warden! I need a Warden!’

  Ellie’s chest tightened at the distant call. She picked up her pace.

  With a clatter of metal, one of the silver-armoured soldiers appeared, marching in the same direction as Ellie. A woman ran towards him, her eyes red rings in a face powdered white by dust.

  ‘Help me, Warden!’ she cried, grabbing the man’s armoured wrist. ‘Please, you’ve got to help. My brother, he’s trapped in the mine. He’s trapped and there’s a fire!’

  Brother, Ellie thought. Her brother needs saving.

  Stalactites

  Ellie hurried after the Warden and the dust-coated miner. At the end of a quiet street, the sandy paving stones gave way to bare, jagged rock and wagons piled with broken stone. A tall, cavernous mouth was carved from the island’s side, discharging grey fumes like a man belching tobacco smoke. As Ellie got near, a panicked cry echoed from the darkness.

  She raced inside. The tunnel was so narrow the Warden’s armour scraped the sides, but soon opened on to a wider, torchlit cavern, where cruelly spiked stalactites speared down from above. A host of frightened miners huddled round a massive rock wedged into the cavern wall, smoke seeping round its edges.

  ‘I’ve brought a Warden!’ the woman shouted.

  ‘This rock fell when we were running from the fire,’ another miner explained to the Warden, stifling a cough. The cavern stank like burning compost, and Ellie tried not to breathe in too much.

  ‘My brother’s trapped on the other side!’ said the woman.

  The Warden inspected the fallen boulder, then looked at the miners.

  ‘Don’t you have pickaxes?’ he said uncertainly. The miners gawped at him.

  ‘You think we haven’t thought of that?’ one said. ‘Do something!’

  ‘What can I do? You’re the miners – mine!’

  Ellie hurried to the rock, knowing she had to act before the others wondered what she was doing. She pulled a fist-sized bundle from her pocket: a clay sphere with a short piece of rope sticking out of it. Seth’s disapproving voice rang in her mind, but she trampled it quiet, dragging a match across the stone, then lighting the tip of the rope. It fizzed like a sparkler.

  ‘What are you doing
here, child?’ cried the Warden, noticing her at last. ‘It’s not safe!’

  Ellie tucked the clay sphere into a wide crack at the base of the rock. She heard a feeble cough from the other side. The Warden grabbed Ellie’s sleeve, but she slipped free, kneeling down by the thin space between the rock and the cavern wall.

  ‘Can you hear me?’ Ellie called.

  More coughing, then, ‘Y-yes?’

  ‘Stand well back.’

  She faced the other miners, whose gazes drifted from her to the little clay sphere.

  ‘What is that?’ said the Warden.

  ‘A bomb,’ said Ellie. ‘You should probably take cover.’

  The miners lurched backwards.

  ‘Girl,’ the Warden growled, ‘you don’t know what trouble you’ll be in. The use of fire powder is blasphemy! The Queen Herself will find out.’

  Ellie glanced at the fizzing rope. There was still time to extinguish it.

  The Queen Herself will find out.

  ‘Everyone,’ said Ellie, ‘STAND BACK!’

  She rushed away from the bomb, grabbing the Warden’s wrist. They joined the miners on the far side of the cavern, huddling behind an empty cart.

  ‘Won’t he get hurt?’ said the trapped man’s sister, her voice trembling.

  ‘I don’t think so – it won’t be a very big bang. I only used –’

  Noise stabbed Ellie’s eardrums and bright light filled her eyes and something great and powerful knocked her on to her back.

  She disentangled herself from the tumble of miners, coughing as ash slipped into her lungs, her ears filled by an insistent ringing. She hobbled towards the boulder.

  Only it wasn’t in the place it had been before, but rather in several places around the cavern. The now-open tunnel spewed smoke. And, limping from inside it, came a man.

  His sister raced to catch him as he stumbled and fell into her arms. As they hugged and laughed together, a tingling sensation raced out to Ellie’s fingertips.

  There was a creaking from above like old bones. Dust trickled on to Ellie’s shoulder.

  ‘Watch out!’ the woman cried.

  Ellie flung herself aside as a chunk of stalactite landed heavily beside her. She lay on her back, panting.

  ‘We need to leave, now!’ roared the Warden.

  There was another creak, and Ellie watched as a second stalactite detached itself from the cavern ceiling. Watched as it hurtled down towards her. Watched as it landed on her left arm.

  At first she felt nothing. But only for a heartbeat. She looked at the rock, her arm underneath it, and she screamed and she screamed until everything went black.

  Leila’s Diary

  4,758 days aboard the Revival

  The Crone spends so much time tending the boy that her plants have started wilting. I water them regularly and scold her for her laziness.

  ‘I think you’re a liar, Crone. If you can make a garden grow in darkness, why can’t you wake him up?’

  ‘His mind resists me, idiot girl. It is a swirling chaos.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  The Crone stroked the boy’s cheek. ‘At the height of his powers, this child held dominion over the sea. But since the Drowning, the sea is full of the memories of the dead, and the terrible suffering of their final moments. The boy is the sea, and so the boy is that suffering.’

  ‘Have you tried hitting him?’

  ‘I have a task for you. The captain keeps some rare elixirs in his quarters – relics from before the Drowning that even I am incapable of brewing. One may have the power to soothe his troubled mind: the Spirit of Osha. Offer him this bag of willow bark in trade. Now go! The boy is a god, but his shell is mortal. He will die of thirst if we don’t wake him soon.’

  I hurried through the Ark with the massive sack in my arms, along the big corridor-street that runs right through the Market Deck, straight towards the Ark-Captain’s quarters. I cursed the Crone but secretly hoped the boy would be okay. He was all I had left of my whale.

  I told the guards what I had come for and they let me right in. The Ark-Captain sat in his wooden throne, before the massive wheel that controlled the ship. His men stood round me, stroking their swords like they were very proud of them.

  ‘The whale rider is here,’ he said, smiling kindly. He was all muscle and scar tissue.

  ‘No whale rider any more,’ said the First Mate, an ugly and even more muscular man with few teeth and a wooden leg. ‘Whale’s dead.’

  I fixed the Ark-Captain with a scowl. ‘The Crone wants your Spirit of Osha.’ I dumped the bag at his feet. ‘She’ll trade you this.’

  The First Mate spat on the floor. ‘Why trade? We should just take what we want from those old bones and her mouldy plants.’

  I stepped towards him. ‘If you come to her garden looking for a fight, I’ll rip off your wooden leg and beat you to death with it.’

  The men all looked at me in disbelief, and then at each other, and they kept doing that until the Ark-Captain stood up.

  And started to laugh.

  Loren

  Ellie’s mind was in her arm. The rest of her body could have been removed entirely, she wouldn’t have known. She was a thin slice of meat, searing in a pan on a hot stove.

  But she was floating, somehow. When she opened her eyes, she saw stalactites passing overhead; or stalagmites – she couldn’t tell which way up she was. A faint light appeared ahead, blindingly bright, and she felt herself being lowered carefully to the ground. She smelled a strange but pleasant aroma, like woodsmoke and raspberry jam.

  ‘This will help with the pain,’ said a clear, musical voice. Gentle fingers daubed something cold against the ragged landscape of Ellie’s arm, and she sobbed in relief. The pain faded, and the rest of her body came back to her – shoulders and hands and the old ache in her leg.

  ‘Am I dead?’ she croaked.

  ‘No, dear child,’ the voice said. ‘I’ve rubbed essence of willow bark into your arm. It will keep the pain at bay for a little while.’

  ‘He saved her!’ cried a woman. ‘Loren saved her!’

  Ellie opened her eyes to see a forest of boots, ankles and colourful trousers, then gazed up into a canopy of smiling faces. Some were looking at her, but most stared at the man kneeling at Ellie’s side. He had long, curling hair like sun-drenched gold, his face tanned and unblemished, and he was watching Ellie with twinkly blue eyes. He was so impossibly beautiful that she feared it was the Enemy in a new form.

  A portly man sat wheezing to one side, a heavy book filled with thousands of ink-stained pages resting on his lap, which appeared to be the cause of his breathlessness. His hair was patchy, like he’d pulled out chunks of it in distress. Ellie wondered if the book was the cause of that too.

  ‘Excuse me?’ Ellie asked him, her voice slurring. ‘Can you see this pretty man?’

  The scribe blinked several times, then rapidly scribbled something in his book. Ellie read upside down:

  Brave Loren saved the girl from certain death. She was a sickly waif of a child, and not sound of mind.

  ‘Hey!’ Ellie protested.

  Standing behind the scribe was a tiny third man with a purple-feathered hat and a lute. He began to sing:

  ‘Bravest Loren rescued the girl from certain demise.

  She was a sickly child. A waif of a child.

  And clearly not sound of mind.’

  The crowd cheered and joined in the singing, badly out of key. The handsome man got to his feet.

  ‘Please, friends, though I am flattered, it is this girl we should be praising.’ His voice seemed always on the cusp of breaking into laughter. ‘Her quick thinking saved one of my own miners from a fiery demise.’

  The crowd fell quiet and nodded solemnly. Ellie watched the scribe as his quill danced across the page.

  When the crowd tried to give credit to Loren, he humbly requested they acknowledge the girl’s own heroism.

  The bard sprang into action:

 
‘When the crowd tried to give all –’

  ‘That’s enough singing for now, friends,’ said Loren. ‘We must get this child the necessary medical attention. I will pay the surgeon’s bill, of course!’

  There was a frenzy of applause, then a clatter of metal as the Warden staggered from the mine, armour smeared with soot, his helmet missing. He clutched his head, checking for blood, then glared at Ellie. He grabbed her broken arm, puncturing the cloud of relief the willow bark had offered. Ellie screamed.

  ‘What do you think you’re doing!’ yelled a man. ‘This girl is a hero!’

  ‘She almost killed us all!’ the Warden snapped. ‘She used blasphemous sorcery to blow that rock up.’

  ‘Sorcery?’ Loren smiled, dimples forming on both cheeks. It was impossible to guess his age – he could have been twenty or fifty. ‘My dear friend, there’s no such thing.’

  ‘It was gunpowder,’ Ellie offered. ‘I made it from sulphur, charcoal and guano.’

  ‘Fascinating,’ said Loren, and the way he said the word made Ellie’s heart leap. ‘You did that yourself? Where did you learn the method?’

  ‘From a book,’ said Ellie. She could remember reading it, though it had been years ago, in her mother’s old workshop.

  ‘Fascinating,’ he said again, and Ellie’s heart leapt further. ‘A scholar, no less. And so young. Your parents must be very proud.’

  ‘I don’t have parents,’ said Ellie.

  ‘Well, someone is proud, I’m sure. And I am terribly impressed.’

  Ellie smiled, feeling dizzy. She’d almost forgotten about the pain in her arm.

  ‘Impressed?’ shrieked the Warden. ‘She could have brought the whole mine down on us. She belongs in prison.’

  The crowd booed, and the Warden loosened his grip on Ellie’s arm.

  ‘Now, friends.’ Loren’s bright blue eyes searched the crowd. ‘This man is only doing his duty. I believe I have a solution. The Queen will shortly be meeting with Her Royal Court, of which I am a member.’ He turned to Ellie. ‘What’s your name, young scholar?’