Between Sea and Sky

by Nicola Penfold

  Pearl stifles a snigger and Clover glares at her. “Well, why would he? Land people don’t, do they? It doesn’t mean he’s stupid.” Clover turns back to me and smiles kindly. “I can teach you, if you like. While you’re out here.”

  “To dive as well?” I ask.

  Clover grins. “Well, once you’ve got the hang of swimming, why not? Dad says you’re here the whole summer.”

  “Yeah,” I say uncertainly.

  “Lucky us,” Pearl retorts sarcastically.

  “Ignore her!” Clover chimes. “Like I told you. Antisocial!” She jumps across into the next boat.

  “How do you even do that?” I exclaim, impressed.

  Clover doesn’t care that there’s water underneath. She doesn’t care about the gaps between the different structures, or that the ropes are all frayed. She doesn’t care about the underwater forest and dark creatures swimming in the depths.

  “You’ll get used to it!” she sings back to me. I decide I much prefer her to her sister. I don’t know why Pearl’s got it in for me, but she clearly has.

  I clamber after Clover, clinging to the side of one boat as I stride across to the next one. It feels like the water’s got inside me too. My stomach rolls, like it’s trying to find its level.

  Pearl’s watching smugly and I pull myself taller, determined not to give her the satisfaction of seeing me throw up.

  “You like it colourful out here,” I say to Clover, pausing for a moment to breathe in a fresh gulp of air. The boat we’re on is painted in strips of different colours. Like a rainbow, except one that’s shedding colour.

  Clover beams. “We wanted it to be cheery. I get the colours from your hardware shop.”

  “The compound one?” I ask surprised. In the compound everything’s grey and metal. Colour is considered too celebratory, or disrespectful, after so many lives were lost in the floods.

  “The shop man orders them in specially,” Clover says. “He lets me pick them from a catalogue from a supplier in Central. He’s lost the colour chart so I never know what I’m getting till they come, but I choose from the names. Like bumble bee. I wanted to see what colour a bumble bee would be.”

  “I never pictured Central as colourful,” I say.

  “It must be. I bet it’s like a palace,” Clover says dreamily. “That’s where I’ll live when I’m grown up. At least some of the time. I’ll go other places too of course. Everywhere you can get to.” Her eyes fix determinedly on the horizon.

  I get this sudden stab of envy for people in other places, and for the bright, colourful lives of the Central Districters, not having to worry about floods and storms, or working shifts, or meeting targets, or accruing disobedience points. Getting all their food delivered by the outlying districts. There are rumours that Central are even allowed second children now. District rules might have had their place one day – to keep us safe and protect what resources we had left – but things aren’t as bad now. The sea has receded, no one actually goes hungry any more. I wonder why we still need all the rules if Central don’t?

  Clover’s floating on obliviously. “That’s pink parasol,” she says about a boat that’s ‘mostly storage’. “We call it the plant room. It’s where the water tank is too,” she says. “If we run out.”

  “How can you run out of water at sea?” I peer into the pink boat, full of pipes and containers. It all looks like it could do with a good clean.

  “You’re very welcome to get your water directly out of the sea, while you’re here,” Pearl says.

  “Don’t do that!” Clover says to me alarmed. “You know you can’t drink saltwater, right?”

  I smile. “It was a joke! Calm down. I’m not from the Dark Ages. The district has its own desalination plant. A huge one. Some of the compounders are bussed out there for their shifts. That’s where I might be sent, when I finish school…”

  Clover looks at me pitifully. Working at the desalination plant suddenly seems the worst job in the world. Even Pearl looks sorry for me, if that’s the most exciting future I can hope for.

  I go on, edging round another narrowboat, this one the colour of rust.

  “That’s where Dad sleeps,” Clover says dismissively. “Don’t look in. It’s M. E. S. S. Y.”

  My eyes dart in immediately – through a half-open door to a dark interior. There must be blinds or curtains pulled across the windows, but even so I can see the floor’s covered in stuff. Mum would be livid if I left my room like that.

  Pearl slams the door in front of me angrily, the shells on her necklace clacking sharply. “That’s private,” she says icily. “That’s the third rule of life out here. People need their space.”

  I think of the narrow cabin I’m sharing with Mum. I guess that rule doesn’t apply to us. “What’s the second rule?” I ask.

  “No shirking work,” Clover recites. “Everyone does their tasks. Except Dad lately. Oi!” Clover shrieks as her sister prods her with her hand.

  “Dad’s been tired,” Pearl says defensively.

  “OK,” I say, looking from one to the other. The tension between them is so sparky it feels you should be able to see it, like lightning. And the way they predict each other – it’s like there’s some connection between them, like an invisible thread. I wonder if all siblings have that? “What’s the first rule?” I ask, uneasily now.

  “All hands to the deck when a storm’s coming,” the girls say in unison.

  “Got it,” I say, gulping, as my stomach turns over again.

  Clover pats my arm gently. “You’ve gone green. Don’t worry! You came for the best bit of the year. We don’t have to worry about storms.”

  Pearl opens her mouth to say something but decides better of it. I think of Billy Crier and the freak storm in summer, but that was years ago. The storms and floods aren’t like they used to be.

  “What’s in here?” I ask, peering into another boat, painted green and low down in the water.

  “That’s just paperwork now, and broken things. Some of the things from your cabin went in there. It all needs sorting,” Clover says dismissively, walking on ahead. “Mostly we just live on the main platform and in the open air when we can. It’s good for your lungs!” She inhales a deep breath and I copy her, smiling.

  “You’re lucky,” I say. “All this space! No peacekeepers in sight!”

  No one to spot the creatures, except for the girls themselves. I’m starting to think I’ll need to let them in on my secret. Clover seems so excited to have someone new around, I can’t imagine her leaving me alone anytime soon. Pearl obviously doesn’t trust me enough to let me out of her sight. Can I trust them both about the butterflies? They’ve had to keep their own big secret all this time…

  Clover’s already turning back to the platform, like the tour’s over, even though there are still a couple of sections we’ve not got to.

  “What about that one?” I ask, pointing to a see-through dome on a raft all of its own.

  “Oh, that,” Clover says, slowing down and changing her course towards the transparent room. “That’s our mum’s greenhouse.”

  “A greenhouse?” I ask, confused, because the boat isn’t painted – it’s like a misted-up plastic bubble.

  Clover jumps on to the edge of the bubble boat, before turning back to me. Her expression’s changed – wistful now. “We call it the greenhouse. It’s an old term for somewhere you grow plants. Our mum was into flowers and herbs and things. This was her dominion.”

  She opens a cut-out door on the side of the plastic dome. It creaks.

  I make the leap over too, awkward and flustered. Pearl comes across right after me, her stride effortless, but her face full of agitation. Her chain of shells seems to snap angrily.

  “Your mum grew plants? Like in the growing tower?” I ask, stepping between bits of broken panels and cracked pots. There’s a strange smell – dank, earthy – that makes me think of the solar fields after it’s rained.

  Clover shrugs. “All sorts! Sh
e had loads of clover, of course. Clover was her favourite. Some of it had four leaves.”

  “Did it?” Pearl says. “I don’t remember that.”

  Clover hangs her head and her eyes glisten a bit more than usual.

  Pearl trails me, discomfort radiating off her as I walk around. The greenhouse isn’t big, but it feels big because the walls are see-through. Or would be if you scrubbed away the mould and algae. The amount of mould, it’s a wonder the whole place isn’t hopping with fungus gnats. Even the growing tower with all its whirring fans gets fungus gnats.

  Green leaves press against the concave edges of the dome, hungry for light. The girls continue to bicker, like being in here pulled that invisible thread between them to breaking point. I let their voices fade into the background. All I’m thinking is, this space would be perfect for the chrysalises.

  We should have kept the greenhouse out of bounds.

  Mum planted herbs for cooking here. Thyme, rosemary, lavender, sage. Dad used to use some of the scrappy bits that were left when he was still cooking properly.

  Mum ordered the seeds from Central and they took months to arrive. She almost gave up hope of them coming, but then one day they did. George arrived with the supply run and a small box of brown paper envelopes full of seeds.

  I still have the image of flowers in my head, all those bright colours, but I don’t conjure it up very often, or come in here. I don’t go to that section of the library either – land flora. I let Olive catalogue that one. I stick to sea life.

  The soil’s dried up now, though the rain gets in sometimes. It’s mostly rain that’s kept anything alive at all, cycling around – condensing in the sun, falling again at night. In winter the water in the greenhouse freezes and new cracks appear in the panes.

  “Pearl! Are you listening? What are these called again?” Clover’s calling, pointing to one of the yellow flowers like sunshine that appear every spring.

  “Dandelions,” I say quietly, Mum’s voice in my head.

  “Dent de lion. Lion’s tooth, see. Look at the toothy leaves, Pearl.”

  Some of them have gone to seed already. Fat globules of seeds that Mum called clocks.

  “Blow it, Pearl! Be like the wind!” Mum’s voice sounds in my ears like she’s here beside me and I’m seven years old again, without a care in the world.

  Nat picks up one of the seed heads and blows into it. Seeds scatter like dust. I glare at him.

  Clover spins on tiptoe in the swirl of seeds. “It’s a snowstorm! Do another!” she cries joyously, and I’m suddenly jealous of Clover’s capacity for happiness.

  Nat plucks another seed head from the ground and his cheeks puff up as he blows. He looks like a fish.

  My teeth grind together. “You’ll waste them,” I say. “They don’t belong to you.”

  Nat pulls a face. “The seeds want to be spread. That’s the point of them, isn’t it?”

  I glare at him silently.

  “You’ve got nettles too,” he says, ignoring me and bending down over a patch of green.

  “Careful!” Clover cries. “Those ones sting!”

  Nat takes hold of a leaf firmly between his forefinger and thumb and plucks it off. He holds it out to me pointedly, superior, like I knew a landlubber would be. Though I didn’t think someone from that concrete monstrosity over the water would be bothered about our old greenhouse and the few straggly green plants left.

  “We get nettles around the compound too,” he says, shrugging. “And the dandelions. Sometimes Mum picks them. She puts them in a glass on our kitchen table with the thistle flowers. They’d only be taken away otherwise.”

  “Taken away?” Clover asks, mystified.

  Nat nods. “In case of disease. Spores or fungus. Anything that could get into the growing tower. We have to protect it. It’s all our district has.”

  He sounds like he’s giving a speech. The nettle leaf drops to the floor.

  “So that’s why you want our oyster farm? To add it to your empire?” I ask.

  Nat shrugs again. “I don’t know. I don’t decide, do I? None of this was my idea. I’m the one that had to leave my mates behind. And my bike. I had to give up my entire summer.” He stamps his foot against the floor.

  Clover wrings her hands and looks depressed on his behalf. “I’ve always wanted to ride a bike. I can imagine how much you’d miss that.”

  Nat smiles at her, amused, and starts to walk round the edge of the space, feeling the panes, putting his hands through the gaps. Clover follows in his wake, imitating him.

  “We shouldn’t be here,” I say, desperately wanting us out, most of all him. “This is Mum’s place.” She could almost be here, in the cloud of dandelion seeds still looking for a place to settle.

  “Mum might like to see us here,” Clover says.

  “She wouldn’t,” I bite back. “Not with a stranger.”

  I don’t mind Mum’s ghost on the flats when we’re larking. I don’t mind her in the water either, but I mind her here. This was the last place she came. She’d walk here when she was too sick to drag herself out to the flats. If I think of Mum here, she’s sick.

  It’s sad we forgot to water her flowers and that we let storms smash up the panels of her greenhouse. It’s sad that Dad forgot to flavour our meals with the herbs and green leaves Mum planted especially.

  “It wouldn’t take much to fix it up,” Nat says thoughtfully. “We could mend it.”

  Clover squeals excitedly. “Do you think? Do you really think we could?”

  I glare at her. “Course we could, if that was the right thing to do. We could do it on our own; we don’t need him. What’s the point, though, when everything died?”

  Nat looks at me confused. “It didn’t all die, did it? The dandelions, the nettles. They’re alive. That’s the point. If they can grow, other things can too.”

  “Like what?” I say, annoyed.

  Nat glances around surreptitiously. “I brought something with me. Something secret.”

  Clover crowds in closer. “A secret!” she whispers with glee. “No one ever told me a secret before!”

  I glower. I’m sure I have. I’m sure there have been things between Clover and I that we didn’t want Dad to know. Sister things.

  Nat looks unsure suddenly. “But you can’t tell anyone! Not Atticus and definitely not my mum. It’s against district rules. Big time. You’d have to promise not to tell.”

  “Oh, we would, wouldn’t we, Pearl?” Clover says, gripping my arm tightly. “We solemnly swear not to tell a soul. Pearl, you say it too.” Her fingernails dig in to me.

  “You found out our secret,” I say to Nat aloofly. “It can’t be bigger than that.”

  “What if it is?” Nat says, his voice low and slow. “What if it’s bigger than anything? What if it could change everything?”

  I hold his eyes for a couple of seconds. They don’t blink.

  “I promise,” I say tersely. Clover’s fingernails dig in further and Nat raises his eyebrows.

  “I mean it. I promise,” I say, louder now, pulling my arm away from Clover. If she presses any tighter she’ll draw blood. “Tell us,” I say, sitting down on the bench, trying to sound like I don’t care, even though I’m desperate to know. Why is Nat keeping secrets from his precious district?

  Nat glances again around us. “Caterpillars,” he whispers.

  I stare at him open-mouthed.

  “And not even caterpillars any more. Chrysalises now,” he says grandly, watching our faces.

  “As in butterflies?” I ask.

  Nat nods slowly, surprised at my knowledge. I keep my expression fixed.

  “Butterflies!” Clover repeats beside me. “But you can’t have! They died out with the bees. Even before the floods!” She looks disappointed, like he’s revealed something about himself she didn’t want to be there – that he’s a liar, that he makes things up.

  Nat nods impatiently. “Yes. Only I think they came back. To the bay. I think I fou
nd some in the solar fields.”

  “In the solar fields? With your mates?” Clover squeaks.

  “You said you don’t go to the solar fields,” I say coldly.

  Nat meets my eyes, a half-smile flickering across his face, like the candles we light in winter when the generator’s down. “All the compound kids go to the solar fields. There isn’t anywhere else to go. You just can’t let the adults know. It’s a penalty against our parents if the district find out.”

  “A penalty?” Clover asks, her nose crinkled.

  “A civil disobedience point. You know, for not pulling your weight, or squandering rations, or breaking border rules, or something.”

  Clover stares at him blankly.

  “We have our rules too,” he says, slightly bitterly now. “So the district can function smoothly. Everyone has to cooperate. The rules are meant to protect us.”

  “So why do you trespass in the fields?” I say. “If you’re so into your district rules.”

  Nat shrugs. “Some rules are made for breaking. The solar fields aren’t actually dangerous. Not if you leave the panels alone. There’s no actual harm in it. But the district police would get you anyway.”

  “So that’s why your supposed chrysalises are a secret?” I ask Nat, surprised he doesn’t think his district is so perfect after all. “Because you were trespassing?”

  Nat nods. “And because butterflies are property of Central District. All pollinators are. It’s written into the laws. You’re meant to report them, so Central can gather them up and keep them safe or something.”

  “So why did you bring them here if it’s against the law to have them?” I ask, accusing.

  Nat shrugs. “I didn’t know what they were, did I? Not at first. I didn’t know they were going to start changing. Almost straight away, they were changing…”

  “Changing?” Clover interrupts.

  Nat nods. “They were tiny in the beginning. They could have been maggots, though I knew they were something different, more important than that. My mate Tally and I fed them thistle leaves, and they ate and ate and ate. We had to keep going back to the fields for more leaves.”