“Why is it a problem?” said Razi, his anger flaring up. “This is what you and Mother have been trying to make me do for ages!”
“We just want you to be the old Razi again. We want you to be happy. Not go following someone who –” she turned to Zheng for a second – “no offence, might not even be telling the whole truth.”
“Hey! I am telling the truth,” said Zheng.
“Are you calling him a liar?” said Razi.
“No! I just think he may be lying, which is a reasonable assumption when you don’t know someone.”
“Listen, I don’t want to come between you two,” said Zheng.
“You’re not,” said Razi. “I trust you. It’s Shifa who doesn’t.”
“That’s not true,” she said. “I don’t distrust you! I just don’t necessarily trust you.”
“This is crazy.”
“No, what’s crazy is you going off with someone you hardly know on a dangerous mission, when you haven’t been able to face the sea in eight months.”
“I’m doing it anyway.”
“Fine!” Shifa went to the stuff on the floor that she’d brought with her and fished something out. “If you’re going with him, I won’t stop you. But I’m going to need to make a copy of that map.”
“Why do you need a copy of the map?” said Razi.
Shifa sighed with impatience. “If you’re going with him, I need to have an idea of where you’ll be. What if you get into trouble?”
“So much bureaucracy,” said Zheng. He tossed the leather case on to the floor.
Shifa got to work with a quill and ink. Razi crouched down on the packed-earth floor and peered round his sister as she set the map and a blank piece of paper side by side in front of her.
“Actually, you do it,” she said, pushing the blank sheet to Razi. “Your drawing is so much better.”
Razi sketched out the map quickly, inking in the land masses and the sea. He handed it back to her.
“No, wait, what about the labels?”
Razi considered the map and pointed with the quill. “So that’s where we are now.” He wrote down Turtle Beach.
“And this is the rock you were asking about?” Shifa said, pointing to something that didn’t look much like an elephant at all.
Zheng nodded.
“Is that what the label says?” said Shifa. “Elephant Rock?”
Zheng nodded again, and Razi wrote down Ananda Rock there.
Shifa glared at him. “Ananda? The name of the Queen’s elephant? Razi, take this seriously.”
“I just don’t feel the need, that’s all! What does this say, Zheng?” he said, pointing at a part of the map close to the islet where the treasure was supposed to be buried. There was something like a cluster of broad snake-like creatures drawn there.
Razi thought he saw Zheng hesitate for a millisecond before he answered. Had he imagined it? “Sea of Monsters,” said Zheng.
“Seriously?” Shifa looked at Razi, then back at Zheng. “Seriously – Sea of Monsters?”
Zheng shrugged. “They might seem unbelievable to you, sea monsters. But having seen the things that I’ve seen, it’s not surprising at all. You should open your mind a bit.”
Shifa snorted. “I do have an open mind. I just don’t believe in monsters, that’s all.”
“Zheng has a point, actually,” said Razi. “We know very little about the ocean. So little of it has been explored by humans. They say that even centuries in the future we might have only explored a tiny fraction of it.”
Shifa ignored that interesting titbit and turned to Zheng. “So you want Razi to come with you to this, this … Sea of Monsters?”
“Oh, don’t worry,” said Zheng quickly. “They don’t mean any harm. They’re quite gentle really.”
“Really?” she said. “A bunch of gentle sea monsters?”
“Yes, really,” said Zheng. “Nothing to worry about. Did I tell you about the time a giant squid—”
“Zheng, you can talk the gills off a mackerel,” said Shifa. “We don’t need to hear this now. Just write it down, Razi.”
Razi faithfully wrote down Sea of Monsters on their map. He glanced at Zheng and saw a guilty look flit across his face.
Was he making a mistake? Was Shifa right to be suspicious?
“So this is where the treasure is,” said Razi, tapping the X. It showed a small islet seemingly in the middle of nowhere, but over on the south-west there was a whole heap of smaller islands. The treasure islet had no label on it.
“Do you think you can get us there?” said Zheng.
Razi considered the map and tried to picture it in his mind’s eye. He’d never gone as far out to sea as the islet but he had a good feel for direction. Neither Father nor any of the fishermen had the type of fancy equipment Zheng’s shipmates must have had, but they travelled these seas and knew them well. “I’m sure I can.”
Shifa compared the minute details of the maps before rolling them up. “All done,” she said, handing Zheng back his case.
At that moment two men burst into the hut. Razi barely had time to get over the shock before he registered who they were.
Marco and Cook!
They shoved past him to Zheng.
“There he is!” yelled Marco. Zheng quickly stuck the pouch down his shirt before the man pulled him by the scruff of his collar and shook him like a leaf. “Where is it?”
“I don’t have it,” said Zheng in a strangled voice.
“Hey!” said Razi. “What are you doing?”
“You! I’ll deal with you in a minute, you little liar,” growled Marco.
Shifa backed away out of the hut and picked up a stick lying on the ground.
Cook pushed Razi away. “You little rat,” he bellowed. His eyes fell on Shifa brandishing the stick. “Marco, the girl has the map!”
He lunged towards her, knocking Razi down.
“Run away, Shifa!” shouted Zheng at the top of his voice. He’d escaped from Marco and was trying to stop Cook. “Go, Razi, before they kill you.”
Razi hesitated. Then he ducked out and grabbed Shifa, pulling her away from the hut. Marco gave a yell and followed after them while Zheng struggled with the cook.
The twins ran towards town with Marco hot on their heels. When they were hidden from his view by some tall rocks on the beach, Shifa threw herself over a thick row of bushes growing to the side.
Razi followed and they rolled under the bushes.
“Ouch,” he whispered. The leaves had little thorns at the ends and lilac berries of some sort.
Shifa looked at him. “I should have warned you – these are prickly pear bushes. We use the oil in some of our medicines. Be grateful you’re not allergic.”
They heard Marco running closer and then stop. He seemed to be wondering where the children were.
Razi held his breath. Marco’s shoes shuffled in place, centimetres from the bushes, unsure which way they’d gone. Razi knew they had the benefit of knowing the land, whereas Marco was a complete stranger.
Razi tensed as Marco’s hand brushed against the bush above them. The man yowled and jumped away from the bush in alarm, shaking his hand and clutching his throat.
“Interesting,” whispered Shifa. She took out her knife and cut off a berry above them. She dropped it into her pocket and hissed in explanation, “This could come in useful––”
Razi shushed his sister. He was more interested in what Marco was doing. Peering carefully through the prickly leaves, Razi saw that he had stopped and was looking towards Galle. Over the man’s shoulder, Razi could see the beachfront, with children flying kites, and the town houses with wide verandahs beginning where the more modest fishermen’s houses stopped. The smell of frying prawns came from the food cart selling freshly made fritters on the beach.
After a few moments, Marco gave up. He couldn’t very well chase two children through a crowded town. He turned back slowly towards the fisherman’s hut and Zheng, breathing raspingly.
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Razi waited till he had gone a fair way before crawling out from under the bush. “Stay here,” he said to Shifa.
He ran stealthily after Marco, keeping his distance. He saw the men try to stuff Zheng into a boat while he struggled furiously. Razi started towards them, then stopped. He wasn’t a match for these men and there was no point in both of them getting kidnapped. His hands were clammy as he watched.
Should he run back to town for help? Surely they’d let Zheng go when they found the map on him? Why would they need him when they had the map?
But they didn’t let Zheng go, and Razi watched in terror as the boat cruised away into the distance.
He looked back to see Shifa approaching.
“They took him away!” he screamed. “Shifa, they took him away! What have I done?” The thought of the powerfully built Marco turning his anger on Zheng made him feel sick with horror.
Shifa was trembling. The full enormity of what had happened had only just hit them.
“Why would they do that?” Razi’s heart was pounding. “They could have just taken the map and let him go.”
Shifa twisted the ends of her hair round her shaking fingers. “W-what if they want revenge on Zheng?”
Razi’s insides contracted with pain. “We have to help him. Those men are dangerous. They were prepared to murder the entire crew of a ship in the hope of getting rich. What would they do to Zheng?”
“I th-think for the moment Zheng is safe.”
“How can you say that?”
“Because his map is only partly useful to the men,” said Shifa. “Until they figure out what the labels mean and find the treasure, I don’t think they’ll do anything to him.”
“What do you mean, figure out the labels?”
Shifa looked distraught as she slid something out of her pocket. A thick brown scroll, something too important-looking to be the map Razi had drawn. She unrolled it and held it up. Her expression was wracked with guilt.
“I swapped the maps, Razi. We have the real one.”
“What?” Razi gawped at the map, with its intricate details and markings, on the thick paper. “How? I saw Zheng tuck it into his shirt.”
“You saw him put the leather case in his shirt, but I swapped the maps so that he has your copy.”
“Why did you do that?” asked Razi.
“Because I thought he wasn’t telling us the truth!” said Shifa, crying. “And you were going to go off with him! I thought I’d take it to my teacher, Miss Nabeeha. She knows everything there is to know about any topic, and if she doesn’t she knows how to find out. She could help translate the labels before you went off.”
Razi remembered Zheng’s hesitation when he was translating the map. “I would never think to do such a thing.”
“This is exactly what I mean! You’d go on a mission across the seas with someone you don’t know just on his say-so.”
Razi was silent. Was she right?
“How would the copy of the map not be useful for them?” he said. “They can’t read our words, but they could get them translated.”
“Yes. Turtle Beach, Ananda Rock, Sea of Monsters. Doesn’t say much, does it? Would they even recognise that it was the Galle coast?”
That was a good point. “Do you think they’ll come back after us?” said Razi after a moment.
“I’m sure of it,” said Shifa. “They don’t look like the type to give up easily. Once they realise they can’t get the details out of Zheng they’ll come for us. They think we’re all in this together!”
“We kind of are now,” said Razi.
They sat in silence for a bit, the sea throwing spray on them.
“There’s something else,” said Razi. He’d been feeling terrible, but this admission made him feel even worse. “Do you know how the men found Zheng?”
Shifa cocked her head to one side and looked at him intently, her cheeks streaky with tears. “How?”
“It was me,” said Razi. “I led them to Zheng.”
“What are you talking about?” said Shifa. “You didn’t lead them to Zheng.”
“Not deliberately.” Razi buried his head in his hands. Again and again in his head he saw Zheng being pulled into the boat and kidnapped. And the image of Zheng’s own boat on the beach.
“How then?”
“I should have been keeping a low profile. Instead, I go and slap a man with a fish in the middle of a busy beach.”
Shifa groaned.
“I’ve been so stupid and wrapped up in myself. Zheng has bigger problems than me and I led them straight to him. What if Marco and Cook saw me making that scene and followed me to Zheng? And to make it worse I forgot to hide his boat. He asked me to do it and I had so many chances but I just kept forgetting.”
Shifa was twisting her hair up in her fingers, cutting red lines into her skin. “It’s not your fault; it’s mine. I shouldn’t have swapped the maps. I just wanted to check out Zheng’s story, but I should have been more trusting, like you. If I had been, he’d have the proper map and they might have just let him go.” She paused. “We need to help him, don’t we? Because, because…”
Razi’s chest contracted. He’d never been so frightened in his life. “Because, intentionally or not, we did this to him.”
“He doesn’t have anyone else to look out for him,” said Shifa. “Everyone who cared about him died on that ship.”
A mist was clearing in Razi’s mind. He knew what they had to do. His heart thudded and his hands were slick with sweat, but he knew they had to do it. “Of course. We have to give Marco and Cook what they want in exchange for Zheng. We have to go and find the dagger ourselves.”
No one noticed Razi as he took Nathan’s boat. A few of his former fisherboy friends were thrashing about in the sea, their laughter the only noise on the empty beach. They didn’t see Razi as he started rowing. Their drifting apart had happened very slowly in the months after Father’s death. Razi couldn’t blame them really. He’d rejected the thing that had bonded them, and it had been hard to find common ground after that.
He sailed off apprehensively, keeping as close to the shore as he could. No one was in this stretch of sea. The beach had been fully cleared of the remains of fish by hungry birds, and everyone was either at home resting or going about their day in town.
This was the first time he’d been in a boat since the accident. Razi knew he had no choice but to do this, but his limbs were stiff and cold with trepidation. When he’d agreed to go with Zheng there was to be another seafaring person with him. But now it was going to be just him and his sister. Shifa, for all her cleverness, was very much a landlubber and not much use at sea.
She was waiting for Razi near the hut when Nathan’s fishing boat turned to the shore. She’d gathered their supplies in a round-bottomed cane basket, a green scroll nestling among a bag of mangosteens. It was the map, for which Shifa had quickly stitched a case. She’d also remembered to bring a spade.
“Good thinking!” said Razi, hauling in the things she passed him. He gave her a hand and she clambered into the boat.
“What’s the point of that?” said Razi, nodding towards the scroll in the case Shifa had made. “Won’t it get wet anyway?”
Shifa leaned out and dipped her fingers in the water. She splashed some on the scroll case. “It’s made of lotus leaf,” she said. “It repels water.”
“Or we could put it in a bottle,” said Razi, seeing the water bottle she’d collected from Zheng’s hut.
“Let’s do both, for extra protection.” Shifa picked up the empty glass bottle and slipped the scroll in, replacing the cork tightly. She’d brought a gallon of water anyway, and been bent diagonal with the weight as she’d lugged it over to the boat.
Razi pushed off. “What about Mother? You know with all she’s been through we can’t have her worrying that something bad has happened to us.”
“We’ll have to be back before nightfall so she won’t even know. We find the treasure, grab it, save
Zheng and get home as soon as possible.”
“That’s quite a plan, but, yes, we have to get back before she misses us.”
“I hope—” Shifa broke off mid-sentence and screamed.
A hand fell on Razi and shook him roughly.
“Where is it?” said Marco, jumping into the boat, his lower half wet from wading in after them. Razi twisted from under him and pushed him away. The boat rocked and the man grabbed at Razi again. The sea pushed the boat out as he struggled against Marco’s grasp. Out of the corner of his eye, Razi saw Shifa jab Marco sharply with the spade, pushing him against the side of the boat which shook violently.
He roared and made a grab at her but she ducked away. Razi pushed him down again, sending him crashing into the food basket so that the mangosteens bumped out and rolled all over the boat. Marco’s gaze fell on the bottle and he grabbed it.
“NO!” Razi lunged at him and knocked the bottle out of his hands. Shifa swooped to catch it but Marco snatched at it wildly. The bottle hit the side of the boat with a crash. It smashed into pieces and the map fell into the sea.
The map in its lotus-leaf case bobbed away on the waves.
“NO!” yelled Razi again. Without the map they’d never be able to find the treasure or save Zheng.
Razi jumped into the water, followed swiftly by Marco. The map swirled out of reach.
Razi struck out after the map, kicking the man out of his way. “Row away, Shifa!” he yelled to her.
Shifa was staring at him petrified, like a seer caught on a line. What was wrong with her? He planned to get the map and then swim after the boat. If she got far enough away, Razi was sure Marco would have to turn back. He didn’t seem to be a very good swimmer. But first Razi had to get the map.
Finally Shifa seemed to get the message and rowed away on the boat. Razi reached the map first and seized it. He struck out towards the boat but Marco grabbed him by his foot and yanked him underwater.
Underneath the surface, the coral on the seabed glinted with myriad colours, bony fingers of bright oranges, yellows and pinks speckled by shoals of darting red-striped fish. A turtle rose up from the bottom, paddling gently as rays of sunlight strobed through the water. The blood rushed loudly in Razi’s ears as he struggled to breathe. He wedged the map in the coral and turned to fight off the man.
The Boy Who Met a Whale Page 4
