The League of Sharks

by David Logan

  ‘Yes!’ he said triumphantly and started to reel it in. Suddenly a hand came out of the shadow, followed by a face. Garvan’s face. Garvan’s enormous face. Terror and panic raced through Junk. He screamed and shot backwards. The sudden movement caused the leather strap on his ankle to tighten even more and he cried out in pain.

  Garvan had been sitting in the shadows watching Junk all along. He picked up the belt with the knife and placed it on the table, well out of Junk’s reach. Then he stood over him like a passing oak tree. Junk was both terrorized and in agony. Instinctively he yanked at the manacle but only managed to make it tighter still. He was desperate to get away from this terrifying giant looking down at him.

  ‘Jesus! Jesus! Jesus!’ Junk said in panicked prayer. Garvan lowered himself down and grabbed hold of Junk’s foot. It was almost black by now. He held it still and with more finesse than one would expect possible from his huge fingers, he loosened the bindings so that the constricting pressure was alleviated, though Junk was still restrained. The pain ebbed away almost at once. Junk lay still, breathing hard, but his pounding heart was calming down. He stared at Garvan’s colossal features.

  ‘Who are ya?’ Junk managed to say on the end of a breath, but Garvan didn’t answer. He made no response at all. He just put Junk’s foot down gently and rose to his feet. Junk had never seen anyone so big. He was easily half the height of the very high room.

  Junk tried again. ‘What do you want from me?’ Garvan didn’t react. ‘Are you going to hurt me?’ Nothing. ‘Where am I?’ Garvan turned and walked away. ‘My friends are looking for me.’ Junk always thought it was phoney when kidnap victims said that in movies, but here he was saying it himself. It was because he couldn’t think of anything else to say and he really felt like he should have something to say. It never did any good. The kidnappers never went, ‘Oh, I’d better let you go then.’

  He watched Garvan as he moved around the cabin. Junk’s head was spinning. He didn’t know what to think. Garvan looked human but not. Junk had never seen such a big person. He was a giant. A proper giant. His face was different too. His nose lacked cartilage. It was wide and soft. His mouth was weak, as if he’d had a stroke. The old priest back in Murroughtoohy, Father Austin, he’d had a stroke and the left corner of his mouth hung lower than the right. However, there the similarity ended. Father Austin’s whole left side was affected. He dragged his left foot, his left arm hung uselessly and his double chins gathered in a fleshy pleat on that side of his face. Garvan, however, had a firm, strong jaw. He stood straight, walked cleanly. His shoulders were broad and powerful. Each of his arms was wider than Junk’s torso.

  Garvan returned holding a plate made from a flat piece of slate. On it was a selection of berries, some fruit Junk didn’t recognize and what looked like bread. Garvan set it down in front of Junk and backed away to the table. He grabbed a chair, turned it round and sat, watching. Junk suddenly realized how hungry he was and wasn’t sure how long it had been since he last ate. He grabbed a piece of the unknown fruit and bit into it. Its flesh was orange in colour but its texture was like that of a banana. It was sweet. A little like vanilla custard. He scoffed it all down quickly. He couldn’t stop. The first bite had awakened the hunger pangs in him and they were demanding satisfaction.

  ‘This is good. Thank you,’ said Junk, biting into the bread-like substance. It was close to bread but it wasn’t quite bread. It was delicious though. Crisp on the outside, sweet on the inside. The texture was like an Italian Christmas cake that he’d tried once. Panettone, it was called. ‘My name’s Junk,’ he said. He looked Garvan in the eye, wanting to make a connection, see some sort of reaction. But there was nothing. ‘Can you tell me where I am?’ That was the second time he had asked that question and the second time that it garnered no response. ‘Do you understand me? Do you speak English?’ Nothing. ‘Ellinika?’ Greek? ‘Milate Ellinika?’ Do you speak Greek? After all, when he went diving he was off the coast of Corfu. It made sense. Junk went through the languages he knew in his head, then looked at Garvan and listed them: ‘Français? Italiano? Deutsch? Español? Português? Svenska? Arabi? Russki? Zhongwen?’ The list could have gone on, though conversation would have become increasingly limited. For example, the only thing he could say in Urdu was ‘my donkey likes your tree’. So far it had never come in handy. As it was there was no conversation at all. Nothing Junk said elicited anything vaguely resembling a response from Garvan, and after about twenty minutes Garvan got up and left the room.

  Junk didn’t see him again that day. The light faded gradually as day turned to night. There were no lamps or candles within view and so Junk sat in the darkness on his fur-lined bed until fatigue overcame him and he fell asleep.

  *

  At dawn, Garvan came back and sat watching the boy as he slept. His mind was racing with the thought that this might be the one he’d been waiting for. He didn’t look like he expected him to look, but he spoke in a strange alien language that Garvan didn’t understand. That was the first marker. The first sign. He had played the sequence of events that were due to unfold over and over in his head a thousand times. Ten thousand. A hundred thousand. But he shouldn’t get carried away, he told himself. This might not be the one. He would test him and see. If he passed, it still wouldn’t mean he was the one, but it would be another step in the right direction. The boy started to stir.

  *

  When Junk woke he felt refreshed, having had one of the best sleeps in memory. He opened his eyes and looked around. Garvan was sitting watching him again.

  ‘Morning,’ said Junk, sitting up. No reaction from Garvan as always. ‘What sort of fur is this?’ Junk asked, running his hand through the luxurious pelt beneath him. ‘This is the softest bed I’ve ever slept on. Spent most of the last few years sleeping in bunks on ships and boats. They’re pretty much the same wherever you are. Thin mattress, thin blanket. Can’t remember the last time I was this still. Got used to rooms swaying around me.’

  Junk wasn’t sure why, but he didn’t feel scared around Garvan any more. There was something serene about the big man. At that moment he thought about the monster in Frankenstein. He’d read the book when he was about nine and found it again a year ago on board a fishing boat he had crewed on out of Gdansk. Of course that ended badly. The book, not the Polish fishing boat.

  Maybe because Garvan said nothing, Junk felt compelled to speak. He didn’t expect a response and left less and less opportunity between sentences for Garvan to say anything.

  ‘So what can I call ya? Got to call you something. You got a name?’ He did pause then but got no reaction. ‘How about Frank?’ he said, thinking about the book again. ‘So I’m Junk, you’re Frank. How’s things, Frank? Looks like a nice sunny day out there.’ He craned his head to look out of the misted window. ‘Any chance I could go for a walk? I won’t go far. Just stretch my legs. Get a breath of fresh air. That sort of thing.’ No reaction. ‘No? Fair enough. It was worth asking though, wasn’t it?’

  There was a moment of silence as Junk considered what to say next. His stomach rumbled and he realized he was starving.

  ‘Any chance of some breakfast? That fruit you had yesterday or the bread or anything really. What was that fruit? What’s it called? Don’t know why I keep asking questions. Seems like a waste of words. I mean what if I found out everyone was allotted a finite number of words and I was using mine up willy-nilly talking to you. Like a man in a desert having a bath. A good, long, hot soak. I suppose I could always borrow some of your words quota. You don’t seem to have any need for them. I wonder what the hell I’m talking about. Strange things pop into your head sometimes, don’t they?’

  Junk stopped talking. The two of them sat in silence. Junk’s stomach rumbled again. This time Garvan got up and crossed to his kitchen. He started putting some more food together. He brought a plate over to Junk and set it down in front of him. Junk looked at him when he was close.

  ‘So you can understand me?’ No r
eaction from Garvan. ‘Or maybe you just heard me stomach. Thank you anyway.’

  Junk dug into the food. There was more of the bread that wasn’t bread, some more berries, a different type of fruit. It was crunchy like an apple but bitter like grapefruit. Junk didn’t enjoy his first bite, but the taste grew on him and by the third he was loving it. There was also something in a small wooden bowl that resembled cottage cheese. It had a sharp oaky, nutty taste.

  ‘This is lovely. What’s this? It’s kind of cheesy. Doesn’t look that appetizing but tastes gorgeous.’

  Garvan returned to the kitchen area and came back with a plate of food for himself and two clay beakers full of water. The beakers had been made with great skill, the same craftsmanship that was evident in the architecture of the cabin, the furniture and the plates. Junk drank deeply, emptying the beaker in one go. Only then did he realize how thirsty he had been.

  ‘Oh man-oh-man, I needed that! Read somewhere that when you get really thirsty, like dying-of-thirst-type thirsty, your body shuts down the bit of you that feels thirsty so you don’t know you’re thirsty. Crazy, huh?’

  Garvan didn’t reply. He just stared at Junk as if he was the most fascinating creature he’d ever seen.

  ‘So where am I?’ asked Junk. ‘Am I still in Corfu?’ No response. A thought occurred to him. ‘Wait. Is this Albania? I was diving in the Corfu strait so I guess I could’ve come up on the Albanian side. What language do you speak in Albania? Albanian? I don’t know any Albanian.’ He looked Garvan in the eye and pointed with both index fingers straight down. ‘Albania? Is this Albania? Albania?’ Nothing. No response.

  The day continued in much the same way. Junk would talk and Garvan would not. Sometimes Garvan would go out and come back with food and water. Day became night and Junk slept.

  The following day was pretty much the same, as was the day after that and the day after that and the day after that. Junk lost track of time. He was certain he’d been here more than a week, but he wasn’t sure if it had been two weeks yet.

  At some point, while he was asleep, Garvan had extended the length of the strap connected to the leather manacle around his ankle. It meant Junk could walk around a little. Not far – a metre or so, and Garvan made sure there were never any knives or other tools left within his reach.

  To fill the time, Junk started telling Garvan all about himself. About his home back in Murroughtoohy, about his mother and father and about Ambeline. He spoke a lot about Ambeline. He told the story of that night. Told him that he was looking for the man who killed her. He told him about La Liga de Los Tiburones … the League of Sharks.

  As time went on, Garvan would do more than just sit and stare at Junk. He had a fat book covered in animal hide, stained dark brown, in which he would write or sketch as Junk spoke. Often Junk would ask what he was writing or sketching, but Garvan never showed him or responded to anything he said.

  One morning Junk woke to find Garvan was nowhere to be seen. A moment of panic rose in him. He had grown used to his captor being the first thing he saw every morning.

  ‘Frank,’ he shouted. ‘You around?’ But there was only silence. Then he noticed a small wooden box next to his bed. It was a cube with sides about fifteen centimetres long. A dozen types of wood had been used in its construction. They were naturally different colours. It was highly polished. There was no hinge or obvious opening, but there was something inside. Junk could hear it rattle when he shook the box.

  He spent the best part of an hour examining it before deciding that it didn’t open and putting it down. Still there was no sign of Garvan, and after boredom took hold again Junk returned to pushing, prodding and poking the box. Then, suddenly, a corner clicked out. Junk tried the other corners but they didn’t move. He realized it was a puzzle box. There was a way to open it; the way just wasn’t very obvious. He’d come across something similar in a market in Shanghai. This realization fired his imagination and he spent the next several hours attempting to figure out the box’s secret.

  Eventually Garvan appeared. Junk held the box out to him.

  ‘So come on then, show me. How do you open it?’ Garvan placed some food and water next to Junk and left.

  It took Junk four days to open the box. In that time he hardly saw Garvan. The big man would come in with food and leave again. When Junk finally worked out how to open the box (the corners had to be turned a quarter, half or three-quarters rotation, and in the correct sequence) he found an intricately carved model of some sort of animal that looked a little like a wild boar.

  The next morning Garvan was sitting and watching him when he woke. Garvan spent the whole day with him. They spoke. Well, Junk spoke. He told him more about his life, his family, his travels. Garvan scribbled in his book. They ate together and Junk was happy for the company.

  The next morning there was no Garvan but there was another box. This one took him five days to open. Inside there was another intricate carving. This time of a mushroom. Junk thought it an odd subject to choose to carve but he couldn’t deny the beauty of the workmanship.

  The morning after that, there was no Garvan and no box. Except there was. A few hours passed before Junk noticed it. During the night Garvan had come in and cut the tether leading from the manacle. Then he had reattached the two ends inside another puzzle box. Junk considered this and he thought he understood. He hoped he understood. This box was his freedom. If he solved this puzzle, he could leave.

  6

  This box was the most intricate one yet. How Garvan had managed to make it was a mystery. It seemed to defy all laws of logic. It was spherical in shape, about the size of a cricket ball. Its surface was made up of a hundred or more small polished interconnected wooden blocks. It took Junk two days just to work out how to manipulate them. Press one block and nothing would happen. However, press a specific combination of blocks simultaneously, sometimes as many as ten blocks at once, which was like playing Twister just with your fingers, and Junk could feel and hear some sort of mechanism moving inside. He could then twist the different hemispheres and rotate them. If he did it slowly he could feel the two halves clicking over internal ridges. If he pressed in the right selection of blocks, the northern and southern hemispheres would move but so too would the eastern and western as well as the diagonal, both south-east to north-west and southwest to north-east.

  Working out how to manipulate the object was only the first task. Then he had to work out the sequence of turns needed to ‘unlock’ it. It was a code with no cipher and therefore impossible. There were so many possible combinations that Junk could spend years trying them all.

  After a week he gave up. He was angry and frustrated. When Garvan came in with food and water, Junk would turn away from him, displaying his annoyance with these silly games through childish petulance. When that provoked no reaction from Garvan, Junk tried another tack and begged.

  ‘Frank, this is killing me. My head’s just gonna explode. Please, just give me a clue, show me how to start, anything. Nudge me in the right direction. Please.’

  Garvan just looked blankly at him. Then he left. He returned a few moments later with a clay bowl, about the size of a dog’s bowl. The inside was glazed in a dark green colour. It was full of water and Garvan set it down next to Junk.

  ‘What’s this supposed to be? I’m not a dog.’ But all Garvan did was leave. Junk stared down into the bowl of water and saw his own reflection staring back at him. Exasperated, he fell back on to his fur bed and looked up at the ceiling. He would probably never leave this place.

  Hours passed. Junk tried to sleep but he couldn’t. He curled up into different positions until he found himself staring directly at the spherical puzzle box. He gazed at it for a long time, hardly blinking.

  And then he saw it.

  The individual blocks were different colours, various shades of light and dark. A small group of them had lined up perfectly and the areas of light, dark and in-between all matched. There was an image there. This wasn’t j
ust a puzzle box, it was also one of those games that kids play where you have to slide tiles around a grid until they form a coherent picture.

  Reinvigorated, Junk sat up and started to manipulate the sphere, looking to match similar areas of hue to see if he could work out what it depicted.

  Then he remembered the bowl Garvan had brought him. What did it mean? It was a clue. He was sure it was a clue. Garvan was helping him. But how? It was just a bowl of water. There was nothing else to it. He lifted the bowl carefully and looked underneath. Nothing. It was a bowl. Terracotta on the outside, Lincoln green on the inside and holding nothing but water. He took a sip. Yep, just water. He put the bowl down again and the movement caused the water to ripple. He stared into it as it settled. There was nothing else. It was empty. Nothing inside. Just water and …

  In a flash of inspiration, he suddenly knew what the picture on the spherical puzzle box was. Now he just had to recreate it.

  It took him another three days of trial and error. Moving the hemispheres of the box this way and that until his own face was staring back at him from one side of the globe. The only other thing that had been in the bowl of water was his own reflection.

  When Junk made the final turn, the sphere made a resounding last click and simply came apart in his hands. He unwound the leather strands from the top half and he was free.

  Junk stood up and stretched his legs. He had been sitting for hours, desperately trying to solve the conundrum. He edged over to the door but stopped as he reached it. What if it was a trick? What if Garvan was waiting outside for him with a gun or a knife or whatever?

  He moved to the window nearest the door, but it was too high. He grabbed a chair from the table and, with difficulty, because of its size, he shunted it over to the window. He scrambled up on to the chair and looked out. His view was blurred by the translucence of the glass. As Junk touched it he realized that it wasn’t glass. It wasn’t cold to the touch like glass would be. It was more like plastic. He could make out vague shapes. Trees. There were a lot of trees. Bushes. General greenery. Blue sky. Nothing seemed to be moving. And nothing resembling the distinctive size and shape of Garvan.