Luca, Son of the Morning

by Tom Anderson

  Apart from Joe Poundes, who nudged me hard by the gates at the end of the day – just enough to make sure I knew it wasn’t meant to be friendly – and went, ‘Bowen would eat you for breakfast, mate. Honest. You wouldn’t know what hit you.’

  He wasn’t in my BTEC class, which meant someone must have told him. He had no audience at the gates with him either, and must have known Ella had been joking. So what he said, well, it was meant for me and only me. Or maybe just him. Was he being creative, then?

  It worked, anyway. I had to walk home pulling hard to get the cold air into my hot lungs, as ‘Many Rivers to Cross’ played over and over to keep my heart from knocking its way up and out of my throat.

  The mists were drawing back in over Chapel Shores as my breath and pulse made it back into their right rhythm, and I could hear the grey rapping of the sea on the beach at the end of my street.

  It might be time again, soon, I thought.

  * * *

  I had the text drafted like ten times. Never sent it, though. Imagine the risk? Imagine the parallel universes filled with her possible reactions, only one or two of which were anything that would make my world any easier. Or hers.

  It was dark, but I had my curtains open anyway. The orange streetlamps were lighting soft rings of mist and drizzle for several metres around them, like really dim versions of the sun floating, in miniature along my street. The lamp by my bed pushed the dark out almost as far as the window, which was only there to keep the room warm. I was letting the night in. It felt like the right thing to do. Under the floor, the rumble of some nineties indie music reminded me my parents were still in a weirdly good mood about life, the universe and everything.

  My thumbs twitched over the screen.

  It would be such a leap to send this. More than I’d ever have in me.

  Still, though, I typed it, again and again, in loads of different versions, and hovered a fingertip by the ‘send’ option:

  ‘Got to ask u Gaby. who were the people behind him in the pic you drew.’

  Or…

  ‘Hey can you tell me coz its bugging me was it his crew from the boat that sunk. The people following your pappi up the beach in that pic you did?’

  Or…

  ‘Hiya any more nice sketches today? Rogoff properly loves u eh. Was it people he’d kidnapped in a line of shadows behind ur grandgrandpapa in that pic, been workin on a theory about him and cld tell u if you wanna meet up?’

  And maybe:

  ‘Hey Gaby-Gabe plz can we meet up I GENUINELY think I met ur grandpa the pirate type and I really mean it. U believe in ghosts right so maybe I can take u to him? LLJ’

  You can see why they always got deleted in the end, right?

  I’d just have to wait. The natural order couldn’t be messed with. It might throw everything into the mix. One day I’d get a message instead probably saying something simple like ‘Bunkers?’, and then I’d go and then I’d pike out of managing to bring it up, yet again.

  Or maybe I could head to that party and manage to actually walk in and be someone else and tell her it all, and more, and then I’d be free of me forever and she’d be free of her.

  And we’d go to Bunny’s land across the sea.

  Dream on, dreamer. I laughed at myself for the idea. So hard my mum called up the stairs to see if I was okay.

  I called back, ‘Fine!’, because that’s all the natural order would allow for an answer to such a stupid question.

  * * *

  As the weekend drew nearer, the things Ella had told me drifted around my mind.

  We had BTEC again one more time, and then all she did was go on about how nice and misunderstood this older kid, Jackdaw, was, and how I really should just come along to this party because he’d love me, and Gaby definitely thought I was going to be there, too.

  Still, though, there was not a word from the mighty Gabrielle Carranero herself, great granddaughter of pirates and mega-crooks. Even Ella reckoned the girl had gone into her own little world and wasn’t speaking to anyone apart from teachers.

  In the meantime, I couldn’t stop thinking about my two theories either, and I wanted to know why Gaby had drawn Gigi’s latest imagined portrait the way she had. Or was it more than something imagined?

  In the end I did send her a message, but it was nothing like I wanted to write. I just said: ‘Howsit going? Been busy? Might wander down Bunkers tomorrow after “work”. U keen?’

  She never replied, though, and ‘tomorrow-after-work’ came and went, and still Gaby set about the tiny moments we were near each other in school as if I was someone she had never met.

  Friday came, one week out exactly from the party that more people than just Ella were starting to rave about now, and there I was trudging home, bored and forgotten, but maybe safe once again.

  So I thought instead about Alex, the boy in Cartagena. How long had it been for him now? I wondered about his father and his life, working those hot streets, painted black in the bright sun. And because of those thoughts on the way home, I dared myself to do something risky. Stopping the tune I had on, I hit ‘Third World’ instead, and found the other track I shouldn’t dare touch because it was almost half the way towards street-viewing that place anyway. The tune I heard when I was there: ‘Ninety-six Degrees in the Shade’ spread through my ears, and immediately Alex and his town and his dad and the warm sea and the cold clothes and the police and the drug dealers and the army and the fire eating were right around me – real life visions, there on the street corners of Chapel Shores.

  Now I knew it was time.

  There was takeaway pizza on order at home, so I had a few slices before heading up early. Once it had got dark and I was again sealed up in my room for the night, I went online and started looking at ways to help ‘street performers’. It was a better option than pretending to sleep.

  Cartagena was in one of the links I found, and then there were more, newer images of several fire eaters. Stuff someone had uploaded since I collected that image to show Gaby at Quarters. They were on a corner together and looked like they could be in some sort of troop or team. I squinted and stared at their faces until there was one who I was convinced was Alex’s dad, because he had a face somehow different from the rest – with the same dark hair and sad eyes as the kid I’d met.

  Then I tried my bravery, and went onto Google maps again, but each time I was about to drop the little orange guy onto the streets of the walled city from above I couldn’t quite make my frozen hand move. Instead I drifted onto a promoted link, which must have been suggested to me because I had been on these ‘humanitarian’ sites about helping the people of other countries. Only this one was about Japan, and had some petition you could sign about saving the seas near Tokyo from fishing. They were catching too many fish there, and it had a YouTube clip of the millions of tons of living, slimy sea life that was being dragged out of the ocean every day, including all the little things that couldn’t be eaten and so had to be thrown in the bin, and the dead dolphins that had got mixed up with tasty tuna. It made me feel a sadness that was almost beautiful. It was so clean, so pure and so right, I realised, to hurt in some way when you saw what people could do to each other, to the world and to its amazing wildlife, just because they felt like it. There were so many other things to worry about on this planet, and somehow to me, right then, it seemed a comforting thought. Does that make me weird? Because it didn’t feel weird at all. It felt like the least weird thing to run through my head in months.

  I drifted off in minutes, then, and woke late on Saturday, still with the gorgeous sadness, but also kind of buzzing that there were already only a few hours to go till dark again. I spent them lying on the couch watching my dad count more shoes and more watches, before he roped me into helping him price up a few. Then he bought me chips to say thanks, and went out to the pub to meet Jeff, while my mum switched on the telly and
reached for the rum.

  Still no word from Gaby either. But by now I’d forgotten to care.

  My next shoreline night was moments away.

  Chapter 17

  This time it was only music. Nothing to look at, nothing to watch, or read – instead I let the dark come from outside and with no lights or lamps indoors laid out my clothes and waited for the right time to come.

  Bunny was calling the mood, and his ‘Dreamland’ was my theme tune.

  The few more hours crept in under the door and, one by one, eased themselves out the window and into the night air, until it was time for me to follow. I stuck my mum’s spare key under a flat stone round the side of the house this time, so that if this outfit of hood, hat and jeans had any trouble coming back with me then at least I’d get into the house okay. Then I shoved the doubloon Haz had given me into my back pocket again – since I knew for a fact luck didn’t exist.

  The wetness had gone from the day before. The mists had drifted back out to sea, over the horizon and it was once again clear, starry and moonlit. The ground was dry and the dunes soft. I felt sand slipping away from under my steps as I half walked, half slid down to the pebble bank that met the shoreline. The tide was in, and the big, round moon stood right at the top of the sky, throwing white and silver patches across the surface of the inky sea.

  The shore was swishing against the looser pebbles, with perfect time passing between each little whoosh and crackling drag-back.

  Everything else was still.

  In case I’d shaken the balance by walking up so clumsy, I worked at making myself still too. I stretched my back, knelt down and then eased myself into a sitting position with a smooth boulder under me as a seat. Then I drew deep breaths with my nose, pushing them out each time a wave sloshed up the shore and the sand, rocks and pebbles ground together noisily.

  A few minutes passed. Things settled again, and I drifted into the trance offered by the hypnotic, dancing light of the moon on the surface of the water. This was the patch of light I knew they’d emerge through.

  And then, sure enough, up came the first lump of dark, rising steadily from the water. Here they were. Here he was.

  Head and shoulders up and out, his body continued emerging, until you could see the gentle rhythm of his steps. Again, those even paces lifted him up and forward, each pushing him further towards the moment when he’d break free of the murky ocean and begin to wade up the dry land in front.

  Behind him followed his number two, then his number three.

  The leader of this silent army was right by me now, and I looked up into his eyes as he began to pass.

  Are you Mr Carranero? I wanted to say – but his eyes were the emptiest I’d seen them. Should I try to show him my doubloon? It looked as though there was no person, no soul, nothing living guiding this figure as he kept his focus ahead and led his followers up and over the dunes, towards the streets.

  I couldn’t follow, though. I was fixed to the spot. My legs were folded, chin at my knees and my arms were looped around them. No part of me wanted to move, and like all the other times I let the whole troop pass, before the sound of the sea returned and my body relaxed, telling me it was okay to move.

  Had they been going quicker this time? I couldn’t be sure. I looked up at the starlight, so unimaginably far overhead, then at the horizon beyond the shoreline. Stepping down to the water’s edge, I swept my hand through the foamy water to check its temperature. Cold. That settled it. I turned and made for the dune as quick as I could.

  As I ran, I looked around to see if I was alone – maybe the fox would be about – but like every other time, it seemed I had complete control over the whole universe for as long as the presence of these men was near.

  Over the brow of the dune, one of the men had stopped to wait for me. It was him, and he gently raised his left hand to me in a silent, firm beckoning motion.

  ‘Mr Carranero?’ I said, the sound of my voice exploding into the night air around.

  No answer. Just the beckoning, every bit as steady and empty-eyed as his walk.

  When he strode into the rising ground and disappeared, I went straight after him. The sand seemed to move away from me. Beneath it, as I sank further, was softer sand, then a swirling torrent of dust and air – and then water which was warm in a way I already knew from somewhere else. My neck and head relaxed in its undertow, and all I had ever wanted was to be in it and under it as fast as I could.

  The sand was now gone, and warm ocean had taken over everything. Breathing out long and content, from my nose, I sank, and with a stroke of my arms pushed under, and forwards. I found and felt the bottom with the palms of my hands. The trickles or warmer and cooler water were pouring out of the sea-bed, and I swam along with them, sliding my belly along the ocean floor as I went.

  Then the warmth moved through me, right to my core, and I was on my way again – through the deepest parts of the night-time, and the whispering voice which sounded like it knew every answer that had ever existed.

  * * *

  ‘Hello. I’m Cee and you’re late,’ said a girl’s voice, as I crawled across the sand, squinting at the weak sunlight above.

  ‘Sea?’

  ‘Yeah. Like “sea” – the ocean – or “see”, with eyes – but spell with letter “C”,’ said the voice. ‘I am “C-E-E”. Is short for “CHIE-EH”, spell “C-H-I-E”, but you won’t be able to say that, so you call me “Cee”.’

  ‘Okay. I’m Luca.’

  ‘Yes. I know. You’re Luca. You’re late. Market starts in three minutes. Come on. No time to dry!’

  Through my blurred vision, I looked at the girl, and blinking several times cleared my eyes to make her out. She was shorter than me, but about my age, and had neat black hair in a ponytail. She looked Japanese or Chinese, and was wearing loose, grey overalls – the kind a worker would normally have on. She had wide, dark eyes and she’d lifted her eyelashes out high and straight. Apart from that, she was pale skinned, pale lipped, thin-faced and wore no make-up. Her smile though, which came and went almost too quickly to notice, looked warm and beautiful.

  An electric speaker barked some announcement in another language, and so crackly I couldn’t make out a single sound. It drew my eyes up to what was around. A narrow bay of dark sand, walled on both sides by huge rows of light-coloured, concrete boulders. Behind me was a busy waterway. Boats were passing and seagulls chasing them in packs. In front, the small bay rose quickly to a strip of concrete steps, and then a massive building made from strips of metal that had the look of plastic or Lego. A bright yellow and pink sign was on the building, in writing that was, again, in Eastern characters. As I saw the sign a seagull bleated loudly overhead and a bell rang on one of the small boats that had been dragged half up the shoreline. That was around the same time the smell hit me.

  This time, I’d come ashore somewhere dirty, and I mean properly dirty – like, scared to stay in the water once I noticed. There was a thin surface of rubbish floating on the sea, which was sticky warm as if it didn’t actually contain much real water. The smell was a disgusting mix of things going off – maybe fish, maybe cheese, maybe bin bags or rotten meat – and burnt plastic or fuel. In fact, you could see a rainbow film of oil binding all the floating dirt together.

  It stuck to me as I walked the last few steps out. The muck on my dark jeans was shining like the vinyl on an old record, and there were millions of bits of broken plastic or rope, almost the size of sand grains, clinging to the dirt from my knees down. I shook each leg, and only some of it fell off.

  ‘You can take a bucket of water from the harbourside,’ said Cee. ‘Throw it on your legs. Good like new.’ Then she laughed. ‘You’ll stay wet but we can say it was raining.’ Her voice was soft, and as she said ‘raining’ she drew the word out. ‘Raaiiiiineeeeng…’ Either she was about to burst into song or she was trying not to la
ugh more. Then she reached for my hand: ‘Come on. You make us late!’

  ‘Is this…?’

  ‘Tokyo Japan! Yes, you know the answer. Why ask?’

  She led me, running, up the stone steps where I held us up for a moment to take a look back. There were five boats in this little bay, which was a tidal harbour of some kind. From the pink and orange brush-strokes in the sky off to what must be the east, it looked like dawn had been pretty recent. The whiter light of the sun was hidden for the moment, though, behind a dull cloud that sat low on the horizon.

  Three of the boats, the bigger ones, were moored just far enough out to float. The two smallest – which only had outboard motors and little wind-shields rather than cabins – had been pulled onto the sand and roped to iron rings on the wall of boulders. A passage of deeper water flowed past on the other side of one of the walls, and another even bigger, red-hulled boat was cruising slowly through it, along the back of the wall to the sea beyond.

  We were at the front of the grey building, and by a small door were a row of tall, white buckets, each filled with clear water. The one at the rear had a hose plunged into it, which you could tell was still discharging water from the way a tiny ripple of twisting current was making its way around the surface.

  Cee gestured to me to pick up the front bucket.

  ‘Throw. Like this!’

  She mimicked chucking the pale of water over my jeans. I did what she said, pouring the heavy water down my legs. It was cold, but it felt so relieving to see all that grime and debris come off me and wash towards the gutter at the rim of the building and back to the sea.

  A small, electric buggy – like a golf cart, but smelly and dirty – came around the corner, driven by an older boy wearing the same one-piece overalls.

  ‘This is my brother! He speaks no English, but you can say konichaaawa to him!’

  ‘Konnichiwa,’ I said, carefully.

  ‘Hello,’ said Cee’s brother.