Escape to the Moon Islands: Quest of the Sunfish 1

by Mardi McConnochie

  ‘Let’s get him below,’ Annalie said.

  They hooked his arms over their shoulders and carried him down to the saloon. Annalie got him some water and he sucked it down in huge gasping draughts. He drank more and more, until suddenly it came up again in a smelly whoosh. The boy tensed, as if expecting a blow, but it was a dull, instinctual movement, slowed by exhaustion.

  ‘Don’t worry about that,’ Annalie said. ‘We’ll clean it up later. Would you like something to eat?’

  Essie jumped up and fussed in the galley, not sure what castaways might like for their first meal back from the brink of death. She offered a banana, a honey sandwich, and a little leftover curry and rice. The boy crammed it all in as if he didn’t care what it was.

  Annalie watched him curiously. He was terribly thin, his arms and legs like broom handles. He was about the same height as Will, but his hollowed-out face made him look almost like an old man. The clothes he wore—a T-shirt and some long shorts—were ragged and almost colourless. He wore no shoes.

  None of them wanted to interrupt him while he was eating, but once he had eaten everything and Essie had brought him seconds and he’d eaten that too, Annalie began.

  ‘What’s your name?’

  The boy’s eyes darted towards her, and then flickered away.

  ‘I’m Annalie, this is my brother Will, and my friend Essie.’

  ‘Hi,’ Will and Essie said.

  The boy’s gaze darted from one face to another, then around the room. He looked like a wild animal looking for an escape route.

  ‘It’s okay,’ Annalie said. ‘You’re safe now.’

  This didn’t seem to register with the boy at all, and Annalie began to wonder if he could understand them. ‘Do you speak Duxish?’

  Still he gave no response. Essie tried saying hello in a few other languages. The boy showed no signs of understanding these either.

  ‘Maybe,’ Will said, ‘we should just leave him alone for a while.’

  This seemed like a good idea, and the three of them began to get up from the table to give the boy some space. Then, unexpectedly, he said, ‘Pod.’

  They all turned back to him with interest.

  ‘Your name’s Pod?’ asked Will.

  The boy nodded, still watchful. ‘How many on this boat?’

  ‘It’s just the three of us,’ Will said.

  ‘And Graham,’ Annalie said, pointing to where Graham was snoozing on his perch.

  The boy snapped around to look, as if expecting a threat. The sight of the parrot seemed to intrigue him, but he turned back towards the others quickly.

  ‘No master?’ he asked.

  ‘I guess I’m the master,’ Will said, and Annalie gave a splutter of laughter. Will gave her a dirty look.

  ‘We don’t have a master,’ Annalie said. ‘It’s just us.’

  ‘So, I’m dying to know,’ Essie said. ‘How did you get to be on that rock?’

  Pod’s face went blank; a silence fell. Will and Annalie exchanged a look, then Will said, ‘If you want to have a rest, there’s a bed in there.’ He pointed to his own cabin, which had once been Spinner’s. With some hesitation, the boy got up and peeped in the cabin door; then he slipped in and closed the door behind him.

  Will jerked his head to Annalie to indicate that she should follow him. They went up on deck, Essie following.

  ‘Does anyone else think it might not have been the best idea bringing this kid on board?’ Will said, keeping his voice low.

  ‘What do you mean? We couldn’t leave him there,’ Annalie said.

  ‘Well, of course not,’ Will said. ‘But who the hell is he?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Annalie said.

  ‘Maybe he’s a refugee,’ Essie said.

  ‘A refugee from what? We’re in the middle of nowhere. The only people who live out here are pirates,’ Will said.

  Annalie’s eyes widened. ‘You think he’s a pirate?’

  Will shrugged eloquently.

  ‘He doesn’t look like a pirate,’ Essie said.

  ‘What do you think they look like?’ Will said.

  ‘Well, tougher. And older,’ Essie said.

  ‘He looks too nervous to be a pirate,’ Annalie said. ‘He looked like he thought we were going to kill him.’

  ‘That doesn’t mean he might not try and take the boat off us.’

  Essie looked at Annalie in alarm. ‘You don’t think he would, do you? We rescued him!’

  ‘I’m just saying,’ Will said, ‘we don’t know what he might do.’

  They were all silent for a moment, thinking about this.

  ‘Let’s wait and see what he’s got to say for himself,’ Annalie said.

  ‘Yeah, sure,’ Will said. ‘But we’ve all got to keep an eye on him, right?’

  The boy slept all afternoon. That evening, as they were gathering for their meal, the cabin door opened and Pod peeped out.

  Annalie noticed him first. ‘Hey, Pod. Want some dinner?’

  He nodded, and came slinking out.

  Food, water and rest had done him good; he no longer looked on the brink of death. While the final preparations for dinner were made, he edged towards Graham, watching the bird with great curiosity. Graham saw him coming and flew up out of reach.

  ‘Who this?’ he squawked.

  Pod blinked in surprise. ‘It talks?’

  ‘Incessantly,’ Will said. ‘This is Pod.’

  Pod watched Graham as the bird flew about the saloon, his face more animated than it had yet been. ‘So colourful.’

  Graham’s plumage was yellow, blue and green; he was a spectacular beast, and he knew it. Attracted by Pod’s attentive gaze, he stopped flying about and came to rest, just out of reach, and then sidled closer to see what would happen. Pod just stood and watched, rapt, as if everything Graham did was a marvel.

  ‘New friend?’ Graham suggested.

  Pod nodded.

  ‘Graham biscuit?’ Graham asked craftily.

  Pod wasn’t sure how to respond. Annalie handed him a biscuit, and Pod held it out. Graham took the biscuit and ate it with satisfaction, still sizing up Pod curiously.

  ‘We should eat too,’ said Essie.

  The four of them sat around the little table and ate together in shy silence. Will, Annalie and Essie were all still desperate to know more about the stranger in their midst, but none of them knew how to begin. So they chatted about the food until they couldn’t think of anything else to say, and all the dinner was eaten up.

  Then, abruptly, Pod spoke. ‘I was a slave.’

  The others snapped to attention.

  Pod’s face was expressionless, and he didn’t look at them as he spoke. ‘I don’t know where I was born, and I don’t remember my parents.’ He paused. ‘I remember a village by the ocean, with houses on bamboo stilts, over the water. I remember looking down, looking for fish. I think maybe it was my mother’s village, and my sister and me, we lived there when we were little.’ He paused. ‘I don’t remember how we left that place.

  ‘My first job, I was a diver. My master took us to an old city—there were drowned buildings there, full of old things. They sent us down into the houses to salvage stuff. Metal, mostly.’

  ‘Stuff that was worth money?” Annalie said.

  Pod nodded. ‘Sometimes we had to go right under the water. We had a hose to breathe through, but it didn’t always work.’

  ‘What happened when it didn’t work?’ asked Essie, already horrified.

  ‘You drowned.’ Pod paused. ‘They were okay masters. They gave us food. But you had to go down under the water, had to work. Couldn’t say no. Say no, get taken away, never seen again.’ He paused, swerving away from this topic. ‘Diving’s no good anymore. The good stuff, the easy stuff, it’s all been taken. Only the deep stuff’s left. Too hard to bring out, no money in it no more. So they sold us.

  ‘Next job, we worked on a farm. The day we arrived, there was a huge sign by the gate with pictures of all the fruit a
nd vegetables and grains we were going to be growing and my sister said, “Look at all that food! We going to paradise!”

  ‘But there was salt in the ground. We were supposed to be fixing the soil, making it grow food again. But it was hard work—work all day in the fields until you’re exhausted, in all weather. They said they’d feed us out of what we grew, but nothing grew right. Things died or grew up stunted. Nothing tougher than salt. So we got hungrier, started working slower, and the masters got angrier cos they got big contracts to fill. In the winter, people were falling down and dying on the ground. We heard if you died there, they’d smash you up and put you in the dirt. Fertiliser.’

  Essie’s hand flew up to cover her mouth.

  ‘Eventually the farm went broke,’ said Pod. ‘They sold us on. We got put on a boat, very bad boat. People were crammed up in the dark together for weeks. Lots of people got sick and died. And then we stopped.’

  He paused. ‘You ever seen them floating palaces? Huge boats, all white and shiny. Rich people live on them.’

  ‘Oh yes!’ Essie said. ‘You mean cruise communities. My uncle and auntie live on one. They’re cruise ships, but you live on them permanently, and they just go round the world, stopping at nice places along the way.’

  Pod listened, unsmiling. ‘So we stopped at one of them. Bosses come down. They’re looking for girls to work as maids. They need two hundred, and they choose all the prettiest faces. They chose my sister. She didn’t want to go without me. I said to them, take me too, I’ll do any work you want. But they only wanted girls.’

  ‘Hang on,’ Essie said, her face red. ‘That can’t be right.’

  ‘What can’t?’

  ‘They wouldn’t use slaves on cruise ships.’

  ‘My sister’s a slave. They bought her.’

  ‘But—those ships are extremely expensive to go on!’

  ‘Someone’s making good money then,’ Pod said. ‘That crew, they’re slaves.’

  Essie looked away, mortified.

  ‘Perhaps your sister was lucky though,’ Annalie said. ‘If the cruise ships are nice, maybe they’re a good place to work.’

  ‘Maybe,’ Pod said, looking sceptical.

  ‘But, wait, you mean none of the staff are getting paid?’ Essie asked, not willing to let it go.

  ‘Here’s how it works,’ Pod said, his eyes blazing. ‘Someone sold me to my first master. He paid money for me, so I owe that money to him now, I got to pay it back. So I work and work until I pay the money back. But there are always costs—food, clothes, lodging. So my debt never gets any smaller. Every time I get sold on, it all starts again. New boss, new debt.’

  ‘So probably your sister is getting paid, but her wages are going to your master to pay her debt,’ Essie said.

  ‘Maybe,’ Pod said dryly. ‘Never seen any wages myself.’

  Essie was still looking baffled and outraged. Will intervened. ‘So anyway, what happened to you? How did you wind up here?’

  ‘That boat, I was on it for a long time. They sold some boys, not me, I don’t know why. Then one day, we got boarded by pirates. But they can’t find nothing on board. One of them says to me, “Where they hide the good stuff? Where’s the tech at?” I say only thing worth stealing on this boat is me. He says no way. Slaves are too much trouble. I tell him I’ll work hard. But he says he don’t believe in hard work, that why he’s a pirate.’

  Pod laughed, surprisingly.

  ‘So I told him I’d show him the good tech, but only if he took me with him. So I showed him and he said, “Call that good tech?” but he took it anyway. And he took me with him.

  ‘So now I got a pirate boss and a new job. I didn’t know nothing about boats, had to learn pretty quick. They show me something once, I got to remember it first time. Pirates don’t like to repeat themselves. The pirates did what pirates do: jack ships, strip the tech, sell it off. I did what they told me to do. Tried not to get in anyone’s way. As jobs go, it wasn’t so bad. Food was good. The captain though—he was the worst boss ever. He thought everyone was plotting against him. He got all wound up about it, started hearing voices, thinking someone was gonna kill him, steal his boat, steal his money. The others kept saying, “No boss, it’s okay boss, no one’s trying to kill you,” but he doesn’t believe them.

  ‘Then one day he works it out: my master is the one. So the captain chops his head in half with a machete, and then he started coming after me, but the other guys said, “He’s not a bad kid, you don’t need to kill him too.” So the captain said, “Fine, I won’t kill him, but he’s not staying on my ship.” And he tossed me over the side.’

  The others gaped at Pod.

  ‘I was lucky though. One guy threw a big plastic bottle over the side when the captain wasn’t looking, I floated on that pretty good. After a while, I saw some white water. I thought maybe it was land. Wasn’t really land though. Just rocks.’

  ‘So, how long had you been there when we came along?’ Will asked.

  ‘Three days,’ Pod said. He looked at the others with an air of defiance. ‘So. Now you know.’

  What to do about Pod

  For a while, no one knew what to say. Pod’s story was like some kind of dark, horrible fairytale. Eventually Annalie spoke.

  ‘The pirate ship you were on,’ she said, ‘what did it look like?’

  Pod frowned, and then described the very ship that had almost attacked them. ‘We saw them!’ Annalie said. ‘They came after us but then they went after something bigger and left us alone.’

  Pod looked critically around the boat. ‘Yeah, slim pickings here. Not much to sell. But if you see ’em again, run fast as you can.’

  ‘You don’t suppose they’re coming back for you?’ asked Essie, looking worried.

  Pod shook his head. ‘They think I’m dead.’ A silence fell. Eventually, Pod spoke, a half-nervous, half-defiant look in his eye, ‘So, what are you going to do with me?’

  Annalie, Essie and Will exchanged looks. It was the same question they’d been asking themselves.

  ‘What do you want us to do with you?’ Annalie asked. ‘Do you want us to take you home?’

  ‘Where’s that?’ said Pod dryly.

  ‘You could go to the Admiralty,’ Essie said. ‘Slavery’s illegal. You could make a report. I’m sure they’d do something to help you.’

  ‘I don’t suppose you have any papers?’ Annalie asked Pod.

  Pod shook his head.

  ‘Then there’s no point going to the Admiralty. If you don’t have papers saying where you belong, they’ll put you in a refugee camp to wait for resettlement,’ Annalie explained.

  ‘That wouldn’t be so bad, would it?’ Essie asked.

  ‘No one’s actually resettling refugees,’ Will said scornfully. ‘The governments all say they’ve got enough people to deal with already.’

  ‘But—’ Essie began, then stopped.

  ‘The Admiralty’s no good,’ Pod said, and spat on the floor. Essie stared at him, disgusted. Realising he’d done something wrong, Pod wiped the spot with his foot, shamefaced. ‘Admiralty,’ he muttered. ‘Never helped anybody.’

  Annalie turned to Will and Essie, looking for ideas. ‘We could drop him off at a decent-sized port,’ she suggested. ‘Somewhere he might find work, or help?’

  ‘There are charities,’ Essie said. ‘They might be able to help you work out where you came from. Help you find your family.’

  ‘My family sold me,’ Pod said dully. ‘They don’t want me back.’

  ‘Well, maybe not,’ Annalie said. ‘But I’m sure we can find someone who can help you.’

  Pod nodded. His fieriness had died down into a hopeless passivity. ‘Wherever you want to take me, I go,’ he said.

  Pod’s true colours

  They sailed on. The weather remained fair, and the days passed. After telling his story, Pod returned to an inscrutable silence. Annalie saw that he had learned to keep his head down and move through the world as frictionlessly as po
ssible. But this did not mean he receded into the background. Unlike Essie, who had decided sailing really was none of her business, Pod was always watching Will and Annalie as they worked; in no time, he seemed to have absorbed as much as he could from them about sailing the boat, and had started lending a hand, unasked, whenever he saw the need arise.

  Will was aware of this, and he didn’t like it. He didn’t disbelieve the story Pod had told them; growing up in Lowtown he’d met many people who’d had similar experiences. After the Flood there had been huge numbers of displaced people on the move, looking for somewhere safe to live, and nowhere near enough countries willing to take them all in. Many of them ended up in refugee camps, where vast numbers of people still resided, forty years later. Some had put themselves into the hands of people smugglers who could get them into wealthy countries like Dux. Without proper papers, many of them ended up trapped in shantytowns and slums like Lowtown, illegal, living on the fringes, always at risk of being deported. Others ended up as slaves, working for no pay, doing desperate and dangerous work in some of the most terrible corners of the world. Sometimes they were lucky; they got away and were able to make a new life for themselves.

  What worried Will was what Pod hadn’t told them.

  How had he really got himself adopted by pirates? That part of the story didn’t quite ring true to Will, and he wondered if Pod was really the hard-working innocent he said he was. Back in Lowtown, Will knew boys who lived on the fringes of the brotherhoods, and could imagine nothing better than to join. The brotherhoods were secretive, hierarchical and violent—entry was not simple. You had to prove yourself trustworthy, and that sometimes meant doing terrible things to show you were up for anything and willing to follow orders. Pirate crews, he thought, must be similar. Had Pod really been adopted by a pirate? And what had they made him do once he joined the crew? Will wasn’t sure he believed Pod’s story, and he wasn’t ready to trust him yet. He found Pod secretive and unreadable, and Will worried that at any moment Pod might show his true colours and kill the three of them, or sell them as he had been sold, and take their boat for himself.