But Fenn was tired of being Fenn Demari. He was exhausted and starving; he just wanted to eat. “This smells good!” he said hurriedly, loosening the other lids. A delicious smell filled the cabin.
Inside the boxes there was a golden roast chicken and two braised pheasants, buttery rice speckled with herbs, roasted chestnuts, samphire, scorched white chunks of eel pierced with skewers of rosemary and a glossy stew of venison that melted in their mouths. To mop it all up were loaves of soft coconut bread, and six prized potatoes that must have been grown in the troughs Fenn had seen on the way in; steaming hot and fluffy, and dusty from the wood ash they’d been baked in. In the last two tiffin they found sweet, chewy cakes made from crystallised apples and honey, and blackberries pureed into a thick jelly the colour of amethysts. There was also a bottle of a ruby-red rosehip cordial that seemed to soothe all their aches and pains away, and tingled in their stomachs more than the hot food.
For the last few days, all Fenn had eaten were bulrush seeds and a few oats – surviving on supplies that wouldn’t have staved off hunger for a day. He’d run hard, been soaked through and viciously bloodied by hawthorn barbs. He was already thin when he’d arrived back at East Marsh, but the last few days had brought him to the shores of starvation. As the rich smells wafted up, Fenn was close to fainting; and as each delicious mouthful went down, he felt like he’d never be able to stop eating. He remembered parts of himself he’d long forgotten; the basin of his stomach weighted, the muscles in his throat stretched again. The simple sense of swallowing felt luxuriant.
“You need to slow down,” Amber said thoughtfully as she watched him wolf down three chunks of venison.
But as far as Fenn was concerned, he couldn’t go fast enough. He lifted the bowl to be nearer his mouth – no point in losing time for the spoon to travel – and he shovelled it in. Before he’d started he hadn’t realised how hungry he was, but now he was licking the bowl; he was going to leave nothing. It was only as he scooped in the last mouthful that he felt his stomach start to strain, like a stretched drum.
“Stop,” Amber said firmly, “it’s time for bed.” She pulled the bowl out of his greedy grip, not remembering that those words were exactly the ones her own mother used with her on the rare occasions they got something to eat.
Fathom and Gulper helped Fenn up the rickety ladder that led up to the next room. They pushed open the door in the floor and Fenn went through. Like the room below, the floor was at a tilt and at the far end was a second ladder leading up into the topmost room. On one wall, Maya had begun a painting of a mermaid combing her golden hair as she leant aginst a coral reef. Beneath the portholes of the old boat, two low beds were heaped with pillows stuffed with bulrush heads, and there were thick beaver furs and coarse linen blankets. It was snowing hard outside and the last of the light coming through the round window was tinted turquoise. They could see their breath steaming as they lit the lamps.
“It’ll be warmer on this floor,” Fathom said. “Me and Gulper can sleep up there.” He nodded towards the second ladder and heaped a load of blankets into Gulper’s arms to carry up. “We’d better wrap up warm; it’s going to be freezing tonight.”
Fenn was limp with tiredness and his eye still throbbed. Fathom gently pulled off his boots and dragged the covers over him, then Tikki slid out of Comfort’s arms to wriggle down next to him, curling into the crook of his neck, where he began to purr contentedly. Amber and Comfort clambered into the other bed, lying top to toe, and the boys disappeared into the room above.
“Goodnight,” Amber whispered into the dark, but no one was left awake to hear her. She curled over, trying to remember every memory she had of her mum, going through them one by one to pin them down as firmly as she could. Soon they were all deep asleep, with not a sound in their dreams but the robins singing outside in the falling snow.
11
Fenn slept until nearly noon the next day, and when he woke he refused to open his eyes. He knew it all had to have been a dream, but he didn’t want to leave. He must have wanted to see his friends so much again he’d actually dreamt it; he must have been so starved, he’d dreamt they’d gorged themselves on crispy roast chicken and fluffy potatoes, then stuffed down blackberry jelly, turning their tongues purple.
But it was strange how he could almost taste the blackberries. Then he smelt something smoky, and felt something move by his face. He blinked open his eyes and found Tikki sitting next to him on the pillow, a half-chewed potato skin in his paws. On the floor was a stone-cold mug of tea, brewed from blackberry leaves that Amber had brought up earlier. Fenn sat up and rubbed a spyhole in the ice that caked the porthole by his bed. Outside, the forest was blanketed in thick snow and the sun sparkled high in the sky. He could hear soft flumps as melting snow cascaded off roofs and firs, and the sound of his friends chatting drifted up from the room downstairs. He felt like his heart was going to burst with joy as he slid out of bed, pushing the blanket of beaver skins to one side. He pulled on his boots, lifted open the door to the room below and climbed down.
“Hey, slug-a-bed!” called Fathom as Fenn stepped down through the hatch.
Gulper and Comfort were sitting on piled-up furs next to the stove, where Amber was poking at the contents of a skillet. Gulper had his foot crooked around in his lap and a small penknife in his hand; he was trying to pare down his filthy toenails that had grown long and ragged. As soon as Fenn came in, Comfort jumped up and hugged him, before gently taking Tikki and tucking him into her lap. Gulper budged up to give Fenn the warmest spot.
“Here he is!” said Gulper grandly as Fenn sat down.
“The last Demari!” Amber teased. She splashed a little water from a cup into the skillet and gave it a thoughtful stir. Fenn blushed red. He’d never meant to lie to his friends.
“Well, now the secret’s out good and proper,” Fathom said. “There were gangs of kids outside this morning. Been there since dawn, trying to catch a glimpse of you! Moray had to clear them off.”
“Moray was here?” Fenn asked.
“Wanted to see you, but you were out for the count,” Fathom said.
“He wants to know exactly what you saw on the marsh,” Amber said, as she stirred the skillet again.
“Lots of his men haven’t returned,” Fathom explained.
“I saw lots of Terras. And Chilstone,” Fenn said, grimacing. And suddenly there they were, back in his mind’s eye: Chilstone’s fingers spinning through the air. Amber noticed his face clouding.
“Anyway, he said he’d be back later, so we’ve got the rest of the day to ourselves,” she said over brightly. “And you need breakfast.”
She began doling out hot fried rice, mixed with flakes of smoky fish and boiled eggs. A spicy smell rose up and Fenn’s mouth started watering. “The kid that brought it called it keggery,” she explained airily, showing off her new-found knowledge as she dipped the spoon in for another helping.
“Though’ he said kedgeree?” Gulper asked, switching feet as he began neatening up the next sty of piggies.
Amber shook her head emphatically. “Keggery.” She tipped some more rice into the bowl. “You’re going to love this, Fenn. It’s delicious, isn’t it, boys?”
Gulper and Fathom nodded as she pronged an extra-large chunk of fish and knocked it into the bowl, slipping Fenn a soft look. He eyed the bowl greedily.
“Actually, I thought he said kedgeree, too,” Fathom said after a moment’s thought.
“No, it was definitely keggery,” Amber insisted. There was a hint of a slap in her voice. She had stopped ladling the food but still had Fenn’s bowl in her hand. Fenn watched as tantalising spirals of steam wafted up.
“You sure?” Gulper asked, abandoning his pedicure for the argument, “because I think I’ve heard of it before and—”
“I know what I heard, Gulper!” Amber snapped. “I was the one he gave it to…”
She still had the bowl in her grip. The scented steam wafted down in Fenn’s direct
ion. He reached up his hands hopefully.
“Yeah, but we were both just behind you.” Fathom looked at Gulper for confirmation.
“That’s right, and there’s two of us…” Gulper stuck out his lip.
“Can I…” Fenn started, but Amber wasn’t listening to Fenn. A point was to be made and she was the one to make it.
“And there’s two of us too,” she said, looking at Comfort. “You thought he said keggery, didn’t you?”
Comfort had been watching Fenn during the children’s argument, but now she gently put the sleeping Tikki in a little nest of fur next to her and stepped over Gulper to reach Amber. Taking this to mean solidarity, Amber gave Fathom and Gulper a smug look, followed by a little nod of triumph. But before she could crow, Comfort prised Fenn’s bowl out of her hands and gave Fenn his long awaited breakfast.
“Thank you, Comfort!” Fenn said and began tucking in.
“Sorry!” Amber exclaimed as she realised.
“It’s fine – Comfort looked after me!” he said, laughing at their worried faces.
Comfort smiled to hear her name and came back to sit with Tikki while Amber shoved a foot into one of her huge boots.
As she yanked her laces tight, Fenn just caught her say, “It was keggery,” under her breath, but if Gulper and Fathom heard too, they weren’t going to bother fighting any more. Amber never gave up; it was her best and worst feature. Instead, pedicure over, Gulper pulled his socks back on – so holey that his toes all poked through the ends, like they were sleeves rather than socks and he wiggled them disconsolately. Fathom grabbed his coat off a nail on the door and looked outside.
“Snowing again,” he said as the porthole speckled with white flakes. “Better wrap up.” Amber nodded as she wound her laces tight around her boots.
“S’posed to be water snakes down in the rubbish dunes,” she explained, when she caught Fenn’s puzzled look.
“Where are you going?” he asked, dropping his spoon back in the bowl. He’d already finished the lot. Amber glanced uneasily at Fathom, shuffling her feet.
“When they brought us in…” she faltered. Fenn’s heart sank to see that old look back in her eyes – two splinters of ice that warm fires couldn’t melt. “There’s an old lady,” she mumbled, looking at the floor, stubbing the toe of her hobnailed boot into the rush mat. “Lives on the edge of the forest…”
“She draws missing people,” Fathom explained. “You know, people who’ve got separated on convoy ships, that sort of thing. Amber thought she might get some clue about her mum. And I might find Neva, my sister.”
There was something in Fathom’s eyes, like he was almost embarrassed about the idea. He knew it was absurd to hope – he’d let go of Neva’s hand two years before, in the pitch-blackness on a sinking ship. He was also sure Amber couldn’t even remember what her mum looked like. He’d asked her once and she told him to mind his own business with such a slicing voice that he never dared mention it again. But Fenn saw beyond the bleak desperation; he just saw the desperate hope.
“I’ll come,” he said, wanting to at least be part of their optimism – seeing as he had none of his own. Even a speck of hope was better than the yawning feeling he felt whenever he thought of a future without Halflin. “Tikki?” he called, as he pulled on his coat.
Tikki peeped slyly out of the corner of his eyes before quickly closing them again and pretending to be asleep. Comfort’s lap was warm. Outside was not.
“I’ll stay and look after Comfort,” Gulper quickly said, washing his hands in the heat of the brazier as he spread out into the warm space Fenn had left. The fire was warm. Outside was not. Gulper happily wriggled down into the furs and prepared for a snooze. Comfort drew out a little packet she must have had hidden away and took out a threaded needle; and with the socks still on Gulper’s feet, she carefully began to stitch up the holes.
“You could do that yourself, you know!” Amber said sharply, but Gulper just smiled and leant back on the furs, wiggling his toes at her.
They closed the door behind them and tramped out onto the snowy walkways, bundled up with fur hats and mufflers, heading towards one of the gateways in the high wall that surrounded the settlement. The heavy snow had kept everyone indoors, so the children were entirely alone as they trudged out. At last they reached the gate and knocked, thumping the flats of their hands against the metal patchwork. A small hatch opened in the centre, framing a pair of eyes peering through. As soon as he recognised it was Fenn, the guard instantly opened the gates, insisting on shaking Fenn’s hand and clapping him on the back before he let them pass.
Half a dozen ladders led off that first walkway and into the under-forest, but after a few minutes Amber recognised the point where they had been brought up by the strange shape of two fallen boughs. How Amber remembered the way amazed Fenn, but then he recalled that she’d known every shortcut on the Shanties; she had an instinct for direction.
It was still only mid-afternoon but it might as well have been night-time down on the rubbish dunes, because the walkways and branches above them blotted out most of the sunlight. Fathom lit a lantern, hung it from the cleft in a long branch and led the way as they carefully tramped across the pontoons – wooden bridges made from barrels floating in the water. Here and there they passed small groups of Grubbers and Toshers whose job it was to pick through the rubbish, looking for anything useful that had washed up in the forest. They collected bits of metal and plastic that could be reused while the youngest Sargasson children ran, banging metal lids with sticks to scare off water snakes. Ferns and ivy were gradually colonising the rotting trees, and tiny self-seeded oaks and maples were sprouting waist-high through the dead snags. When the children left the pontoons to wade through the undergrowth, hundreds of frogs and toads leapt around their feet.
“Urrgh!” shuddered Amber. “Why are there so many of them?”
Fenn looked puzzled: they should have been hibernating, especially in this weather. He remembered the insects crawling up the willow tree. Something was out of kilter on the marsh this winter. They pushed on, but progress was slow and difficult, until at last Amber held her hand up.
“Shh,” she whispered. “We’re nearly there.”
A faint rattling sounded through the darkness, like a rattlesnake’s tail. Amber stood stock still, listening for its direction, before darting forwards again through the low elderberry bushes and alders. The jangling got louder, reminding Fenn of the noise the sunk-marked boats used to make, waiting for the Punchlock, the tinny clamour of the steel sail hoists banging against the masts. They clambered up a bank of rotten logs, thick with moss and suddenly it came into view, like the shimmering sail of a ghost ship.
“That’s it,” cried Amber racing ahead. “Come on!”
Ahead, a giant curtain was strung up through the trees like a huge web, with thick anchor lines fixed to the branches of the tallest dead firs. To see the very top, they had to tilt their heads back so far it hurt their throats. It had been made out of rubbish; fishing nets, sails, lengths of plastic tape and barbed wire snaffled from the Terra Firma fences. Sewn, stapled and tied into it were thousands of discs of tin and plastic, silver-birch bark and even oyster shells, all shimmering and rattling in the breeze. On every single disc there were little portraits engraved, often on both sides: the person seeking, the person missing. Amber grabbed one.
“Davia,” she read out loud. “Eight years old.” She turned it over and read the back inscription. “My daddy is Marin.” She looked over her shoulder at Fathom and Fenn. “The poor little thing must be looking for her dad. Wonder if she found him.” She let go of the disc and picked up another, reading it to herself this time. “So you see?” she declared. “My mum might have come this way too. I could still find her!”
Fenn looked at the curtain doubtfully; there were thousands of faces staring at him through the gloom, their discs jangling in the breeze.
“I’m going to look for Neva!” Fathom said, beginning to re
ad the discs.
Amber flitted quickly along the curtain, making the discs clatter as she shuffled through them. She reached the end and turned back, so fast that she couldn’t have been looking properly.
“Can you really read them like that?” Fenn asked gently. She came to an abrupt halt, and spun around to face him.
“Oh, you noticed, did you? Yes, there are loads to get through,” she replied, her voice brittle and sharp. “And you could help!”
Fenn walked over to her side. “So what’s her name?” he asked, starting to look through the discs.
Amber suddenly hesitated, like she’d had the wind taken out of her. “Her name was…” She looked at Fathom for help, but he couldn’t. Then she stared at Fenn in confused sadness, shaking her head at him as if he’d wronged her. She’d forgotten. “It’ll have my name, won’t it?” she snapped, flipping through more of the discs, her neck colouring up with the shame of not knowing what her mother had been called.
She hurried on along the curtain, peering intently at each image, then paused in mid-flow and held a disc up for Fenn to see. “What’s the V stand for?” She asked him directly, as if he knew. It was as if she expected him to know everything.
“Venice?” he ventured.
A rustling came from the tree overhead and a thin, sugary voice seeped down, its notes swinging sadly like the pendulum of a clock slowly running down. It was hard to tell if it was man, woman or child.
“That’s right! But they should all be Ls…” the voice sang. “L for lost … losers, weepers,” it continued, warbling sadly.
Fenn peered at the dark patch above where the voice had treacled out.
“It’s her!” Amber whispered, her eyes huge as she searched the shadows above.
They could just make out the silhouette of someone squatting above them, where scraps of wood had been assembled to make a platform with sheets of plastic draped over it. The tree trunk had a bucket handle, lumps of wood and bicycle handlebars nailed up it, acting as a ladder.
Fenn Halflin and the Seaborn Page 9
