Fenn Halflin and the Fearzero
Page 5
As Fenn clutched the rail and felt the cold metal bite in his hands, he had the sudden sense that Halflin knew they’d never see each other again. His heart began pounding so hard it felt like it would crash through his ribs, and he shouted as loud as he could across the ever-increasing wash of water.
“Grandad!”
Although Halflin was already halfway up the hill, he still heard the boy cry out as clearly as he had heard him that first time, as a baby in the water. But he refused to turn around or stop; it would do no good for the boy to see him weeping. There was no place for tears in this world.
5
When Halflin used to go out to the Punchlock, Fenn would often climb up into the hiding place, just to scan East Marsh with the telescope for anything of interest. To the untrained eye there wasn’t much to see, but Fenn knew every creature living on the marsh, all their comings and goings, and in particular he liked spying on his nearest neighbours: the Sargassons. They were a rare sighting, usually appearing after dusk to lay their eel traps, like ink blots in the haze, seeping out of the marsh mist itself. As Fenn turned away from the rail he realised that most of this crew were Sargasson too.
He stared wide-eyed, gaping at the crew. Some had sleek black hair knotted in complex weaves or in plaits that coiled like rope pots on top of their heads. Most were tall and moved quietly and carefully, never bumping into each other or dropping anything. For warmth they wore ganseys, tightly crocheted jumpers of twisted goat hair, but all their other clothes – trousers, shirts and jackets – were made from strips of soft eel skin, stained dull red and violet from marsh flowers and roots. Silently they got on with their work; carefully nudging the Panimengro up the tributary that led them out to sea, far away from where the Fearzero would have moored. Fenn was bursting to speak to them and had a million questions, but not one even acknowledged him. So it was true what Halflin said about Sargassons, he thought: they kept themselves to themselves and didn’t like strangers. Viktor though, put his hand on Fenn’s shoulder.
“Char?” he said. “Shala?”
Fenn looked at him blankly. Halflin knew enough Sargasson to trade, but Fenn had never heard the language before.
“Char?”
“Work,” Viktor said, tugging him insistently away from the rail. “Shala?”
“Shala…?” Fenn stammered.
“Tu Shala? You understand?” Viktor snapped. Now Fenn nodded.
“Halflin’s paid passage but you earn your scran,” Viktor continued. He mimed eating before pushing his sharp fingers into Fenn’s back, prodding him towards the hold in the centre of the deck.
“Stay down, out of sight,” Viktor said, pointing towards the hatch. “In the day we’ve gotta clank you … hide!” He patted his jacket pocket with the permits inside, then wagged his finger disapprovingly. “No risks! Halflin’s papers are kushti but they’re still fakes. Goes gami for us if we’re caught with a fake. Worse than none at all. Chilstone always looking for boys your age…” For a second Viktor scrunched up his forehead as he peered hard at Fenn, then he shrugged away the thought.
The Panimengro had broken free from the calmer tributary and the water was starting to get choppier. A couple of the crew swapped smirks as Fenn swayed and stumbled over to the hatch. They’d only been at sea for a minute and he already felt unexpectedly unwell. He’d always longed to be on a boat, gazing through his telescope as the tug taxied out to the Fearzeros, fetching Sunkmarked boats to scuttle. After thirteen years of squelching around in the slobbery mud of the marsh, he often imagined the wonderful fresh feeling of the wind out at sea. But he’d never predicted his stomach would feel like it was being flipped upside down before being stuffed back up into his lungs, nor the strange, salty trickles of saliva in his mouth. He didn’t even know this was how throwing up began. Halflin had taken such good care of him, he’d never once got sick. Suddenly sweat broke on his forehead and he pulled free from Viktor, rushed to the side and heaved up his breakfast. As he stared bemused into the water, the crew laughed again. Viktor followed and idly leant on the rail and peered over, looking at his spew in the waves. He slapped him roughly on the back.
“That’s a waste. Supper’s not till nightfall!” he remarked.
“What happened?” asked Fenn creakily. He was white and trembling.
“Bit of pani-puke. Don’t fret it; you’re a lubber but you’ll get your sea-stimps soon,” Viktor said, giving him another hard smack on the shoulder like it would help. He held out a tin flask full of water and nodded for him to take a swig, then he walked to the hatch and flipped it open, revealing a dark interior. Bent double, Fenn crept weakly down the ladder with Viktor following quickly after him, stepping on his fingers in his impatience.
At the bottom Viktor lit a hurricane lamp and hung it on a nail. The hold was large, practically the length of the boat itself. There were no portholes, but just enough light spilled from the lamp to show dozens of wooden crates against the wall, and a huge pile of what looked like rubbish heaped up at one end. The ceiling was low and despite the cold day it was stiflingly hot, with the fumes from the engine and the acrid stench of something dead. Viktor pointed to the crates in turn.
“Ever Mudlarked?” Fenn shook his head. “Been a Grubber? Tosher? Fish gold from mud?” Viktor asked. Fenn shook his head again. Viktor rolled his eyes at Fenn’s uselessness. “You sort jetsam? Rubbish? Shala?”
Fenn nodded; he knew what jetsam was. He had always been good at sifting through the stuff Halflin brought back from the boats, sorting what they needed, what could be bartered.
“It’s not hard,” Viktor said and strode over to the rubbish pile. “The crates are for salvage to trade: plastic, wood, metal and tin. And you’ll sometimes get a can that’s full.” Viktor bent down and picked up a tin and put it on a shelf stacked with other cans of many different shapes and sizes. “Nothing’s wasted, so keep your yews sharp,” Viktor said, pointing towards Fenn’s eyes.
It was a huge pile: shotgun shells, rubber tubing, a broken table leg, the grill from a radiator. He pulled at a net in which a rotting turtle was trapped and recoiled at the stink. “Even this – it’s foostie but valuable!”
He flipped a knife through the air towards Fenn.
“How long are we sailing for?” he asked, catching the knife. He had decided not to say he already had a knife; two knives were better than one.
“Maybe four weeks. Depends,” said Viktor.
“On what?” Fenn asked looking around in dismay.
“The weather. The Slicks. Can’t go through them: too much damage.”
“Slicks?”
Viktor sighed.
“Halflin didn’t tell you a lot.”
“He told me all I needed to know,” said Fenn defensively, but Viktor didn’t rise to it.
“Not all, or you’d have no questions,” he replied coolly. “Slicks are oil spills.”
Fenn nodded gloomily, suddenly realising what he was in for.
“Where do I sleep?” he asked.
“We sleep on deck; you sleep down here. Make yourself a bed and doss over there. By the engine is tato.” Viktor gave him a sharp look to see if he’d understood. “Warm!” he exclaimed with a rare smile, chaffing his hands together in case Fenn didn’t understand. Then he walked over to a metal barrel in the corner and turned a lever on the side. Water the colour of tea trickled out of the spout into his cupped palm. “Pani nevi!” he said, nodding to Fenn as if he were simple-minded.
He scooped the water into his mouth, trying to reassure Fenn with an uneasy smile, but the water was from the river and filthy. With that, he wiped his sleeve across his chin then climbed back up the ladder. The hatch slammed shut behind him and Fenn was left in the reeking gloom.
Fenn stared back up at the steps, wondering if he’d ever see Halflin again. He swallowed hard, but still felt his cheeks begin to tingle with rising tears. Then he heard Halflin’s voice – don’t go blubbin’ – and steeled himself for the task ahead. He gritted hi
s teeth, opened his rucksack, found Halflin’s gauntlets and put them on. It was like slipping his hands into a giant’s gloves.
Gingerly he picked up the decomposing turtle and yanked it away from the net. He could hardly face touching it, but knew he needed the net to sleep in. After he’d managed to untangle it, he scooped out the flesh and slopped it into a lidded barrel to stop the smell. Then, with the tip of his blade, he ground a hole in the tail end of the shell, washed it out and hooked it up by the engine room to dry. He knew enough about curing bacon to do that much. Then he looped up the net to make a hammock, like Viktor suggested, and returned to the pile to start sorting.
There were plastic bottles with words on them that made no sense to him; bits of rubber shaped like feet with V-straps, which he guessed must be a type of shoe, several barnacle-coated metal discs, one with the word “Ford” in the middle, door handles, driftwood, netting, fishing tackle and an eyeless doll with “Made in China” imprinted on its back.
The day dragged on and on and the pile of rubbish never seemed to get any smaller, but one of the crates of plastic was already half full when the hatch opened again and a head appeared, silhouetted against the dusky sky. It was a woman, her face as tanned and wrinkled as a walnut shell. She brandished an iron ladle at him.
“Come up,” she called. “Cap’n say it’s time.” Her voice was wheezy and cracked, like a pair of broken bellows, with a strange twang at its heart. When Fenn didn’t move she stared crossly at him for a moment, then stuck out her tongue. “Well I ain’t waitin’ all night,” she shouted, and disappeared.
Fenn scrambled up the steps onto the deck.
6
Despite Halflin’s coat, Fenn was freezing. It was a breezeless night, but cloudless too and colder for that. He could hear the strains of thin, sweet music drifting above the gentle shushing of the sea. The crew had eaten already and were now singing and drinking, their laughter trailing across the deck. But Fenn didn’t only shiver with cold; he’d spent most of his life holed up in two small rooms, always within sight of the hut or Halflin. He felt oddly light and unfettered, but in a helpless, frightening way, like he was drifting, unanchored.
Slowly, like a weathervane, he turned around and gasped. The vast indigo sky wheeled over him, dusted with sprays of tiny golden stars, and the sea rose and fell so gently it seemed to be almost breathing. Fenn felt he was riding on the back of an enormous, living thing. The horizon completely encircled him, no land to be seen. For as far as the eye could see there was only black water, sky and never-ending emptiness. The solitude suddenly made Fenn dizzy and he staggered slightly. Immediately the woman hooked her arm through his, like a shepherd’s crook, to steady him and lead him towards the light and singing.
On the ship’s deck there were two large crates and next to these a winch for the salvage and fishing nets, coils of rope, buckets, and pike poles to haul the flotsam out. Towards the front of the boat, by the pilot house, stood a thick, tall mast and Fenn could just make out the figure of someone high up in the lookout. The chart room and pilot house were painted a slug grey so they blended in at sea, and although the crew had quarters and a mess room they ate their meals out on deck, in the gap between the crates, over which a patched tarpaulin had been stretched. The crew warmed themselves around an oil can brazier, which sparkled brightly, making giants of their shadows.
“Sit!” the woman ordered, pushing him onto a huge coil of rope a little way from the rest of the crew. She went to the brazier where a pan was bubbling. While Fenn waited he listened to the men playing their music. In the flickering half-light he could just make out what they were holding: instruments that were all made from rubbish.
In the corner, the oldest Sargasson of all hunched over a rusty oil drum gripped between his bandy legs, plucking taut strings on a fingerboard made from a small paddle, with tuning pegs of steel bolts and door keys. A younger man with a beard plaited tight into a dense mesh had a flattened can tucked under his chin, and he ran half a fishing rod across four strings anchored by the bent tines of a fork. A melancholy tune was made by a man blowing into the side of a piece of copper piping, with stops over the holes made of coins, ends of spoons and buttons, while a fourth strummed his thumbs across the only thing that wasn’t rubbish: an old washboard. Fenn stared; he had never heard music other than the cries of the peewit and marsh warbler, or the croaks of the natterjack toads. Sargassons, so Halflin told him, learned an instrument before they even learned to catch eels, and they had beautiful voices. The men without instruments began to sing – a plaintive lament that unexpectedly broke into a joyful, upbeat chorus, with one of the men clapping spoons against his thigh to keep the tempo.
Over land drove a mighty sea surge,
With water came the fear.
Terra Firma built Walls to stop it,
Bringing sadness, far and near.
Take to the seas! Try not to drown!
Try your luck there! Keep your head down!
As the flood-tide swamped the land,
Deeper grew their hate,
Thousands homeless, millions starving,
This the Seaborns’ fate.
Take to the seas!
Try not to drown!
Try your luck there! Keep your head down!
At the end of the song the entire crew erupted into laughter. The woman returned and handed Fenn a bowl of stew, then hopped up onto a barrel to sit and watch him. Fenn sniffed the bowl suspiciously, gingerly sticking out the end of his tongue to taste it. He took a mouthful and the flavour hit him like a firework exploding in his mouth. He had never eaten anything so delicious in his entire life; it made his head swim. Halflin’s food had kept him strong and healthy, but it was basic – no flavour other than the salty water Halflin had boiled it in. But this food was layered, spicy and mellow, sharp and sweet. He felt like he was tasting colour after eating grey all his life and he wolfed it down.
“You like my gumbo?” the woman asked with a smile. “Grew the lady’s fingers myself.” She jabbed her thumb to where bushy plants grew in a few mossy tubs on the deck but Fenn was too busy gobbling to answer. “More?”
He nodded quickly and she fetched him another bowl.
“I’m Magpie,” she said as she sat back down on the barrel, swinging her matchstick legs. Fenn could have wrapped his finger and thumb around her ankles she was so scrawny.
By lantern light her crescent eyes shone golden-green and her hair grew in long tortoiseshell-coloured spirals, blowing wildly around her head like seaweed. While she listened to the men singing and playing she nibbled a crust of bread, like a squirrel. After a few moments she sensed him staring at her and frowned.
“So, wha’chou staring at, child?” she asked at last. “Ain’t you never sin a Cajun woman before…?”
Still befuddled and light-headed from breathing in the fresh sea air, eating the stew and listening to the music, he forgot himself and his manners.
“Are women normally as little as you?” he blurted out.
For a second she looked annoyed, then burst into laughter.
“So where you come from? A place with no women?”
“I haven’t seen many,” he said.
“What about your mam?”
“She was—” he began, then stopped himself. He didn’t know this person – women could be spies too. “My mum and dad drowned,” he said carefully. Magpie didn’t bat an eyelid; people drowned in the sea surges all the time.
“So who was that old timer on the quayside?”
“My grandad,” Fenn said, trying to push the thought of Halflin from his mind in case it started him off feeling tearful again.
Magpie nodded slowly as she looked him over, scrutinising his black, tufty hair, his peculiar eyes.
“So you Sargasson or Venetian…? Cos your hair say, ‘Venetian’ but your eyes say both; one blue, one green!”
“I’m…”
Fenn didn’t know what to say or if he should say anything at all.
“So this your first time at sea?” she asked.
“I … I’ve never…” Fenn started, but his sentence dangled like the overhang of a cliff crumbling to nothing. Halflin said trust no one.
“It’s my first time on a boat,” he said at last.
Magpie laughed incredulously and slapped her knees.
“You kiddin’? You never go help your grandaddy fishin’?”
Fenn shook his head.
“You ever meet folks from elsewhere?”
Fenn shook his head again.
“What did your grandad tell you about Seaborns?”
Fenn sighed. He knew how to gut a pig, what wild plants to eat, which mushrooms caused agonizing death, how to tell north from where moss grew, but whenever he’d asked Halflin about Landborns or Seaborns he’d always said the same thing: “Folk is folk; good ‘n bad in both.”
“My grandad was…” He was going to say overprotective, but that wasn’t the right word. To be protective of something you had to love it first and Fenn wasn’t sure Halflin loved him. It seemed more like a grudging determination to keep him alive. Suddenly, instead of finding words, thoughts of Halflin engulfed him like a wave and he couldn’t breathe. Slippery as quicksilver, Magpie slid down next to him and put her hand on his shoulder, watching and waiting for the danger of him crying to pass. The tears quivered in his eyes but he blinked them back, focusing on one of the Sargassons as he passed by to take his shift in the lookout.
“You see Sargassons before?” Magpie asked, trying to distract him.
Fenn nodded.
“Course you did!” Magpie said, clucking her teeth at her own stupidity. “East Marsh is thick with them! But off the marsh you can tell a Sargasson from that fancy way they have. They come all the way from the Sargasso Sea. Most are eel-trappers, but some are scavs like Viktor. Allus roamin’ the sea, like real Jipseas…”