Only the Ocean

by Natasha Carthew

  Kel’s head swam with pain but she tried to hide it with anger, bravado built from shame. ‘What’s happened?’ she asked. ‘Who the hell are you?’

  ‘This int to do with me.’ The boy walked around her, came close and crouched. ‘I’m just doin what the majority voted for. You need to tell me who you are.’

  ‘I int nobody.’ Kel straightened her back against the wall.

  ‘Don’t lie, the others won’t like that.’

  ‘Lie about what?’ Kel felt the salt-blisters on her lips unstick and rip and seep liquid.

  ‘You’re keepin stuff from us, that other girl’s the same and don’t say you int cus you is.’

  Kel sat forward and her head felt too heavy to hold, she felt it teetering upon her neck. ‘Rose,’ she said.

  ‘That’s her name, we know that much about her.’

  ‘Nobody bin askin me nothin,’ she whispered. ‘I int seen nobody.’ She thought things back and she thought things forward from when they had been sailing in the dinghy and she had no recollection other than sitting in the dinghy, settling to the storm, followed by the crane hitting her unconscious.

  ‘So you tellin me there int nothin in you? You just so happen to be out snoopin the high seas just cus?’ The boy pushed closer and he filled the space that wasn’t crammed with crates and boxes of contraband.

  ‘Snoopin where, what’s there to snoop about?’ Kel put her hands to her head to hold it but the rope that bound them bit too tight and she returned them to her lap.

  ‘The old man said you was snoopin, takin what int yours.’

  Kel shook her head and she tried to see the boy’s face and she told him they had only taken food from him in exchange for a gun, that it was a fair and square exchange.

  The boy laughed and he asked Kel if the gun he was holding was the gun she was talking about.

  Kel nodded and said yes, that was it.

  ‘Expensive piece of weaponry innit?’ The boy smiled.

  ‘Spose, dunno.’

  ‘Spose you int gonna tell me where you got it from.’

  ‘Can’t remember,’ Kel lied. She was getting impatient despite the banging in her head.

  ‘That’s a shame,’ he said. ‘We could do with more of these is all.’ He sat down on the floor and placed the lamp beside him.

  ‘Well I could do with more food,’ said Kel, and she added that food was worth more to her than any guns.

  ‘Is that right?’

  ‘Since whatever it was that kicked off is right.’ She wiggled forward to test if the boy was in kicking distance, almost.

  ‘Just the usual chaos,’ he laughed and stepped back, ‘Nothin worse than usual anyway. It works for us.’

  ‘Who’s us?’

  ‘You’ll see.’

  Kel relaxed a little because the boy didn’t have much of the scare about him, he was physically smaller than her, perhaps the same age but he didn’t look like a fighter, he smiled too much and Kel marked his friendliness as his biggest weakness. The more he talked, the more he might think he could trust her, become an ally. She asked what had sparked things this time.

  ‘Damn if I know, I int bin on the mainland since forever.’

  ‘Land int worth much in any case, mostly swamp land,’ said Kel.

  ‘That’s why we’re out here skatin in the pond. Some of us bin out here a year.’

  ‘You pirates?’ Kel asked. ‘You loot and all the rest?’

  The boy nodded.

  She thought maybe him and her were getting on OK and so she asked him if he could untie her for the stretch but the answer was no. She asked about Rose and was told she was fine.

  ‘Her baby’s fine too.’ He picked up the gun that sat in his lap and pretended to clean it. ‘So how you find yourself in a boat with a tower girl?’

  ‘Tower girl? Thought you said she int worth nothin.’

  ‘It’s not hard to tell the difference between a girl from the towers and a girl from the swamps.’

  ‘Circumstance,’ sighed Kel. ‘Whatever this is, whatever you want with me, you can let her go. She int the type of girl to be locked up or whatever.’

  ‘Know that.’

  ‘She int the type to be treated mean neither.’

  ‘Not like you then.’

  ‘Not like me or you or that gang of stompin, laughin kids I hear bangin above deck.’

  The boy leaned forward. ‘Never mind bout them.’

  ‘I int, but I’m mindin em on the girl’s behalf.’

  The boy put down the gun and returned the lamp into his hands, paused for a minute and Kel thought perhaps he was going to offer her a way out.

  ‘So this girl, friend of yours is she?’ he asked.

  Kel thought for a minute. ‘Kind of.’

  ‘Best buddy friends?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Just friends then?’

  Kel shrugged and said yes, she was a friend.

  ‘Int so alike though is you?’

  ‘So?’ Kel didn’t know where things were travelling and her head spun out in confusion.

  ‘So you met up just as then? Out on a river laneway or whatever?’

  ‘What you gettin at?’

  ‘She int like you is what I’m gettin at. I int sure you two got all that much in common at all.’

  Kel knew what he was getting at, but she let him carry on running his mouth off in any case.

  ‘Seems to me you bumped into that girl accidentally on purpose and you’re bringin her somewhere or someplace close to payday.’

  Kel thought for a moment, she didn’t want to give anything of herself or her plans away.

  ‘Cus she’s rich int she and you int,’ he continued, ‘and when things calm down on the mainland like they usually do that girl will be worth somethin.’ He stood and stepped back, held the light to his face. ‘See what I’m gettin at here? So you tell me her name and why you’ve got her and things will sort themselves out just fine.’

  ‘Where you got her put?’ Kel was getting angry, tried again to twist free of her restraints.

  ‘Away some. She’s fine, won’t be long now anyway.’

  ‘What won’t be?’

  ‘Gettin to where we’re goin.’

  ‘Where we goin?’

  The boy laughed and he got up and said as if he would tell her, and when Kel asked him for his name at least he laughed twice and left the room.

  Kel hooked her eyes back into the black inkwell that was the burrow below deck and listened to the tussle of jubilant, fighting kids up above who knew they had struck gold with the find that was Rose. Kel knew they wouldn’t stop with the riffling and ripping until they found out the exact details of Kel’s plan. It was obvious that she and Rose were not friends or from the same place and once they took a good look at the gun they would put two and two together.

  The girl had the look of money about her: it wouldn’t be long until they wondered about that gun and worked out that Rose was the daughter of an arms dealer.

  Kel knew it wouldn’t be long before they extracted the truth.

  She reached for her canteen the best she could with the rope choking and cutting where it touched limb-skin and she drank the warm swill water that it had been filled with and it tasted of all the things it shouldn’t have. Kel thought about the pirate boy and when she felt the engine buck and heard the anchor chain clink and fall she knew she had all the anger she needed for the fight ahead.

  She waited for the engine to stop completely and listened out for the sounds of the docks perhaps returned to normal but there were none. Nothing but the waves coming good against the hull of the boat and the shouts of kids above board and the shouts of kids out there somewhere on unreconisable land.

  Kel kept her eye on where she had last seen the door open and waited for it to open and she didn’t have to wait long.

  ‘So you’re the swamper who swapped the gun for food,’ shouted a girl. ‘The one who int botherin to say much at all.’

  Kel watched the g
irl step into the square of artificial light and stand against the door jamb, a can of beer in her hand.

  ‘Well?’ the girl asked.

  ‘Well what?’

  ‘Who the hell are you and more importantly, who’s the pretty posh girl?’ She took a slurp of her drink.

  Kel didn’t like this girl, she looked weak, like somebody who was used to telling others what to do. They had a name for girls like that in the swamps, she was a maggoty bully.

  ‘And where did you get the gun? Don’t say my dad, I know that bit. Least he had smarts enough to get it off you I spose. Still, he’s an idiot.’ She entered the room fully and put the lamp she was carrying on to one of the crates.

  ‘Why’s that?’ asked Kel.

  ‘Why’s what?’

  ‘Why’s your dad an idiot?’

  ‘Dint I just say? He let you go.’

  Kel decided the old man was right, this kid had a crazy streak running right through her.

  ‘You took the gun off him,’ she said. ‘I did a deal with him, not you.’

  The girl stood up and threw the can of beer at Kel. It missed and hit the wall in a fizz.

  ‘The gun, where you get it?’ the maggot girl shouted.

  ‘Found it,’ Kel said.

  ‘Folk don’t leave guns like that lyin around, it’s a bloody machine gun.’

  Kel kept quiet.

  ‘So now, what you got to say for yourself?’

  Kel shrugged, it had been a long day night day and night again, she knew staying quiet was the only option available to her; about the girl, about the gun, about anything.

  ‘You got a word suckin anywhere there inside your gob?’

  ‘Got plenty words for a girl like you. Which one you want?’ The kid was a bully and Kel didn’t like her. She wasn’t scared either.

  ‘Where you find the gun?’ The girl came close and pulled Kel to her feet.

  ‘On a ship,’ said Kel.

  ‘Which ship?’ The girl jabbed two fingers into Kel’s stomach for the sake of intimidation but it didn’t work.

  ‘No idea.’ Kel stood best she could with everything tied and she promised herself that she would not tell on the tower girl who was hers for the groundwork that had been completed.

  ‘And how you know the posh girl, found her the same did you?’

  ‘I already told that boy, we’re friends.’ Kel felt a bit of her old self come back to her, the bit that was flapping Crow beast. ‘Good friends,’ she lied.

  ‘Bull,’ shouted the girl.

  ‘How you know?’

  ‘Cus I bin speakin to her.’

  ‘And what she tell you?’ Kel swallowed hard, she realised her safety depended on what the girl had said, the girl she had kidnapped.

  ‘She tells me you int no friends. Don’t take a genius to work that out, anyhow.’

  ‘You’re lyin,’ said Kel.

  ‘Am I now? The girl pushed into her and Kel could smell the stale alcohol on her breath.

  ‘A stinkin liar,’ Kel continued. ‘In fact, you don’t look like you got much in you at all cept bullyin.’

  ‘What’s that sposed to mean?’

  ‘Means what’s meant.’

  ‘You ribbin me?’

  Kel sucked at her teeth to indicate she was thinking. ‘Spose,’ she said at last. ‘Just a bit.’ Kel had a feeling the girl was going to prove herself one way or the other and she was right.

  The girl punched her once in her stomach and once in her face and Kel spat the blood on to the floor in defiance.

  ‘You want more?’ the girl asked and Kel shook her head and said that no she didn’t want more but if the girl thought she held all the cards now she was wrong and not just bit-wrong but double wrong.

  The girl didn’t know what to say and Kel thought maybe she hadn’t heard her right with all the swagger that burst from her and the mental madness that went with that and so Kel waited for the next shot but it didn’t come.

  Instead the girl made a thing of blindfolding Kel. Then she grabbed her by the knot around her wrists and pulled her from the hull and out on to the deck. Kel stood to take in her surroundings through her nose and mouth and she could sense by the taste and tang of the air that it was still night and she took comfort in that. She was more of the night when bad came biting and she could make more of scheming in the dark.

  Obediently she followed the girl dragging her as they stepped from the boat and soon the hands of other pirate kids came poking and pushing to put some scent-claim on her. Dogs marking their territory, that was what they were: mongrels making something out of their existence that was better than nothing.

  Kel went on stumbling and following as told. She knew there were rocks beneath her feet for the slip and cut but still she went on because the kids told her to. She asked to have the rope loosened at her feet and was ignored but when the blindfold loosened around her face Kel shook her head to let it drop around her neck. In the dark nobody seemed to notice.

  Kel took her time to take in her new surroundings. She had thought perhaps they were on the mainland, wished it were so, but when she saw the lighthouse rise up in front of her the little bit of last-ditch hope shrunk inside.

  ‘Pirate base,’ she said to herself.

  Her words made the kids laugh, some of them cheered because in their minds they were in heaven. They lived by their own rules, had nobody to teach them right from wrong and if Kel didn’t have her sights set on America and her operation she might have thought it perfect too.

  They pushed her into the lighthouse and she saw its single winding staircase spiralling upwards, but instead they kept pushing her down, down more steps until she reached the very bottom deep in the rock and she fell into an empty room, her knees hitting concrete as the door locked behind her.

  Kel sat up and with her hands still tied she mopped the blood that ran from her cheek with the blindfold. She called out to Rose and heard the faint return of her own name from another room higher up in the lighthouse and she took joy from that one brief second moment. The thread that stitched between still tied them and that was worth something, even when the girl with the mental red flag waving within returned to kick Kel unconscious.

  Another day or week could have come around counting and Kel wouldn’t have known anything of the fractal world outside. The strange and the strangers beyond the lock-down door and the granite bricks that went around. When she called out Rose’s name this time nothing but seagulls called back. She was alone again.

  Kel noticed her canteen had been refilled and thrown to her sometime during the knock-out phase and Kel guessed the boy that was OK had been and gone. She drank some and washed the blood best she could from off her hands and knees and face and she sat cold and close with the memory of a bad life behind her and the thought that her life ahead was just about the same.

  Kel propped herself against the wall and supped a little more of the water. The cold of night was everywhere in her. She knew no bones were broken because things that could move did, but when she held still everything inside her felt bust and twisted and set wrong.

  The lighthouse was a shaking bottle and she the dreg-end swirling in the bottom. The thought of a little camp settled out here in the middle of the sea was so strange. It struck Kel as the craziest thing and if she’d had less ache in her bones she would have laughed out loud for the bizarre notion that was the child pirate base.

  She studied the one wall that coiled around and around and around. She looked at the door and wondered about its thickness and the lock that twisted against her on the other side. There was nothing in the room besides but despite its wash of white Kel felt the creep of dark-matter memory all around her. She could see it and smell it and it was soaked through with the stench of home.

  Kel drew her knees up close to her chest and she crossed her arms to hugging. She tried to think of some tune, the way her older sisters used to tell her to do. To find some happy and hold on to it no matter what. She closed her eyes and tried
to focus, snatching at things that were supposed to be gift-good for settling the want to scream.

  Nothing came.

  The night was a long night and it didn’t give much of itself except the light bulb that glared down on Kel. She watched it for flies, but knew she was the only living thing in that room and she took up her canteen and hurled it hard and it smashed the thing dead where it dangled.

  Kel watched the worm-red filament wiggle and fizz the last of its fire and when it burnt itself out complete she let the memory of light fade with it and the dark that had been prodding at her finally push in.

  All through the night she let the dark have its way and it was a long night stripped of all image except eyes. Dad’s eyes, her eyes.

  When morning came Kel was waiting for it. She knew by the slip of boots running the stairs and the bang of doors that replaced the rhythmic, savage sea that the rowdy kids were up and doing.

  She stood at the door and tried every crack and corner for looking and when she heard footsteps scuffing the stairs down to her she sat backed-up on the ground and waited. She hoped it was the boy and it was.

  ‘Got you food,’ he declared as he kicked the door wide. ‘Got you lobster.’ He laughed because lobster for breakfast was ridiculous. ‘We all had it. Int poison, is what I’m sayin.’

  He asked Kel to sit back whilst he placed the tin plate central to the room and then retreated to the door.

  ‘I won’t bite,’ said Kel as she crouched to the food. ‘Know you’re just followin orders, but still.’

  ‘I int followin no orders but my own.’

  Kel picked the meat from the claws and ate it and it was good and she fingered more into her mouth and the boy watched. When she was finished she said she thought the little maggot girl was in charge and the boy laughed.

  ‘No,’ he shouted. ‘She just thinks she is and it keeps her quiet to think it.’

  ‘So who is?’

  ‘We all are, it’s a democracy.’ He crouched in front of Kel to cut the rope at her feet and told her that was why he was looking after her.

  ‘Why?’ she asked.

  ‘Maybe we can do a deal.’

  ‘For me and Rose?’

  ‘Just you.’

  Kel thought for a minute. Had this boy finally figured out who Rose was? Had she told them?