The Flooded Earth

by Mardi McConnochie

  Annalie adjusted their course, but the winds were slight, and they sailed all that day and the next without seeing land.

  Will’s condition did not improve. He swung unhappily between burning heat and shivering chills, ridden by fever. They ran out of dressings and had to start making them from spare clothes.

  On the morning of the following day, the rising sun revealed the bumpy edges of an island emerging on the horizon. They sailed toward it, eager but trepidatious. Would there be water? What else might they find there?

  When they got closer they could see the small island was topped with long-dead trees.

  “Any point going ashore?” Annalie asked, although she’d mostly made her mind up already.

  “Nothing there,” Pod said. “Only salt.”

  They sailed on.

  They came to another island that looked much more promising. It was larger, and covered with greenery. Growing things meant the island had water. But would they be able to access it?

  They sailed closer, and saw a smudge of something above the trees: smoke. “There might be people on the island,” Annalie said. “If there are people, there has to be water.”

  “We don’t know who they are,” Pod said. “Could be pirates. Could be anybody.”

  “But maybe they’re just ordinary people who’d be happy to sell us some water,” Essie suggested, trying to look on the bright side.

  “It’s not like we’ve got a choice,” Annalie said.

  Pod and Annalie had made repairs to the two damaged water tanks as they traveled. Now, they headed for the green island, looking for somewhere to land.

  Graham was not at all happy about this plan. “Bad island,” he said, watching it loom from the safety of Pod’s shoulder. “Lots of cats.”

  “I hope it’s just cats,” Pod said, stroking Graham’s plumage.

  As they sailed into a likely-looking bay, people began to appear on the shore.

  “They’ve seen us,” Pod warned.

  Graham flew up to a perch high in the rigging.

  The people began to drag out an assortment of boats—old-world tinnies and sea-kayaks, canoes made from island materials—and came paddling out to meet them.

  “See any weapons?” Annalie asked.

  “Not yet,” Pod said.

  The boats drew closer. The people in them were open-faced, smiling. They all wore white.

  “Hello there!” a man called.

  “Welcome, travelers!” called a woman from a second boat.

  Annalie and Pod exchanged a look. This wasn’t quite the welcome they’d been anticipating.

  “Hi,” Annalie called back. “We don’t want any trouble. We were hoping you could help us with some water.”

  “You won’t find trouble here,” the woman said, paddling closer. She was in an old kayak labeled with the name of a long-defunct adventure travel company. “We welcome all travelers to our island, if you come in peace.”

  “We definitely come in peace,” Annalie said.

  The little flotilla of boats was now arriving around the Sunfish. Smiling faces turned up toward them, like a field of daisies.

  “How can we help you, young woman?” the first man asked.

  “We need water,” Annalie said.

  “Water is a gift,” the man said. “We share this gift with you.”

  “Share?” asked Pod, checking the terms of the deal.

  “In return, you may share a gift with us,” the man said.

  “Um, okay,” Annalie said. “We have some money—only a little money. Or we can trade with you, if you’d prefer.’

  “Your gift is your choice,” the man said.

  “I don’t suppose you have a doctor on your island, do you?” Annalie continued. “Or some antibiotics?”

  The people in the boats looked at each other, murmuring. “No doctor,” the woman said. “But perhaps we have antibiotics. If we do, we will share this gift with you too.”

  Annalie looked at Pod and Essie. “What do you reckon?” she whispered.

  “They seem so nice,” Essie said.

  “Too nice,” Pod said darkly.

  Annalie turned back to the woman and said, “Forgive me for asking this—I don’t want to insult you. But we haven’t met many people out this way who are as friendly and welcoming as you.”

  “We are the Welcoming Friends,” the woman said. “We believe that we celebrate our god by offering our gifts and hospitality to all. We welcome others to our domain as one day our god will welcome us to hers.”

  Annalie looked at the others.

  “They’re religious,” Essie said. “I’m sure it’ll be all right.”

  Pod scowled, but said, “Not much choice.”

  “Okay then,” Annalie said. “We accept your kind gifts. Thank you.”

  The Welcoming Friends

  It was decided that Essie would stay on the boat with Will, while Pod and Annalie loaded the water tanks onto the dinghy and took them ashore. Since they still weren’t quite sure how the gift economy worked, Annalie took some money, one of Spinner’s old books, a tin of peaches, and some spare parts. Surely there would be something in there the islanders could use.

  Pod rowed, miserable and hunched.

  “At the first sign that there’s anything wrong with all this,” Annalie reassured him, “we run. Even if we haven’t got what we want.”

  Pod nodded, still not looking happy.

  They pulled up on the tiny strip of sand with all the other little boats. The islanders clustered around to help them lift the water tanks out of the dinghy. They led Annalie and Pod to a huge water tank and filled their tanks for them, then carried them back to the dinghy.

  “The gift of water,” said the woman who’d spoken to them first.

  Annalie recognized a prompt for payment. “Here is my gift in return,” she said, offering them some money.

  The woman smiled politely, but it didn’t quite seem enough, so she gave her the peaches as well. This seemed more satisfactory. The woman took the peaches with a broad smile. “Now,” she said, “you seek antibiotics?”

  “If you can spare them,” Annalie said.

  “Come to our village,” the woman said. “And we will see.”

  The woman began to lead the way. Annalie followed. Pod didn’t look keen, but he didn’t resist either.

  “Are you hungry?” the woman asked. “We love to share a meal with our guests and let them experience our way of life. We could prepare a banquet for you.”

  “That sounds really nice,” Annalie said nervously, “but I don’t think we can stay. We’d love to know more about your way of life but we have people waiting for us, and we’re already running late.”

  Was this the moment when the smiling, kindly people switched from welcoming to wrathful?

  But the woman kept smiling. “What a pity. I hope you’ll reconsider. Our banquets are very special.”

  They were now on the outskirts of a village. Once, it had been something much grander, perhaps a resort. Now, the tropical foliage was trying to tear it down, and it looked like it was going to succeed.

  “Come,” the woman said, arriving at the steps of what had once been a grand lobby, “I will take you to our stores and you can look for the thing you seek.”

  “No,” Pod said, before Annalie could answer. “We’ll wait here.”

  Pod could not shake the suspicion that something was not right about this place. On his own, he would never have gone to their village, and he would certainly not step inside one of the buildings, and he wasn’t going to let Annalie step inside one either. The crumbling resort looked like the kind of place he’d grown up in: a slave-hole you couldn’t escape from. He wouldn’t willingly step inside one ever again.

  Annalie looked at him, surprised, but then nodded.

&nbs
p; The woman looked only mildly disappointed, then disappeared inside the building.

  Pod and Annalie waited. The sun blazed down. There were white-clad people all around them, more of them all the time. They all seemed very interested in Pod and Annalie and were eager to talk to them.

  “Will you join us for the feast?”

  “You must come for the feast!”

  “You have never experienced anything so delicious!”

  “I’m sorry,” Annalie said, politely but firmly. “We can’t stay for the feast.”

  “You will be the guests of honor!”

  “You must stay!”

  “You must!”

  They were bringing ingredients and cooking utensils. Some of them began trying to move them along to a different part of the resort. The children wanted to stay where they were but the crowd pressed in closer, jostling them. Unwillingly, they found themselves moving deeper into the compound.

  “This way!”

  “Come!”

  “You’ll enjoy it!”

  “Look, I don’t think—” Annalie tried to say.

  They were jostled through an open archway into a courtyard that opened onto jungle. The people were all moving toward what seemed to be a communal kitchen—probably the source of the smoke they’d seen earlier. Pod’s eye was caught by something on the far side of the courtyard. There, where the jungle encroached, was a great midden, a heaped pile of rubbish, the detritus from their kitchen and their banquets. There were the shells of many shellfish there, but there were other things as well, things that were too big to have come from anything that swam in the sea.

  Bones.

  Long bones. Human bones.

  “Run!” Pod hissed at Annalie.

  He grabbed her arm. She looked at him, startled, for just a moment. Then they rammed through the crowd that was surrounding them and broke into a run.

  The crowd moaned and cried and came rushing after them.

  “Stop!”

  “The gift!”

  “We need you!”

  “Don’t go!”

  Pod and Annalie ran, ducking and dodging. Finding the archway they’d just come through blocked by more people in white, they turned and slipped through a different doorway and came out into what had once been a swimming pool area. Rising up out of the pool was a colossal figure, built out of chrome towel rails and old TV sets, broken chairs, pool recliners and tennis rackets. It had a huge, dreadful painted face with an enormous mouth, smiling and red, the pointed teeth made out of shards of broken crockery. In each upraised hand she held a human figure. Scattered at the foot of the figure were skulls and leg bones, carefully carved.

  This was their god. A cannibal god.

  Pod ran toward the statue and grabbed up one of the huge carved leg bones. A few people behind them gasped.

  “We’re not your gift,” Pod shouted. “We’re not your banquet.”

  Then they began to run again. The white-clad people gave chase. Somehow they found their way back to the main path to the beach and Annalie ran down it, fleet-footed, Pod following behind. Whenever anyone tried to grab him, he swung his bone-club, not caring how much damage he did.

  At last they reached the beach. The dinghy was still there, heavy with its weight of water. Annalie put her back into it and shoved it down toward the water while Pod turned and faced the white-clad cannibals.

  “You must give us your gift!” they cried. “Your gift is a blessing!”

  “We already paid!” Pod shouted.

  “Come on Pod!” Annalie called.

  Pod tossed the club at them, ran down the beach and leaped into the dinghy. They roared away from another island, back to the safety of the Sunfish.

  “Cannibals,” Pod said in disgust. “I hate cannibals.”

  Little Lang Lang

  With the water safely on board they sailed east without stopping, toward Little Lang Lang. They didn’t want to risk any more encounters with the strange and dangerous people of the Islands, and they knew now that their best hope of finding help was to get to Uncle Art’s house.

  The weather turned bad, and rain and strong winds made life a misery for a day or two. Essie did her best to look after Will, but his condition did not improve. He was weak, pale, plagued by fever, drifting in and out of consciousness. But at last they sailed up the strait toward Little Lang Lang, with Annalie at the wheel. After all the trials and dangers they’d been through, she could hardly believe their journey was almost over. Soon they would be safe at Uncle Art’s house. Safe with Spinner.

  Little Lang Lang Island was long and gently sloped, with a smallish mountain—really, more of a large hill—in the middle of it. There were scrubby, windswept trees on the island, but it was mostly open ground sloping toward pebbly bays, with a few caves scattered around.

  Annalie and Will had spent many summers here with Spinner, so the landscape was familiar, although the angle of their approach was different: before, they’d always arrived from the north and this time they approached from the south. But the mountain loomed up just as it always had, and soon they were sailing into the bay where Art had a jetty.

  Art’s house was old—it had been old before the Flood—a large, rambling, drafty place with wide verandas and lots of bedrooms, set up high on a ridge of hill well above the highest sea levels. It had had various uses over time: once it had been the lighthouse keeper’s residence, although the lighthouse no longer stood; it had also been a trading post, a communications array, and a military outpost.

  Now it was a weather station; Uncle Art maintained the instruments and made sure the readings were relayed properly. It wasn’t a well-paid job, but the house was included, and Art had five children. There was a little town at the other end of the island, so they weren’t completely isolated, although they seemed isolated enough.

  The house had commanding views over everything that moved up or down the strait; by the time Annalie and Pod were tying up the Sunfish at the jetty, Art and his wife Rene had come down to meet them. Art was a small, smiley man with a roly-poly face, and Rene, who was slightly taller than her husband, had a freckled face and a very long fountain of frizzy hair.

  “Annalie, welcome!” Art said, coming toward them, smiling, his hands out. “To what do we owe the pleasure?”

  “Where’s your dad?” asked Rene, her brow crinkling.

  Annalie looked from Art to Rene in dismay, and then burst into tears.

  Art and Rene exchanged a look. “You’d better come up to the house,” he said.

  Where’s Spinner?

  Will was carried up and a doctor sent for; Pod and Essie were introduced; Uncle Art’s cat was locked outside so it couldn’t try to catch Graham; sandwiches and fruit and drinks were provided and consumed; and then the children told their story.

  Art listened while they described the wrecking of the workshop, Spinner’s flight, the visit from Beckett, the theft of the Sunfish, and the story of their long and eventful journey to reach Little Lang Lang.

  “I can’t believe you managed it,” Art said, when at last they were finished. “I don’t know if I could have pulled off a journey like that.”

  “I wouldn’t have let you try,” Rene said.

  “The main thing is, you’re safe now,” Art said, smiling at them kindly.

  “First things first,” Rene said, “we’ll need to get Will’s leg looked at. The doctor should be here soon. I’m sure she’ll have you fixed up in no time.”

  Although still terribly pale, Will had refused to be put to bed. Rene had tucked him up on the sofa and dosed him with the strongest painkillers they had in the house while they waited for the doctor.

  “We can look at getting the Sunfish mended properly too,” Art said.

  “But what about Spinner?” asked Annalie, still unable to believe that he wasn’t actually here.


  “I’m sorry, Annalie,” Art said. “To think you came all this way...What made you think he’d come here?”

  “When we heard he’d gone to the Moon Islands, we thought it must’ve been to stay with you,” Annalie said, her chin beginning to wobble.

  “You’re his oldest friend,” Will said. “Where else would he go?”

  “I hate to say this,” Art said, “but did it ever occur to you Spinner might have been trying to put people off the scent?”

  “What do you mean?” asked Annalie.

  “Maybe he put the word out that he was going somewhere really far away, because he was actually planning to stay right where he was,” Art said.

  Annalie and Will looked at Art in dismay. “You think he never left Lowtown?”

  Art put his hands up. “I don’t know where he went. If I did, I’d tell you. All I know is, he hasn’t shown up here.”

  “That doesn’t mean he won’t show up here,” Rene put in soothingly.

  “That’s right,” Art said. “And you don’t need to worry about a thing. You’ve got a home with us for as long as you need it. Your friends, too, if they want to stay.”

  “Or we can find out about sending you home,” Rene added, smiling at Essie and Pod.

  Essie smiled uncertainly back, then looked at Annalie for reassurance. But Annalie was staring down at her hands, overwhelmed.

  Pod was scowling. “I got no home,” he said.

  “Then you’re welcome to stay,” Rene said.

  A silence fell. Rene eventually broke it by getting to her feet and saying, “I’d better get out the spare bedding.”

  “I’ll give you a hand,” said Art.

  “Feel free to help yourself to more sandwiches,” Rene said. And then the two of them left the room, leaving the children alone.

  “I thought he’d be here,” Annalie said brokenly.

  “Maybe he’s been held up,” Will suggested gamely.

  “He could be anywhere,” Annalie said, “which is just the same as being nowhere. We’re never going to find him.”

  And she broke down and began to sob.