by David Logan
Junk became aware that his fingers had started to manipulate the box again, seemingly on their own, without his brain being involved. He heard a click and looked down as the box split open on his lap. Inside were two small green stones. Junk lifted them out and set the box aside. He knew what to do with them even though he didn’t know how he knew. He held the two stones out in front of him, just above the table, and cracked them together. A small green flame shot out, igniting an invisible wick. The green flame spread down the centre of the table, illuminating the people on either side as it progressed. Except they weren’t people, they were animals. They sat like people, wore clothes like people, but their bodies were scaled or furred.
To Junk’s immediate left was a goat, wearing a white coat and a pair of pince-nez. Next to him a tiger, opposite a snake smoking a pipe. Next to the snake was a porcupine pulling a sour face.
‘Ugh, what’s in this pâté?’ asked the porcupine. Now Junk could understand what was being said around him.
The green flame continued down the table, illuminating more and more animals: a walrus polishing his tusks, a crow playing a ukulele, a rhinoceros doing sleight-of-hand card tricks, a capybara with a yo-yo, a bear making the sign of the cross over and over, muttering a little rhyme under his breath as he did so, a flamingo applying lipstick and a cow nodding sagely.
The flame went on until it reached the far end of the table, where it fizzed and sparkled and lit up the occupant of the seat directly opposite Junk. It was a shark. A great white, covered in scars, the most prominent of which was in the shape of a cross over its left eye. The eye was milky and dead just like the eye of the creature who took Ambeline. Junk stood up violently, knocking his chair back as he did so. As the chair hit the floor, all conversation in the room stopped again and everyone looked from Junk to the shark and back again.
‘Sit down, boy,’ said the shark. His voice was deep and slow. He spoke from the back of his throat.
‘I’m here to kill you!’ shouted Junk. The shark laughed, his fleshy throat pulsing. The laughter enraged Junk. His hands curled into fists, his fingernails digging into his palms. His face was puce with burgeoning rage.
Then, in the blink of an eye, the shark stopped laughing. ‘Impertinent worm.’ And with that, the creature launched himself out of his seat and flew the length of the table at lightning speed, coming straight for Junk, his mouth open, multiple rows of teeth glinting. Junk couldn’t move. No time to react. And then, just as the shark reached him, just as the shark’s jaws were about to snap down on him, a hand came out of nowhere. A fist moving like a cannonball. It hit the shark on the top of its nose, smashing him down on to the table, where all life left the one good eye.
Junk breathed again and looked up to see Garvan standing over him. Garvan unclenched his fist and shook out his fingers. Then he grabbed the dead shark, hoisted him over his shoulder and walked away. The shadows at the edge of the room swallowed them both.
*
Junk woke with a start. He was lying in the boat and Garvan was next to him. Still unconscious. Junk sat up, leaning back against the side of the boat, and thought about the dream.
9
By the time the sun started to rise the next morning, Junk had decided what the dream meant and what to do. So instead of abandoning Garvan, he took down the canvas he had used as a shelter and rigged it to the boat’s mast, returning it to its intended purpose. He untethered the boat and set sail. He and Garvan would stay together a little longer.
*
They headed south, keeping the coastline in view off the starboard side. The wind was gentle so it was slow going. For hours Junk saw nothing but open water and forested land. Garvan’s boat sliced through the calm seas easily and there wasn’t much Junk had to do. As the hot sun bore down on him, Junk’s eyes grew heavy and he started to slip into sleep, which was why he didn’t notice the approaching ship until it was almost too late.
It was a job to not notice it. The ship was huge. Vast. So vast in fact that it was hard to comprehend. It was eight hundred metres in length, three hundred metres wide and towered a hundred metres out of the water, with fourteen masts adding further to its height. It seemed to be made of wood so had the look of a galleon or a barque but on a scale that would dwarf a supertanker.
The reason Junk didn’t see it was because the coastline cut away sharply. Had he been awake he would have been getting ready to turn to starboard to continue following the land and would have turned unwittingly straight into the path of the behemoth. Ironically, falling asleep was what saved his and Garvan’s lives. He ploughed on straight and in doing so cut across the bow of the big ship. As he drew closer, someone on board miraculously noticed Garvan’s little boat and sounded a warning. The cacophonous blast yanked Junk from his dreams. He cried out as he leaped to his feet and looked around just in time to see the skyscraper-like bow bearing down on them. He screamed in horror and panic. There was nothing he could do. He grabbed hold of the rudder and held it firm and true and just managed to cut across the front of the giant ship with the narrowest of margins to spare.
The wash from the big ship tossed the little boat about as if it was a leaf in a washing machine. Fortunately Junk had lashed Garvan to the deck in case they experienced any storms. Junk however was flipped overboard and only just managed to grab the little boat’s perimeter rail. He held on with one hand and refused to relinquish his grip no matter how much the boat was tossed to and fro. After a minute the massive ship passed by and the sea returned to its former calm. Junk hauled himself up and into the boat. He lay on the deck panting until he regained his breath. He looked up to see the stern of the huge ship moving away. It was like watching an office block sailing out to sea.
Junk turned and looked the other way, in the direction the ship had come from. He was startled to see a town nestled in an expansive cove. Stone buildings littered the shoreline and rose up behind on steep hills. He was reminded of the Greek island of Santorini. Though whereas the buildings there were predominantly white, here they were many different colours. Here also the buildings were bifurcated by an enormous railway line that ran, rather incongruously, straight into the sea and disappeared beneath the waterline.
The town was buzzing with activity. There were three dozen boats of various sizes moored in the cove, much closer to shore. Nothing was on a scale with the supership that had narrowly missed flattening them. They were mostly fishing boats, roughly the same size as Garvan’s. From where he was, a clear mile out to sea, Junk could see what looked like a bustling market on the quayside. There were people of all shapes and sizes milling to and fro. Not people, Junk reminded himself. Aliens.
Junk had no way of knowing whether or not the inhabitants of the town were friendly. He decided caution was the best approach. He sailed on past the cove and around the next headland he found another smaller, deserted cove and anchored the boat there. He unrigged the sail and used it again to shade Garvan from the harsh sun. Then he secreted Garvan’s knife under his jacket, which wasn’t easy, seeing it was the size of a frying pan, and set off.
*
He climbed up the hill. When he reached the summit, he looked down and discovered that the part of the town visible from the water was small compared to the rest. It was sprawling, reaching back for a couple of miles before the buildings started to thin out. He could see the huge railway line stretching off into the distance. Just below where he stood, the tracks split into two at the largest structure in the town, which appeared to be a station.
Junk made his way down the hillside on to a dirt road, which he followed into the town. Single-storey stone houses gave way to municipal buildings and shops. Junk passed one building that made him think of a sheriff’s jail in a western. Three big glowering men were loitering outside, all wearing the same uniform of red-stained hide long coats. The men were big, though not as big as Garvan. Seven or eight feet tall, broad-shouldered, with big hands, big feet, big features. They looked like brothers. All had dark b
rown skin and white-blond hair cut short at the front but tied back into a long, thin ponytail behind. They had heavy brows and thick blond moustaches that were in need of trimming. They sat or leaned outside their building, eyeing the passers-by with undisguised suspicion. Hanging by their sides were foot-long leather saps, and their expressions were begging for a reason to wield them. Junk kept his head down and hurried on.
As he went he looked at all the different aliens and marvelled at their uniqueness. Not just from him but from one another. People here were all sizes, shapes and colours. Then it occurred to him that they weren’t the aliens; he was. He was on their planet, not the other way around.
He passed shops selling fruit, bread (or at least the bread-like substance that Garvan had given him), fish and meat. The smells of cooking flowed over and around him, caressing his senses and making him realize how ravenously hungry he was. He hadn’t eaten in several hours. He felt his pockets for money and realized that he had neither money nor pockets.
The winding streets were narrow. He followed the sound of the sea to the quayside that he had observed from the boat. As he had thought, there was a market set up here. Dozens of stalls were selling food (more divine smells teased him), clothes, tools, books, artwork, all sorts of things. As Junk listened to the myriad voices around him, the first he had heard since his arrival (the didgeridoo calls of the birdmen didn’t count), he realized that he couldn’t understand one word of what was being said. The local language was spoken quickly and rhythmically. There was almost a musical quality to it, similar to Italian, though the words were most definitely not Italian or French or Spanish or English or Russian or Chinese or any other of the hundred languages that Junk could speak to some degree or had heard on his globe-trotting travels. The signs on the stalls, the street names and the titles of the books for sale were indecipherable to him. There seemed to be distinct characters, but it was like the first time he had ever visited Japan: he couldn’t work out what anything meant.
He spotted another of the dark-skinned, blond policemen (if that’s what they were). He wore the same uniform as the others Junk had seen and had the same distinctive hairstyle. He walked casually between the stalls, as if on his beat. He had an air of chilly superiority about him, glancing at the people he passed with a curled lip of contempt, and everyone knew to get out of his path rather than the other way round. Junk gave him a wide berth for no other reason than that Junk didn’t belong here.
At that moment, he had the strangest feeling that he was being watched. He glanced around but didn’t see anyone paying him any undue attention. He looked up and caught sight of a silhouetted figure standing on the roof of one of the buildings overlooking the marketplace. The figure was tall and lithe and after a second disappeared from view.
*
The person who had been standing on the rooftop was a young woman by the name of Lasel Mowtay and she had indeed been watching Junk. Her green eyes were large and oval and there was a subtle point to the top of her ears. Her legs were impossibly long. Slender but muscular, like a dancer’s. She had long copper-coloured hair, thrown behind her in a carefree ponytail that reached down almost to the small of her back. She looked about sixteen years old but was an old soul in a young body. To Lasel, everything was possible. Occasionally a solution to a problem wasn’t glaringly obvious, but it was always there somewhere. The trick was to find it.
She skipped off from the parapet at the front of the building and slid down the sloping roof behind. Her movements were wonderfully balletic. She let herself drop down into an alleyway. She slowed her descent by pushing herself from one wall to the one opposite and back again. Her movements seemed to defy gravity though in reality they merely made the most out of gravity. She landed silently on the ground and moved towards the quayside.
Lasel fell into step a short distance behind Junk and started to shadow him. She drew closer without alerting him to her presence. As they passed one of the bookstalls, her hand shot out in a blur of motion, whipped a book away and secreted it beneath her leather waistcoat. She advanced on Junk with the intention of slipping the book into his pocket. Only as she got closer did she realize that he didn’t have any pockets.
‘Cootun,’ she muttered with a frown, and continued to follow him. Junk turned left, saw the policeman ahead and turned back. Lasel’s reaction was casual. She didn’t make eye contact with Junk, didn’t hesitate, didn’t falter. She moved past him, then turned blithely and fell into step behind him again as Junk made his way back towards the bookstall. As he passed the stall, Lasel moved quickly forward and in one fluid motion slipped the book into his hand and moved away before Junk was even aware that he was holding it.
‘Dattakar!’ came a shout from Lasel. Everyone including Junk turned. The bookseller spotted the book in Junk’s hand at about the same time as Junk did. As far as he was concerned, it had magically appeared there.
‘Dattakar! DATTAKAR!’ shouted the bookseller, and started coming around his table towards Junk, who was shaking his head, at a loss to explain why or how he was holding the book. ‘JUNTA!’ shouted the bookseller.
Junk saw the policeman turn and start running towards him. ‘Junta’ must mean ‘police’, thought Junk. Then he thought, Run. So he ran.
Junk avoided the bookseller as he lunged for him by slipping under his grasping hands. The bookseller was a small man, who reminded Junk of a jockey. There was an old manor house back in Murroughtoohy, and the lord of the manor, a man called Eales, trained racehorses. Junk would see the diminutive jockeys in town from time to time and that’s who he thought of now as the bookseller pursued him.
‘TUNK ET! TUNK ET!’ shouted the big policeman as he pounded towards Junk. All eyes in the market were on Junk and no one was paying Lasel the slightest bit of notice, which was just what she planned. She moved in behind the bookseller’s counter, produced a small crooked piece of metal and deftly picked the lock on his cash till. She lifted the tray, revealing a stash of colourful paper money. She smiled and pocketed it all. She was in and out in less than twenty seconds.
Other people in the marketplace tried to grab Junk as he passed them. He was forced to twist and turn and weave to avoid capture. He turned a corner and saw the bookseller coming towards him. The policeman was gaining behind. Realizing he was still holding the book, Junk tossed it in the air as he passed the bookseller. The little man instinctively made to catch it and Junk slid past.
He emerged from the market stalls and ran down the first street he came to. The policeman was still in pursuit. He reached into his coat, withdrew a small horn made of shell and blew hard as he ran. It made no sound.
However, some distance away, at the police station, his three colleagues all reacted. They were attuned to the shell horn’s frequency, like dogs to a dog whistle. Each drew his billy club and started running.
The narrow streets were a maze and Junk quickly lost all sense of direction. All he heard was the sound of feet thundering towards him. Panicking, he turned down one street and saw one of the policeman charging straight at him. He turned back the way he had come and zigzagged down a side street. Two quick turns brought him to a small open square with a fountain in the middle. The buildings here were higher. Three or four storeys. There were a dozen alleyways and openings leading off the square. He didn’t pause. He chose one at random and continued running.
On the rooftops above, Lasel sat and counted her plunder. She looked down to see Junk run out of the square. A moment later two of the pursuing policemen entered, hesitated, chose two random exits (both different to Junk) and carried on. Then a third policeman came and went. He chose the route that Junk had taken. Lasel stopped counting and wrestled briefly with her conscience. She sighed and pocketed the money. Then she stood and leaped gracefully into the air and off the roof.
Junk stopped at an intersection to catch his breath. He heard the policemen’s shouts echoing all around him. He didn’t know which way to go. It sounded as if they were getting closer.
Just then he heard a soft, short whistle and looked up to see Lasel perched like a cat on a windowsill.
‘Puttum,’ she said, gesturing with a nod of her head.
‘I don’t understand,’ said Junk, with a panicked strain to his voice.
From her slightly elevated position Lasel could see one of the policemen approaching. Another few seconds and he would have Junk. She reached down her hand. ‘Puttum! Puttum!’ she said again, more forcefully. The outstretched hand spoke for itself. He grabbed it and she pulled him up, yanking him back into the recess of the window just as the policeman lumbered past below, panting audibly. They waited until he had passed and then Lasel pointed a thumb upwards. ‘Tankata solip.’
Junk shook his head. ‘I don’t speak your language. I don’t understand.’
‘Criptik tapar,’ said Lasel. ‘Mullatapar.’ Which ironically means, ‘I don’t speak your language. I don’t understand.’ ‘Tankata,’ she said again and pointed. Then she started to climb up the side of the building. Junk was pretty sure she wanted him to follow her. So he did.
*
At the top of the building was an ornate dome. By the time Junk reached the top Lasel was sitting there eating a red fruit. He sat next to her and caught his breath.
‘Thanks for your help,’ he said. ‘My name’s Junk.’ He patted his chest. ‘Junk. Junk. Me Junk.’ Lasel ate her fruit, frowning a little as she scrutinized him. Then she retrieved a second fruit from one of her many pockets and tossed it to Junk. He caught it and ate it quickly. ‘Wow, this is nice,’ he said, juice running down his chin. ‘Juicy.’