by Leyland, L J
I found a battered captain’s hat stashed in one of the old trunks in my cabin. I put it on and smudged my eyes with kohl. I was only play-acting, knowing that it would amuse Matthias since he was embarrassingly aware that I used to make Edie and Aiden call me captain when we were younger, but I thought the look suited me.
I sauntered up to the top deck where my crew were and demanded attention by yelling, ‘Man the main sail Redman or I’ll make you swab the deck! Farringdon, get the grog you scurvy dog, now!’
‘Aye, aye, Captain,’ replied Noah, his sparkly eyes matching the crystal-like effect of the breaking waves against the boat.
He returned with four pigskin water pouches filled with ice-cool water, collected from the stream by the jetty before we departed. We had also filled a large bucket with the water as we didn’t know how long it would take us to find another fresh source. The liquid was refreshing and sweet on my tongue. Grimmy took his pouch and sniffed it, warily.
‘What’s the matter, comrade? Think I’ve poisoned it?’ I asked him.
He smiled sweetly, well … as sweetly as his haggard features allowed. ‘Oh no, I know mine isn’t poisoned, I made sure of that when I emptied it out and refilled it myself this morning. But what about yours, Captain?’
I stopped sipping, my mouth full of water, not daring to swallow.
‘You know, it was common for pirates to mutiny against their captain, leaving him stranded on an island, or making him walk the plank into shark infested waters. Of course, they only did that to bad captains. We’d never do that to you, Captain. Well, not yet anyway.’
I still held the water in my mouth. I didn’t know whether this was his idea of a joke or whether he inexplicably hated me so much that he had actually poisoned my water supply.
‘Don’t worry, it’s clean,’ he sneered, and disappeared into the darkness below deck. I swallowed. Ever since he had seen my binoculars, Grimmy had become an ever-present thorn in my side. He would have to be dealt with at some point, but I didn’t have the energy to address it at the moment. I wasn’t going to let anything or anyone deflate my feeling of elation.
I’d never been out of Brigadus before but I’d assumed that the Periphery was made up of hundreds of islands just like ours. I thought they were all a short hop away from each other, strung like pearls on a necklace; a ragged archipelago that we could skip across like a skimming stone on our way to the Highlands, picking up supplies and fresh water as we went. I imagined that there were large islands with fairly big populations, governments of sorts, ports, boats, fishermen, maybe even agriculture if the land was good enough. I knew there were old mountains and moors that were high enough to have avoided the Flood waters, acting as safe havens when the Flood hit, such as the Highlands, Cumbria and the North Yorkshire Moorlands. I knew some of our more adventurous fishermen traded with these islands and these lands were sometimes mentioned in the news when the Metropole talked about ‘The Periphery’ as a whole. But the further north we travelled from Brigadus, the more I realised how lucky the people on our island were.
Everything was gone, no land, no people, no anything. I had no concept of distance. No clue as to quite how alone we were in Brigadus, no clue as to quite how far away the other islands of the Periphery were. The sudden realisation of our own isolation left me feeling vulnerable and lonely. There was no significant landmass, no real grouping of people for miles. There was nothing but shining, sparkling sea for as far as I could see.
Even using my binoculars revealed nothing apart from the odd glimmer of possibility when I saw a shape on the horizon, only for my hopes to be dashed when I realised it was not land but just a large wave. Tiny islands peaked out of the water but they were nowhere near big enough to support populations of any size. They were marooned refuges for plants and possibly small animals but no humans. These tiny islands were simply too small to support any human life – no food source and no water. I thought of them as nothing more than gravestones – markers stuck in the sea to signify the death of the civilisation that lay beneath.
I caught Grimmy looking wistfully at some of those dead islands. ‘It’s been taken back,’ he said, pointing at one which was a mess of tangled greenery and bark. ‘Nature will reclaim what is hers. That’s why there’s little point in us trying now. It’s a time bomb and it has started ticking. Tick tock. We could just help it on its way …’ he suggested.
I turned my back on him and walked away, disgusted that he still harboured this little nugget of hope that I would be convinced by him. There was nothing I could say to reason with him, so why even waste my breath?
He shouted at my back, ‘She would have had more courage than you. She would have been brave enough to take tough decisions … coward.’
I was suddenly so overcome with rage that I could feel it choking me. I bent to pick up the wooden bucket which contained all our fresh water and with the superhuman strength that only occurs through anger or desperation, I hurled it across the deck at him, aiming directly for his head. The water arched in a beautiful rainbow until it exploded on the deck with a swoosh. The bucket found its mark and dashed against Grimmy’s head. He screamed as it opened up a gash on his forehead. Noah and Matthias scrambled across the deck, unsure whether to restrain me or help me.
‘Stop comparing me to her.’ My voice was hysterical. ‘Regina is gone and she’s never coming back. I’m not her and I never will be. So get with us or get thrown overboard.’
I fled below deck, ashamed I had reacted so angrily. Noah came after me but wisely didn’t follow me into my room. I slammed the door of the captain’s cabin and flopped onto my bed, pummelling a pillow until it was squashed out of shape. I heard him drag the rocking chair outside my door and sit down on it. He was waiting; waiting until I had calmed down, waiting until I had stopped my tantrum. The way I was feeling, he would have to wait all day.
I heard footsteps come down the steps and Matthias ask, ‘Where is she?’
Noah replied, ‘Don’t worry, I’ve got it. She’s just calming down. Let her be for a while.’
‘You do know she’s thrown away all our fresh water? There’s nothing to drink. We’re going to have to find some more before sundown.’
‘I know. She knows that, too. Probably why she’s hiding. Don’t yell at her just yet, she probably feels terrible as it is. Just leave it with me.’
I could sense that Matthias was itching to shout at me and teach me a life lesson about keeping my temper but I wasn’t in the mood to hear it. I was relieved and intrigued that Noah knew exactly how to handle me. How had he known to leave me alone to simmer for a bit?
When I heard Matthias thunder back to the top deck, I slowly lifted myself off the bed, quietly crept to the door, and opened it a few inches. I left it there, half-open, half-closed, and slunk back to my bed where I sat cross-legged. After a moment’s pause, Noah’s voice drifted in.
‘Is that an invitation?’
‘If you want it to be,’ I replied.
He came in and sat opposite me, cross-legged, like we were two Buddhas, meditating. We sat unspeaking for a few moments until I managed to gather my thoughts. He was patient and didn’t prompt me, just let me sit and think until I was ready to begin.
‘I should never have let him come. He’ll be the death of us, you know.’
‘I’m sure between the three of us we can handle a scumbag like Grimmy. I’m sure you’ve handled worse. But he does give me the creeps. The way he’s always staring at you, it’s like he hates you but there’s something else there, too. It’s hopeful, like he’s waiting for something, expecting you to do something,’ Noah said.
‘He thinks I’m Regina.’ I sighed, voicing the worry that had been haunting me ever since I first met him.
‘What do you mean?’
‘I’m not quite sure but it’s like he’s hoping I’ll be the “second coming”. I can sense it. He wants me to be like her and is disappointed that I’m not. He’s disappointed that I don’t live up to
his memories of her and that’s why he hates me, because he feels that I’m letting him down, letting her down. I’ll never live up to her standard and he hates me for it.’
I began to tell Noah about Grimmy’s plan that had arisen after he had lost Regina; the suicide plot during the Coronation Ceremony in front of all of Brigadus, wiping out everyone and sending a very clear message – that the corrupt, festering civilisation that we had become, the civilisation that had wiped out Regina, could no longer survive.
Worry creased Noah’s brow. ‘Why didn’t you tell me about this earlier? You and Matthias have been keeping me in the dark. I thought we were going to be honest with each other and yet here you both are, lying to me.’
‘We weren’t lying! Well, not deliberately. We just thought we could handle him without worrying you. But he’s worse than I thought. He’s crazy.’
I knew why Noah was particularly upset. The same type of covert terrorism had been used against the Bluebloods before the Flood, when they were in power. Some of their most prominent figures had been killed by pro-democracy extremists and the wounds were still raw for the Blueblood families who had eyed all townsfolk with suspicion ever since, keeping an eye out for a detonator or a concealed weapon to be revealed inside our clothes or bags. This only further exacerbated their prejudice against us and made the gulf between us more cavernous.
‘We should have told you, I’m sorry.’
‘Don’t keep anything from me in future. I’m serious, I want to know every little worry, every little thought, every development, no matter how small.’
‘OK, well you can’t say you didn’t ask for it …’ I took a deep breath and launched into the concerns which had been dogging me since yesterday. ‘I might as well tell you that I think Grimmy knows something. Something about me that he’s keeping secret. Ever since he saw my binoculars, he has been really weird towards me and I had no idea why. I’ve been racking my brains, trying to think what possible explanation there could be. Then I realised, he recognised them. He had seen them before and said they were “distinctive”. He was particularly concerned about where I had got them from. What if … what if the binoculars belonged to someone he used to know? What if the binoculars belonged to Regina?’ I paused to let the enormity of my theory sink in.
‘… But that doesn’t make sense. Why would you have them? She died before you were born.’
‘Did she? Where’s the proof? From what I heard, she just disappeared and no-one knows what happened to her. What if she escaped? What if she’s alive?’
Noah shook his head, incredulously. I admit, it was a long shot. It was pretty unlikely that anyone could have escaped the Mayor’s clutches once he had set his mind to destroy them. But what if, what if, she had done it? What if she had escaped and had started to build a new life for herself in secret?
‘So, where did you get the binoculars from?’ asked Noah.
‘… My mother.’
His look of puzzlement was quite endearing. ‘I thought you had no parents.’
‘I don’t. Edie, Aiden, and I were abandoned at an orphanage in Brigadus when I was four. The matrons said that the only thing the woman who dropped us off left us with was our names and these binoculars. I’ve always assumed that the woman who left me there was my mother …’
‘But … if the binoculars are Regina’s and it was your mother who left the binoculars with you … that makes you her daughter,’ said Noah, voicing my own suspicion which I had been lugging around with me ever since Grimmy had reacted in the way he did to my binoculars.
‘Grimmy said I looked like her. Around the eyes,’ I whispered.
The sea gale was whistling through the cracks in the boat and making an unearthly wailing that chilled me to my marrow. But I suspected that the deep, deep coldness that had settled over me was not just the result of the weather but of anxiety and unhappiness. My emotions had changed so quickly within the space of half-an-hour that I felt like I had whiplash.
Neither of us spoke as we processed the discoveries we had just made. It was like having a jigsaw with pieces that looked like they might fit but when the time came to put them in their place, they were slightly malformed and not quite the right shape. I felt like I had some clues as to who I was but nothing concrete. If the binoculars were Regina’s, and if the woman who left me at the orphanage with them was indeed my mother, then the first part of the puzzle would be solved. I would know that I was the daughter of a rebel, a miscreant, and a trouble-maker. Not too far a leap to make, I thought, it’s in the bone.
But that was only the first part solved. How did Regina escape the Mayor to go on to have children? Or (I was almost too ashamed and frightened to think about this) what if she really did just run away when the going got tough and knowingly left the others to die; left Matthias’s parents to die a terrible traitors’ death on the gallows while she strolled off into the sunset? That would make me the daughter of a snivelling, good-for-nothing coward and a traitor. Not too far a leap to make either, a little voice in the back of my mind pointed out.
And if she was alive, where the hell was she now? There were so many unanswered questions. I could feel the storm clouds of a towering headache start to gather in my temple from the effort of trying to work out the most annoyingly complex puzzle I had ever encountered. I was beginning to feel that I was woefully underprepared for what we were doing. My problems were just too many and too confusing. I didn’t know what my task was supposed to be anymore; was I fighting the Metropole and the Mayor? Or the Bluebloods and Grimmy? Or did I even care about that anymore?
I had tasted tiny drops of knowledge about myself and I wanted more. I had an addict’s urge to abandon our original plan and discover who I was and where I was from. Everything! I wanted to know everything about myself, everything about my family! Screw everyone else and this stupid plan! For too long I had been denied my basic right to know who I was. Why shouldn’t I be selfish for once and start looking for some answers? I looked up, suddenly feverish with the idea but unfortunately my eyes fell on Noah’s soft, open expression. My heart sank and I knew straight away that I could never abandon him to fight the Mayor and the Metropole alone. I’d have to bury my hopes for now and return to them when my job was done. I was in over my head and, without help, would quickly begin to drown.
Chapter Sixteen
I could see the Milky Way. It was a beautiful silver swirl painted across a jet sky. Looking up at the stars, I felt small and overwhelmed. I lay on my back on the top deck, letting the boat rock me gently into a slumber. It was only six o’clock but it was pitch black already. In the winter it got dark at four. I could see my foggy breath in front of me. It was so cold but I didn’t move below deck. Because of my tantrum earlier, we were out of drinking water and we hadn’t been able to find any all day. We needed to find some quickly, as we were all beginning to feel the first fuzzy thickness of dehydration on our tongues. By the morning, we would all be dying for a drink and therefore we needed to find some this evening.
Noah had been using the binoculars and had spotted some land on the horizon. Not a big island, but one that was slightly bigger than the gravestone islands so, perhaps, we speculated, it had a fresh-water source like a small spring or creek. It had taken us hours to get there in which I wasn’t much help, considering that it was me that had stupidly thrown our water over Grimmy in the first place. But I was feeling too sulky after my tantrum to help.
Matthias brought over a fur blanket and draped it around me. ‘I know you’re feeling guilty but there’s no need to freeze yourself to death as penitence. Really, you’re forgiven about the water. Don’t punish yourself.’
I smiled at him and he took it as an invitation to lie next to me, leaving Noah and Grimmy to steer the last couple of hundred metres to land. I told him about my fears that I was Regina’s daughter and that she had abandoned the other rebels, including Matthias’s parents, to die. It was cathartic and made me feel much lighter, sharing the burden with m
y old comrade, letting him carry the load for a while.
‘If Grimmy suspects that you’re Regina’s daughter, then it makes perfect sense that he would hate you,’ said Matthias.
‘Why’s that?’
‘Well, he loved Regina, didn’t he? He’s never got over her “death”. That’s why he’s crazy now, wants to take revenge on the society that murdered her. But, what if she hadn’t died? What if she escaped, left everyone else, including him, to die and swanned off to start a new, carefree life? You’d be living proof of her treachery. You’ve shattered his entire existence, his entire reason for living. He lives for the memory of her and, obviously, he would be willing to die for the memory of her. She’s been exposed as a sham because of the simple truth that you’re alive. Not to mention the fact that she would have had to start a relationship with another man in order to have you. I bet he felt utterly betrayed by that … that she could love another man while he and others had died for the love of her … But this is just speculation, of course.’
I raised a wry eyebrow at him. ‘But you think it’s true, don’t you?’
‘It’s the most convincing lead we’ve had on your past to date. I used to think perhaps you were sprung from a creature of hell and a goat but I guess this is more persuasive.’
‘You’re a charmer.’
‘I try my best.’
We fell into a comfortable silence which was occasionally punctuated by my unanswered questions such as: ‘I wonder who my father is?’ and ‘Why did she abandon us?’ The questions floated up towards the star-filled sky and hung there, answerless and dangling. After a while, Noah, who was now wearing my captain’s hat, yelled, ‘Land ho!’
When I sat up, we were metres from a natural jetty; an outcrop of flat rock which jutted out into the sea and connected to the island. The smacking sound of shallow waves hitting rocks cut through the air. The air was salty and gritty, filled with the smell of damp greenness and earthy soil. We scrambled to make a safe mooring, Matthias bravely jumping from the boat to the rocks to haul our boat in with a rope. Noah safely steered us to shore whilst Grimmy glowered at me and I pretended not to notice.