by Mandy Hager
“Onewēre, eh? That's a new one. And you were heading for?” The man's face gave away nothing, good or bad.
“Anywhere we could find.”
The captain frowned, tapping his boot impatiently on the floor.
What is Lazarus playing at? Why is he being so obscure? Maryam cleared her throat and forced her words out past a nervous lump. “We seek sanctuary. Somewhere safe where we can live.”
“Indeed?” The captain did not even glance at her, his gaze still locked on Lazarus. “These natives are your slaves, boy?”
Lazarus flinched and shook his head. “No…” He paused, as if deciding how to answer this. “They are my—friends.”
Maryam felt her face flush hot. Since when did he promote himself to friend? She'd have laughed out loud had the captain's words not jarred so uncomfortably in her head. Natives? Slaves?
The captain laughed crudely. “Two for one, eh boy? That's quite a score.” He turned to his companion and winked.
Lazarus shrugged. “Two is nothing, my father once—”
“Silence!” the captain barked, all signs of humour obliterated by the impatient swipe of his hand. “As captain of this vessel, I arrest you all for illegally entering our sovereign territorial waters. You will not be permitted to set foot on any Confederated Territory soil, and will be transferred to our detention centre for processing with all the other illegals, in compliance with our Sovereign Rights Act. Any non-compliance will be dealt with swiftly and assertively—so do not try.” He waved his hand again, as if swatting away a fly. “That is all.” He spun on his heel so quickly his threat still hung in the air after he had gone.
Confederated Territory? Where was that? Maryam was sure she'd never seen this written on the map.
Now his companion spoke. “You, girl,” he said, indicating Maryam, “come with me. We will see to your arm.”
Maryam just stared up at him, too scared to move.
The man snapped his fingers at her. “Come on. Do you want help or don't you? The choice is yours.”
“Go, Maryam,” Ruth whispered. “You need it fixed.” She gently pushed Maryam towards the edge of the bed. “Go on. Go.”
The vibration of the engines built inside Maryam's ears. She didn't want to go with him alone, undressed and vulnerable in a ship controlled by foreign white men. She shook her head, resisting Ruth's pressure on her back.
“I will accompany her,” Lazarus declared in his most arrogant voice. “She is my woman, after all.”
Maryam gasped. How dare he? She turned to skewer him with her gaze, but was sidetracked by Ruth's frightened voice.
“Don't leave me here alone.” Her cheeks were so leached of colour they looked grey.
Maryam couldn't seem to piece her thoughts together in any logical way. She was too tired, too sore and too bereft to think this through. If she went alone, she left Ruth unprotected in the room with Lazarus, while opening herself up to possible abuse from the guards. If she left Ruth alone and took up Lazarus's outrageous offer, Ruth would be the vulnerable one. Then the answer came to her. It was so simple she flushed at her stupidity. What is wrong with me? She turned to the officer. “Could Ruth accompany me?”
The man shrugged. “Whatever. Just get moving. I have better things to do.” He crossed to the doorway, drumming his fingers on the frame as the two girls stood and tucked the blankets more securely around themselves. “Oh, for heaven's sake, that's enough! Now come.”
He herded them past the deafening engine room and up two narrow flights of stairs. Maryam's legs were trembling so badly she had to steady herself against Ruth. What will they do? The way she'd been treated by Mother Lilith, the only other healer she'd known except dear old Mother Evodia, played back in her mind. The humiliation. The pain. The total lack of care. But then these thoughts were shunted sideways as she recalled Lazarus's outrageous words. She is my woman…
She felt sick to her stomach, as it dawned on her that this was what he must have hoped for all along: he knew Joseph was going to die—oh Lord, had he not actively discouraged Joseph from taking her blood?—and, now that Joseph was out of the way, he'd staked his claim. His cold-hearted scheming disgusted her. How he'd fooled her with his act of grief…it was simply a ruse to soften her resistance to his game. Once a shark, always a shark. And now she and Ruth were cast to the bottom of the food chain again—aided, it seemed, by yet another group of uniformed, sadistic, white-skinned men.
Maryam lay curled up on her bunk, listening to the unending thump of the engines as the ship ploughed through the ocean. Apart from getting up to relieve herself in the bucket Ruth had screened off behind a blanket, she had not moved for what seemed like days. Neither had she eaten the stodgy tepid food; she had forced herself to drink the stale water only when her thirst was such she could no longer block it from her mind. Her arm had finally settled after the agony she'd endured when the ship's healer had hurriedly encased it from wrist to elbow in a sticky coating of white powder mixed with fibre. It had set hard now, and formed a buffer from further movement or knocks, but it did little to ease the ongoing discomfort.
She was so furious with Lazarus she could not even look in his direction without anger spiralling up like the waterspout that had nearly destroyed their boat. It almost threatened to outstrip her anger with the Lord, which sat inside her festering, as cold and domineering as Father Joshua's eyes. But the Lord had surpassed Himself, rubbed salt into her wound by making sure she'd seen a glimpse of Heaven with Joseph before He slammed the door shut in her face.
How she despised them all; hated the fact that nothing in her life was worth the effort even to breathe. The people she had loved were dead. And now she was trapped with the monster Lazarus, who had willed his cousin's death for his own greedy, selfish aims. Even Ruth was not immune to her unbridled fury: her ineffectual pleas for Maryam to rouse herself were as annoying as a buzzing fly.
To make things worse, Lazarus seemed to have brainwashed Ruth. She could hear them whispering in the bunk above, no doubt colluding in some cruel new game. She strained to hear what they were saying but the insufferable engine blocked their words. No mind. Let them scheme whatever they wanted: she no longer had the will to fight…no will, in fact, to live at all. She would starve herself until the end released her. She would welcome the descent into the eternal nothingness she now believed was really all that lay in store for those who died.
She drifted in and out of sleep, revelling in a bitter pleasure at the hollow rumbling in her gut. Then, during one of the long stretches staring morosely at the grimy wall, she heard a shift in the tempo of the big engines. The boat was slowing. From somewhere high above, the thud of feet and clank of chains reverberated down through the walls. Were the crew about to scoop up more deluded souls from the water, or had they reached their new island jail?
Ruth jumped down from the bunk. “Did you hear that, Maryam? I think it means we might be there.” Her voice was pleading, urging Maryam to respond. She did not.
Now footsteps rang out close by, and Maryam heard the key turn in the lock of their prison door. Someone entered, clearing his throat before he spoke.
“We've arrived at the camp. Get ready to disembark.” His voice was flat, as though he didn't care at all.
“Will we have a chance to plead our case?” Lazarus asked.
“You can try. Who knows? I've not seen any whites detained.”
“And my companions?”
The man snorted. “I dunno about Onewēre, but surely you must know what happened to the last wave of illegals from Marawa Island?”
“What do you mean?” Ruth cut in.
“This was years ago, back in my grandpop's time…” Maryam could hear a shift in the man's tone, as if he was enjoying what he now revealed. “Hordes of them came—the whole fandango—deserting their poxy island for our tasty shores.” Whole fandango? What did he mean? That the entire population of the island had up and fled? But what of the bones? She rolled over to study his
pasty face. “Of course our blokes wouldn't let them in—we've had more than our share of useless bludgers in the past. No way were we gonna give up any of our own precious resources for a bunch of lazy heathen blacks…”
“They sent them back?” Lazarus asked. He stood facing the crewman with his arms folded across his chest. His cheeks were stained an unaccustomed red.
The crewman laughed. “Too right they did. Shipped them back and made damned sure they never bothered us again.” He tapped the side of his nose and smirked. “Unfortunate collateral damage, mate. Couldn't be helped.”
Maryam closed her eyes, picturing the sea of bones that littered the temple floor, the babies who had died wrapped in their mothers’ arms. Were they wrong to have presumed the Tribulation had caused such slaughter? Were there other hands on which the blood of Marawa's people might be found?
“And it worked, you know, for bloody decades,” the crewman continued. “But now you little bludgers are at us again.” He punched his fist into his palm. “We'll whip you, though, just like that. The Confederated Territories are ours alone.”
“Just where are these Territories?” Lazarus asked. “Anywhere near Australia?”
Again the man laughed. “Bugger me, I haven't heard that mentioned in a long time.” He shook his head. “What's past is past. The Confederation Wars soon saw to that. Just you and your pretty little boongas here remember that we're all good Christians now, who've worked hard to shake off the effects of the radiation from the flares, and we're not letting any other useless bugger screw that up.” The man looked pleased with himself, as if he alone held back the so-called heathen hordes.
Ruth's eyes widened as his words sank in. “You mean—”
“The Confederated Territories for Christian Territorials,” he said smugly. “Cee Tees for Cee Tees. That's our motto.” He snapped back into official mode. “Enough of this. Come with me now.” He turned his gaze to Maryam, his lip curling as he surveyed her matted, filthy hair. “Get up, girl. In God's name, d'you have no pride?”
A kind of hysterical bubble surged up inside Maryam as she studied the man's ugly sharp-nosed face. He and his kind treated them like animals, yet expected them to come out looking fresh and clean? For a moment the old fire in her belly flared. How dare he? How—No. There was no point in fighting this. Let him think whatever he liked. Soon she would not be alive to care.
She rose, as if in a dream, to follow after Lazarus and Ruth, reaching out to steady herself as dizziness rocked her. The ascent through the ship seemed endless as she struggled to move her weak and wobbly legs, and she was so light-headed she could hardly see. It pleased her, in a disconnected way, just how much the lack of food affected her. Perhaps this would be over sooner than she thought.
The men working to ready the boat for arrival barely gave the passing group a glance. At last they emerged onto the deck, and Maryam was disoriented for a moment: the dawn was just breaking in the sky. Just how many days had it been since Joseph died?
After the putrid confines down below, the fresh air was welcome although the fumes from the engines—and something else, something faintly foul—masked the salty crispness of the breeze. Around their small huddled group the crew scrubbed decks and coiled ropes, preparing for their arrival at the unknown port that now lay directly up ahead.
The outer rim of the island crouched low in the water. Its raised central plateau was barren and windswept, and the thin sprinkling of trees on its lower coastal fringe looked scruffy and parched. Most of the buildings that bordered the decaying dock were patched and decrepit; only one gleamed white in the early morning light, and a startlingly bright pennant flew from its roof. It was blue, with a red and white criss-cross in the upper left-hand corner and, to Maryam's surprise, the stars of the Maiaki Cross. Its familiar aspect was strangely comforting amidst this jumble of unknowns.
As the ship drew up to its mooring, the acrid stench grew stronger on the air, like the stink of broken birds’ eggs that had lain too long untended and turned rotten in their nests. It clung to the inside of Maryam's nose, feeding the nausea brought on by lack of food and sudden movement from their airless cell. The three of them were corralled together as a rickety set of stairs was pushed along the dock to be secured in place beside the ship. Strangest of all, an unfamiliar object was moving along the dock on six huge wheels. Many times bigger than the trolleys used to serve food back at the Holy City, it appeared to move all on its own. What could it be? Two men sat in the snout-like metal cabin, as if somehow guiding it, while at the rear a green cloth canopy and sides concealed whatever lay inside. It was the most peculiar thing she'd ever seen. The thing drew up next to the stairs, and the two uniformed men disembarked through doors cut into each side.
Lazarus was the first to descend the unstable grid of stairs. He stepped onto it suspiciously, testing its strength under his feet before he looked back over his shoulder and nodded reassuringly at Maryam and Ruth. His face had lost its certainty, and his skin was so pale the tired rings beneath his eyes stood out like the smears of charcoal used at ritual times to decorate the faces of the village chiefs.
Ruth scrabbled for Maryam's hand. “Please,” she whispered uneasily, “don't let them split us up.”
Maryam had no time to reassure her as she was prodded from behind towards the steps. With Ruth holding tight to one hand and the other stiff within its cast, she stepped onto the structure and began the slow journey down to the dock. Her knees were threatening to give out again, and she found herself leaning against the side railing for extra support. She dared not stop to stabilise herself further, only too aware of the guns slung over the shoulders of the crewmen who brought up the rear. Such an excessive show of power was laughable: just what, exactly, did they think she'd do? Make a break for it and run? Little did they know she'd never again give the Lord a chance to play such cruel games with her sense of hope.
As soon as they had reached the ground, all three were herded to the rear of the strange wheeled contraption and made to scramble in beneath the cloth. Inside, each side was lined by bench-seats formed from rough planks of wood. Two armed men climbed in, ordered the trio to sit, and took up positions opposite them.
“What is this thing?” Lazarus asked.
“What thing, mate?” the younger of the guards replied.
“This thing in which we now sit.”
The guard laughed, nudging his companion. “Hoity toity, ain't he, Kev?” He pulled a face, as if he were sucking a lime, and spoke in a drawling parody of Lazarus. “This thing in which we sit is known as a truck. T. R. U. C. K.”
The other guard sniggered. “Actually, Lord Muck, it's a bio-fuelled army personnel vehicle. Is there anything else Your Worship would like to know?”
Lazarus, his face suffused in red, ignored their game. “Where exactly are we being taken?” he demanded.
The young guard swallowed down his mirth. “Cee-One,” he snapped. “You'll be processed and detained up there.”
“I want to see your village chief.” Lazarus spat out the words with gruff resolve, but Maryam could see his hands were shaking before he clamped them hard between his knees.
The guards’ derision was drowned out as the truck lurched to life with a sudden roar. Maryam startled, trying to make sense of what was going on: it had to be some kind of engine, judging by the steady rumble and the vibration that rattled through their seats. Then, to her further astonishment, something graunched and juddered, and the whole thing began to move. Ruth still clutched desperately onto Maryam's hand; her other hand clasped firmly to the seat. She closed her eyes, mouthing prayers, no doubt wishing her Holy Book had not been swallowed by the sea as they'd leapt from the burning boat. How hard Ruth will be feeling this, Maryam thought. She reached inside her pocket for the small blue pebble Ruth had gifted her back on the atoll and pressed it hard into her palm as if the tiny talisman could somehow give her strength. It had, after all, survived her trials and flight from Onewēre, the storm, the fir
e, her plunge into the ocean…perhaps it contained more magic than she knew. Even just the thought of losing it now prompted nervous stirrings in her chest.
Poor Ruth. Whatever lay in store for them at this place, this Cee-One, she knew it would not be the answer to Ruth's rabid prayers. In truth, all they could hope for now was quick relief. She closed her eyes, willing the movement of the truck to bounce such bleak and frightening thoughts from her head.
It seemed a punishingly long time before the truck slowed back to an idle. Above the chug of its engine Maryam could make out men's voices, but was unable to identify the words. Then the truck jolted back to life, bumping over something that rocked them sideways; it made a sweeping turn and finally shuddered to a halt. In the ringing silence Maryam caught the dying whisper of Ruth's prayers.
“Right! Out you get.” The older guard drew back the flap of the fabric and motioned for them to jump down from the truck.
One by one they set foot on the dusty ground and tried to take in their new surroundings. The truck had stopped just inside a towering barrier of netted steel topped by coils of fine-strung wire that budded lethal-looking barbs. Several more armed guards had arrived, and were hurrying to close the gates behind them. There was no mistaking it: they were locked in.
“This way.” Their two guards pointed at a shabby building and pushed the trio roughly towards it.
“Leave the talking to me,” Lazarus hissed to Maryam and Ruth. “I'm sure once they know the truth they'll set us free.” He drew in a deep breath, as though pumping himself up, and took the lead.
Maryam bit back a sharp retort as she reminded herself that she no longer cared. What did it matter who spoke for who? The end result would be the same: Lazarus elevated back to his position of power, while she and Ruth were left to rot.
She couldn't help but glance around her, though. Beyond the building, another layer of netting rose just as high as the first, and beyond that again row upon row of squat, rusty metal structures packed the dusty, arid camp. Thin bedraggled chickens scratched around in the littered dirt and, through the gaps in the netting, a gaggle of dirty, wide-eyed children stood beside a group of men who seemed to be tracking their journey to the wooden building near the truck.