Beyond the Knock Knock Door

by Scott Monk

  The chieftain clicked his tongue and the same four boys stood up. They gritted their teeth as the elders slipped the sleeves over their outstretched arms, and two hundred raging ants needled their tender flesh with burning stingers. As the name bullet ant implied, the pain was like being shot. The boys did not flinch, however. They sucked in the hurt and sweated it out as the men stood, looped arms, sang and danced.

  The triplets squirmed. Personally, they would have thrown the ants into the fire and howled with tears.

  After twenty minutes of such torture, a cheer erupted and the elders removed the sleeves from the Scorned boys, who clutched their swollen and numbed arms. They had entered manhood. They were now full members of the tribe.

  ‘They’re nuts!’ Samantha said.

  ‘We better not be next,’ Michael agreed.

  ‘I’m glad I’m a girl.’

  ‘Forgetting something?’ Luke asked, stroking his chin.

  She reached up and touched her beard. Her eyes widened.

  With the initiation ceremony complete, the chieftain moved among his people with humour and respect. He shook the good hands of the four initiated boys, hugged them, then bent down and helped some men clear away dirt covering a steaming hole in the ground. Hours earlier it had been filled with hot volcanic rocks. Removing a layer of banana leaves, they hauled up woven baskets of vegetables and the carcass of a wild boar they’d buried and cooked. They carved up the flesh with stone knives then served it with pumpkin, sweet potato and carrots.

  ‘Eat,’ he said, offering it to the triplets on shipwrecked plates.

  They stared at the meal with upturned noses. ‘But it’s been cooked in dirt,’ Samantha sniffed.

  ‘Then go hungry.’

  He turned away with the food but Michael and Luke stopped him. ‘We’ll try it!’ Luke said, breathing in the steaming pork.

  ‘Why do you cook everything in the ground?’ Michael asked, accepting a plate.

  ‘We can’t light too many fires here or the enemy will find us,’ the chieftain answered.

  The brothers tried the meat first before wolfing down the whole lot. The boar was succulent and juicy, and the vegetables fresh and crisp. They stuffed their faces, grateful for the meal, before Samantha followed suit.

  Luke wiped his mouth of the fruit punch then asked, ‘You’re a chieftain, right?’

  ‘I am Tahoke – the last of the Great Chiefs of the Thirteen Tribes,’ he said, crossing his arms. ‘Those who welcome you tonight are the remaining free men and women of my people.’

  ‘You’re not going to force us to wear those ant sleeves are you?’

  ‘No. It’s a ceremony only for brave young warriors.’

  Both brothers cringed. They didn’t need bullet ants to feel that sting.

  Michael nodded towards the man’s tattoos. ‘Do they mean anything?’

  Tahoke angled his body into the light. ‘They are the four stages of manhood. These on my right leg were inked by the elders when I was a boy. They show that I no longer crawl as a baby, but walk among my people. These along my arm were done when I was twelve and remind me of the strength of brotherhood. This on my right shoulder is fatherhood – I carry the weight of my family each day. The fourth on my face is the most important: wisdom. It is only half complete, because Man is not perfect and can never reach full wisdom on his own.’

  ‘The tattoo on your shoulder,’ Michael said. ‘That means you’re married?’

  Tahoke’s muscles tightened. A few women within earshot heard the question and shooed away their children, encouraging them to play elsewhere.

  ‘Yes, I have a family,’ he said. ‘I have a wife and three sons. They are lost to me.’

  ‘Lost?’ Luke asked.

  ‘Come. I will show you.’

  Gathering several warriors together, Tahoke flew them by dolphin-back to the far end of the Weeping Mountains and landed in the centre of an ancient village. It was built of drab, grey stone around a common square and splotched with lichen. Some of the dozen single-storey buildings were shaped like beehives; others were long and rectangular with square columns and peaked roofs. Decades of rain had eroded the battle stories carved into their walls, and the roots of strangler figs had clawed down and crushed what remained of them. No one had lived there for years.

  Michael walked among the ruins and touched the rough, furry stones, recalling a similar village he’d seen in a school documentary about Cambodia.

  Running feet startled him. The warriors readied their spears as the triplets retreated. Pushing aside the ferns, a Scorned boy appeared, barely four years old. He stared at them and readied to shout behind him when Tahoke knelt and gave him a mango, which he greedily sucked and ate. Handing over a second one, Tahoke asked in clicks where he’d run from. The boy pointed past the trees.

  They hiked down a slope, picking up distant voices. Other sounds became clearer too: chipping, cracking and mechanical hums.

  The commotion grew louder as electrical lighting glowed through the thinning forest. Tahoke signalled for the young boy to run along, before urging the triplets to crouch down. They reached the abrupt edge of the forest and gasped. Across a huge pit, Michael, Samantha and Luke witnessed a horror far worse than any monster they could imagine.

  Eating into the mountain was a deep open-cut mine. Thousands of slaves swung picks, drilled holes, shouldered heavy baskets of rubble or manned water pumps. Most were brown-skinned; the rest, pale-white Pacificans in rags. They laboured at the rock face or slumped on the zigzagging pathways, awaiting death. Overseeing the mining were modern-day pirates. They threatened, bullied or whipped any slave who slackened off.

  ‘Welcome to Pacifico’s lost city of gold,’ Tahoke said.

  Michael turned away and retched as the whip snapped down on another worker.

  ‘There are two more mines on the other side of the mountains. And beyond them – the timber mills. This is what your people are doing to my island.’

  ‘But they’re not our people,’ Luke said.

  ‘Then why have you been helping the Pacificans and not us? Or has the Hall of Heroes forgotten us as well?’

  The triplets shrank as a mining ship launched into the night sky.

  ‘Stay close,’ Tahoke snarled. ‘There’s more to see.’

  They crept further along the edge of the mining pit, using the darkness as cover. The foulness of sulphur struck them and they covered their noses. ‘Look there,’ he added, pointing to a dozen stone buildings similar to those in the ruined village. ‘That is where they hold our families.’

  Inside the dimly lit huts, hundreds of women and children sewed expensive gowns and suits, cobbled together leather boots or laboured as dye-makers by stirring noxious-smelling weeds in wooden vats until they ran blue. Outside was worse. Young boys slit open the bellies of sheep and watched as fatty guts plopped into wooden buckets. The small intestines were then removed, milked clean by hand then fumigated in sulphur pits to be later twisted into violin strings. Beyond them, girls gathered together long sheets of spun wool and placed them into wooden tubs full of stale urine. The girls then stepped in and squelched the cloth underfoot for hours to remove the grease and make it soft.

  ‘That’s disgusting!’ she said.

  ‘These are the jobs no one else wants to do.’

  ‘But they’re kids.’

  ‘Not to the slavers. They’re just another means to make more money.’

  ‘Are they –? Are they –?’ Michael began.

  ‘Yes. The clothes you see are the same ones sold in Pacifico’s shops.’

  As Michael burned with shame, Luke pointed to a path hewn into the rock face. A young Pacifican man with a blunt nose and cropped messy blue hair refused to carry any more baskets. A group of pirates descended on him, curling their fists.

  ‘Cavalli!’ Michael breathed.

  They all turned away in horror when the inevitable happened.

  ‘Get us away from here!’ Samantha begged.

&nbs
p; All three Bowmans remained dumbstruck as the dolphins returned them unseen to the giant floating island.

  ‘My people you saw are just a small number of those whom the pirates have captured,’ Tahoke said as the triplets sat inside the camp. ‘Those who are healthy work the mines. Others who are a threat are sold off-world.’

  ‘Your family?’ Michael dared ask.

  The chieftain dug his spear into the dirt. ‘I’ve been searching for them for two years. No one knows where they are.’

  ‘Why hasn’t anyone stopped this?’ Luke said. ‘Like Queen Oriana?’

  ‘We live at the end of the world. How can your Queen help when she’s ignorant of what’s happening here?’

  ‘But have you tried telling people?’

  ‘Many a time – nobles, merchants, tourists! But after a few days, their hearts forget and their ears no longer listen. Also, there is a long history between our two nations. Too much blood has been spilt in battle.’

  ‘But someone must have listened,’ she said.

  ‘Yes, and when they complained too loudly, they ended up in those mines. People seem to grow very quiet when their freedom is at risk.’

  ‘But many of your people live in Pacifico,’ Michael said. ‘They’ve got jobs. They’re not working the mines. Why don’t they tell people?’

  Tahoke’s face darkened. ‘They might as well be slaves. They left these islands before the start of our troubles. Pacifico lured them with its promise of riches, only to treat them like paupers. Now they do the work that the nobles no longer do themselves. They launder their clothes, cook their food and clean their streets. Where is the honour in that?’

  ‘You work as a footman.’

  ‘To spy on our enemies and help my people – not to serve the lazy. We need medicine, food and knowledge. I’ve been smuggling supplies out of the palace for ten months now with the help of a brave friend, whom, I fear, will now be hunted like the rest of my people.’

  He looked at Aurelio, who slept.

  ‘That explains the sack of food I caught you with in the tunnels,’ Luke said. ‘You should have told us. If we knew –’

  ‘I didn’t trust you. And I still don’t trust you. The Hall of Heroes has lost its way. We must help ourselves.’

  ‘We’re different,’ Michael said. ‘We do care. We just –’

  ‘Didn’t know,’ his sister finished.

  Tahoke rose from his seat. ‘Now you do.’

  Michael followed him towards the island’s edge, where a ship’s bell lay crushed on the rock face. Silver and purple moonlight salted the waves. ‘How have your people survived this long? Surely the slavers know you’re up here.’

  ‘We move among the islands. The magnetic rock keeps their ships away. We hunt at night, so as not to be seen.’

  ‘It was a hunting party that my sensors picked up our first night here, wasn’t it?’ Luke said, stepping into view. ‘Back on the other side of the mountains.’

  Tahoke nodded. ‘Your pirate friend almost cost you your lives. You’re lucky an elder stopped our hunters filling your bellies with spears and let Aurelio discover your motives.’

  ‘Then why didn’t Aurelio tell us about what’s really inside the Weeping Mountains?’ Samantha asked. ‘Tell everybody for that matter?’

  ‘He’s a piper – not a warrior. I’ve lost too many brave men to those haunted shafts, and dare not risk him as well. The monster can have its lair as long as it stays away from my people. Our fight is with these pirates.’

  The triplets stared at each other.

  ‘But the monster isn’t real,’ Michael said. ‘It’s a story made up by the harlequins.’

  The triplets explained the secret police force, what they’d found in the Weeping Mountains and the plot to officially invade the Broken Isles. As Tahoke listened, anger fired in his brown eyes.

  ‘Call a war council – now!’

  Men and teenage boys stood around the fire, consumed by the same anger as they heard the full story. Women and children stayed hidden, although within earshot, as the arguments grew heated and more and more talk turned to battle. Michael shook his head until his sister pulled him back through the trees. They joined Luke next to a rusty ship’s boiler.

  ‘This is backfiring,’ she said. ‘We’re starting a war, not stopping it.’

  ‘There are only fifty of them,’ Luke said. ‘What can they do?’

  ‘All get killed,’ Michael answered.

  ‘They’re crazy if they think they can take on the pirates,’ she said.

  ‘Not to mention the harlequins,’ Luke added.

  ‘Maybe we can enlist the marines,’ Michael suggested. ‘They could help.’

  ‘They’re boys,’ she pointed out. ‘Security guards at best. Besides, Cavalli warned us that some are working for the harlequins.’

  The voices grew more heated, forcing the triplets to move further away.

  ‘Do you get the feeling that everything we do on this planet ends in disaster?’ Luke asked.

  ‘Same as the last one,’ she snorted.

  ‘Maybe we’ve failed,’ Michael said. ‘Maybe Mr Goode Deed was wrong picking us.’

  ‘Or maybe we weren’t sent here to fix it after all,’ Luke said.

  A war cry was followed by frantic activity. Mothers hurried away their children as the warriors grabbed weapons hidden among the trees. The triplets found Tahoke testing the weight of his wooden clubs.

  ‘We raid the mines tomorrow night,’ he said matter-of-factly, pushing past them. ‘We free our kin then attack Pacifico.’

  ‘You can’t!’ Michael said. ‘People will die.’

  ‘People always die in wars. We must defend ourselves by striking first.’

  ‘We can help. We can go back to Pacifico and –’

  ‘No,’ he said, towering above them. ‘We’ve waited long enough for help. It’s time for my people to reclaim these islands and remove the invaders. If you want to help, then stand by my warriors and fight.’

  WHUMP!

  A curved sword barely missed Samantha’s head. It jabbed into the ground beside her ear and wobbled. Wide-eyed, she jumped from under her fur blankets and glanced around for attackers. Finding none, she shook Luke, who was still asleep among the other snoring islanders.

  ‘Wha –?’

  ‘Get up.’

  ‘No. It’s too early.’

  ‘Get up!’

  She strained to free her cutlass, but the magnetism held it tight. She needed a greater force to yank it away. Luke blinked at her and gradually pushed himself up. ‘Hey. How come your sword’s here? I thought it was trapped in that –’

  WHUMP!

  His jetpack and visor hit him in the face.

  She hushed him as other bodies stirred and stretched at the noise. He struggled into his gear against the strong pull of the island as they both looked at Michael’s empty bedroll. Aurelio was also missing.

  ‘Here we go again,’ she said. ‘Michael’s gone off and done something stupid.’

  28

  Leeuwin, the blue whale, surged east with Michael and Aurelio on her back. Thin clouds crisscrossed the skies and the piper’s melody filled their ears. The tune would have been fitting for such a glorious day, if not for their urgency. They needed to reach Pacifico and warn Oriana. Only she could stop this war.

  ‘Are you okay?’ Michael asked, as the music paused.

  ‘Yes, I’m a little winded, that’s all,’ Aurelio hissed and gently kneaded his ribs.

  Michael looked at the floating islands shrinking behind them. He felt uncomfortable leaving Samantha and Luke behind but he was riding towards danger. If he failed, he hoped his siblings would find the Knock-Knock Door and return home.

  As they neared the whirlpool, the pilot fish scattered. Leeuwin slowed and Aurelio played louder. It didn’t work. The blue whale began descending.

  ‘What’s wrong?’

  The giant eye of the whirlpool churned less than two hundred metres below.


  ‘The fish aren’t responding. Something’s scaring them.’

  ‘Wark! Wark! Wark!’ a familiar voice crowed high above. ‘Experiencing engine problems, are you?’

  The pair looked upwards as a skysled silently dropped from the clouds. It was little more than a winged flying platform with railings, a steering console, harpoon gun and a cargo of wooden crates. At the helm stood the black harlequin, his cape billowing behind him.

  ‘Now why would two young gentlemen such as yourselves be in such a rush to reach Pacifico?’

  Before Michael and Aurelio drew their swords, a glass ball shattered beside them and leaked red knock-out gas.

  ‘Haul them up!’ the black harlequin said.

  Michael woke with a headache. His hands were tied behind his back and his shoulder was numb from leaning too long against a wooden crate. Next to him slumped Aurelio, still unconscious. They’d been stripped of their weapons by the blue harlequins, who stood cross-armed, scouting the horizon. The rest of the troupe lazed about, saying little and listening to the white harlequin strum her silver and pearl mandolin. The whirlpool twisted below them.

  A crate creaked above Michael. He looked up to find a tangle of multicoloured feathers. ‘Hello, little birdie,’ the Vulture said, yanking back Michael’s head with a wooden fighting staff. ‘Escape from your cage, did you?’

  ‘Ow!’ Michael screamed.

  ‘Vulture,’ the black harlequin said, holding his spyglass steady. ‘Play nice.’

  ‘Any sign?’ the red harlequin asked, joining him.

  ‘Not yet. But our impatient buyers will be here shortly. I’m counting on it.’

  ‘Yes, counting gold. Wark! Wark! Wark!’

  Sniggers broke the boredom.

  Still a little wobbly, Michael stood, attracting the attention of the blue harlequins, who growled and squared their shoulders. He advanced towards the black harlequin. ‘Don’t you care that people will die in your selfish war?’