For a moment, no one said anything.
‘You’re free, Spinner,’ Will said, grabbing his arm. ‘You’re free!’
Then they all started whooping and laughing and dancing around—Annalie and Will, Pod and Blossom, Essie and her father and Graham.
‘Oh, and we’re looking at getting Pod and Blossom identity papers,’ Everest added. ‘Welcome to Dux.’
Pod and Blossom cried in delight and hugged each other even more fiercely.
‘I can’t believe it,’ Spinner said, dazed. ‘I don’t know how to thank you.’
‘That’s easy,’ Everest said seriously. ‘Never take my daughter away again.’
‘That wasn’t his fault!’ Will said, jumping to Spinner’s defence.
‘I made her come, nobody else did!’ Annalie said at the same.
‘It’s all right, I’m joking,’ Everest said. ‘Mostly joking.’
‘He’s joking,’ Essie said firmly. ‘Try and keep me away from these guys.’
‘Does this mean we can go home, then?’ Will asked, his eyes shining.
‘Yes,’ Spinner said, a slow smile spreading across his face. ‘I think it does.’
Home again
As soon as Spinner was recovered from his injuries, he, Will, Annalie, Pod, Blossom and Graham boarded the train to Port Fine. Thanks to Everest Wan, it was much nicer than the train Annalie and Essie had taken. It even had seats.
While Will, Pod and Blossom roamed up and down the carriages and bought snacks in the dining car, Annalie sat with Spinner, watching the landscape whisk by. She had had something on her mind since that last terrifying night in the Ark, but she hadn’t found the right moment to talk about it until now.
‘I’m sorry about your research,’ she said. ‘I should never have brought it with us. If I had any sense I would have hidden it somewhere Beckett couldn’t find it.’
‘Even if you had, Beckett would have got the truth out of you somehow, and it still would have fallen into his hands,’ Spinner said.
‘It just makes me so sad to think that all your work is gone forever,’ Annalie said. ‘When you tried so hard to keep it safe.’
Spinner was silent for a moment. Then he said, ‘Have you heard of the Stipple-backed Bandicoot?’
‘No,’ Annalie said.
‘They’re little burrowing animals that are native to Sundia. They dig huge networks of tunnels and they like living near humans, partly because we break the ground up and make it easier to dig, and partly because they like stealing our scraps and raiding our cupboards. The really interesting thing about them is they like to collect things.’
‘What sort of things?’
‘Blue things, shiny things, metal, plastic. They take them away to decorate their nests underground.’
‘Okay,’ Annalie said, wondering what this had to do with anything.
‘The Ark has quite a large population of Stipple-backed Bandicoots. They moved in while the Ark was being excavated and they’ve been living there ever since. The staff don’t mind having them around—I think some of them quite like it, although they’ve had to devise systems to stop the bandicoots damaging the collections and breaking into the servers to steal the blue wires.’ He paused. ‘There was another copy of every piece of research. I collected a copy from each of the others and took them to the Ark. We thought hiding them in the Ark’s network would keep them safe. You saw how that worked out. So it’s lucky we had a back-up plan.’ Spinner paused. ‘Those memory chips have a blue casing and a little shiny metal bit in the middle of them, which makes them irresistible to bandicoots.’
Annalie looked at Spinner disbelievingly. ‘You didn’t…?’
‘I took the chips to different bandicoot holes and left them enticingly where they’d easily be found. The bandicoots snaffled them up immediately.’
‘So now where are they?’ Annalie asked.
‘Scattered about under the Ark in various bandicoots’ hoards.’
Annalie thought about this and started to laugh. ‘But how will you get them back?’
‘It won’t be easy, but it can be done. Sola has a way. Something to do with the Ark’s sensors and a rare element in the chips. In the meantime, they’re safely hidden away where no one will think to look.’
Annalie had felt personally, troublingly responsible for the loss of the research, and it had felt like a terrible failure to have been such a central part of its capture and destruction. It was a huge relief to know that the research had not been destroyed after all. And the more she thought about it, the more she liked the idea that it had been gathered up and collected by busy little animals, living their own lives, unaware of the weightiness of the information contained inside those blue, shiny chips.
‘But what if…’ she began.
‘It’s safe,’ Spinner said. ‘Safe among the animals. And one day, when the time is right, maybe someone will come back and get it. But it won’t be Beckett.’
The warehouse still stood, more or less as they’d left it, all those months before. But someone had nailed the doors shut and boarded up the windows, and a sign on the door said ‘Private property—keep OUT’.
Spinner prised open the door and went cautiously inside. Annalie and Will, Blossom and Pod followed him. Graham flew in, shrieking with delight, and proceeded to fly around and around until he eventually landed on the workshop counter, crooning with pleasure.
‘What a mess,’ Spinner said, looking around at the fallen shelves, the litter of nuts and bolts and broken components on the floor.
‘I don’t think anyone’s been here since we left,’ Will said.
‘I thought for sure someone would claim the place for themselves,’ Spinner said.
‘Maybe someone was keeping an eye on it for you,’ Will said. ‘Somebody closed it up and put up those signs.’
Pod was looking around the space with an eager look on his face. ‘Is this stuff all yours?’ he asked.
‘There used to be a lot more of it,’ Spinner said ruefully.
‘Why do you have so much junk?’ Blossom said.
Pod shot Blossom a mortified look, but Spinner just laughed. ‘Junk is in the eye of the beholder. Let’s go out the back.’
They walked through the workshop to the living quarters at the back. This too was in a state of chaos, and it looked like mice had moved in while they were away.
‘Is this where we’re going to live?’ Blossom asked.
‘Yes,’ Spinner said.
‘Why can’t we just keep on sailing?’
‘Well, for one thing, I’m flat broke,’ Spinner said. ‘I need to get back to work so I can start making some money. And for another, you kids have to go to school.’
Will rolled his eyes. ‘What could I possibly learn at school that I can’t learn at sea?’
‘You’d be surprised,’ Spinner said dryly.
‘I want to go to school,’ Pod said shyly.
‘Why?’ Will asked.
‘You know,’ Pod said, blushing.
‘Oh yeah. The reading thing.’ Will was unrepentant. ‘You’re not going to like it, you know. School sucks. “Sit still, pay attention, do what you’re told.”’
‘I don’t want to go to school, either,’ Blossom said.
‘But don’t you want to know how to read, and be good at things?’ Pod asked.
‘Don’t need to read,’ Blossom said. ‘I’m already good at stuff.’
‘You’re all going back to school,’ Spinner said firmly. ‘No arguments. School is not negotiable.’
They all pitched in to help, setting the workshop to rights and building some new rooms on the back to accommodate Pod and Blossom. Spinner talked to Will’s high school about taking Pod, and Will and Annalie’s old primary school agreed to take Blossom.
That just left Annalie.
‘Where do you want to go to school, Annalie?’ Spinner asked.
‘I don’t have a choice, do I?’ she asked.
‘You do,’ Spinner said. �
��I’ve spoken to Triumph. They’ve already agreed to take Essie back. They’ll take you, too, if you want to go.’
Annalie was nonplussed, assailed by conflicting feelings. ‘But—but I ran away. They wouldn’t want me back after that, would they?’
‘They think you’re one of the most capable students they’ve ever seen,’ Spinner said, ‘and they’d gladly have you back.’
‘But I’ve missed so much work,’ Annalie said.
‘You’ve got a lot to make up,’ Spinner said, ‘but you’ve had more on-water experience than most of those other girls will ever dream of. They’re willing to give you credit for that. The real question, though, is do you want to go?’ Spinner waited, studying her. ‘You weren’t all that happy there, were you?’
‘No,’ Annalie confessed. ‘Some of the girls were pretty mean. But that’s not really it.’ She paused. ‘Is it true you were in the Admiralty?’
‘Yes,’ Spinner said. ‘Things were a bit different, then—the Admiralty had had to get bigger very fast and they took me on in engineering. I sailed with them for four years.’
‘And did you think they were good? Or bad?’
Spinner thought about this. ‘They were good,’ he said slowly. ‘Mostly. You have to remember, they were very bad times, and sometimes they had to do things that weren’t very nice or very popular. But mostly, they were a force for good in the world.’
‘But what about Beckett? He went round the world acting like he could do whatever he wanted and nobody could stop him: destroying things, hurting people, and the Admiralty condoned all of it.’
Spinner nodded. ‘I think the Admiralty chose not to know too much about what he was up to, because he was effective. Now it’s blown up in their faces because he went too far, and he’s ended up in a Sundian jail.’
‘I guess the thing I want to know is, which is the real Admiralty? Is it Beckett and the people like him? Or is it Lieutenant Cherry?’
‘It’s easy to think of the Admiralty as this huge, monolithic thing,’ Spinner said. ‘As if it’s a giant with one point of view, doing its thing in the world. But the Admiralty is made up of people, lots and lots of people, all making their own decisions along the way. And any organisation can only be as good as the people within it.’
‘What if the people at the top are all Becketts?’
‘Well there’s one less Beckett there now, isn’t there? And a few less of his protégés too.’ Spinner smiled. ‘It’s easy to say that the Admiralty ought to be different. But sometimes, if you want to make something different, you have to get in there and make it different. Be the change that you want to see.’
Annalie nodded, taking this all in. ‘You think I should go, don’t you?’
‘For all its faults, Triumph is still an excellent school. And maybe at the end of all this, you’ll decide you don’t want to go to university, you don’t want to join the Admiralty, you don’t want to be a part of any of it. That’s fine, you can do that. But at least you’ll have the choice.’
‘Are you saying I have to do it?’ Annalie asked, squirming.
‘We both know I can’t make you do anything you don’t want to do,’ Spinner said with a grin. ‘But you should think about it.’
‘Are you crazy?’ Essie shrieked down her shell. ‘Of course you have to come! I won’t go if you won’t!’
‘I don’t know if I can go back to all of that,’ Annalie said. ‘The uniforms and the rules and the mean girls…’
‘Annalie,’ Essie said. ‘We faced down pirates and cannibals. We are the mean girls!’
Annalie began to laugh. ‘All right, all right! You’ve convinced me!’
And so, as the new term began, Annalie walked once more up the front steps of Triumph College, with Spinner on one side of her, Essie and Everest Wan on the other.
‘Are you sure about this?’ she whispered to Essie.
‘Don’t worry,’ Essie said. ‘If anybody gives us a hard time, I’ve got my slingshot in my pocket.’
And the two girls walked, laughing, in the school doors.
Epilogue
The sky was a deep blue over the vividly green ocean.
From the top of the mast came a ripping cry: ‘Land!’
‘What is it, Graham? Can you see it?’ Pod asked.
Will, Annalie, Essie, Blossom and Spinner each came drifting up onto the deck to see what was happening.
Pod had the binoculars out. ‘There’s land ahead,’ he confirmed.
They sailed closer and closer and the island began to take shape above the horizon, first as a dark shape. Then they began to see trees, and as they drew closer still, they saw the distinctive shape of a tower rising above it.
‘The castle in the sea!’ Will cried.
They all took it in turns to look through the binoculars at the island that had been Will and Essie’s prison, and the strange castle-like structure that rose over it.
‘It’s beautiful,’ Annalie said.
‘I think that was probably a temple,’ Spinner said.
‘That’s what I said,’ Essie said.
‘Castle sounds better,’ Will said.
It was the start of another summer, and the Sunfish was loaded with all the things they’d need for a long, long summer holiday: a generator for power, hammocks to relax in, books and games and plenty of food. They anchored off the shore, and Spinner called, ‘Who wants to be in the first dinghy to shore?’
But Will couldn’t be bothered waiting for the dinghy. He was already throwing his clothes off and diving into the water. ‘Last one to shore’s a rotten egg!’
Annalie and Essie looked at each other, then jumped in after him.
Spinner looked at Pod and Blossom. ‘Come on, let’s race them!’ And the three of them hopped into the dinghy.
And the whole crew of the Sunfish, with Graham on the wing, began racing towards the shore, and journey’s end.
Acknowledgements
There are many people who’ve helped bring this series into the world.
I’d like to thank Fiona Inglis and her staff at Curtis Brown Australia, for the support she’s given me over many years.
Anna McFarlane is both my publisher and my friend and it’s been fantastic to work with her again on this quest. My editors on the series, Jennifer Dougherty and Radhiah Chowdhury, have given me wonderful editorial support with the lightest of touches, and the whole team at Allen and Unwin have been very supportive of me and this book.
I was thrilled to receive the support of Garth Nix and Lian Tanner, two amazing authors whose work I hugely admire.
This book probably would not exist without the inspiration of my daughters Annabelle and Lila, whose creativity, resourcefulness, and refusal to do what they’re told had some influence on the crew of the Sunfish.
And finally, this book most certainly would not exist without James Bradley. He is not just an exceptional writer, he is the best partner another writer could have. He keeps the whole ship afloat.
When Will and Annalie’s father disappears, they set out with their friends, Essie and Pod, on a perilous sea voyage to find him. The motley crew of runaways put their faith in each other, and in a small sailing boat called the Sunfish. In a world transformed by a catastrophic Flood, they embark on an adventure that will test their ingenuity—and their friendship—to the limits.
The crew face off against storms and pirates, but the biggest threat of all comes from the Admiralty, the all-powerful navy that rules the oceans of the world. The Admiralty are supposed to be the good guys, but the deeper the Sunfish voyages into the Moon Islands, the more they realise that nothing is what it seems.
Once more, Annalie, Will, Essie and Pod set out on the Sunfish to look for Spinner. Their only clue is a coded list Spinner left behind, naming four scientists who were once his colleagues on a top-secret project.
When a terrible storm separates the crew and almost wrecks the boat, Will and Essie must use all their courage and ingenuity to try and make their
way back to the others. Meanwhile, Pod and Annalie, travelling in the crippled Sunfish, are captured by pirates, who agree to fix the Sunfish—at a price.
Not all of Spinner’s former colleagues can be trusted. Worse still, their old nemesis Beckett is still on their trail. Can they follow the clues, track down the scientists, and find Spinner before Beckett does?
The Skeleton Coast Page 20