A dark smudge on the horizon caught her attention. It was out of place, like a fly floating in a glass of milknut juice. Watching the hazy cloud, she absently patted the outboard motor and encouraged it to go faster. The spray stung like tears on her cheeks and the skiff slammed through the low swells. The smudge resolved into a drifting pillar of smoke, slowly dissipating in the still air; in another hour the sky would be dark and the smoke invisible. Smoke on the water usually meant trouble, but fire in the sky would be worse. Shoal slowed the boat as she reached the source, a single charred log floating just under the surface. She wondered how it ended up out here.
Turning the engine off, she let the boat drift, scanning the water for any signs or explanation. A faint voice floated across the water.
“While the Fophler fish appears to be similar in shape and colouring to the Phofler fish, differences can be noted in the dorsal fin shape and mating habits. The Fophler favours one-night stands after which the male actively avoids contact with the female, while the Phofler tends to mate for life, or until one of the pair gets eaten by a predator…”
“City boy?” Shoal called across the water. “Where are you?” Using a paddle she pushed the boat forward until she saw Ascott’s head bobbing above the waves. His head rolled and he waved weakly to his invisible audience with one hand.
”It’s bigger than just fish,” he announced. Shoal stowed the paddle and reached out to pull Ascott on board. A dark purple shape swelled and then contracted under the water. As she heaved Ascott’s limp form up, a giant octopus released him and shot away into deeper water.
“It’s everything…” Ascott muttered. “That’s what drives you mad.”
“You drive me mad,” Shoal said, opening Ascott’s mouth with one hand and trickling fresh water from a milknut bottle onto his half-baked tongue. “Always going off and getting into trouble. That’s twice this week I’ve had to save you.” She stared at his sun-blistered face with gentle concern. Ascott’s earnest fascination with fish seemed harmless until he got himself in trouble like this. She gave him more water, and he seemed to slip into a doze, one arm clutched protectively around an old metal box. Shoal started the boat, turning towards the island where Ascott lived with Tacus, and wondered why her mother saw marriage potential in the strange boy from the city.
The white sand glowed under the moonlight. As the skiff ran up the beach and the engine sighed and relaxed, Ascott opened his eyes.
“Shoal,” he croaked.
“Hey, city boy,” she said.
“They took Tacus.” Ascott sat up, and winced, a hand going to his head. “They kidnapped him.”
“Who?” Shoal scowled in a way that Charlie Meninges would have recognised.
“Pirates,” Ascott said. Shoal let her scowl relax.
“There are no pirates, not anymore.”
“Yes there are. They drive big cruiser motor yachts and are looking for treasure. That wreck we found—they think that it holds a secret. Probably in this box. They were looking for it, but the octopus took it away and then we played Ixnay.”
“You were floating out there for hours. The sun and thirst can make you see strange things,” Shoal said.
“The octopus…it wanted to eat me, but then it came up and kept me afloat. I remember trying to explain to it about the fish. Drakeforth told me that fish aren’t the important thing. It is bigger than fish.”
“What is?” Shoal stepped out of the boat and helped Ascott step on to the sand.
“I don’t know. Maybe the treasure? But treasure isn’t everything. Is it?”
“It could be, to some people. You need to get some rest, and stay out of the sun,” Shoal guided him up the beach and into the cool interior of his bamboo hut. She laid him down on his bed and got a glass of fresh water from the tap that connected to the desalination tank humming away outside.
“Drink this,” she ordered and he did so, draining the glass and gasping as he lay down again. “Now get some sleep,” she said, but Ascott was already unconscious.
Chapter 9
While Ascott slept, Shoal tidied up. The open suitcase made her frown. Ascott had said something about going back to The City. It seemed he was serious.
There wasn’t much for her to do. A few pizza boxes to bundle up for return to Montaban, sweep the sand outside, and Tacus’ drawings to tidy away. She regarded a sample critically. Most of the pictures were the same: an outline in green or blue, with squiggles and lines inside the shape. She rifled through them, stacking one page on the next, noticing that each picture was a repeat of the last. Shoal wondered what could obsess the parrot so much. Ascott said they were amoebas, which he claimed were tiny living blobs that lived in water, which you couldn’t see without using a microscope. A device, she thought, that sounded as fanciful as a horse. Besides, how would a parrot know what an amoeba looked like? The only amoeba she knew of was the island of Saint Amoeba, named after one of the Arthurian missionaries who arrived in the islands two hundred years ago. It was considered sacred now. Visiting the island was forbidden, unless you were a bird or a turtle or a competitor in the annual whale migration race.
The race started on the tiny rock known as Arthur’s Nose and went across the channel to the beach of Saint Amoeba. South of Amoeba and the Nose the channel got deeper, and this was the only way in or out of the archipelago at low tide. Especially if you were a pod of whales, or a ship with a keel.
After sunset the temperature dropped from baking to merely warm, so Shoal put on one of Ascott’s shirts and sat on the porch watching the moon and the waves. She couldn’t imagine living anywhere but on the islands. She had been born on Montaban and had explored every inch of the myriad channels between the islands since she was old enough to handle a boat on her own, which coincidentally was when she was old enough to punch boys like Charlie Meninges in the face.
It was peaceful sitting in the moonlight, listening to the heartbeat of the ocean, the gentle pulse of the waves whispering to the sand. To Shoal the water was a living thing, a vast creature that breathed and moved. She felt as close to it as she did her own family. When she was small, Sandy had told her how people came from the sea and they were still mostly sea water.
“To the sea we return,” he said. It was the day they buried Nana Smith, Sandy’s mother. The old lady had been laid to rest in the traditional way. A service was held in the Exco’s Arthurian chapel and then her body was taken out on a boat. With family present, the old woman’s body was gently floated into the water, and the currents took her away.
Shoal preferred to be in the water than on land. The idea of being away from the sight, sound and smell of the sea was something she could not comprehend. She knew that for most people the sea was a strange and fearful place, but for her it was like a return to the womb.
Shoal stood up. The house was still and quiet; Ascott was asleep and the waves stirred the sand. She walked down to the water, shedding her clothes until, naked, she walked into the waves and dived. The warm water flowed over her skin, making her feel streamlined and fleet as a fish.
The world under the waves was entirely silent, buoyant and still. The gentle push of currents and tidal shifts was easy to ride and they carried her to the edge of the lagoon in one record-beating breath. She broke the surface with barely a ripple and exhaled slowly. Taking in her next lungful of air she dived down again. Her body cutting through the water, she passed beyond the reef and into the stronger currents that flowed like coiling rivers around the islands.
The sea shaped the land as much as the land shaped the sea. The ancient rock lay mostly below the water, keeping it shallow and warm enough for life to get really crazy. The colder deep-sea mixing with the warm surface water carried food through an infinite cycle of wash; where eggs, smelt, or spores found purchase on the rocks, life took hold.
The channel was the only way to leave the archipelago by se
a; everywhere else was too shallow for big boats. With Montaban being the biggest island, it made sense that people lived there and it certainly made borrowing a cup of milknut crumbs from your neighbours more convenient.
Shoal stopped swimming and let the water carry her. The occasional colder current raised goose bumps on her skin and made the return to warmer thermoclines more pleasant. After eight minutes underwater even Shoal’s lungs burned, so she rose to the surface and floated on her back, catching her breath under the stars.
The islands existed as a living body. Everything in the water or on the rocks was part of that living, breathing entity. Shoal knew this with a deep awareness that she could not describe; it would be like asking fish to define water.
Only Ascott was an enigma, even for a boy from the city. He loved the ocean in a different way. Not content to simply be a part of it, he needed to take it apart, see why it resonated with him and somehow understand it in a context that he could put in something as flat and dull as a book. To begin with Shoal had thought he was just odd, and in true Montaban fashion she had taken care of him—the same way one would take care of a seabird that had been blown in by a hurricane.
Like a stormed gull, without help he would not have survived. He couldn’t feed himself, or find shelter or run a boat. She had taught him as much as she could. The pizzas were a source of amusement to everyone who knew about them. That crazy city fella, sitting in the middle of the biggest larder in the world and he insists on eating frozen stuff shipped in from The City, they said. City people eh? they would say and nod over their mugs of java.
She’d never defended him aloud, never told the people who sat around the bars laughing at him to shut their faces. She’d just taken care of him, bringing him his weird food, telling him that it was being charged on his credit stick. Not that anyone on Montaban had much use for credit sticks. Pearls and favours were the common currency. Shoal did some fishing and boat cleaning each week for Old Sam, the teller at the Exco who ordered pizzas in bulk and stacked them up in the big freezer out the back.
“So what is he doing for you?” the grey-haired old-timer had asked her one time when she made her regular pick up.
“Nothing. He’s just here to look at the fish,” she replied, unable to meet the old man’s eye.
“Reckon you’ve gone soft for him, eh?” The clerk’s eyes gleamed with good-natured humour. Shoal shrugged and hurried out of the Exco with the loaded chiller box in her arms.
Just because she liked him, didn’t mean she had to marry him. Her mother was annoying, always asking after Ascott. Asking why Shoal didn’t invite him home for a meal.
“He’s too skinny that boy. How can he be a good provider if he’s that skinny?” she would wail.
“Mum,” Shoal would reply. “Just leave it.”
Ascott could swim all right and he could catch all the fish he wanted. He just chose not to. Shoal didn’t mind that Ascott only cared about the fish. And she’d always known that when he had written about all the fish he thought no one knew about simply because he had never seen them before, he would go back to his home. But now he was preparing to leave early.
Shoal couldn’t imagine leaving the archipelago; she would die like a beached fish in The City.
Chapter 10
Ascott woke up to the sound of Tacus squawking. He lay there a moment, thinking about the pros and cons of teaching the parrot to get his own biscuits from the cupboard. The mess would be horrendous, but it might be worth it for a few more minutes of undisturbed sleep in the mornings.
It was no good, he was awake now. Opening his eyes Ascott sat up, put his feet on the wooden floor and reached for a shirt. Walking out to the kitchen he boiled water for tea and went to the window overlooking the veranda and the beach beyond.
Tacus wasn’t at his usual place on the table. Shoal was sitting there instead, her head on her folded arms, asleep. Ascott stood in the window, regarding the view. Shoal was wearing one of his shirts and her usual cut-off shorts. The light morning breeze stirred her short hair and her sleeping face was the most serene he had ever seen her. Ascott wondered what it would be like to know that kind of peace.
“What?” Shoal murmured, her eyes still closed.
“What?” Ascott replied with a guilty start.
“You’re staring at me,” Shoal said, and began to move with great reluctance as if the chair and table where the most comfortable bed imaginable. Her eyes opened, and she stretched. Ascott went to make the tea.
The gulls screeching overhead sounded like Tacus, from a distance.
“How will we find him?” Ascott said and stirred the leaves in the bottom of his empty cup.
“There’s only one way out of the islands for a boat of that size, and that’s going to be blocked off by whales for the next week.”
“We don’t even know if they are trying to leave. Everything Kalim said suggests they are looking for something here in the islands.”
“Buried treasure?” Shoal gave a snort. “People are always looking for buried treasure. It’s one of the main reasons city folk come out here.”
“They ever find any?” Ascott thought that a chest full of loot might solve a lot of problems right now.
“There was this one fella, Skimpy Gherkin, he made treasure maps. He would draw them, stain them with tea and then leave them in the sun for a few days. Then he would send them off to some city fella who would leave them in old books and things for people to find. The maps had enough information on them to guide who ever found it to Montaban. After that he would lay out a random bunch of clues like, Twenty paces from the shark’s tooth and dig under the sign of the red moon.”
“Did anyone fall for it?”
“Quite a few people, yeah. There were some seasons when we had whole groups of city people turning up with shovels and asking strange questions about local landmarks.”
“That’s kind of cruel,” Ascott suggested.
“Montaban did well out of the tourism for a while. No one took it seriously until one of the maps turned out to lead to actual buried treasure.”
“You’re kidding?” Ascott set down his cup and stared at Shoal.
“True as, eh. A small chest of gold coins that dated back to the olden days when ships would stop over here. Worth quite a bit nowadays. Bound to happen sooner or later, I guess. Lots of old wrecks in these islands. Someone must have buried treasure somewhere.”
“Skimpy must have buried the treasure to get more people to come to the islands.”
“Nope, Skimpy swore till he was blue that he had no idea where the coins came from. Said his maps were all a joke to get tourists to visit. Didn’t stop people looking, though. The city fella heard about the treasure they’d found and rounded up all the maps Skimpy’d been making to search for himself. Plenty of other city folk searched, but they never found much.”
“Did the man from The City find any treasure?”
Shoal shrugged. “No—he took to calling himself Captain Aarrgh and went crazy. The Seaguard went to find him after he started attacking other sailors and they ended up bringing his boat in. They reckon he drowned.”
“Your mum and dad told me about Captain Aarrgh. They reckon he went mad because he found treasure.”
“Maybe.” Shoal frowned, “What kind of treasure would drive you crazy?”
“Maybe there was a trap, some kind of poison that made him go insane?”
“Never heard that theory before.” Shoal finished her tea and started to clear the dishes. “Whale races will be starting today, you going to come and watch?”
Ascott hesitated. The idea of being in the tight press of spectators made his skin crawl, and he desperately wanted to start the search for the blue cruiser and rescue Tacus.
But the thought of abandoning Shoal as she risked her life for a driftwood trophy didn’t appeal, either.
&n
bsp; “Sure,” he heard himself saying. “I’ll be there to cheer you on.” Shoal’s answering smile was brighter than the morning sun sparkling on the water.
“After I win, we can go looking for that boat and get Tacus back,” she said. Ascott nodded and then froze as Shoal kissed him on the cheek before vanishing inside with the breakfast dishes.
On rubbery legs, Ascott retrieved the metal box from his room. The sea had sealed it shut with rust and coral. A few sharp blows with a rock sheared the crusted latch off.
“If it’s not water-tight, whatever was inside will be ruined,” Ascott said.
“Only one way to find out.” Shoal leaned over the table on her elbows, her face alight with curiosity.
The box squealed and resisted when Ascott pulled on the lid. He took a better grip and strained harder. With a final scream of protest the corroded hinges broke and the container sprang open. A bundle wrapped in dark leather and tied with a cord thudded out on the table.
“Fruity,” Shoal said. Ascott nodded. Other than the bundle, the small box was empty. He put it aside and began to work on unknotting the leather cord.
“Here, let me, I’m good with knots.”
Ascott sat back as Shoal pulled a knife and slashed through the leather string with one quick strike.
“What?” she asked as Ascott shook his head. Unwrapping the leather shroud revealed a small book. It looked old, but more importantly, it seemed to be dry. Ascott gently opened its leather-bound cover and slowly read the faded ink aloud. “The Log an’ Jyrnl of Fensa Aarrgh. Capn o’ the Bilgepuppy.”
“Fencer Aarrgh—he was a real pirate. Is there a treasure map in there?” Shoal moved around the table to stare more closely at the faded text while Ascott turned the pages.
“Jany fit’teen. Caught a merchant sloop boun’ for Montaban. Nothin’ on “er cept a brace of hairy fellas. Crew’s spirits lifted when they fig’ud that some of the hairy fella’s were wimmin in disguys. No loot.” Ascott turned more pages, “Jany sick’teen, Calm, no ships. Jany sen’teen, Calm, used upwind whale for cannon target practice, blubba all over deck and drippin’ off sales. Jany hate’teen, Light breeze, Can still smell whale. Doc reckons could use whale spit to make soap and perfoom. Had Doc flogged for insuboar, insoboo for bein’ looney.”
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