“What about the pearls and other valuables?”
Shoal shrugged. “People around here don’t steal. If someone needs something, they ask. We share things and look out for each other.”
“It wouldn’t take much to ruin the perfection of this place, you know,” Ascott said.
“Why would anyone want to do that? If we can’t convert them to our easy-going ways, we can always take them out into the channel, tie a rock to their feet and drop them over the side.”
“Your isolation is your best defence. No one knows how perfect this place is. Even if they did they would never believe it.” Ascott held the door open to the Exco.
“Tourists come—and go. That’s why they are tourists.” Shoal brushed past him and went inside.
The Exco was empty except for a woman stretched out asleep along one wall, her tanned arms wrapped around a wooden horn that might have been a distant cousin to the saxophone. She muttered in her stupor and stirred, making the instrument sigh a middle C note.
The teller was in place behind his iron bars. Today he wore a green visor to go with his starched collar and bow-tie.
“Morning, Sam,” Shoal said.
“Hey girl!” Sam beamed carefully at them. “What can I do for you today?”
“I’m looking for any maps and charts of the islands you might have?” Ascott tried to speak quietly so as not to disturb the sleeping woman.
“Maps and charts, eh?” Sam scratched the white stubble on his dark cheeks. “Don’t know nothing about maps and charts.”
“Nothing back in the file room?” Shoal asked.
“Mebbe…” Sam looked unenthused about the idea of going to check.
“Hey,” Shoal said brightly, “Why don’t Ascott and I go back there and check and you can tend to your other customers?”
Sam and Ascott both looked around the nearly deserted Exco lobby. The sleeping woman lifted one leg and let out a rumbling note a good octave lower than the horn had managed.
“Well, okay then…” Sam seemed unsure. Moving with a glacial slowness he slid off his stool and moved to the swinging half door that separated the staff area from the public space of the room. With a grunt of effort the withered old man pulled the door open.
“It’s been a long time since anyone came back here, there were words…ahh…Welcome to the Export Company Montaban office. Enter freely, go safely and please, no flash photography.” Sam closed the swinging door and executed a slow U-turn. They waited while he crossed the floor and reached up for a cobweb-covered key ring on a dusty hook.
“I thought you said that no one ever locked anything up around here,” Ascott whispered to Shoal.
“They don’t,” Shoal replied.
“I always wondered what this key was for. Must be for the file room, eh?” Sam grinned again.
The hunt for the locked door ensued at a speed that would have a tortoise drumming its claws with impatience. Sam conducted a tottering perimeter search, pausing occasionally to move chairs and cardboard cartons. Shoal and Ascott stepped up to help move the heavier items and most of the lighter ones as well. They found blank walls behind furniture, the humming freezer, coat racks, and piles of driftwood that Sam explained “were briefly considered as a form of currency after the oyster plague of eighty years ago wiped out pearl production for a time.”
“How would that work?” Ascott asked.
“Well, one idea was to cut the wood up into small discs and paint them a silver colour.”
“Did they do that?” Shoal asked, moving a wastepaper bin full of carefully rolled pairs of woollen socks.
“Nope, couldn’t find any paint.”
Ascott came to the filing cabinet. It sat silently with an air of casual watchfulness as if waiting for someone to invite it to share its years of collected wisdom on a range of subjects.
“Help me move this, Shoal.” Ascott crouched down and got his arms around the cabinet. Shoal gripped it at the top and they twisted and turned, walking the heavy thing across the floor. The filing cabinet rattled its drawers, dust puffing from ancient seams in consternation.
“There, there,” Sam said with a soothing pat on its flank. “Just a little house-keeping. Nothing to worry about. You know, this filing cabinet was old when I started here.”
Ascott couldn’t imagine anything older than Sam the teller. He looked like a mummified corpse with a starched collar and bowtie.
“And how old are you, Sam?” Shoal asked with a grin that suggested she knew the answer but liked to humour the old man.
“A hunnert and twenny-two. Born on Migration Day.” Sam grinned at Shoal.
“Sam’s Montaban’s oldest resident. You know he won the Migration Race in his day?”
“More’n once. Course back then there were more whales and they were bigger too. Got so a fella could run the channel without ever once getting his feet wet,” Sam chuckled, a dry rattling sound like dice in a cup at the bottom of a crevasse.
“Shoal came second in this year’s race,” Ascott said.
“So I hear. Fine effort,” Sam nodded.
“A door,” Shoal said, pointing to the wall space behind the filing cabinet.
“Well shovel my shrimp, how long d’ya think that might have been there?” Sam said, scratching his ear.
“Probably as long as the building has been here?” Ascott suggested.
“Nope, this building was built no more’n thirty migrations ago. Weren’t no door here then. “Fore that the Exco was like every other place. Space cut into the white-rock.”
“It must have been. You can’t just build a door in a wall and put a cabinet in front of it without anyone noticing,” Ascott said, peering closely at the door. It was covered in dusty cobwebs, with a large and ornate metal lock plate built into its face, but no apparent latch or handle.
“Try the key in it,” Shoal suggested. Sam lifted the key ring with both hands. Ascott took it and slid the key into the hole. Twisting it, he felt the interior workings of the lock grate against each other like a fist full of pebbles.
“It’s quite stiff,” he said through gritted teeth.
“Let me try.” Shoal pushed in and seized the oversized key in both hands. She twisted until the tendons stood out on her arms.
“It’s a lampet lock,” Sam said with pride. “Haven’t seen one of them since I was your age. There’s a trick to it.”
The old man shuffled forward and put a hand lightly on the key. With the gentlest gesture he twisted it all the way around and the internal mechanism clicked as it released.
“Lampet lock,” Sam said again.
“Just like a lampet on a rock. You have to sneak up on them and ease them off. If you pull too hard, they grip with everything they have and you’ll never move them,” Shoal explained.
“Oh? Well, I haven’t started the chapter on molluscs yet,” Ascott said with something of a hurt tone.
With the key still in the lock, Sam strained to pull the door open. He stepped back, panting, as Shoal and Ascott took over. The heavy steel door creaked as it swung outwards on disused hinges. A smell of stale salt water and the ghost of damp wafted out through the gap. Beyond the door they could make out the dimensions of a small room. Judging from the apparent age and volume of the contents, all four dimensions had been filled to capacity for some time.
“Well…that’s curious,” Sam admitted.
“What is this place?” Shoal said, not venturing into the gloom.
“Some kind of old store room. Sam, do you have any battery-powered torches?” Ascott asked.
“Some what now?” Sam cocked his hand to his ear.
“I’ll see what I can find.” Shoal vanished up to the front of the Exco and returned a minute later with two torches. “They were being used as paperweights,” she explained.
The yellow light banished t
he darkness in its typical fashion. The room was larger than the toilet cubicle on a train, but smaller than the kind of steamer trunk that gives railway porters nightmares.
With curious caution they began to make an inventory of the items found inside.
“I can barely read this,” Shoal complained as she pored over a stack of sheets of stiff paper.
“Is that fish-skin vellum?” Ascott said with awe. “I’ve heard of it, but to actually see it…”
“Heh,” scoffed Sam. “Used to see a lot of it. Never saw no paper from trees back then. We’d scrape the skin of a fish till it was so thin you could write on it. That’s what we did in my day. My old papa had a page press. Big heavy thing, with a screw handle. We’d be up before dawn clampin’ it down on the latest batch of sheets. Squeezin’ the juice outta them an’ trimmin’ ‘em up just so.”
“It’s beautiful,” Shoal said, holding up a sheet so the desiccated scales caught the light in a spray of colour.
“You could boil pages into soup if you were desperate, too,” Sam added.
Ascott took up a sheet and examined under the torchlight. The ink had faded, but he could make out columns of numbers and names.
“This is something Arthurian,” he said. Putting the sheet aside he picked up another one and haltingly read the ancient words: “And on tha sevynth daye, Arthur cayme apon the Malon Farmyr and spaked to hym ov tha glorese ov tha Unyverse. Tha Malon Farmyr offeryd his weres to the Lord, sayeng untoo hym, This shell bee three quarks a pounde. Too wych Arthur denouncyd tha Farmyr as a theeph who cometh betwixt tha oweres ov sunryce and sunsette. His pryce per pounde, beyng robbree dun in syt of tha daye.”
“Old copies of Arthurian writings?” Shoal asked. “Fruity…”
“Must date back to when the Arthurian missionaries came blunderin’ through here,” Sam said. “Oh sure, folks pay attention on the right days, and toss a coin to the bearded ones. But they still follow the old gods in their hearts.”
“But why would someone hide Arthurian Tellings in a secret store-room?” Shoal asked, effectively walking up to the elephant in the room and slapping it on the rump.
“What else is in here?” Ascott wondered as they carried stacks of fish-vellum papers out into the light. Excavating the paper revealed wooden chests and statues of various shapes, sizes and materials.
“Oh! It’s Old Noodle-Nose!” Shoal exclaimed with delight, hefting a squat statue of a humanoid figure with a head that appeared to have been inspired by an octopus from a mad sculptor’s nightmare.
“Who?” Ascott said, regarding the strange statue with unease.
“Old Noodle-Nose—he’s a sea-god, he spends his time sleeping in his castle at the bottom of the ocean and then once a year he rises and delivers gifts to all the good children.”
“Just the sort of thing the Arthurians disapprove of,” Sam warned.
“The Arthurians disapprove of giving gifts to children?” Ascott wrinkled his nose.
“No, the idea of worshippin’ strange idols. It doesn’t fit with their belief system. They used to be a lot more adamant about it,” Sam said, running a finger across his neck in a slicing motion.
“So maybe someone hid all these things in here because they were afraid the Arthurian missionaries would burn it all if they found it?” Ascott rummaged some more and lifted a wooden spear with three thin points at the end.
“Ritual fishin’ spear,” Sam said. “For ensurin’ good luck on a fishin’ trip.”
Further digging revealed statues of the laughing figure that the Smiths had painted on their wall, a miniature fishing net that Sam confirmed served the same ritual purpose as the spear, and a delicately crafted model of an outrigger canoe, small enough to fit in Shoal’s hand. Ascott found a large vellum painting that had escaped their earlier excavations.
“Maybe it’s a museum,” Ascott said, regarding the artefacts stacked up around them. He lifted the delicate vellum sheet and let the torchlight play across it. The yellow light caught a painted image, now faded with age, showing various figures sitting around a table in some kind of cave-like setting bathed in silver moonlight. They appeared to be playing a card game. Arthur was dealing; to his right was the brown-skinned laughing figure, who had an expression of deep focus on the cards in his hand, and next to him was Old Noodle-Nose, apparently an early riser when a card game was scheduled. Next to the octopus-headed god was a woman with a body of transparent silver whose lower half was hidden in water. The final player was a rough-looking bearded man whose mouth snarled with filed teeth and whose hands were crab claws.
In the centre of the table was a large fish made of gold. It took the form of no species that Ascott could recognise, but it was clear that the golden fish was the prize for which the gathered gods were competing.
“Pysces o’ Fayte.” Ascott read the crudely painted letters at the bottom of the tapestry. “Pisces of Fate?” he repeated.
“Ne’er heard of it,” Sam said.
They laid the vellum tapestry aside and opened the wooden boxes that were the only things remaining unexplored. Each crate revealed more carvings and figurines. There were carved wooden bowls with embossed fish designs, a strange puppet made from chunks of coral with string holding the bits together in such a way that they could be moved to simulate walking, and the long-dried remnants of pieces of burned fish and fruit stuck to a tarnished metal plate.
Ascott wiped the sweat from his eyes. The air in the room was close and stuffy. “What if this is a shrine? Some kind of chapel?”
“Someone set this up to worship all the gods?” Sam said from his position on top of a crate of shells that had been polished until they glowed in an iridescent rainbow.
“It’s the fruit,” Shoal said. “Totally the fruit.”
“Someone really wanted to cover their bets,” Ascott said.
“Ne’er seen none of it before,” Sam reminded them.
“We still haven’t found any maps or charts,” Shoal said, bringing the conversation back on topic. “Someone’s been doing a lot of drawing, but they haven’t drawn a map.”
Ascott wiped his face. “Well, you know where all the islands are, and Tacus’ drawings will tell us where to go once we get there.”
Shoal gave Ascott a look. “I don’t know where all the islands are. There’s too many of them for anyone to know each one. Besides, Nana Smith used to say that the islands move.”
“The islands move?” Ascott felt his credulity creaking under the strain.
“Yeah. They move. At night. When no one’s looking.” Shoal’s tone warned Ascott to not question her Nana’s wisdom further.
“That would make sense,” Ascott said carefully.
“What do we do with all this stuff?” Shoal gestured to the piles of fish-skin and crates of religious artefacts.
“Ne’er mind it. I’ll have a fossick,” Sam said and ushered the pair to the door.
“If you find anything about the treasure of Captain Aarrgh, put it aside,” Ascott said.
“No worries, lad.” Sam firmly pushed them out into the Exco lobby and let the half-door swing shut.
Shoal and Ascott hurried out into the sun, leaving Sam to start returning the papers and carvings to their strange storage space.
Chapter 16
After collecting Tacus, who was still nursing his hangover, they boarded Shoal’s boat and headed out of the port to collect the various drawings that were stuck to Ascott’s fridge.
Entering the island lagoon, Ascott scrambled to his feet in the narrow boat. “Ohh no! No! No!” he wailed as the remnants of smoke drifted across the water from the burned remains of his house.
It wasn’t until they landed on the beach that they could truly accept what their eyes were telling them. The three-room bamboo hut that had stood, in Shoal’s words, “for quite a while,” now floated across the lagoon in blac
k flakes and dying embers. A dark patch on the sand showed where it had stood, and the milknut trees that grew at one end were scorched and grotesquely stunted. Only the metal appliances and water desalination tank remained intact, though all were stained with soot.
“Who…” Shoal said, tears streaming down her face.
“Kalim Aari and his crew,” Ascott whispered. Everything he owned had been in that building. “My research. My notes. The encyclopaedia,” he said weakly, the thud of realisation hammering down on his skull.
“Pluckerth,” Tacus squawked from his spot on Ascott’s lap.
They got off the skiff and walked up the beach. The ashes of the hut were still smouldering. Ascott kicked sand over a few small fires. Treading carefully, he tossed aside piles of ash and bamboo embers. “The box is gone,” he said.
“They found the old book?” Shoal looked dismayed.
“Aaarrgh!” Ascott screamed at the sky with clenched fists.
Shoal waited till he had gotten it out of his system. “You can stay with us. Mum and Dad will be fine with that.”
“Thanks. We need to find that treasure. There’s no telling what they might do if they think we have information that we are not giving them.”
“So we find the treasure, and then what? The pirates steal it away?” Shoal asked.
“No, we find it and keep it a secret until they give up searching. Then they leave and never come back.”
“We hope they leave and never come back,” Shoal said.
“They will leave. I’ll make sure they leave,” Ascott kicked another foot’s worth of sand over the smouldering pile of his house and turned his back on it all, walking back to the boat.
The return journey to Montaban was taken in silence. Ascott sat in the bow, brooding, while Tacus wrapped his near-naked wings around himself and scowled at everybody. Shoal didn’t know what to say. The idea of someone deliberately burning down your house was beyond her comprehension.
Ascott refused her suggestion to report the arson to the Seaguard. Instead they went to the Smiths’ house, where Palm made tea and insisted everyone have a second helping of her Migration Day soup.
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