as the days and the sea stretches before us, and every morning brings no sight of land, Gollum can do nothing but trust the knowledge from Reader’s blind books.
“There’s a cross of stars that marks the sky tonight. And a belt that draws a circle around a dagger. Should I helm a little to the west, Master Reader?”
Master Reader! Gollum knows how to charm the old fool.
On calm nights, Reader teaches Gollum the alphabet. My old teacher is more patient with the pirate than he was with me. Gollum uses a piece of coal to make the letters on the deck, and Reader has taught him the alphabet song. Gollum’s voice sinks and rises in the air: “Ela-menna-pee. Queue-are-ess, tee-you-vee …” Over and over. I could scream.
Gollum is quick to learn the twenty-six letters and Reader teaches him how to write his name, and short sentences. To encourage his progress, the old man has given Gollum a journal he found in the Guardian’s trunk. At the end of each day, Gollum writes an entry into what he calls his “captain’s log”. It records all the important occurrences on board, the weather, the navigational details and, of course, the captain’s keen observations of the sea. He keeps the book in a pouch strapped against his stomach. Only the captain may make entries into the log, Gollum tells me. So smug.
Reader says Gollum is the smartest student he has ever taught. “Yes, even smarter than you, Juliet. I wonder how it is possible that this fine mind belongs to a Reject.”
Soon Gollum will be able to read, beginning with nursery rhymes. Reader has already taught him some songs, and Gollum buckles his shoe (one, two), knocks on the door (three, four) and follows Mary and her little lamb all the way to school until I want to slaughter him and his woolly sheep. They are my rhymes. Mine.
And now his. Next Reader will tell him fairy tales, and before I know it, this Reject thief will have stolen all of my stories.
During the day, when Gollum sleeps, I take the helm and keep the seacraft’s course. Today, as the sun begins its descent in the bloodied sky, Reader joins me on deck.
He places a bowl of mango and a cup of water on a crate. “Eat something, my lovely. I stewed the mango as I know you like it, with some chopped strawberry.”
At the sight of the food, bile rises in my throat. My stomach twitches, a tumbling movement. My insides rearrange themselves. Another movement, like feathers dancing in my gut. I place my hand on my stomach and pull myself up onto the railing.
“Perhaps, if you are not hungry, my young captain will have some mango. The rascal is always ravenous after his sleep. I declare his legs are hollow,” Reader says.
I stare unseeing into the shimmering water and count back the days, the weeks and the months to the nights I spent with Nicolas on the roof of the warehouse, waiting to set sail. His soft hands on the base of my spine, my head on his chest. The smell of his hands in my Savage hair – strawberry and the bark of my tree. Love-in-a-Mist. Our sweat drying under the cool gaze of the one-eyed moon, the stars blinking shyly away.
I know then: I am not sick. I am gone down the river. I have tracked the path my mother took sixteen years ago, with a different twist: I fell in love with a Posh, and in a few months I will have his child.
Captain Gollum’s Log
My name is Gollum
Gollum
Gollum
Her name is Juliet
Juliet
Juliet
Beautiful Juliet
3
SEA MONSTER
Reader joins me at the railing. He blinks his gooey eyes at me and gives a shy baby-pink smile.
“I am baffled, my lovely. I have kept faith with my books, and by all my calculations we should have reached home weeks ago. Even the storms could not have thrown us so far off course. And I do not doubt that our friend has carried out my instructions and steered the seacraft by the stars.”
Our friend! My collar bone is healed but I still hobble about, shoulder hunched, my face a mask of pain. I play weak, waiting for an opportunity to shove Gollum overboard or feed him a banquet laced with poison, fit for a hungry rat.
Gollum watches me, eyes peeled like boiled eggs. He wears a waist harness even on the calmest days, and a life jacket for just-in-case. When he eats, he insists that Reader takes the first mouthful.
“Taste this, Master Reader,” Gollum says. “Has Drudge overcooked our meal? Again?”
I wait, and watch him too.
One day he will slip up. And good riddance to him.
Reader continues, ignoring my snort. “I do not doubt my books or our young captain. But I wonder sometimes whether the world has changed. Whether the waters that rose after the conflagration swallowed up the lands that used to exist.” He scratches his forehead. “Or perhaps when the earth flipped on its axis and carved the moon in half, it rearranged the stars in the heavens. Or maybe, just maybe, Juliet, we are looking at the sky from a different hemisphere. Could it be that our world has actually turned upside-down?” Reader sighs. “It is a conundrum, my Juliet, and I have no answers.”
Fear rises in my throat. I am trapped on this sloop with my burden, sailing into a void with a blind old man and a filthy Reject. I should never have trusted Reader. I should have chucked him overboard months ago. He is a useless sack of old dots.
“Could it be, old man, that you have got us hopelessly lost? You, and our fine captain. Could the conundrum be that both of you don’t have a clue what you’re doing, and that we’re going to sail around on this terrible ocean until our teeth fall out or we die of thirst and starvation?”
I sink onto the deck. We will never get back home. Nicolas will believe that I abandoned him forever. And unless we find new land, we will die. Maybe there is only a sea of nothingness, and we are chasing the ghosts of lands that died hundreds of years ago.
The setting sun paints the sea flaming orange and bright pink, harsh brushstrokes against the black canvas. A flash of silver breaks though the surface. Then the ripples on the water settle back into their fiery tapestry.
“Tonight I will have to tell our captain that I fear my books have failed him. That we are lost.” Reader presses his hand over mine. “We will make a new plan, Juliet. We will not give up.”
I pull my hand away from Reader’s and screen my eyes against the glare of the setting sun. There it is again. A flash of silver breaking the water. Now a spear of grey carving a path towards the seacraft.
Stories of terrible sea monsters are told by the Mangerians to keep the residents of Slum City from venturing across the ocean. I never believed their lies, but my eyes do not deceive me. Something is moving in the water below.
Gollum joins us, picking the crust of sleep from his eyes. “Did I hear the beautiful words ‘stewed’ and ‘mango’? Or was it a dream?” His eyes brighten when he sees the bowl on the crate. He stands at the railing next to me and hawks a throat full of phlegm into the sea. “Before I went to sleep this morning I found a book in your library, Master Reader. It has pictures and words, not just dots. Maybe we could read it together tonight? I think I’m up for it.”
Reader claps his hands. “I brought a couple of Juliet’s favourites. The one with the pictures? Yes, that must be Peter Pan. It is about a boy who flies. And a pirate captain who sails a seacraft much like ours called the Jolly Roger. I think you will like it a great deal. We can read it together, my fine captain.”
Master Reader and my fine captain. Reading my book. Mine!
“The Jolly Roger. It’s a good name for a seacraft. From now on my sloop is the Jolly Roger.”
His sloop. How dare he!
The Reject wipes his mouth and rubs his hands down