Shipwreck Island Read online

  ‘The island’s got something growing out of it.’

  ‘A mountain?’ said Seth.

  Ellie frowned. ‘No. The shape’s too regular. Like it was made by people.’ She passed him the telescope. ‘It sort of looks like –’

  ‘A ship,’ said Seth.

  ‘Yeah,’ said Ellie. ‘A huge ship.’

  ‘What’s a ship doing on top of an island?’

  ‘I don’t know. Maybe it got stuck there? But how …’ Ellie’s palms prickled. ‘Wait! Seth, maybe it’s an Ark. One of the four giant ships people used to escape the Drowning!’

  The sun rose as the raft approached, painting the eastern sky pale orange, washing the darkness from the massive structure that rested atop the island. It was almost crescent-shaped, as if the moon had crashed down from the skies above. Ellie and Seth looked at each other – there was no doubt it was an Ark.

  The island itself was shrouded in mist, except at one side, where a volcano jutted out at an angle. Even this was dwarfed by the Ark, which rose and rose until it was a swollen shadow above them. The raft drifted through the humid mist, leaving hot beads of condensation on their faces.

  Then, houses appeared.

  At first, Ellie thought that they were floating impossibly above the water. But, as the mists cleared, she realized they were raised on stilts – a village of wooden homes with straw roofs, connected by rickety bridges and narrow walkways. The mist parted, and sunlight struck the village, revealing a world of bright paintwork: cherry reds and cornflower blues and egg-yolk yellows, and lurid carvings of whales and fish and sharks that poked from the rooftop corners, grinning down at the sea.

  A woman opened her door with a musical clatter of wind chimes, stepping out on to a walkway.

  ‘Morning, Alistair,’ she called, to an old man in a rocking chair on his front porch. ‘Looks like a lovely day.’

  ‘Aye, no doubt. Praise Her.’

  ‘Praise Her,’ beamed the woman. Her eyes glanced down at Ellie and Seth as their raft passed beneath. ‘Look at the state of you two,’ she said with a smile.

  ‘Did you come all the way from Ingarth Island on that?’ said the man.

  ‘Oh,’ said Ellie. ‘I mean, um …’

  ‘Yes,’ Seth said stiffly. ‘We came from … Ingurf Island.’

  ‘Hope you’ve got a place to stay,’ said the woman. ‘You look like you could both use a good bath.’

  ‘We do, don’t we?’ said Ellie, faking a laugh. ‘It must be all that mud we have on Ingarth Island.’

  ‘And a meal for you, skinny one,’ the woman said to Ellie. ‘Though it seems you’ve brought breakfast with you!’

  Ellie followed where she was pointing, and saw a carpet of glittering fish trailing their raft, like a thousand shards of blue crystal.

  ‘Been a long time since I seen a shoal that big this close to the island. Perhaps our fortunes are changing, praise God,’ the man declared. ‘Praise Her.’

  ‘Praise Her,’ echoed the woman.

  ‘Praise Her,’ said Ellie, since it seemed like the right thing to do.

  The raft floated lazily on between algae-covered stilts, beneath walkways and rope bridges. Seth was crouched on all fours, eyes darting from one house to the next.

  ‘We should have kept that spear,’ he said.

  ‘It’s fine,’ said Ellie. ‘We just have to act like we belong here.’

  An old woman drew a trap up from beneath her house as the shoal passed by, laughing at all the fish wriggling inside. She spotted Ellie and Seth and narrowed her eyes. Seth threw his arm out protectively in front of Ellie, and Ellie batted it away.

  ‘Smile,’ she whispered, forcing one herself. ‘Look friendly.’

  Seth gripped the edge of the raft so tightly that the wood splintered beneath his fingers. ‘Ow.’

  ‘Seth, relax.’ Ellie pulled some tweezers from her coat. ‘Don’t worry.’

  ‘Why not? The last time I arrived in a new place, all the people there tried to kill me.’

  ‘Except one,’ said Ellie, plucking a splinter from Seth’s palm. She smiled at him, but he just rubbed at a scar on his arm – a legacy of his interrogation by a particularly brutal Inquisitor called Hargrath.

  ‘It’ll be okay, Seth,’ Ellie told him. ‘We’re together, we can do this.’

  The raft drifted further through the village. Cats stalked overhead, licking their lips as they watched the shoal of fish. One man paddled behind the raft in a canoe, fishing net at the ready, ignoring the looks Seth was giving him.

  Finally, a strip of beach appeared through the gaps in the stilts, the colour of burnt sugar. Golden sandstone buildings hugged the island above it, climbing in rows towards the massive bulk of the Ark. Some huddled close like dear friends, others stood alone, surrounded by colourful potted plants. And trees – actual trees – erupted from the ground, not wizened and emaciated like those few sad specimens that grew in the City, but lush palm trees so tall they sagged over at the top, weighed down by clutches of fat, hairy coconuts. They sprouted between the buildings, and in some places through the buildings, bursting from the thatched rooftops.

  ‘It’s beautiful,’ said Ellie.

  ‘That doesn’t mean it’s not dangerous.’

  The raft washed against the beach. Before them was a large lime-green wooden house. A little girl sat on the doorstep, chewing a blade of grass.

  ‘See – nobody here wants to kill us,’ said Ellie.

  Seth grumbled, glaring at the girl like she might be concealing a harpoon gun. Ellie used the mast to hoist herself to her feet. ‘What should we do with the raft?’

  ‘I suppose we could just leave it.’

  ‘What if someone steals it?’

  They looked at the raft, barely more than a bundle of sticks tied together with dead vines, then laughed. It was hard to believe they’d spent three months on such a dismal thing. They’d abandoned Ellie’s underwater boat after only two weeks at sea, its mechanisms corroded by salt water. She sighed at the memory – it had been arguably her greatest invention, even if it had only worked in the first place because the Enemy had fixed it. They’d left it on a rocky islet, along with the small collection of tools and prized books she’d brought from the City. Now all she owned were the clothes she was wearing, the contents of her coat pockets, and the coat itself: a drab grey thing stitched together from scraps of cloth and sealskin. She pulled it on, despite the clammy heat, comforted by its familiar weight.

  ‘You’re going to be too hot,’ said Seth.

  Ellie gave him a warning look, and Seth nodded in understanding. Wearing her coat made Ellie feel more like an inventor – more like her mother – and, most importantly, it put another layer between the world and the terrible secret she carried everywhere.

  ‘Here you go,’ said Seth, picking up a long, polished rod of wood, which they’d salvaged from the rudder of the underwater boat. Ellie glared at it resentfully.

  ‘Thanks,’ she grumbled, using the cane to lower herself from the raft. She had hurt her right leg while fleeing the City three months before. It wasn’t healing, and Ellie worried this was something to do with the Enemy. Soon after her injury, the god had almost taken a physical form inside her – a process that would have killed her had she not found a way to stop it, with the help of Seth and her best friend, Anna.

  Ellie crossed the beach to join Seth, the sand fluffy beneath her bare feet. Seth was inspecting a tall wooden statue of a woman that sat outside the house. She had purple hair down to her waist, large yellow eyes and a kind smile. Bunches of lilacs grew by her feet, and she wore a chain of wilted daisies on her head.

  ‘Who do you think this is?’ said Seth.

  ‘Maybe it’s the woman everyone keeps praising,’ said Ellie, leaning in close to admire the carving.

  ‘That’s not how you do it!’

  The little girl shoved between Ellie and Seth, kneeling before the statue.

  ‘Thank you, Divine Queen, for bringing the fish and
the flowers and keeping our island safe. Please could you bring me a new puppy and fix Grandma’s hip.’

  The girl looked at them scathingly, a blade of grass still sticking out of her mouth.

  ‘Who is –’ Ellie started to say, but Seth clapped a hand over her face and pulled her aside.

  ‘We shouldn’t ask obvious questions,’ he whispered. ‘If people realize we’re not from here, they might think we’re dangerous.’

  Ellie scrunched up her nose. ‘She’s only little. Anyway, that man asked us if we were from Ingarth Island. And he hardly seemed worried by the idea, did he?’

  ‘It’s rude to whisper, you know,’ said the girl. ‘Especially in front of the Queen.’

  ‘Sorry,’ said Ellie. ‘Um, praise Her,’ she added.

  The girl’s face lit up. ‘Praise Her,’ she said, then bent to pull a wad of grass from the sand.

  Ellie and Seth walked away along the beach, glancing back at the girl, who was kneeling before the statue once more.

  ‘She’s a queen?’ said Seth.

  Ellie nodded. ‘But that girl’s praying to her. In the City, people prayed to the saints, but … did you hear what that old man said?’

  ‘“Praise Her”,’ said Seth, shrugging.

  ‘Before that. He said, “Praise God”.’

  Seth grimaced.

  Ellie checked around to make sure there was no one listening. ‘What if the Queen is a god, like you?’ she asked, excitement tickling the back of her neck.

  ‘How do we know that’s a good thing?’ Seth said, eyeing the statue with a dark expression. The little girl was now gathering daisies, making a new chain that she placed on the statue’s head to replace the old one.

  Ellie had known two gods. One had saved her life, and she trusted him completely. The other had spent three years trying to destroy her.

  ‘What kind are you?’ she whispered.

  Leila’s Diary

  4,753 days aboard the Revival

  I want to cry but I can’t because I’ve got to write this down first. Feels important.

  Blue Eyes wasn’t himself this morning. A seal swam right by his mouth and he didn’t even take a nibble, so I thought I’d see if that old medicine woman could do something about it. I dug my heels in and swore at Blue Eyes until he swam us back to the Ark, on to the sea-soaked platform sticking from its side. I tore my feet from the stirrups and leapt from the saddle.

  ‘Get the Crone!’ I roared, splashing ankle-deep through the water. Timothy looked at me in terror. ‘NOW!’

  He scarpered up the rickety staircase towards the Sky Deck. I knelt at Blue Eyes’ side to check him over. His black skin was scarred and bumpy as usual, but the big white patch on his side was yellow as old paper.

  The staircase creaked and I looked up and saw the ancient woman, a wild cloud of wispy grey hair and a face lined ten thousand times. She had a big hump for a back, and her eyes were a tight bunch of wrinkles, like shrivelled walnuts.

  ‘How’d you get here so fast?’ I said.

  ‘She was already coming down the stairs!’ said Timothy behind her.

  ‘My whale is sick,’ I told the Crone.

  She hobbled towards me on a crutch made from a tree branch. ‘Your whale isn’t sick, child.’

  ‘It is so. And don’t call me child – I’m thirteen years and eight days – don’t call me child.’

  ‘Your whale isn’t sick, old child.’

  ‘Then why won’t he hunt?’

  ‘Because he’s old. Much too old for a whale of his kind.’

  ‘Fine – you’re a healer. Heal him.’

  The Crone closed her eyes intently, like she kept secret knowledge behind her eyelids. ‘Old things must die. This one especially.’

  ‘No!’ I snarled. ‘We are bonded – we will hunt together until I am as wretched and wrinkled as you are. He will not die!’

  ‘My child. He is already dead.’

  ‘He’s not, he’s breathing, look!’ I pointed at his side, which was clearly rising and falling.

  ‘That is not him,’ said the Crone. ‘A new life comes. We must help it.’

  She moved too fast for something so old. I saw a flash of metal, then a thick red slash across Blue Eyes’ side. I raised my fist to strike the Crone, then screamed when I saw what was reaching out from the cut she’d made.

  A hand.

  Shipwreck Island

  ‘Come on, Ellie,’ said Seth. ‘I can smell food, and I’m starving.’

  Ellie lingered, studying the statue of the Queen.

  ‘Mm? Oh, oh yeah, I’m coming.’

  She was about to turn when she noticed something else far along the beach, where the mist still clung to the shore.

  A dark shape, blurred like a mirage at its edges.

  ‘Seth, is that a ship?’ she asked. It was always worth checking whether he could see the same things she could.

  Seth frowned. ‘Yes.’ His eyes widened. ‘With a black sail.’

  ‘It’s not the one you saw following us, is it?’ Ellie asked.

  ‘I … don’t know.’

  They watched as the ship slid up the beach. It was small, built for two or three people at most. As Ellie watched, a tall figure leapt down from the deck and looked around.

  ‘Can you see that as well?’ Ellie whispered. It reminded her all too much of the dark shape she’d seen beneath the waves.

  Seth nodded, squinting through the misty haze. ‘Come on. Whoever it is, I doubt they want to help us.’

  They hurried along the beach to the bottom of a wide, splintery wooden staircase that rose out of the sand, built into the side of a low cliff face. Ellie could smell sizzling tomatoes, sweet vanilla and rose perfume, and hear the bustle of a crowd above. She glanced over her shoulder, and saw the dark figure had stopped further up the beach.

  ‘Are they … watching us?’

  She took Seth’s hand, leading him up the staircase to the top of the cliff. Into a land of music and colour.

  Children darted past, giggling and throwing oranges at each other, then tumbling to the ground in a heap and wrestling across a yellow sandstone street like excitable puppies. Beyond was a market square teeming with shoppers in tunics and dresses the colours of autumn leaves. Every person was smiling or chatting or happily haggling, crowding round an assortment of lace-covered market stalls that spilled over with creased leather shoes, glittering threads of pearls and carelessly piled hats.

  In the centre of the market was a whale.

  It lay on its belly with its tail curving up and its head rising to meet it, glittering with jewels that studded its hide like barnacles, a beard of green and blue paper streamers trailing from its jaw. Its eyes were made of black coal, its body from grey wood. Its mouth gaped open like a cave, and inside was a small orchestra of flutes, lutes and violins. Two women in floor-length embroidered dresses were singing, their hair tied up in yellow ribbons. Their voices vibrated deep in the belly of the wooden whale, as if it was singing. A crowd of children sat rapt in its shadow.

  Ellie blinked, trying to take it all in. How could such cheerfulness exist? Seth took a few careful steps forward, and Ellie watched as his scrunched-up, tightly wound frame relaxed, his shoulders settling, the white of his knuckles returning to brown as his fists unclenched.

  ‘Looks like this island might be everything we hoped for,’ said Ellie.

  ‘What if we’ve been followed?’ said Seth. ‘That ship …’

  ‘Well, what better place to hide than an island full of people? I hid you in an island full of people, didn’t I? From three hundred Inquisitors.’

  Seth stared round the market. ‘It is nice,’ he admitted.

  Ellie breathed in a wave of smoke from chicken legs searing over a fire pit. The smell made her stomach squirm with hunger.

  ‘We need money,’ she said.

  ‘Huh?’ said Seth, watching a woman teeter by on stilts, tossing flowers to children below.

  ‘Money. For food.’

/>   Seth shrugged. ‘I can just catch fish.’

  ‘We need more than fish, Seth. We don’t even have any shoes! And where are we going to sleep? We should get jobs. Then we can get money and blend in. In case someone really has followed us.’

  Seth squinted into the distance, then pointed. ‘Look at all those fishing boats! That must be the port. Come on!’

  The crowd parted to let Seth through, smiling at him approvingly and whispering to each other through half-hidden grins. They didn’t part for Ellie, or even look at her, except to frown. She found this irritating. She caught up with Seth, panting for breath and scrutinizing his appearance. With his unblemished skin, large eyes and symmetrical features, she was forced to admit that other people probably thought him attractive. She found this irritating too.

  ‘Look,’ said Seth.

  They’d reached the top of a hill overlooking a bright ocean dotted with boats. Each one was sleek and as riotously coloured as the rest of the island, sails dyed and hulls splashed with garish murals, so the docks appeared like some water-drenched flower garden.

  ‘We can get a job on one of those,’ said Seth.

  ‘Oh,’ said Ellie, pulling at the tattered hems of her coat sleeves. She pictured them on a boat, Seth hauling in huge mountains of fish, Ellie tangled up in a fishing net, helplessly stuck while sailors pelted her with questions about who she was. ‘Um, they’d never let a woman fish. Even Castion didn’t allow women on his ship.’

  Seth pointed to the wooden jetties stitched between the boats. ‘Ellie, half the sailors are women.’

  ‘Well …’ Ellie raised her cane. ‘What about my bad leg!’

  ‘That woman there only has one leg. Come on,’ said Seth, dragging her down a rickety wooden staircase. The sea was green like molten emeralds, and Ellie spotted tiny glittering fish and blushing coral beneath the gentle waves. There were no spires or rooftops poking above the surface, like in the City – all the buildings here must have been built after the Drowning. Maybe the Ark had crashed into the island, and its occupants had decided it was as good a place as any to build a new home.