Beyond the Knock Knock Door (21 page)

Dawn crept over Michael's shoulder as he returned to camp holding his bear helmet like a bowl. Water from a small rock pool sloshed around inside and threatened to spill. His sister finally woke Luke as the shadows shortened around their stony hideout. Dozens of floating islands hovered above the long-grass plains, which thickened into forest to the west. ‘Here,' he said, offering the water. But when Luke looked around them, startled, he added, ‘Don't worry. We're safe.'

Luke sipped from the helmet then passed it to Samantha, who announced, ‘We have to keep moving.'

‘We need to reach that forest,' Michael said as the air heated up. ‘It should give us shelter.'

‘What about Aurelio?' Luke said. ‘He still might be –'

‘You heard the black harlequin. He's been captured.'

‘We don't know that. He could have –'

‘We're heading west.'

‘But Pacifico's to the east,' Luke said, frustrated. ‘We have to get back and warn Queen Oriana.'

Samantha and Michael exchanged glances. Neither said anything. He emptied his helmet then trudged down the mountain.

‘What's going on?' Luke asked as his sister straightened her coat and sword.

‘The Knock-Knock Door we arrived through is on the other side of these mountains,' she said, falling into step.

‘What about Isabelle? Cavalli? All the other Pacificans? The harlequins are about to start a war!'

‘Just pick up your stuff and move.'

Luke stood his ground. ‘I don't believe this. Yesterday you charged in here, ready to fight a monster. Today, you're running away? After all the help people have given us, this is the last thing I expected us to do – especially you, Michael.'

‘Hey!' she snapped. ‘Don't think for one second any of us are happy about this. But what can we do? We don't have an army. We don't have the skills to beat them. We don't even have a boat. Michael
does
want to help but he's just a kid. We all are. We can't stop a war. We need to go home. Pacifico has to fight its own battles.'

‘If my girlfriend was in trouble, I'd do everything to save her!'

Below them, Michael flinched before continuing down the slope, keeping plenty of distance from his siblings.

As the sun rose, warm winds swirled among the plains. Waves broke on the distant shores and the floating isles rumbled like one giant herd. The triplets spoke little, even when they reached the shade of the forest mid-afternoon. They marched up and down gullies, refreshed at streams and cringed when yellow toadstools
pop! pop! popped!
high into the canopy. Fear kept them moving whenever they ached for a rest.

Discovering trees tied with red rags, Luke, now in the lead, whistled for everyone to stop. They froze until they also heard the low throb of a cargo ship. ‘Slavers!'

Leaves and mulch gusted about them as they rushed behind a boulder to hide. The orange and red cargo ship cruised into view from the east, sweeping the forest with its own sensors. A laser cannon shrieked. A rock exploded and rubble bounced around a fleeing boar. The triplets pressed together, fearing they'd be next.

As the ship neared, Michael felt his armour tremble.

‘W-W-What's g-g-going on?' he asked, grabbing the rock. An unseen force was trying to drag him into the open.

‘I don't know,' she answered, her sword tugging against her red sash.

It felt like an earthquake but the ground wasn't moving. Luke tried his radar again – all the readings were twisted and warped. He dared sneak a look. A giant floating isle headed their way. The captain of the slave ship spotted it too and urgently increased the throttle. The engines glowed bright blue as they
struggled to escape the magnetic pull. Instead of going straight, the ship curved to the right as the isle reeled it in. Two torpedoes fired and blasted the widow rock into thirds. The sudden jolt freed the ship and allowed it to escape, tailed by flying shards.

‘Did you see the symbol painted on its side?' Luke asked. It was a logo of an encircled wild dog – possibly a coyote, wolf or dingo – but moved like an electronic billboard. Every five seconds it silently howled. ‘It's the same one on the crates at the harlequins' warehouse.'

Samantha rolled up her sleeve and showed her hissing cobra. ‘They're not just slavers,' she said, noting the matching style of artwork. ‘They're pirates.'

More trees sported red rags. Thousands more. But there hadn't been any clues as to why. As the rainforest thinned and the understorey died away, they hiked to the top of a bald ridge and found their answer – fields of tree stumps.

‘Who could do this to a rainforest?' Michael asked, spotting several felled logs tied with the red rags.

‘Guess,' Samantha answered. ‘Pacifico has run out of land. All that furniture, timber and paper come from somewhere.'

‘They're locusts,' Luke said.

‘No, that's civilisation.'

Michael descended a trail worn into the ridge's side. ‘It'll take at least half an hour to reach those far trees. Maybe twenty minutes if we hurry.'

‘What if the pirates come back? We can't hide among those stumps.'

‘I don't think we have a choice,' Luke said, his visor scrolling with information. ‘My radar's just gone haywire.'

‘I don't see any more floating islands,' Michael said.

‘There are eight – no fourteen – signals coming straight at us!'

‘I can't see anything.'

‘I know, I know!'

They drew their swords. No matter what buttons he pushed, Luke couldn't pinpoint their attackers.

Suddenly, a Scorned warrior – tattooed and cloaked with camouflage netting – dropped from the canopy armed with a spear. Thirteen more men and boys landed around him, jabbing their stone tips forward. Luke readied to blast off when strong hands grabbed him from behind and wrestled away his jetpack. They quickly disarmed his brother and sister as well.

The triplets stopped struggling when the warriors parted for their chieftain: the lame footman.

Marching under armed escort, the triplets headed north at a brisk pace in the middle of the Scorned hunting party. They avoided the open plains and stayed deep in the forest. Occasionally, the teenage boys scouted ahead of them in short bursts then returned, clicking their tongues. The older warriors fanned out and wrung their spears. They were clearly spooked.

With his hands tied, Michael snuck glances at the
palace footman hobbling beside him. Stripped of his coat, breeches and neck scarf, he wore a loincloth made from boar hair, a woven straw belt, long jade earrings and a fish net cloak matted with leaves. He no longer stooped like a submissive footman but shouldered the confidence of a chieftain. He was broad, toned and imposing. Tattoos not only covered the right side of his face, but his whole right arm and leg as well. A necklace of shark's teeth hung around his throat, and cowry shells bulged under the skin of his chest. Nicks scarred his body, recounting the many battles he'd fought. The most serious injury he'd survived was nasty – most of his left calf was gone, bitten off, it seemed, by the same killer whose teeth he now wore.

Noticing him staring, the chieftain placed his spear tip on Michael's cheek and pointed his face forward.

Samantha had had enough. ‘I'm not going any further until you tell us where we're going.'

‘Move!'

‘No!'

‘I don't have to tell you anything, pirate,' the chieftain said. ‘I'm not your servant anymore.'

He clicked at a warrior, who butted his spear into her back. She bristled but kept marching.

An urgent call sounded from ahead. Trees swayed as a low throbbing bullied the canopy and warned of the slave ship's return.

‘Hurry,' the chieftain said.

Hands grabbed the triplets and pulled them in separate directions. All three screamed, kicked and
struggled, hoping to escape. No way were they going to be sold into slavery! But rather than flagging down the ship's captain, the Scorned dragged the triplets towards the largest trees, pulled open curtains of stiff bark and pushed them inside hollowed-out trunks. Three or four warriors joined them and huddled together, gripping the makeshift curtains against the winds stirred up by the hovering vessel. The throb grew louder and louder until it paused right above them, drumming against their skulls. One moment the ship's radar had picked up blips. The next – nothing.

The slavers lingered for a long time until the throbbing disappeared and everyone cautiously stepped outside.

‘Now will you tell us what's going on?' Michael asked.

‘Soon,' the chieftain replied.

They continued through the forest, spared from the afternoon sun, before stopping at the fringes, which faced a beach. Most of the warriors shared gourds of water as the chieftain cut the triplets free and ordered Michael to remove his armour.

‘Everything metallic,' he said.

The triplets watched as a pair of warriors dug up two long ropes from the sand and hauled them over their shoulders until a wooden trapdoor lifted up to reveal a buried bunker. They stored Michael's armour, Luke's jetpack and their swords before the hatch clattered down again and was locked. When the triplets walked twenty metres away, they could hear their belongings
slam against the trapdoor. Michael felt his civilian clothes being tugged as that strange magnetism linked to his costume kicked in.

‘You realise we're defenceless now, don't you?' Samantha whispered.

‘Yes,' the chieftain said, surprising them, ‘but if I wanted to harm you, my people would have abandoned you to those pirates.'

They didn't speak again for hours. The triplets sheltered in the fringes of the forest, sitting away from the warriors, greedily eating juicy, yellow papayas they'd been handed, increasingly uneasy about why they hadn't decamped. At last, a warrior in his mid-fifties climbed down a tree and clicked his tongue. Concerned, everyone stood.

Specks appeared in front of an enormous, distant, floating island and grew in size. At first, Michael suspected they were sharks, but as they approached they sharpened into a dozen dolphins escorting a giant blue whale.

‘Aurelio!' he yelled.

The piper was in bad shape. He had a bandaged head and an arm in a sling. By the look of the blue whale, both had survived a ferocious battle.

‘A harlequin ambush,' he explained, as Michael climbed behind him. ‘They waited for me near the ruins. I'm glad you're alive, my friend. I tried warning you –'

‘It's okay. For once, it's good to know who to trust.'

Under the twilight stars, the triplets navigated on foot through thick trees and approached a small camp in the middle of the same enormous floating isle. They passed children dressed in oversized clothes salvaged from shipwrecks and a huddle of mothers and daughters cutting up mangoes, pineapples and coconut for a tropical fruit punch. The chieftain pointed for the triplets to sit on the ground before summoning the warriors together and talking to them in their private clicking language. A few metres away, an elderly medicine woman tended to Aurelio's wounds as he lay on a torn couch.

The tribe largely ignored the triplets as it prepared the evening meal and quietly laughed at jokes. The only contact occurred when a young girl offered them hot vegetable soup in a turtle shell, which they greedily drained.

Samantha readied to stand and get answers before Michael held her back. The camp fell silent as women
ushered girls into the trees, and the men and boys sat in a circle around a fire. An elder carried forward a bowl sloshing with hundreds of black dots that the triplets couldn't immediately recognise and placed it before those involved in an initiation ceremony. Four boys aged twelve and thirteen passed to the older tribesmen sleeves woven from thin palm leaves before the elders then picked from the bowl. Between their fingers they held big bullet ants, which they wove into each sleeve, stinger-first. As the ants woke up, they found themselves trapped and became enraged. They stabbed and stabbed as they tried to wriggle free.

The chieftain clicked his tongue and the same four boys stood up. They gritted their teeth as the elders slipped the sleeves over their outstretched arms, and two hundred raging ants needled their tender flesh with burning stingers. As the name bullet ant implied, the pain was like being shot. The boys did not flinch, however. They sucked in the hurt and sweated it out as the men stood, looped arms, sang and danced.

The triplets squirmed. Personally, they would have thrown the ants into the fire and howled with tears.

After twenty minutes of such torture, a cheer erupted and the elders removed the sleeves from the Scorned boys, who clutched their swollen and numbed arms. They had entered manhood. They were now full members of the tribe.

‘They're nuts!' Samantha said.

‘We better not be next,' Michael agreed.

‘I'm glad I'm a girl.'

‘Forgetting something?' Luke asked, stroking his chin.

She reached up and touched her beard. Her eyes widened.

With the initiation ceremony complete, the chieftain moved among his people with humour and respect. He shook the good hands of the four initiated boys, hugged them, then bent down and helped some men clear away dirt covering a steaming hole in the ground. Hours earlier it had been filled with hot volcanic rocks. Removing a layer of banana leaves, they hauled up woven baskets of vegetables and the carcass of a wild boar they'd buried and cooked. They carved up the flesh with stone knives then served it with pumpkin, sweet potato and carrots.

‘Eat,' he said, offering it to the triplets on shipwrecked plates.

They stared at the meal with upturned noses. ‘But it's been cooked in dirt,' Samantha sniffed.

‘Then go hungry.'

He turned away with the food but Michael and Luke stopped him. ‘We'll try it!' Luke said, breathing in the steaming pork.

‘Why do you cook everything in the ground?' Michael asked, accepting a plate.

‘We can't light too many fires here or the enemy will find us,' the chieftain answered.

The brothers tried the meat first before wolfing down the whole lot. The boar was succulent and juicy, and the vegetables fresh and crisp. They stuffed their
faces, grateful for the meal, before Samantha followed suit.

Luke wiped his mouth of the fruit punch then asked, ‘You're a chieftain, right?'

‘I am Tahoke – the last of the Great Chiefs of the Thirteen Tribes,' he said, crossing his arms. ‘Those who welcome you tonight are the remaining free men and women of my people.'

‘You're not going to force us to wear those ant sleeves are you?'

‘No. It's a ceremony only for brave young warriors.'

Both brothers cringed. They didn't need bullet ants to feel that sting.

Michael nodded towards the man's tattoos. ‘Do they mean anything?'

Tahoke angled his body into the light. ‘They are the four stages of manhood. These on my right leg were inked by the elders when I was a boy. They show that I no longer crawl as a baby, but walk among my people. These along my arm were done when I was twelve and remind me of the strength of brotherhood. This on my right shoulder is fatherhood – I carry the weight of my family each day. The fourth on my face is the most important: wisdom. It is only half complete, because Man is not perfect and can never reach full wisdom on his own.'

‘The tattoo on your shoulder,' Michael said. ‘That means you're married?'

Tahoke's muscles tightened. A few women within earshot heard the question and shooed away their children, encouraging them to play elsewhere.

‘Yes, I have a family,' he said. ‘I have a wife and three sons. They are lost to me.'

‘Lost?' Luke asked.

‘Come. I will show you.'

Gathering several warriors together, Tahoke flew them by dolphin-back to the far end of the Weeping Mountains and landed in the centre of an ancient village. It was built of drab, grey stone around a common square and splotched with lichen. Some of the dozen single-storey buildings were shaped like beehives; others were long and rectangular with square columns and peaked roofs. Decades of rain had eroded the battle stories carved into their walls, and the roots of strangler figs had clawed down and crushed what remained of them. No one had lived there for years.

Michael walked among the ruins and touched the rough, furry stones, recalling a similar village he'd seen in a school documentary about Cambodia.

Running feet startled him. The warriors readied their spears as the triplets retreated. Pushing aside the ferns, a Scorned boy appeared, barely four years old. He stared at them and readied to shout behind him when Tahoke knelt and gave him a mango, which he greedily sucked and ate. Handing over a second one, Tahoke asked in clicks where he'd run from. The boy pointed past the trees.

They hiked down a slope, picking up distant voices. Other sounds became clearer too: chipping, cracking and mechanical hums.

The commotion grew louder as electrical lighting
glowed through the thinning forest. Tahoke signalled for the young boy to run along, before urging the triplets to crouch down. They reached the abrupt edge of the forest and gasped. Across a huge pit, Michael, Samantha and Luke witnessed a horror far worse than any monster they could imagine.

Eating into the mountain was a deep open-cut mine. Thousands of slaves swung picks, drilled holes, shouldered heavy baskets of rubble or manned water pumps. Most were brown-skinned; the rest, pale-white Pacificans in rags. They laboured at the rock face or slumped on the zigzagging pathways, awaiting death. Overseeing the mining were modern-day pirates. They threatened, bullied or whipped any slave who slackened off.

‘Welcome to Pacifico's lost city of gold,' Tahoke said.

Michael turned away and retched as the whip snapped down on another worker.

‘There are two more mines on the other side of the mountains. And beyond them – the timber mills. This is what your people are doing to my island.'

‘But they're not our people,' Luke said.

‘Then why have you been helping the Pacificans and not us? Or has the Hall of Heroes forgotten us as well?'

The triplets shrank as a mining ship launched into the night sky.

‘Stay close,' Tahoke snarled. ‘There's more to see.'

They crept further along the edge of the mining
pit, using the darkness as cover. The foulness of sulphur struck them and they covered their noses. ‘Look there,' he added, pointing to a dozen stone buildings similar to those in the ruined village. ‘That is where they hold our families.'

Inside the dimly lit huts, hundreds of women and children sewed expensive gowns and suits, cobbled together leather boots or laboured as dye-makers by stirring noxious-smelling weeds in wooden vats until they ran blue. Outside was worse. Young boys slit open the bellies of sheep and watched as fatty guts plopped into wooden buckets. The small intestines were then removed, milked clean by hand then fumigated in sulphur pits to be later twisted into violin strings. Beyond them, girls gathered together long sheets of spun wool and placed them into wooden tubs full of stale urine. The girls then stepped in and squelched the cloth underfoot for hours to remove the grease and make it soft.

‘That's disgusting!' she said.

‘These are the jobs no one else wants to do.'

‘But they're kids.'

‘Not to the slavers. They're just another means to make more money.'

‘Are they –? Are they –?' Michael began.

‘Yes. The clothes you see are the same ones sold in Pacifico's shops.'

As Michael burned with shame, Luke pointed to a path hewn into the rock face. A young Pacifican man with a blunt nose and cropped messy blue hair refused
to carry any more baskets. A group of pirates descended on him, curling their fists.

‘Cavalli!' Michael breathed.

They all turned away in horror when the inevitable happened.

‘Get us away from here!' Samantha begged.

All three Bowmans remained dumbstruck as the dolphins returned them unseen to the giant floating island.

‘My people you saw are just a small number of those whom the pirates have captured,' Tahoke said as the triplets sat inside the camp. ‘Those who are healthy work the mines. Others who are a threat are sold off-world.'

‘Your family?' Michael dared ask.

The chieftain dug his spear into the dirt. ‘I've been searching for them for two years. No one knows where they are.'

‘Why hasn't anyone stopped this?' Luke said. ‘Like Queen Oriana?'

‘We live at the end of the world. How can your Queen help when she's ignorant of what's happening here?'

‘But have you tried telling people?'

‘Many a time – nobles, merchants, tourists! But after a few days, their hearts forget and their ears no longer listen. Also, there is a long history between our two nations. Too much blood has been spilt in battle.'

‘But someone must have listened,' she said.

‘Yes, and when they complained too loudly, they
ended up in those mines. People seem to grow very quiet when their freedom is at risk.'

‘But many of your people live in Pacifico,' Michael said. ‘They've got jobs. They're not working the mines. Why don't they tell people?'

Tahoke's face darkened. ‘They might as well be slaves. They left these islands before the start of our troubles. Pacifico lured them with its promise of riches, only to treat them like paupers. Now they do the work that the nobles no longer do themselves. They launder their clothes, cook their food and clean their streets. Where is the honour in that?'

‘You work as a footman.'

‘To spy on our enemies and help my people – not to serve the lazy. We need medicine, food and knowledge. I've been smuggling supplies out of the palace for ten months now with the help of a brave friend, whom, I fear, will now be hunted like the rest of my people.'

He looked at Aurelio, who slept.

‘That explains the sack of food I caught you with in the tunnels,' Luke said. ‘You should have told us. If we knew –'

‘I didn't trust you. And I still don't trust you. The Hall of Heroes has lost its way. We must help ourselves.'

‘We're different,' Michael said. ‘We do care. We just –'

‘Didn't know,' his sister finished.

Tahoke rose from his seat. ‘Now you do.'

Michael followed him towards the island's edge, where a ship's bell lay crushed on the rock face. Silver
and purple moonlight salted the waves. ‘How have your people survived this long? Surely the slavers know you're up here.'

‘We move among the islands. The magnetic rock keeps their ships away. We hunt at night, so as not to be seen.'

‘It was a hunting party that my sensors picked up our first night here, wasn't it?' Luke said, stepping into view. ‘Back on the other side of the mountains.'

Tahoke nodded. ‘Your pirate friend almost cost you your lives. You're lucky an elder stopped our hunters filling your bellies with spears and let Aurelio discover your motives.'

‘Then why didn't Aurelio tell us about what's really inside the Weeping Mountains?' Samantha asked. ‘Tell everybody for that matter?'

‘He's a piper – not a warrior. I've lost too many brave men to those haunted shafts, and dare not risk him as well. The monster can have its lair as long as it stays away from my people. Our fight is with these pirates.'

The triplets stared at each other.

‘But the monster isn't real,' Michael said. ‘It's a story made up by the harlequins.'

The triplets explained the secret police force, what they'd found in the Weeping Mountains and the plot to officially invade the Broken Isles. As Tahoke listened, anger fired in his brown eyes.

‘Call a war council –
now!
'

Men and teenage boys stood around the fire, consumed by the same anger as they heard the full
story. Women and children stayed hidden, although within earshot, as the arguments grew heated and more and more talk turned to battle. Michael shook his head until his sister pulled him back through the trees. They joined Luke next to a rusty ship's boiler.

‘This is backfiring,' she said. ‘We're starting a war, not stopping it.'

‘There are only fifty of them,' Luke said. ‘What can they do?'

‘All get killed,' Michael answered.

‘They're crazy if they think they can take on the pirates,' she said.