PathFinder (9 page)

Jerra had to be stopped from going after Annar. “Don’t,” said Nicko, grabbing his arm.

“You will put her in danger if you go after her,” Snorri told him sternly.

Nicko and Snorri hurried them on, heading for a large, weather-beaten red boat called
Adventurer,
moored with the bigger fishing boats. In seconds they were on board and Snorri was casting off the mooring lines. As they sailed off from the quay, Jerra had to watch his beloved
Skimmer
– along with
Swan
– being towed away by the launch. But what was even worse was seeing Annar marched off to the Quay Office, her slight figure dwarfed by the prancing OutPost officials with their ridiculously tall white wigs.

From across the water came the conversation of the two sailors towing
Skimmer
and
Swan
.

“No escape for them now,” they said, laughing. “Stupid Fish Slime.”

The Lemonade Stall

The
Adventurer
was moored
at a jetty in the creek safely past the OutPost, and Nicko was cooking breakfast. Up on deck Snorri was showing their Visitor Pass to a pair of officials who had arrived as soon as they tied up. Down in the cabin, Oskar’s stomach was rumbling loudly.

Over breakfast – a deliciously heavy soup of beans and fish with crusty pieces of cheesy bread floating in it – they exchanged stories. Snorri told them how she had met Nicko in his country across the water, and how after a few years she had gone back home to the Land of the Long Nights. Nicko told them about his long voyage to find Snorri and that she was now coming back to his home – which he called the Castle – where they planned to get married. Tod thought this was very romantic indeed. Oskar thought it was a long way to travel just to find a girl, but he knew better than to say so.

Then it was the turn of the PathFinders to tell their story. Tod did the talking while Nicko and Snorri listened increasingly sombrely. She explained about Ferdie, the Garmin and Aunt Mitza. And the more she explained, the worse Tod thought things sounded. By the time she had finished, Tod was feeling seriously scared. A glance at Oskar told her he felt the same.

Jerra, too, looked serious, but he was thinking about Annar. What would she think of him, watching her being taken away and doing nothing about it? And without Annar, they did not know where to find the
Tristan
.

There was a lemonade stall set up at the end of the jetty run by a big woman with a friendly smile. After breakfast, Tod and Oskar decided to ask the lemonade seller about the
Tristan
. Tod made Oskar stay in the sun while she ventured into the shadows of the awning. She handed over a couple of copper pennies and the stallholder took two thick green bottles out of a tub of ice and gave them to her.

“Excuse me,” Tod said. “We are looking for a ship. She’s called the
Tristan
.”

The woman frowned. “The
Tristan
?”

“Yes. We have an, er, appointment there. I wonder if you know where –”

The lemonade seller leaned so close that Tod could smell her sweet, lemony breath. “Look, ducks, here’s some advice. If you have an appointment on that ship,
don’t keep it
. Go home. Got that?” Suddenly she screamed out, “Get off, you vermin!
Get off!
”

Oskar froze. He’d been discovered – but how? He was standing in full sunlight. He turned to run but Tod grabbed him. “No,” she said. “It’s that. Look.”

A small monkey wearing a red jacket was leaping across the pile of lemons, skillfully avoiding the lemonade seller’s swipes. It picked up a lemon and then jumped into the sugar barrel, scooped up a fistful of sugar and crammed it into its mouth.

“Filthy, filthy animal!” yelled the woman. She lunged at the monkey and set the pile of lemons tumbling to the ground. The monkey screamed with laughter and ran off.

“Tod!” said Oskar. “Look. Look what the monkey’s got!”

“What?” said Tod, who was busy picking up the lemons and handing them back to the lemonade seller.

“Thank you, ducks,” said the woman. “You see, nothing but trouble comes from that ship.”

“Tod!”
Oskar said urgently.

Tod ignored him. “So,” she asked the lemonade seller, “is that where the monkey’s from – the
Tristan
?”

“Yes, ducks. And it’s not the only filthy creature on board, either.” She leaned forward confidingly. “There are abomin­ations on the ship.
Abominations
.” The woman rolled the word around her mouth like a sour lemon.

“Sorry,” Tod said, looking at the fallen lemons, “but we have to go now.”

Oskar was impatiently hopping around in the sun. “Did you see what was on that monkey’s arm?” he said.

“No, what?”

“It was
Ferdie’s purple ribbon
.”

“Oh, Oskie!” Tod spotted a flash of red scuttling through the stalls. “There it is! After it!”

Oskar dithered. “But what about Nicko and Snorri? They won’t know where we’ve gone.”

“There’s no time,” said Tod. “We have to follow the monkey.”

Snorri saw them go. “They are chasing a monkey,” she said to Nicko as she climbed down into the cabin. “They are a little peculiar, do you not think?”

The Monkey

Following the monkey was
not as difficult as Tod had feared. As it scampered along the dusty path beside the creek, people leaped out of the creature’s way. Tod noticed that many of them crossed their index fingers against each other and held them in front of their faces, making the seafarer’s sign to ward off the Evil Eye.

Suddenly the monkey sat down and bit into the lemon. It leaped up squealing and hurled the offending fruit out into the creek.

Oskar chuckled. “Serves it right,” he said.

The monkey dropped down off the path and set off along the sand uncovered by the low tide. The flash of its red jacket against the dark yellow was easy to see, and Tod and Oskar jogged along the path keeping pace with it. They had left the market behind and the creek was now bordered by a dense wood, which curved into a steep left-hand turn ahead. As they rounded the bend, Tod and Oskar no longer had any need to watch the monkey. In front of them lay a beautifully elegant ship, her paintwork shining blue and gold. Her white sails were neatly furled, her woodwork shone, her ropes were perfectly coiled and the line of windows in her broad stern – their blinds down – gleamed in the sunlight. And just below the stern rail, proud curlicues of gold proclaimed the ship’s identity:
Tristan
.

Tod was shocked. “But … she’s
beautiful
.” She had been convinced that somehow the ship would show the evil that lurked within.

Oskar, too, was dismayed at his inability to read the ship. He had been convinced that as soon as he saw the
Tristan
he would feel that Ferdie was close by. But Oskar felt nothing at all. His twin could just as easily be thousands of miles away on the other side of the world.

Down in the deep cut of the creek, the monkey was scampering towards the ship. Her blue hull reared up like a cliff face and they watched the monkey run into the shadows of the ship’s overhang.

“Look!” said Tod. “There’s a rope ladder for the monkey!”

“We could use that to get on board,” Oskar whispered.

There were some ivy-clad ruins deep in the shadows of the trees. In an old, eerily dark archway with the figure
IV
carved into it they put on their
Tristan
tops.

“This is some kind of tunnel,” whispered Tod.

Oskar peered into the depths of the archway. “Yeah, you’re right.”

“Can you see a spooky white mist way down there?”

“Weird,” said Oskar with a shiver.

“Yeah,” said Tod. “Let’s go.”

The Prisoner

Balanced at the top
of the rope ladder, Oskar peered into the ship. It was just as Annar had said. The only person on deck was a sailor guarding the gangplank on the far side, and he was facing away. Oskar looked down at Tod and gave the PathFinder “OK”
sign. With a movement as sinuous as if he were tracking dune rats, he pulled himself up over the gunnels and slithered silently down on the deck, which was warm and smooth to his bare feet. He crouched behind a raised hatch and waited for Tod.

Tod was up the ladder as fast as the monkey. In thirty seconds she had slipped over the gunnels and landed lightly beside Oskar. They began to crawl slowly forward, keeping hidden behind neatly stowed coils of rope, upturned boats and a stack of packing crates. Soon they reached a long, raised skylight, which concealed them from view and allowed them to head fast for the open cargo-hold hatchway that Annar had described.

The cargo-hatch ladder took them two decks down into hot, stuffy gloom. As they descended they smelled something nastily familiar – the damp-dog stench of Garmin. As Tod and Oskar crept warily off the ladder, they saw three large cages in the shadows. Each contained a Garmin. The creatures got to their feet, their eyes glinting yellow out of their broad, white faces, their monkey-like front paws gripping the bars. They opened their mouths to show a row of flat, white teeth and two long, tubular fangs from which thick spittle was dropping in a shining thread. One of them flicked out a lengthy, flat, forked black tongue.

Clicker-click-click. Click-click.

“C’mon,” whispered Oskar.

Tod and Oskar dropped down the hatchway into the lowest cargo hold. There were no portholes here, and all Tod could see was the sheen of Oskar’s hair. She took a light stick from her pocket and bent it. Its soft green light showed many more cages lining the sides of the hold.

“They’re empty,” whispered Oskar, who could see much better in the dark than Tod. “And they don’t smell of Garmin.”

A horrible thought struck Tod. “You don’t think they keep
people
in these?” she whispered.

“I dunno,” Oskar said miserably. He couldn’t bear to think of Ferdie imprisoned like a dog. “Ferdie,” he said in a hoarse whisper.
“Ferdie.”

A faint rustle of straw from somewhere in the darkness set Oskar’s heart pounding. “Ferdie?”

There was no response. “Did you hear that?” Oskar whispered to Tod.

Tod nodded. They crept slowly along the dark, silent row. At every cage they stopped, and the eerie green light from Tod’s light stick lit up no more than rough wood and straw. They headed forward towards the prow of the ship and at the very last cage, by the forward bulkhead, a voice said,
“Hish!”

“Who’s there?” whispered Oskar.

“Hish. Hish. Water.
Water
.” The voice was harsh and parched and Oskar knew there was no way it belonged to Ferdie. Tod’s light showed a man sitting cross-legged on the straw, a thin hand gripping the bars. He stared at them, sizing them up. “Water,” he whispered.

From his backpack, Oskar took his precious bottle of lemon­­ade and handed it to the man. The man fumbled awkwardly with the top and Oskar realised with a shock that he had only one arm. Oskar reached in and flipped the top open. The man drank greedily, gulping down the liquid while Oskar and Tod exchanged glances, both imagining Ferdie in the same condition. The man finished drinking and handed the empty bottle back to Oskar.

“I thank you. I thank you.”

“Can we help you – can we get you out?” asked Tod.

“Out?” The man’s wide eyes stared at them, shining in the dim green light. As the water and salts from the lemonade spread to his parched brain he began to think once again. And he realised that the two children in front of him were not the regular crew. And they were as desperate as he was.

“Aye, ye can. Bolt at the side. Simple mechanism. Release it and the front slides up.”

The front of the cage slid open easily and the man crawled out. He stood up slowly and painfully – he had not stretched out straight for many days. He looked at Tod and Oskar. “My heartfelt thanks to ye,” he said. “Samuel Starr, at your service.” He bowed his head.

“Are you the only one here?” asked Tod.

“In these pernicious cages, I am the only one left,” he said, running his hand along the bulkhead, searching for something. He grinned. “No use to them with but one arm.”

“Oh, Oskie,” Tod whispered miserably. “I was so sure we’d find her.”

Oskar was too desolate to speak.

Clink
. Something metallic fell to the floor. Samuel swore.

“I beg your forgiveness for my foul words,” he said. “Please, I was trying to discover a key they keep hanging here on a hook. But it has fallen. Can you see it with your light?”

With the glow of her light stick, Tod found a large iron key lying on the floor. She handed it to the man, but he waved it away. “I pray you do it, for my hand is shaking still. Place it in the lock there.” He pointed a trembling finger to what Tod and Oskar could now see was a small door in the bulkhead – the entrance to the chain locker, the place deep in the prow of a ship where the anchor and its chain were normally kept. In the right-hand side of the door was the dark shape of a keyhole.