Phoenix Burning (30 page)

Hiko frowned. “What number?” He twisted his arm to look.

Hideaki pointed to Hiko’s tattoo. “That one.”

“That’s not a number,” Toby said. “It’s lines. I’ve seen it.”

Hideaki smiled. “It’s Japanese – a multiplication problem. Fifty-three times three hundred and eighty.”

“Twenty thousand, one hundred and forty.” The captain strode into the mess hall, answering the problem as he crossed to stand in front of Hiko. “Why did you say you have that tattoo?”

“It matched my father’s,” Hiko said in a small voice.

Barnaby folded his arms and frowned. “Tell me about your father.”

Hiko hunched. “He died when I was little.”

“What else do you remember?”

Hiko clenched his fists, unwilling to speak.

“They were travelling when he died,” Toby supplied. “Isn’t that right?”

Hiko nodded, keeping his eyes lowered.

“Where were you going, Hiko?” Barnaby pressed.

“I don’t know,” Hiko wailed. “I was
little
. We were going somewhere
safe
. He’d been away, but he came back for us.”

“Back from where?” Ayla asked, suddenly interested.

Hiko glared at her. “He was a fisherman – gone for ages at a time, that’s all I remember.”

“Hiko.” Barnaby lifted the boy’s arm in careful fingers, turning it one way and the other to look at the tattoo. “Is it possible that your father found the island?”

“That’s where he was taking you!” Toby leaped to his feet. “The tattoo marks the coordinates.”

“I’m going to fetch Dee.” The captain ran from the room.

“We’ve found it,” Ayla breathed.

“
If
they’re coordinates,” Dee said, turning Hiko’s arm back and forth in the light of the lamp, “the island is nowhere close.”

Toby was dying to know how she had stolen the inverter
back from Nell, but the discovery of the meaning behind Hiko’s tattoo had swept everything else away.

“Where is it?” the captain pressed.

“See here.” She pointed to two small arrows in Hiko’s tattoo. “I’m guessing these indicate direction so, assuming the coordinates are 20 degrees north and 140 east, it puts the island … here.” She opened her atlas and pointed. “About 750 miles from the east coast of Japan.”

Toby leaned in. Her finger rested on some writing. He nudged it aside. “The Dragon’s Triangle,” he read.

Arnav pushed through the gathered crew. “I’ve heard of that. We don’t want to go there. Dragons live there – and devils.”

Peel nodded agreement.

“Really, Peel, you’re superstitious?” The captain frowned.

Dee turned to the back of the Atlas. “There’s something here about it. It’s been marked as a danger zone for shipping since 1950. There’re undersea volcanoes.”

“Which explains the dragon stories.” The captain nodded.

“And might have caused the island to rise,” Toby cried excitedly.

“It’s not just volcanoes.” She traced the words. “Magnetic anomalies, whirlpools, thick fog, sudden storms.
It’s practically unnavigable.”

Toby’s eye fell on the map, tucked into the back of the Atlas next to Hiko’s attempted translation. It seemed years ago that he had last seen it. He pulled it carefully from the book and turned it over.

“Avoid the fast mist and take three swift turns around the white doom spiral,” he muttered.

“Let me see that,” Peel snatched it from him.

“Careful,” the captain warned. “It’s meaningless, but that doesn’t mean we’re going to throw it out.”

“It isn’t meaningless,” Toby said slowly. He saw Ayla, listening intently from the back of the mess hall. “Don’t you see?”

The captain shook his head.

“The
white doom spiral
,” Toby pressed. “It’s a whirlpool!”

“Ashes, he’s right,” Dee murmured. “And the fast mist – that’s a sudden fog.”

“So it means ‘avoid the sudden fog or you’ll be taken three times around the whirlpool’.” Dee jumped to her feet. “This isn’t a map, it’s
instructions
. There are a dozen haikus here. Taken in order they’re a guide through the Dragon’s Triangle.”

“Did your father have a map?” Toby whirled on Hiko.

Hiko shook his head. “I don’t know. When the trader sold me at the slave market, he said he’d get a few pennies
for all Father’s things, too. He didn’t leave me with anything.” He ran his fingers over the tattoo.

“
That’s
why the Tarifan port master had the map.” Toby was almost jumping in his excitement. “He bought it from the trader when he bought you. It
was
your father’s, Hiko. Your father knew where the island was and he was taking your family there.”

“And now we have it.” Dee added. “Permission to set a course, Captain?”

Ayla stood on the deck of the
Phoenix
and watched the
Banshee
approach. “Nell’s coming,” she said.

Toby touched her bandaged hand with his own wrapped fingers. “It’ll be all right, the
Banshee
’s not wailing.”

Ayla laughed bitterly. The wind shifted her hair around her face and she made no move to push it away. “I’ll have to go back,” she said eventually.

“I know.” Toby leaned closer. “I wouldn’t ask you to stay.”

“Even though I know the coordinates?”

“Even though.” Toby smiled wryly. “You might know where the island is, but you can’t translate your copy of the map. Dee said the sea was unnavigable without it. We’re not worried.”

Ayla leaned on the railing. “We can just follow you.”

Toby pulled Ayla around to face him. “You can try.” A shout from the
Banshee
told Toby they were within hailing distance. “Part of me hopes you succeed. An island won’t be fun without you.”

Ayla’s eyes widened as Toby took her face in his hands and kissed her.

The breeze caressed them and salt foam danced as the
Phoenix
dipped into a wave. Toby didn’t care that they had an audience. Ayla’s arms snaked around his neck and he deepened the kiss.

They were pirates. They had today. Tomorrow would take care of itself.

Japanese multiplication works with lines. For example, if you want to work out 2 x 2 you draw two lines intersecting two lines and count the places they cross:

If you want to work out 23 x 2 you draw 23 as two lines, then a gap, then three lines. You then draw two lines the other way crossing them, as before. As you can see, we now have two sets of intersecting points, a group of 4 and a group of 6.

To work out a bigger number, such as 32 x 21, you will have even more intersecting groups. These need to be grouped together according to hundreds, tens and units as below:

With even bigger numbers you have to start carrying units across when you add your groups. Here is 132 x 16: the answer is not 192,012! When the intersected lines move into double figures you need to start carrying figures across, working from right to left:

Here is a table to show the steps you need to take when you have answers in double figures. Don't forget to work from right to left!

This is what Hiko's tattoo looks like:

The pirates work out that the arrows signify compass points – north and east. The lines of Hiko's tattoo use the Japanese multiplication system to encode the coordinates for the island that Hiko's father found. Here is how you work out those coordinates from Hiko's tattoo. The dotted line is used to signify zero.

Once Hideaki has pointed out that Hiko's tattoo represents the number 20,140, the pirates puzzle over its significance. It is Toby who figures out that the number is in fact the coordinates 20 degrees north and 140 degrees east.