Daughter of the Deep(37)

Once I’m dressed and back in the cabin, I curl up in my bunk again. I gulp down a couple of painkillers and press the hot-water bottle against my abdomen.

Yellow spots of pain dance before my eyes. What feels like metal grabber arms continue to clamp my gut.

Top trots over and kisses me on the nose. He wants to help.

‘YOU’RE NOT GOING TO DIE,’ Ester tells me.

I laugh, which hurts. ‘Thanks, Ester. I always get through this.’

‘NOT YOUR PERIOD,’ she says. ‘I MEAN ON THE ISLAND.’

‘Volume, babe,’ Nelinha says.

‘Sorry.’ Ester sits at the table and begins flipping through index cards. ‘I’ve been writing down all the secrets I can remember. All the stuff I wasn’t supposed to tell you. It’s here somewhere.’

‘Ester has been busy,’ Nelinha tells me. ‘We’re just going to be sure to keep these cards safe from now on, right, Ester? We won’t leave top-secret notes lying around where anyone can find them?’

‘I put them down in the kitchen for a minute,’ Ester confesses. ‘While I snuck a cookie. It’s fine. Nobody saw.’

Aha. So I’m not the only chocolate-chip-cookie thief. If the crew mutinies, Ester and I will both have to walk the plank.

When I first realized Ester had such a great memory, I asked her why she needed the note cards. She explained it like this: she can remember an entire symphony orchestra, a hundred musicians playing at once. But if you ask her what the oboe was doing in the second bar of the third movement, she can’t immediately unravel that information from all the other sounds she absorbed. The cards help her make sense of the music. She can colour-code the brass section, so to speak, and keep it separate from the strings and the percussion. She can unwrap the symphony and study it instrument by instrument, line by line.

Without her index cards, the world is a scary, overwhelming place.

‘Here.’ She holds up a bright-blue card, covered front and back with her neat handwriting. ‘Tomorrow, when we get close to the secret base, there’s going to be a challenge.’

I try to concentrate. The hot-water bottle is slowly doing its work, relaxing the knots in my belly, but the pain is still blinding. Dev’s voice crackles in my head. Major threat. Need everyone to EVACUATE.

‘A challenge?’ I manage.

Ester nods. ‘Standard protocol when someone approaches a base. It says so right here. I don’t know what kind of challenge. Something to make sure we are legitimate. If we’re not, the island will probably destroy us with alt-tech weapons.’

‘But that won’t happen,’ Nelinha says.

‘No,’ Ester agrees. ‘Because …’ She looks at Nelinha. ‘Why won’t it happen?’

‘Because we’re going to figure out how to pass the challenge,’ she says gently. ‘We’ll do that while Ana gets some sleep. Remember?’

‘That’s right,’ Ester agrees. ‘Ana, that’s why you’re not going to die. Get some sleep.’

She says this like it’s as simple as switching off a radio.

Maybe it is.

I want to join them at the table. I should help them figure out this challenge. But my body is shutting down. Hearing Dev’s voice was too much. The medicine and the heat and the cramps are fighting for dominance, turning my nervous system into a choppy sea. I cling to the sound of my friends’ voices like a life raft.

I close my eyes and drift into the painless depths.





In my dream, it’s the Fourth of July. I’m ten years old. I’m sprawled on a blanket in the San Alejandro Botanical Gardens, waiting for the fireworks to start.

Dev dances around our family’s picnic spot, waving a sparkler. My mother sits next to me, her face swallowed by the shadow of her broad-brimmed straw hat. Her black pearl gleams at the base of her throat. She wriggles her bare toes (she always hated shoes) in time with the John Philip Sousa music being piped over the loudspeakers.

She reclines against my father’s chest. His arm circles her waist. Their show of affection makes me vaguely embarrassed. Are parents allowed to cuddle in public?

My father’s white shirt, white linen slacks and glass of white wine all seem to glow in the dusk. His slick black hair is perfectly combed. His Mona Lisa-like smile makes him look like he’s just woken from a beautiful reverie.

My mother gazes out over the field of poppies, sunflowers and baby-blue eyes that lead down to the lake. She sighs contentedly. ‘When I die, sprinkle my ashes in the water here. I like the view.’

‘Mom!’ I say.

She laughs gently. ‘My dear, dying is nothing to be embarrassed about. It happens to everyone.’

‘Okay, but can we not talk about it now?’

She gives me a playful pinch on the arm. ‘Ana, it’s good to be honest about such things. Besides, I’m just saying … this would be a nice place to rest in peace.’

‘But you’re not dying!’

‘What?’ Dev stops his sparkler dance and marches over, on high alert for scandal. ‘Who’s dying?’

The sparkler sheds a cascade of golden starbursts across his bare arm. He doesn’t seem to notice.

‘No one is dying,’ my father assures us. ‘At least, not until after I’ve finished my chardonnay.’ His eyes gleam with humour. They’re deep brown like the centres of the sunflowers. ‘I’m with your mother, though. When the time comes, sprinkle my ashes here, too, will you?’