Chapter 19

DOG HAD NEVER seen a sky full of stars. The pet-shop window was too grimy and the streetlight outside too glaring to see more than a faint dot of light from the very brightest ones. But the open sky above her now was shimmering with an endless sea of them. She gazed up, mesmerized. She didn’t know what stars were, but she was lost in their beauty all the same. Esme pointed her nose straight up and blinked her eyes in wonder.

But Carlos wasn’t interested in stars. “Danger, danger!” he hissed. “Must hide! Coming person! Now.”

The sound of footsteps ringing on the metal deck finally got Dog and Esme’s attention. Just in time, they scrambled up to one of the lifeboats slung above the deck and wriggled, rather noisily, under its cover.

They lay still in the bottom of the lifeboat, listening as the footsteps got closer and closer, then stopped, right beside them.

A voice spoke very sternly. “I know you’re in there; I heard you banging about.”

The three friends crouched lower.

The corner of the cover was lifted and a bright torch beam began to search the boat.

“Just come out and show yourself,” said the voice, though now it didn’t seem quite so stern. “You can’t get away, you know!”

The beam caught them like a spotlight. They huddled together, waiting to be seized. Instead, the voice gave a long, low giggle, and someone jumped in with them, propping the torch up like a lantern to light the whole space under the cover.

“Well, am I glad to see you! After all that clanking of hatches I thought I was going to find some villain with a gun.”

The owner of the giggle was a lanky boy dressed in a pair of ancient shorts, a T-shirt with a picture of a beer bottle on the front and a grimy yellow oilskin jacket. Dog looked at him from under the cover of her fringe.

“No need to look so scared!” He grinned. “I don’t think you’re a danger to the safety of the ship, so I won’t give you away, don’t worry! Just don’t let anyone else see you, or we’re all in big trouble.”

They were safe! Dog had never hugged a human but she wondered if she should start now. Esme caught her relief and her tail went straight up like a flag.

Carlos, who had been sitting dejectedly on the floor, now clambered onto Dog’s shoulder. “Boy fine, very,” he announced.

The boy was delighted. He smiled as if all his features wanted to join in the fun, even his ears – which, Dog noticed, were large and rather nicely mouse-like.

“Well, that’s a compliment if ever I heard one!” he said. “Quite right too. I am a very fine boy, though I’m not sure there’s anyone else on board that would say so! Anthony Steven Kevin Edwards, at your service. Asky for short, apprentice seafarer extraordinaire!”

He sat down on a coil of rope, grinning, and looked keenly at Dog. “So what’s your name then?”

Dog shook her head.

“What?” said Asky. “Not going to tell me your name?”

She shook her head again and looked down at her feet, still inside their small red wellies.

Carlos coughed. “This,” he said, tapping his curved beak gently on Dog’s head, “Dog, this.” Stretching a wing towards the coati, Carlos went on, “Esme … Me, Carlos.”

Asky looked dumbfounded. “Wow! Not just a talking bird, a thinking one too! You know we’re bound for South America, don’t you?” he said to Carlos.

Carlos squawked approval and said, “Sí, sí, sí!”

“Oh, you already speak the lingo then!” said Asky. “Going to see your family in the jungle, Carlos?”

The parrot stretched his wings around his two friends. “All see family in the jungle,” he said in Asky’s voice.

Asky laughed at Carlos’s mimicry but Dog wondered if he was being silly or saying something true. She thought about Marmalade’s words:

I haven’t seen a coati or a child like this since I left Theamazun.

If Theamazun was where they were going, maybe she and Esme were going home too?