Everyone stops yelling and all eyes stop on me.
I shrink. My stomach sucks in and I feel like I’ll shrink right down until jus’ the soles of my feet is left standing here, stuck, in the dirt.
‘Why?’ my mother asks, and her eyes is dark like the thunderheads that boil up over the sea sometimes. And I’m afraid to answer in case lightning kicks out from her eyes.
‘Why?’ Marta asks.
‘Coz I wanted to give Gerra time to get to know us and see we could never do bad things like the things that happened that she can’t remember happening. And if nobody knew the siblings had been here, then maybe they wouldn’t look here first.’
Marta tries to explain it. And one of the men with guns steps forward to grab me, but first Jag grabs me and pulls me behind himself, and I think good, I can get a head start, that lanky giant won’t be able to keep up if I run into the trees.
But then Jag says, ‘No! It was me. I was angry that they put up something dangerous without even our say-so, and it burnt my friend.’ He rips my hat off and points to the hairless burn across my scalp.
‘That ain’t true!’ I yell, but the man grabs Jag anyway. Why’d he have to go and say that?
Jag’s da runs and jumps on the man’s back, wrapping his strong fisherman arms around his throat. ‘Let him go! He’s jus’ a kid!’ he yells.
‘Stop it!’ I yell. ‘It was me!’
Marta yells so loud I swear she jus’ broke her throat. It’s a wail like a night-screecher, eyes more desperate than I ever seen.
Everyone stops and looks at her. Uncle Sorren slides to the ground. Puts his arms at his side like he been told off.
The old woman with the black hair speaks our language and says, ‘Someone must answer to our law, someone must pay. We will take the father.’
‘No!’ everyone yells.
‘It was me!’ I say.
‘No,’ Jag says. ‘It was me. I’ll go.’
I punch him in the arm. ‘This ain’t a game!’
‘Ow!’ he says, like it is.
‘We don’t answer to your law,’ Marta says, standing as tall as she can to look the old woman in the eyes. ‘We are not part of your land.’
‘You are. You just don’t know it because you don’t keep in touch with the outside world. All these abandoned islands have been claimed by the Valley of the Sun. If you defy our laws then you will be at war with us, is that what you want?’
Marta shakes her head slowly. ‘If this is true, then no decent society punishes children.’
‘We hold the father accountable, but the child has admitted his crime and given proof of motive. And he can work off the father’s debt. Leaving you with a fisherman here to feed you until he does.’
‘No!’ Jag’s da says again.
‘We will return the boy when he has worked off the debt,’ the old woman says. ‘As to the other crime …’
One tall man scoops up Gerra and carries her down to the boat, the other grabs Jag’s arm and drags him away.
‘No!’ I shout. ‘I did it! Jag would never go near that stuff. It was me! Take me!’
Jag’s da sets off after Jag, and the older woman pulls a gun from her robe and fires at him. I duck as something leaves the gun, flies through the air and stabs into his back.
He grunts, reaches for it, arms twisting behind snatching up his back, as I’m scrambling in the dirt to get to him, to help him. He drops to his knees, flops forward, and I get there jus’ in time to catch his head and slow its fall to the ground. I wail, coz he’s dead!
The older woman steps over me, pulls the thing from his back. ‘He’ll sleep for a day or two but he’ll be fine,’ she says, and leans down to my ear. ‘Do not touch our equipment again!’
I gasp. ‘You know it was me! Let Jag go! Take me!’
‘Ha!’ she says. ‘A wild spark like you will be no end of trouble. Think long and hard about this lesson, child. You might learn something.’
She turns back to the rest of the adults. ‘As to the other crime, we will find who attacked our people and they will be punished far worse than this. Think long and hard about who it might have been or we will take another from this village to pay the debt of our two lost people.’
Everyone cries out, ‘No!’
