I sail south towards who knows where, but anywhere away from pirates. I could do with my friend Jag backing me up here. I’m the doer. He’s the one who’s cautious, ’cept when he goes and takes my place in the Valley of the Sun boat. He’s the one who’d tell me for sure if Saleesi is a trickster working for the pirate or not. Saleesi might know which way the Valley of the Sun is from sailing round pirating for so long, but she might lie to trick me.
She’s following. She’s slower to get moving, got a heavier boat, so I don’t think she’ll catch up anytime soon. It’s a couple of hours before I lose her completely. She’s got her own boat now. She’ll be fine.
I head south by keeping the afternoon sun to starboard, but I’m way out to sea so I’m really lost about how far up the coast I’ve come in the last few days.
I’m quicker than that old pirate yacht so I don’t have to worry about them no more. Especially since Pirate Bradshaw is long dead. I sail till the earth turns away from the sun and my old star-friends dot the sky and I can sail more accurately in a straight line south. I eat some of my dried fish, I drink, I have short sleeps but keep waking to check the stars. Then when the earth turns back to the sun, I wash myself in the sea to wake myself up.
I’m still going looking for Jag. This is why I’m out here, after all. I gotta head back in, find a village, ask there for how to find the Valley of the Sun.
After a while I find some fishing boats sitting with their lines out, so I wave to them and pull alongside.
‘Sir!’ I call out to an old man. ‘Can you help me figure out which way is the Valley of the Sun?’
The old guy pulls his hat off, tilts his head, and wipes his wispy grey hair over his brown, but not as brown as his face, scalp. ‘Last I saw it was that way,’ he says and points back out.
‘But I been out there,’ I say.
‘You’ll know you’re getting close when you see the mist,’ he says. ‘Did you see the mist?’
I shake my head.
‘It’s not an easy place to find,’ he says. ‘Specially if you’re sailing alone.’
‘I ain’t sailing alone. My da and uncle is sleeping down in the hulls,’ I say.
The man shrugs. ‘Just the way you said you been out there, not we been out there, makes me think you should be careful going near the Valley of the Sun. I don’t wanna see you lose that pretty little fishing boat.’
‘No sir,’ I say. ‘We won’t lose it. We jus’ got some business in Valley of the Sun. Thank you for your help. Go gentle.’
I spin about and head back out, casting some lines as I go to take advantage of the schools of fish I’m passing. I immediately pull in two large fish and kill them and drop them in my bucket for later. Don’t usually go deep sea fishing, but this is easy.
It don’t feel safe to be heading directly out from the coast alone. I’m a land critter, but the Valley of the Sun boat went this way somewhere, and it’s no more suited to crossing oceans than Licorice Stix. I keep checking the horizon coz my detour into land and back out again means Saleesi could have caught up, but no sails anywhere. Saleesi must’ve given up following me and gone somewhere else. Good.
I’m squeezing limes to get fish soaking when a scream rattles my skull. First I think that old pirate’s been swimming after my boat to teach me a lesson for setting my croc on her and this is her killing scream. But no sea hag leaps on board to kill me, and the scream peels back my ears again.
I stand up on the port hull, can’t see nothing. I bounce across the net to the starboard hull and there, sitting in the water, clinging to a chunk of wood, is Saleesi. A fin is circling her in the water, and every now and then she stabs out with the chunk of wood. ‘I’m gonna whomp you!’ she tells the shark.
I grab a coil of rope, hang on to one end, haul back my arm and send it spinning and unfurling through the air. It lands in front of her. She swims and grabs it and wraps it around her body as I wrap my end around the winch. By the time it snaps tight from the speed the Licorice is travelling at, she’s tied it off, leaving her hands free to swing that hunk of wood at the shark.
Saleesi submerges a bit as she’s jerked along behind Licorice, then pops up with a big old mama shark following. I turn on the winch. Saleesi smacks the shark with her bit of wood and skips across the surface on her behind, her legs pulled up, away from the chasing shark. A massive mouth, all gums and rows of chomping teeth, rises out of the water jus’ behind her. She screams as a whole shark rises up above her. The shark’s eyes is closed, so she’s jus’ chomping, chomping at the air, wondering where her meal is at, fat body and tail jerking back and forth, pushing her high up out of the water. The old thing is the size of a whale!
My heart thumps and my legs wobble like they’re telling me to run, like they forgot I’m on a boat and running off the boat would be bad right about now. The giant shark falls, falling sideways onto Saleesi. But Licorice Stix acts like she seen the shark too, and she keeps powering through the sea, and the winch keeps grinding away sure and steady and the shark falls short, crashing into the sea, sending a wave up and swamping over Saleesi’s shaved head.
I run to the starboard hull she’s prolly gonna hit, coz ain’t no one there to shut the winch off. Saleesi pops out of the sea again, blinking and gasping like someone who almost got swallowed whole by a giant shark, still swishing that hunk of wood around with one arm. I hang off a stanchion and throw out my hand. ‘Come on!’ I yell, like there’s anything she can do right now to get aboard quicker.
Deep down below there’s a shadow about the length of the starboard hull with a tail. It turns and points up at us. ‘Hurry!’ I scream.
Saleesi reaches out her arm like she can get to me, but the shape down below, now half white, half dark, with its face opening up into flashes of pointy teeth, that monster shark is moving faster than anything I ever seen. My eyes swell with the sight of it, and when something grabs my outstretched hand, I pull back like it’s the shark herself. But that shark, with a wash of water in front of it, pushes up and up through the surface of the sea and douses me in a massive wave, sending me surfing right over the deck, right over the deck wall, bouncing into the net, and then there’s teeth high above the hull gnashing on wood, and wood splintering and flying, and I got nothing in my hand! Did fear make me let Saleesi go? Was she swallowed whole? And the shark veers away from Licorice and smashes back into the sea sending another wave swamping the boat, up through the net, lifting me for a moment so I’m washed back towards the deck, coz Licorice is still powering away like she knows we gotta get out of here.
I’m dropped back onto the net, hard up against the hull where my croc lay, and there’s silence, jus’ the winch still cranking and a noise like flak, flak, flak. I crawl up the wall between net and deck and there’s the winch, rope still in a loop going round and round, completely empty. Oh no!
