Then the net below me pushes up again and the dark body of the shark lifts the middle. She’s still here, looking for another feed, her slimy skin sliding against my knees.
I scramble over the wall onto the deck. And the deck is soft and wet and grumbles, ‘Ooof!’ and it’s Saleesi.
She’s been dragged all the way to the deck and pulled the rope off herself. But there’s blood, a lot of blood, and water smearing it everywhere, making it run bright in the grooves between the boards on the dark deck of Licorice. I scramble off her. She’s still got two legs and arms, so that’s good.
‘What happened?’ I ask.
‘I tol’ you. I tol’ you, you don’t cross that old sea hag, Pirate Bradshaw. She swam after me and threw me off her boat for stealing it away while she was busy fighting your croc.’ Saleesi is holding her hand with her other hand.
‘Did the shark bite your hand?’ I ask. Saleesi holds her left hand up and her middle finger is missing from the knuckle on. ‘Pirate Bradshaw chopped it off and threw it and me to the sharks.’
‘Lucky you had that bit of wood to fight it off.’
‘That wasn’t no bit of wood. That was the rudder. After she threw me off the side, I clung to the rudder so hard she chopped that off as well and left me floating on the sea.’
Licorice Stix thuds and rocks. That shark knows where her meal went.
I block up the bunghole with a lime skin to stop the blood leaking off the deck, prolly sending signals to every shark in the risen sea to come here for a meal, and grab a rag for Saleesi to wind around her finger end. ‘Stop bleeding everywhere,’ I tell her.
‘S’your fault. Had you let me come with you, we coulda left the pirate’s boat for her, and we coulda sped off without her. Why you grouchy wif me? I’m the one what almost got et by a giant shark!’
The shark gives the hull of Licorice another good nudge and circles her to see what falls off. We crouch low on the deck.
‘You jus’ tol’ me stories about how I couldn’t escape. You never helped me and I din’t tell you to come chasing after me, did I?’ I say. ‘I got my own problems.’
Saleesi screws up her face as she winds the rag tight around her finger. ‘Oh right, you gotta rescue someone.’
‘Yeah. I do,’ I say. ‘So you jus’ better not be bringing me no trouble.’
‘I tol’ you. Rescuing is my speciality. First thing you want to do is set your sail a bit to starboard, or you’re gonna sail right on by Valley of the Sun.’
‘How do you know where I’m going?’
‘It’s the only place out here.’
‘You’ve been there?’
Saleesi nods. ‘Yep, we was there five days ago trading.’ She stands up, hanging tight to the edge of the deck wall in case the shark nudges again. I stand too. She points a bit south-east. ‘Then it was about there. But by now, it’ll be over there.’ She points east.
‘It moves?’ I ask.
Saleesi laughs and laughs until her finger aches and then she groans and holds her sopping, bloody rag-wrapped hand to her chest. ‘You’re going to be a stunned mullet when you see it,’ she says.
The shark gives us another nudge, then turns suddenly and heads off, tall fin cutting through the slopping waves.
