Saleesi tows me along into the dark of the inner ship, past electric engines and equipment and locked doors, then into a noisy corridor of stalls selling all manner of food and clothing and bits of equipment for boats and bits and pieces that look like some of the best salvage ever found. The smells is amazing! Fried food, and sweet food! My stomach growls.
Saleesi stops for a minute and digs into a pouch on her belt and pulls out a coin. She trades it for two paper bags and hands one to me. ‘Fried prawn dumplings,’ she says like I might know what that is.
The bag is greasy, and when I shove one little wrapped pastry thing into my mouth, it’s the best food I’ve ever had. Salty and crunchy on the outside, warm sweet prawn in the middle.
‘Mmm. Mmm,’ I say, coz I can’t even speak!
Then Saleesi pulls me to a hallway full of tiny rooms and there’s people waiting to get in the tiny rooms but I don’t know what for, coz when the doors slide open on one of them it’s jus’ full of people trying to get out.
‘Come on,’ she says and drags me into the tiny room people is getting into until we’re all packed in there, really close, and I can see why everyone wanted to get out. But music is playing in there, not a guitar, which is the only music I ever heard, but light and tinkly, and as soon as the doors close the sea lurches the boat straight up in a weird way. The doors open and everything is changed, there’s all new shops here, and different walls. I go to get out and Saleesi grabs me and says, ‘Nup, we’re going to the top.’
‘What d’ya mean?’ I ask.
‘This lift goes to the top deck. I wanna show you something.’
‘This is a lift? I never been in a lift.’ I heard of these from salvaging in the tall buildings, but those ones is long past working.
Saleesi laughs at me again in that way that makes me feel stupid and annoyed.
The doors open and close six or seven more times, all the time people getting off and on like they know where they’re going in this place, even though I’m worrying I might not ever find Licorice Stix again.
Lots of people have the headbands on with the sun, and I eye them like they might be the ones who took Jag, but I don’t think they is.
Saleesi grabs me and tows me out into a room with solid metal doors with portholes in them. She runs to one and pushes it open with her shoulder. We step out into the wet salt breeze onto a painted metal floor outside. The floor is bubbled with rust like my old bus, but painted over. She drags me to the rail, leans over, throws her hand open and says, ‘Ta daa! The Valley of the Sun!’
Down below us, in the rectangle formed by all these giant ships, is a valley. A valley of green, shaped like an upside-down pyramid, all the terraces planted with crops and trees. Pretty shades of green and gold in lines and rows, all in steps down and down, to a point at the centre. And at that point right in the bottom, right in the centre, is a single common old mangrove tree.
Ha! Mangroves is the happiest trees in the inland sea. But even mangroves like for the salt water to be a little diluted. And all the other plants, the yellow wheat steps, the banana trees, they don’t like salt water at all.
‘Where do they get the water for all this?’ I ask.
‘Desal plant on one of the ships,’ Saleesi says.
‘Huh?’ I ask.
‘Takes the salt right out of the sea and jus’ leaves the water. And it’s all powered by these.’ She hammers on the roof over the deck. ‘Solar,’ she says. ‘And right up the top of the tallest part of the ships, wind. And under the sea, current turbines. With this garden and fish from the sea, Valley of the Sun don’t need a thing from the land, and it won’t never be drowned like other cities, not unless there’s a storm bigger than what we already seen.’
I nod. ‘There’s been some monster big storms.’
Saleesi looks around. ‘So where might your friend Jag be?’
‘He was taken by the people with the suns on their heads who came to install tech on poles in the villages.’
Saleesi thinks for a moment. ‘So an engineering family then,’ she says, and points to a ship a long way across the valley. The engineers live there.’
She heads off across the deck at a jog, holding her missing finger hand close to her chest.
I follow her through a lot of people standing around talking, so many, so loud, I don’t know how they’re hearing each other, and the music is thumping like it’s trying to be heard, and some of them is scruffy and smelling of sweat, and some of them is in better clothes.
We go through an area full of tables and chairs with people dining, all of them wearing fine clothes, some that sparkle like the stars. And the smells. Fried food, and sweet food, and my belly grumbles, like it’s saying, Remember me? Get me some prawn dumplings, right now!
Up on a stage someone is twirling burning sticks and flashing knives in a way that looks too dangerous for anyone to be near. I slow to look and Saleesi grabs me.
‘You can’t stop here, dressed in rags and stinking like fish,’ she says, and while I’m looking down at my clothes that do their job and keep the sun off me jus’ fine, she says, ‘Keep moving like you know where you’re going and everyone will think you’ll soon be someone else’s problem and they won’t stop you.’
I follow Saleesi, so glad for her and her knowledge about the Valley of the Sun. We run along decks and gangplanks and rope bridges and boardwalks, none of them quite as rolly as the floating pontoon we tied off on. We pass rich people and poor people, so many people, and stalls selling all manner of salvage and newly fashioned items, and grubby marketplaces and fancy eating squares and go down below to corridors and back up top, the sight of the green valley making me gasp and tingle all over again.
What a thing! What a thing to be at sea, surrounded by all this rolling ocean. I know Saleesi has explained it but it still seems to me to be some kind of magic. Imagine if we had this much garden back at Cottage Hill.
