Saleesi and I are left standing on the jetty watching as Jacob stands and shakes their hands and they all sit down while he makes tea.
Up beside one of the huts Echo is waving at me. He points at his chest and shakes his head. ‘What’s he doing?’ I ask.
‘He don’t want anyone to know he tol’ you anything,’ Saleesi says.
I give Echo a thumbs up and he disappears back behind the hut.
When Marta’s boat gets close, Ma’s too busy dropping sails to give me dark looks but Gerra is sitting in the boat with her walking stick held firm in front of her, looking right at me, like … I dunno. Is she angry? Has she remembered what happened now? Is she angry I made her come back to this place?
I don’t wait for Ma to get off before I set off up to the fire-pit, coz I don’t want for Ma to grab me and give me one of them angry whispering talking-tos. I tell Saleesi to help Gerra, and for the rest of them to follow me.
Jacob’s eyes go wide when he sees Gerra limping along behind me. Sweat beads on his forehead, his skin goes pale, and he drags his eyes off her and back to the dirt. I reckon he put her in a boat thinking she was dead, and now he maybe thinks her ghost has come back to make him pay.
Marta makes all the Valley of the Sun people sit down with me and Ma and Jag and his da, and then while Jacob serves them tea, his hand shaking as he fills Gerra’s cup, Marta asks all sorts of questions about their intentions for the Ockery Islands.
I quietly drag the fire-poker away and stuff it hard against the log I’m sitting on. There’s an axe in the woodpile nearby that’s making me worried in case Jacob or Tyrell go to grab it.
We find out that Valley of the Sun are now the law here. Our government has given up on keeping us at all after years of not being able to help us. Jus’ given us away to a whole new nation!
The red flashing light tech lets them track movements of ships in the area and send messages. ‘You don’t know what’s out there to the north,’ the old woman says. ‘Armies of people who prefer to take rather than build. If they come here, you’ll be pleased for the protection of the Valley of the Sun.’
‘And what do you get by collecting and protecting ramshackle islands that no one else wants?’ Marta asks.
‘The most valuable of all commodities, land for growing things,’ the old woman says.
‘Well, we use as much land as we dare for growing things already, so why would you protect us?’ Jag’s da asks.
‘These islands hold the mouth to the inland sea and those larger land masses we need,’ the woman says. ‘You are our eyes and ears. We hope to grow food inland and ship it out past your islands.’
Marta nods slowly. ‘If these technologies allow you to communicate, then can we use them to communicate? I’d like to be able to talk to the other Ockery Islands now and then.’
‘No!’ Jacob says. ‘We live without technology!’
Marta sighs. ‘We live gentle lives, now what can be more gentle than being able to let you know if we have too many bananas or dried fish and to share our resources?’ she asks.
Jacob jus’ says, ‘Humpf!’ and goes back to staring at the dirt.
‘I think we can spare some handsets set on a local channel.’ The older woman lifts her cup. ‘Now we all have tea, can we get to the business we came here for?’
Marta waves her hand at all of us sitting stiffly on our seats, hot mugs of tea in our hands that we ain’t even drinking coz we’s all too worried, and says, ‘This is how you approach a village in this area. You come, you bring gifts, you sit, you drink tea. Now, if you intend to be the governing law here, I trust that you will learn our ways and be patient and just with us as we learn yours. It’s been a long time since anyone has had to answer to the law here. We’ve had to make our own.’
‘You expect me to have tea with every island?’ the old woman asks. ‘It’ll take days!’
Marta nods. ‘It will take days, possibly weeks.’ And she smiles politely. ‘Now, what’s your name?’
‘Leonor.’
‘Welcome to the Ockery Islands, Leonor. We live gentle lives. We live polite lives. We do not want war or raiders to come to these islands, so we will keep your technology on our hill, and help you watch this opening to the inland sea. Drink your tea,’ Marta says like she’s talking to someone who never met tea before.
Leonor gulps down the tea like she’s surprised Marta’s telling her what to do. I’m not surprised, Marta’s always telling me what to do.
Marta asks Gerra if she remembers coming here before.
‘She was never here!’ Jacob says, but he still won’t look directly at Gerra. He jus’ wipes sweat from his forehead and stares at the fire.
Marta ignores him, and carries on speaking to Leonor. ‘We know that Gerra and her siblings came here, but the people of Jacob’s Reach dislike and fear all technology and want to live gentle lives as do all the people of the Ockery Islands, and so walking in without a word with the intent to set up tech here was bound to cause problems. We know they visited here. We know it was covered up.’
Uncle Sorren must’ve told Marta about our second visit after me and Jag left.
‘Marta does not speak for me!’ Jacob says.
Leonor with the black instead of grey hair does a really strange thing. She takes a sip of tea and looks right at him. ‘This is very nice tea,’ she says. ‘What kind is it?’
He don’t answer. He’s feeling around for where he left the poker. Maybe he’s thinking he’s in real big trouble.
‘Mint,’ Marta says. ‘With a hint of ginger?’ She lifts an eyebrow at Jacob to agree.
Jacob scowls, stands and walks towards the woodpile.
Leonor drops her voice. ‘Who do you think we should take for questioning from Jacob’s Reach?’
Marta thinks and sighs. ‘I would say you should take Jacob himself, given how he keeps tight control on his people and how hot to temper he is, unless anyone else comes forward and says they did it.’
I’m standing, watching that axe, but Jacob don’t reach for it. He takes a split log, and puts another on top of it.
‘It wasn’t Jacob,’ I say. ‘Well, he din’t start it.’ I sit back down.
Marta and Leonor both tilt their heads and wait for me to speak and it’s a bit scary to have two leaders looking at me in that way, and Jacob maybe listening too, but I got to go on. ‘The siblings from the Valley of the Sun were cutting down the trees they bury people under. They cut down the tree that belonged to dead Aunty Meryn, and her son got angry,’ I say. Even though I don’t know for sure who Aunty Meryn’s son is. It’s not Echo, and it can’t be Jacob, coz he’s too old to have a mother buried jus’ a couple of years ago.
‘We came back to Jacob’s Reach,’ Jag says. ‘On the way back from Valley of the Sun.’ And he seems a bit proud to be getting up to things he shouldn’t. I can see I’m gonna have to give him lessons in looking sorry afterwards.
‘We saw the log with the letters in it. What happened is, the guy sibling cut down the tree and they grabbed him. Do you remember, Gerra?’ I ask her. I make an M and a W with my fingers. Leonor translates and Gerra nods.
‘Cutting down a tree is not a cause for murder,’ Leonor says.
‘There ain’t no murder!’ Jacob says. He’s stopped behind us, armload of logs, like he don’t know whether to come back to the fire-pit or run away.
‘It was accidental,’ I say. ‘Coz then Gerra and her sister went running back to the boat to get weapons. The son, he’s real mad, and he’s carrying the log they made out of his mother’s tree, and then he sees them coming up the jetty to hurt his people and so he runs at them, thinking to chase them back to their boat maybe, who knows? Then they fire at him, with that dart thing they shot at Uncle Sorren. And coz he’s running, carrying a whole tree pole right at them, he can’t stop, I guess, and he knocks them both onto the rocks in his sleep and that’s how Gerra got injured.’
‘These people,’ Marta says. ‘You have to understand they’re not violent, although that boy with the log, he shouldn’t’ve lost his temper and run at them like that.’
‘They put Gerra and her sister in a boat for dead and cast them out on the tide, and probably killed their brother,’ Leonor says. ‘The boy didn’t do that. He was asleep. So we’ll need to take Jacob and the boy. Which boy do you think it is, Neoma?’
‘Now, see here!’ Jacob says. He drops the wood and shakes a finger at that old woman. ‘This girl don’t know anything.’
‘Not for sure,’ I say. ‘But I think it’s Tyrell Weatherman coz of the W in Weatherman.’ There’s a growl from behind the trough. ‘But you see, you can’t be taking both of them. They have someone to trade, coz they still have the guy sibling.’
‘What?’ Leonor says.
‘They have him in that boarded-up shack,’ I say and point up the hill.
Leonor translates to Gerra, who gasps and looks at me. I nod. Finally Gerra smiles. I’m surprised her face don’t crack with the effort!
‘The people of the Ockery Islands are not violent,’ Marta says again. ‘Your engineers broke their law, they arrested one of them. How were they to know you make the law now? We’ve lived through some violent times before we found peace here in the Ockerys.’
‘Thank you, Marta,’ Jacob says. ‘Yes, it was an accident. Tyrell didn’t want anyone to die, and your people were treating our hill like they owned it. We didn’t know you were the new government. Think of how we felt to have them stomping round on graves up there!’
‘Cutting down memorial trees is certainly not what we want,’ Leonor says.
‘You shouldn’t be cutting down no trees. Don’t you remember how the world got this way? We gotta live gentle lives,’ I say.
‘We have to create a clear line of sight for our technology, and fence the power sources to stop people digging them up.’ Leonor looks at my burnt scalp. ‘We’ll trade the crime of concealment, for our engineer, and take someone to work off the debt for the death of Gerra’s sister. Is this fair, in your opinion?’ she asks Jacob.
‘No!’ I say. ‘Don’t you go taking someone what ain’t done nothing. You take the one who done it!’
Leonor frowns like she’s had enough of me butting in but Marta nods. I can’t believe she’s backing me up.
‘All people need a sense of fairness,’ she says.
Leonor agrees so Marta goes to have a quiet conversation with Jacob.
‘How did you find out all this information?’ Leonor asks me.
I shrug. ‘By being a bit wild.’
At that moment Tyrell must figure he best be far away as possible coz he stands up from behind the trough and takes off running up the hill. ‘That’s Tyrell,’ I say, grab the fire-poker and take off after him. He’s heading for the woodpile with the axe sitting in the stump. I stop, lift the poker up behind my head and biff it through the air. It smacks Tyrell in the arm jus’ as he’s reaching for the axe. He pulls his hand back, turns and then runs.
Saleesi passes me with a whoop. ‘I’ll whomp that rascal!’
Two of the Valley of the Sun People with guns are chasing him too.
‘Tyrell!’ Jacob bellows.
Tyrell stops dead. I stop dead. Even Saleesi stops dead.
Jacob holds up a finger and carries on talking to Marta. Then he marches over and grabs Tyrell by the arm and drags him back down to the fire-pit.
‘I din’t mean for it to happen!’ Tyrell yells. ‘I din’t even know until the next day. I was jus’ angry. It was my Ma!’
‘I know, son,’ Jacob says. Then he turns to Leonor. ‘He’s quick to temper and he needs to learn not to be, but he’s not a bad person. He’s been real affected by this horrible accident. A chance to put things right will be good for him, but he ain’t got much family and I don’t want him away from them for long. He ain’t quite grown, he needs to be with us.’
We all trail along as Jacob deals Leonor down to keeping Tyrell for jus’ six months. She agrees too quickly prolly coz Tyrell looks like he’s too much trouble and she’d rather take a nice kid like Echo or someone else.
Then Jacob tells them to go and get their engineer from the shack.
The tall brother sibling comes running from the shack, hair all messy, blinking against the sun on the horizon. Then he yells, ‘Gerra!’ He runs and hugs Gerra so hard he picks her up off the ground, and she drops her stick, and sobs into his shoulder. His face is covered in tears, and he runs to each Valley of the Sun person and kisses them on the cheek and hugs them and slaps their backs like they’s the ones who rescued him, then he runs back and hugs Gerra again.
Ma comes and hugs me, her strong arms around me, her warm body against mine, strong rough fingers wiping the hair off my face. Uncle Sorren hugs Jag, and everyone’s back where they should be. I feel sorry for Tyrell, coz he’s gotta pay for reacting badly to a thing that he had no control over.
