The queen’s ship might once have been described as a frigate, though it was hard to be precise because the masts and rigging were long gone. They’d been the first things sacrificed in the building of the island. That’s what the Sargassans said. Miles of rope had been unwound to begin the baling of seaweed and the binding of flotsam.
“They thought she was mad,” Ekua explained. “Making a raft out of a good sailing ship. She told them it was a Nation, not a raft. Named it Freedom Island there and then. And that when it was no more than a hulk. When one of the men went against her, she killed him. They were too scared to go against her after that.”
“There were men?” Elizabeth asked.
“There’d been men on the Unicorn. But they were never part of the Nation.”
“Did she kill them all?”
“No.”
Elizabeth had still not discovered where the men of the Iceland Queen had gone. But other information was being pushed at her. It was as if Ekua and the others had been instructed to educate her, and as quickly as possible. No reason for the change had been offered. Nor had anyone told her that she’d properly become a Sargassan. Ambiguity hung heavy in the air.
“Where did the men go – those she didn’t kill?” Elizabeth asked.
“Somewhere. I don’t know.”
“If the ship had been made into a raft, how did they leave?”
“They were against her – that’s all that matters.” Ekua’s voice was becoming sharp with frustration. “Mother Rebecca saw the future – an island, a great nation of free women. The men didn’t want it, so she had to send them away.”
They’d been touring the main boardway, looking into shops, which mostly sold vegetables and fish, though one had been full of metal wares, pewter tankards and plates, cutlery and nails. With the gentle shifting of the island, all the goods had swung on their hooks and clanked against each other. Yet the day was calm.
“How do you manage when there’s a storm?” Elizabeth asked as they walked away.
“We learned it the hard way,” Ekua said. “The island was ruined every time at first. It’s weakest at the edges and back then it was all edge. When parts broke off, we had to go out and pull them back. After one winter there was nothing left but the ship, and that wallowing with no sail to keep it into the wind. So we started over. The first time we built it, it was fixed in place with nails and timber. Then we learned to let all the parts move. The secret’s in the ropes and the tree roots. It took us five years to figure that.”
“Us? You saw it all?”
Ekua smiled. “I’m not that old! But I’ll be here for the next time.”
The next time. Elizabeth turned the phrase in her mind. Though the history lesson was interesting, the most fascinating revelations slipped out as if by accident. They were instructing her in the myth of their own creation. But woven through it was a golden thread of destiny, running from the building of the island to the moment of the telling and then on to a future they could all see when they closed their eyes. They would build new islands. They would conquer new oceans.
Connected somehow with that glorious future was a phrase: The Unicorn will sail. Each time she’d heard it spoken, the context had been destiny. It had made no sense until she saw the figurehead of Mother Rebecca’s ship and learned its name: the Unicorn.
“The first years were all hardship,” Ekua said, continuing the history.
“What did they eat?”
“Fish and seaweed.”
“But where did they get the materials to build the island?”
“The ocean brought it all. Everything that floats in the mid-waters of the North Atlantic ends up here.”
Hardship and determination were more believable than destiny. It seemed unlikely that the ocean would provide all the things they’d needed: barrels and rope and logs, and at such a rate that an island could be built faster than the storms could wash it away.
“When we were on the Iceland Queen, you told me we were going home to Mother. But now we’re here, you say its name is Freedom Island. What should I properly call it?”
“You ask the strangest questions, Elizabeth! The island is our home. But Mother Rebecca is the Nation.”
“What of Gwynedd and Siân?”
Ekua shot her a quizzical look. “What of them?”
“Siân seems first when it comes to fighting. Gwynedd in counselling the queen.”
“Perhaps.”
“Which of them has the higher position?”
“You have us wrong! We do different jobs, but we’re all of us equal in the Nation.”
“But I’ve seen people bowing to them,” Elizabeth said.
“Respect costs nothing.”
Elizabeth would have pressed her further, but Ekua turned abruptly, setting off along a narrower walkway, and all she could do was follow.
Freedom Island had zones of development. In the centre was the Unicorn itself, clustered around with the most prestigious buildings. None were more than a single storey, but she’d seen conspicuous quality in the carving of their lintels and luxury in the width of their doorways. Beyond the centre were shops, in which some trade was conducted in barter. Closer to the edge came poorer housing interspersed with machinery.
“This is the secret of our wealth,” Ekua said.
They were looking at hundreds of panes of glass arranged on the ground, each angled gently, like a sloping roof. From a distance it had appeared to be a sprawling field of cucumber frames. Closer now, she saw that lines of guttering had been arranged below, some painted black and some white. Condensation ran from the underside of the glass.
“What is it?”
“We’re making water. Fresh, sweet water from the sea!” Saying this, Ekua beamed with pride. “The waves under us make the seawater flow along the troughs. The sun warms it. It evaporates and condenses onto the glass. When the drops get big enough, they fall into the fresh water troughs. Our storage tanks are always full. All from little drops.
“Long ago, when Mother Rebecca was young, she made sweet water this way and sold it to the sailors who passed. That’s how they lived back then. As the island grew, we made more. So however many came to join us, there was always enough to drink.”
Elizabeth didn’t doubt the evidence of her eyes. But the origin story left out as much as it revealed. If they’d had fresh water, why didn’t the sailors take it by force? How did they protect themselves right back at the beginning? The future-casters of the Patent Office believed that the chaos beyond the Gas-Lit Empire should snuff out any spark of civilization before it could develop. But something had enabled the Sargassans to gather sufficient strength to survive.
“The beginning of the Nation was the water trade?”
“There’s more,” said Ekua. “Come.”
She followed along another walkway, which took them further out towards the edge. The ground movement was enough to make Elizabeth stumble. More than once she had to swing an arm to keep from falling. The sound of machinery was louder here. Structures that seemed like waterwheels were positioned between the trees. Wooden frames held them clear of the ground so that there seemed nothing to power their movement. Yet they turned on their axles, slowly, creaking and clanking in time with the movement of the island itself.
As they approached one of the wheels, Elizabeth made out a crank arrangement, the drive for which was a metal rod connected to the ground.
“This is the secret of our power,” said Ekua, reaching out to let her fingers brush against the turning wheel. “The thing that is our weakness – that our island is in constant motion – this has become our strength. The swell shifts the ground. That turns the wave mills. And the wave mills make galvanic energy, which we channel through metal ropes.”
The next wheel they came to was stationary. Four women worked on it, adjusting the crank arm.
“It’s like the sail of a boat,” Ekua explained. “If not trimmed to the conditions, the mill won’t turn. However high the waves come to us, the machine must be changed to match. A fraction out and the wheel doesn’t turn. Or worse, it breaks itself to pieces. But perfect alignment makes great power.”
Elizabeth had seen the workings of mills before, by which some natural force could be harnessed to drive a saw or loom. But the wave mill had no machinery. The only thing attached to it was a curious rope, leading away from it like a washing line, supported above the ground by pairs of sticks.
“What is it for?” she asked.
“Follow the galvanic rope and you’ll see.”
They followed another walkway across the landscape of roots, parallel with the line of the galvanic rope. Other ropes trailed across the island from other wave mills, converging at a hut next to one of the upside-down ships.
“Don’t touch anything,” said Ekua, before leading her inside.
Elizabeth sniffed the air. There was something in it that made the inside of her nose tingle. “It’s too dark to see,” she said.
“We can’t have a flame here,” said Ekua. “But be patient. Your eyes will get used to it.”
And so they did. The galvanic ropes all converged at a curious machine of barrels and copper pipes. The whole thing looked like nothing so much as a brewery or whisky still.
“Do you make alcohol?”
“No, sister. Listen.”
Elizabeth did. “What am I listening for?”
“Put your ear close to the vat.”
It was the faintest of sounds, less than a whisper. It reminded her of a mug of sparkling cider, the breath of escaping bubbles.
“The wave mills make electricity flow along the ropes. And here, we galvanise the sea water, splitting it into hydrogen and oxygen. That’s what you’re hearing. We store the gases inside the hulls of the upturned ships. When hydrogen and oxygen are brought back together, all the energy of their separation is released. They burn with a flame that makes no smoke. It leaves only water. That’s how we drive the submarine ships.”
It was an answer to a question that Elizabeth hadn’t even considered.
The moment stretched. Ekua seemed content to stand in the dimly lit building, staring at the strange machine, though it had no moving parts. Elizabeth was glad of the pause. Much information had been fed to her, yet she’d had no time to think about it or put it in order. The galvanic rope had somehow brought to mind the unspooling drum of cable, hidden in the mother ship’s central hull, though the leviathan was driven by oil, not electricity.
Then she thought of Tinker, who had led her to the place where she could look in on that secret chamber.
“Where are the men from the Iceland Queen?” she asked, trying to make the words sound casual, not expecting a straight answer.
“I’ll show you,” Ekua said, taking her hand.
They followed a galvanic rope away from the field of wave mills towards another machine, quite different in appearance. A low, wide drum rotated slowly on a horizontal axle. Drawing closer, she made out rungs on the barrel. That’s when she knew what it was, for she’d seen illustrations of convicts undergoing reform by hard labour.
But only when Ekua led her around to the other side of the drum did she see the men of the Iceland Queen clambering endlessly up the ladders of the treadmill. Each was kept in his place by a chain. Other men sat or lay on the ground nearby. They too were chained, waiting their turn.
Perhaps seeing her horror, Ekua said: “They must earn their keep as we all do. We may fight or fish. They make electricity.”
The men on the mill could only focus on the task before their faces. If they stopped for a moment, they’d fall and be left dangling by the chains. The men waiting their turn seemed too exhausted to move, let alone notice that their one-time crewmate was watching. Locklight lay on his side. His face and captain’s uniform were covered in grime.
But nowhere could she see Tinker.
The sound of footfalls on the boardwalk made her turn. A messenger was approaching at a run.
“Mother Rebecca will see Elizabeth,” she called. “You’re summoned to her presence!”