Thirteen Pearls (6 page)

The outboard's droning saved me from having to make conversation with Uncle Red. Instead, I sprawled in one end of the tinny and trailed my fingers in the sea. The water was warm and felt like jelly just before it sets. It was a relief to escape the mugginess of the island and feel the soft breeze against my cheeks.

Sunset had turned the islands into velvety black hunched animals, the tree lines illuminated with a last fiery blast of gold. The sea was pigeon pink and grey. For a single, soppy moment, I wished I could be sharing it with someone I loved. I
was
going to have to toughen up – there would be many, many solitary sunsets on the
Ulysses
. And much as I loved my boat she couldn't exactly hug me back.

That was the thing I was most anxious about when I imagined myself out on the ocean alone. I'm fine during the day – don't need anyone, perfectly happy to potter by myself, working on
Ulysses
or roaming the infinite aisles of the hardware store or practising my knots or making lists of supplies, poring over sea charts, and fiddling with wind and water generator designs.

But come dusk and this sooky-chook part of me wants to return to the nest and be with the rest of the flock. Pathetic, I know. And especially pathetic when there will be months at a time when I will be a solitary chicken contending with nothing but endless sea.

A black shape loomed above the shifting silver currents, growing larger as we approached: Thirteen Pearls. The island was tiny! I reckoned I could have walked around it in ten minutes. A long, thin wooden jetty protruded from the mangroves where shadowed ibises clacked and rustled in the canopy. Uncle Red cut the engine to let the tinny drift in. The sounds of roosting birds and lapping water and encroaching night rushed to fill my senses.

‘Why's it called Thirteen Pearls?'

‘Lowanna's choice,' he grunted. ‘Stupid bloody name, but there was some Thirteen Pearls fairy story her hill-tribe grandfather used to tell her before they moved down to the city.'

I wanted to ask more, but his cracked lips tightened in a way that made it clear there 'd be nothing further from him on the subject.

As we bumped against the jetty, he threw up a rope around a jetty pole and neatly pulled it taut, but made no move to climb out.

‘Now,' he said. ‘Before we go up you need to know a few things. Just because you're my niece, I won't cut you any extra slack. It's bad enough that I had to come looking for you on T.I. It was a waste of time and it's dangerous taking the tinny out after dark.' His scowl deepened. ‘You're working for me, just like the boys. You'll call me Red and you'll do what I say. Satellite phone costs a bomb so you won't be making any calls except for emergencies. I'll be sending you over to T.I. with one of the boys to do a shop once a week and the rest of the time you'll be looking after Aran, cooking and cleaning up.'

My jaw dropped. Childcare yes. But no one had said anything about cooking and cleaning!

‘Get that?'

I nodded, hearing the bumpy gurgle of an eighteenth-birthday pearl necklace going down the drain. It wasn't as if I could change my mind at this point. It was too late. Character-building, Dad would call it. Either that or my character was going to be hammered out of shape, messy entrails strewn everywhere, by the time Uncle Red was through with me.

‘Ngggaaaaaaaggggggghhhhhnrrrrrrrrr.' A small figure, with arms stretched out like the wings of an aeroplane, bowled down the narrow wooden jetty.

‘Hi! You must be Aran. I'm Ed—'

The figure slammed into my stomach and the ballast of my pack pulled me off balance. I flailed for a few seconds, and landed in squelchy brown mud. Sharp prongs of mangrove roots and jagged oyster shells dug into my jeans. The mud smelled like rotten eggs. I tried to push myself up and my hand sank further.

‘You all right?'

A hand reached down, then two. I was sucked back out of the mud with a squelching noise, lifted into the air, pack and all, and set down on the jetty with an unceremonious plonk.

Out of the evening shadows two faces looked down at me. Both young men. Both good-looking. One Eurasian face with olive skin and dark eyes. The other haloed by a wild mane of hair. He was trying not to laugh.

‘I'm fine,' I said. I wanted to cry.

‘Aran was being a plane,' the dark-haired boy explained. He spoke with a broad Aussie accent.

I turned to see the little boy leaping like a puppy, getting underfoot, while Red tried to carry a box of supplies up from the boat. Uncle Red stumbled.

‘Edith! Enough gasbagging! Get this kid out of my way!'

I turned, uncertain. Neither of the boys seemed fazed by Red's sharpness.

‘I'll take your pack,' the blond guy said, extending a muddy hand. ‘I'm Leon, by the way.'

I nodded. ‘
Edie
.'

I squelched back down the jetty and took hold of Aran's hand.

He twisted from my grasp. I grabbed him again and held him tighter.

He swung around and punched me in the ribs.

‘Ouch!' I let go and he was off, running back up the jetty into the mangroves. ‘Do I get paid a damages allowance for this gig or what?' I muttered. ‘I should have taken out a health insurance policy.'

I jumped, startled, when, from behind me, Uncle Red growled. ‘There 's no place for you here if you can't handle a four-year-old.'

He said it with such contempt that every single stubborn cell in my body flared
Oh yeah? We'll see about that
.

The house was not at all what I had envisaged. Maybe I should have been more realistic, but an island called Thirteen Pearls conjures up visions of a long, low-slung South Seas colonial homestead, wrapped with wide, gracious verandahs and ornamented with iron lace.

Okay, so the iron lace wasn't such a great idea in a place so susceptible to rust, but it was a good fantasy. What I'd arrived at was a house that was in fact a large Colorbond shed. A skillion roof jutted out from one side, sheltering sun-cracked plastic outdoor furniture. Across the dirt path were two canvas tents on wooden platforms that I assumed were for the boys.

Inside the shed, Aran found a patch of bare concrete and sat down to tear the stuffing out of a cushion. In the back corner, the kitchen overflowed with dirty dishes, pots and pans. There was not a single scrap of clear bench space. A trail of ants swarmed around the sink and cockroaches sauntered over the festering piles of dishes.

They had to be kidding.

The dark-haired boy walked in, glanced at Aran and the disembowelled cushion, and shrugged. ‘Welcome to paradise.'

I nodded, speechless.

‘I'm Kaito.'

‘Yeah, I'm Edie. I'm Red's—'

‘Niece, we know. Leon and I've been making bets on how long you'd be staying for.'

‘What are the stakes?'

‘Full charter of a dive boat off Cairns on the first full moon in November.'

‘When the reef spawns?'

He nodded. ‘I'm told it's like underwater fireworks.'

I smiled. ‘Better.'

Kaito raised a fine dark eyebrow. ‘You're a diver?'

‘Got my PADI Rescue Diver certification and I'll be going for Divemaster on my birthday.'

‘I've done my Open Water Scuba Instructor,' Kaito said.

Mentally, I stuck out my tongue; he was two up from me. Instead, I said, ‘Is that what you want to do? Be a dive instructor?'

He shook his head. ‘Been diving since I was a kid. Now it's useful for my degree.'

‘What are you studying?'

‘I'm at the James Cook University studying marine biology, specialising in molluscs.'

Leon clattered into the shed and dropped an overloaded cardboard box with a satisfying thump to the floor. ‘This guy tell you he's practically pearling royalty?'

I looked at them both blankly: had Leon made a joke for which I hadn't figured out the punch line?

Kaito gave Leon a friendly punch on the shoulder, drawing my attention to Leon's smooth golden skin and well-defined biceps.

‘Not royalty,' Kaito said. ‘Just an ordinary guy.'

‘Yeah right,' Leon drawled, ‘an ordinary guy who just happens to be first in line to inherit a massive pearling empire.'

Kaito's cheeks flamed, ‘What about you?' he said, recovering quickly.

I didn't want to tell him I was still at school. ‘I'm building a boat. Going to sail solo around the world.'

Leon whistled. ‘Not just a pretty face.'

Despite myself, I blushed too. Then I blushed even more, realising that I was blushing. Wave after wave of stinging red crept into my pale cheeks.

Leon stared, clearly amused by my silly schoolgirl blushability. ‘Better go help the boss haul in more boxes.'

Kaito followed him out.

Moments later, Uncle Red stomped in. ‘What's Aran doing?' he demanded.

What I wanted to say was: ‘The same things he 's been doing for days, judging from the other five torn-up cushions.' They were strewn all over the floor in a snow of chunky foam cubes.

Instead, I said, ‘Oh, dear. What should I do?'

‘You could get some tucker into him for a start.'

Tucker. Right. Pulling a sleeve over my fist, and pinching my nose with the other hand to overcome the reek of rotting food, I cleared a tiny triangle of space on a bench. Next step: search the cupboards.

Uncle Red had said that being on Thirteen Pearls was like being on a ship, but frankly the food options were far more limited than I'd ever seen on a boat.

CUPBOARD ONE:

Five tins of spaghetti.

Three long-life packs of flavoured milk and a single straw.

One (rusted) can of sardines in tomato sauce.

Four litres of UHT milk.

One box of Fruit Loops.

Five bottles of red cordial.

One box of pizza-flavoured biscuits.

Three packets of no-name marshmallows

CUPBOARD TWO:

One indecipherable can with label half eaten away by rodents or cockroaches.

Two bottles of Thousand Island salad dressing.

One tube of liquid cheese.

One bottle of barbeque sauce.

Seven tins of sweetened condensed milk.

Yuck. Sighing, I opened a tin of spaghetti with a rust-crusted can-opener I'd foraged from beneath a stack of maggoty dishes in the sink. I didn't heat it; it was hot enough in the shed as it was. I searched the kitchen section of the shed for more food, for
edible
food, before pulling out another can of spaghetti and opening it for myself.

‘Aran, I've got dinner for you.'

Aran didn't look up from the computer game he'd switched on. I stole a glance at the screen. Yankee-style commandos in army flak jackets were creeping over sand dunes and blowing people up. Every time they (Aran) blew someone up the victim would (literally) fly apart with electronic spurts of blood streaming out from their blown-off limbs. Charming.

‘Dinner,' I said again.

Aran blew up another three bad guys.

I stood in front of the game, blocking his view.

In response, he took the control console and smashed it against my shin.

‘Owww!'
Holy Crap! What was he? Some kind of devil child?

Aran smiled. A sweet smile – Eurasian like Kaito – the best-looking people on earth, Dad reckoned. Aran had honey-coloured skin, dark eyes with long lashes and perfect four-year-old milk teeth.

Encouraged, I went to sit beside him, carefully placing his bowl of spaghetti on the floor. ‘Come on, it's you and me, Kid. I think we could have a lot of fun together. What do you like to do?'

With lightning-fast reflexes (probably from all that shooting up of assorted world order enemies) Aran snatched up the bowl of cold tinned spaghetti and threw it at my face.

Peals of merry four-year-old laughter echoed through the shed. I would have laughed myself if I hadn't been so busy scraping worms of spaghetti from my hair and mashing them into his mouth.

He bit my fingers.

I grabbed him in a self-defence hold and funnelled more of the slimy stuff into his mouth.

He spluttered and spat and elbowed and kicked.

I paused to let him take a breath, then squashed another mouthful in, until he seemed to realise it was easier to chew and swallow than resist.

‘Right,' I said with some satisfaction (maybe I wasn't so bad at childcare after all). ‘Now it's time to wash our faces.'

I hauled him up by the collar of his Bob the Buillder shirt (yeah I noticed the spelling mistake too – clearly a rip-off ) and marched him towards . . . Where exactly was the bathroom?

I let go for a single misguided moment and Aran was off, crashing out into the darkness like a frightened joey.

Outside, kerosene lamps illuminated the two canvas tents from inside. One of the boys' shadows was large and fuzzy in his tent.

A bush whimpered.

I crept over.

Aran stared up at me, the gleam in his dark eyes picked out by the light-spill from the shed.