Francesca Haig - The Forever Ship

‘They say that there was a wave, afterwards,’ she said. ‘So high that any low-lying islands that had survived the bomb were swept clean. Nothing left at all.’ She exhaled slowly. ‘Imagine that: surviving the bomb somehow, and thinking that you might be OK, and then seeing the sea coming for you.’

She was quiet for a few moments.

‘Some survived both, though – the fire and the water. Not many, and for years it was nearly impossible to keep going. Not just the darkness, and the lack of food – all the babies were horribly sick. Even if they managed to live, they could barely walk when they grew up, let alone farm, or fish. And all the fish were dead, anyway. For months after the bomb, and after the wave, the dead fish were washing up. Piles of them, rotting on the beaches, and floating in the shallows.’ She gave a short laugh. ‘It’s funny – in all the stories that come down to us, that’s one of the things they always mention: the stink of all those fish. You’d think, after the bomb and the wave and everything that had happened, that somehow it wouldn’t matter – but so many of the stories mention it. How the world stank of dead fish, for months.’

Paloma told us stories of how, when the fish finally came back, they’d changed. They had bulbous growths on them, or more fins, more eyes. Some that had been striped or silver were pure white after the blast, as if even underwater they’d been bleached by the flash of the bomb.

And on land, too, the children were born into new bodies, in shapes that their parents didn’t recognise. Babies who looked half-formed, and refused to live. Then came what Paloma called the plague of twins: the doubling, the flawless babies paired with those who carried the burden of the mutations. The ones who were born together, and died together.

‘Nobody could believe it, at first,’ she said. ‘Even when they knew it was real, nobody fully understood how it worked, despite all the doctors’ research. But it only lasted a few generations. Then the doctors found a way to treat it, eventually, and it was over: no more twins.’ She spread her hands wide. ‘Finished.’ It seemed such a casual thing – a single word, to describe the end of everything that we knew.

Late into each night, we swapped stories; we told her about the deadlands, the stretch of land to the east, where nothing grows, and nothing moves but lizards and the drifts of ash. She told us about a place called the strike zone, an area to the south-east of Blackwater, where most of the islands had disappeared altogether. ‘And not even the birds will land on the few islands that are still there,’ she said. ‘On the Southern Archipelago, closest to the strike zone, the mutations are worse than anywhere else. Some of them can’t have children, even after the injections.’

‘Have you ever been there?’ Zoe said. ‘To the strike zone?’

Paloma shook her head. ‘But my father anchored off there once, when he went out that way, crewing on a seadoghunting ship. There were no fish in the water around it, and an oily sheen to the surface. Dad and the others rowed ashore for a few hours, just to look. In the south of the island there was a crater, miles and miles wide. He said it might have been a dried-up lake, or it might be from where a bomb hit. The ground was covered with grey sand.

‘He brought back a handful of it, in a jar, to show us. Mum said it was disgusting, made him throw it out before it frightened me and my sisters. But I went through the bin, that night, and found the jar. There was a tooth in it, and tiny pieces that might have been stone, or bone.’

*

Despite the hush in her voice when she told us stories of the strike zone, of the wave and the fire, Paloma nonetheless spoke of the blast as something long gone. It had been six days since we’d left the coast to head towards New Hobart, but our warnings about the Council, and the blast machine that they had dug up from the Ark, didn’t seem to have penetrated.

‘She still doesn’t understand,’ I said to Zoe and Piper. We were whispering, drawn apart from the fire where Paloma was resting. ‘She asked again, yesterday. She still wants to try to set up a meeting with the Council.’

Zoe rolled her eyes. ‘Might as well tie a bow around herself, if she wants to hand them Elsewhere like a gift.’

There was a sound in the scrub behind Zoe. She jumped, spinning away from me, a knife already drawn. Piper had echoed her movement, pushing me behind a tree as he crouched next to Zoe, knife raised.

Paloma gave a yelp, raising her hands as she stepped out of the cover of the trees.

Zoe stepped back, slipping her knife back into her belt.

‘Be careful creeping around like that,’ she said quietly. ‘You didn’t come all the way across the sea just to get yourself skewered.’

‘I heard what you were saying,’ Paloma said. Her chin was tilted at a bold angle, but her hands were clenched to stop their shaking. ‘I’m not an idiot.’

‘Nobody said you were,’ said Zoe. ‘But you need to understand what you’re dealing with.’

‘I’m not afraid of your Council,’ she insisted.

‘You should be,’ Piper said.

‘Let me meet with them,’ Paloma said. ‘If I explain the trade terms that the Confederacy’s willing to negotiate, they’ll see the benefits.’

‘You’re not listening,’ Zoe said. ‘The Council will—’

‘I’m an emissary,’ interrupted Paloma. ‘Empowered by the Confederacy to make contact, establish terms for trading negotiations and mutual cooperation.’ Her voice grew faster and higher, as she repeated herself. ‘I’m an emissary, on a peaceful expedition.’

‘Not here, you’re not,’ I said. ‘Here, you’re the enemy. They’ll hunt you down.’ I had known Zach since birth, but even I was afraid of what he had become. And I had seen how much he feared The General, who ruled the Council. Together, with the blast in their power, they would have no mercy towards Elsewhere. There was no if or perhaps or maybe about the flames that I’d seen in my visions. They were real, and they were coming.

I hadn’t thought it possible for Paloma to grow more pale, but now her lips seemed blue-tinged, the freckles standing out more conspicuously on her white face.

Piper threw down his dagger. He lifted his shirt, pulling it over his head and tossing it to the ground beside the knife.

‘Look,’ he said, turning his back on Paloma. He reached his single arm across his body to point over his left shoulder. There, on the brown skin below his shoulder blade, was a cluster of horizontal scars, white and raised. I had seen them before, during the months of travelling together, hunching together over streams to wash, but Piper wore so many scars that I hadn’t noted these ones in particular. I stared along with Paloma: these scars weren’t like the skirmish of scars on his hand and arm, or the nicks and scratches on his face. They were faded, and unlike the jagged slash that striped his shoulder, they had a uniformity to them, all of them parallel, perfectly straight.

‘That was a whipping I got when I was eight,’ he said. ‘A patrol came through our village, and Zoe and I had been playing a game with a few of the other kids. There was a song we used to sing: Jack was strong and Jack was brave—’

Zoe joined in, speaking the next words with him:

‘ He sailed away to Elsewhere, across the mighty waves .’

‘It was just a kids’ song,’ Piper said. ‘But the soldiers heard it, and made an example of me. Of course it was me they chose. Even out east, back then, when it wasn’t so unusual to be split late, they were always going to pick the Omega for the whipping. I got ten strokes.’