Pod looked at her curiously. ‘Are you crying?’
‘No,’ Essie said crossly, wiping her eyes.
‘It was just a shell.’
‘I know,’ Essie said, ‘but I really liked it. And my dad gave it to me for my birthday.’ The shell she’d sold had truly been a dazzling object: light, tiny, splendidly fast. It also had the very latest headset, a sleek, jewelled headband with a customisable light display (it flashed and sparkled and you could change the colours to match your outfit) which housed technology that could project the contents of your shell directly in front of your eyes. When it was new, it was the very latest version and all her friends agreed that it was superior to any other on the market. Her replacement shell was older and fatter and slower and uglier, and did not come with a headset. ‘This one will do what I need it to do,’ she sighed.
‘That’s all you need then,’ said Pod, who was immune to the magical attraction of shells and did not really appreciate the scale of her sacrifice.
They settled in to wait.
Several more hours passed. The pirates did not call.
Eventually, the vet appeared once again.
‘Surgery go well,’ she said with a smile. ‘Parrot going to be okay. We keep here, tonight?’
‘We’d rather take him with us now, if that’s okay,’ Pod said.
Graham was handed back to them, still groggy from the anaesthetic, with some very expensive medicine and instructions about how to change his dressing. They carried him through the darkening streets in a box; occasionally, his blue head would pop out.
‘Where Pod?’
‘I’m right here, Graham.’
‘Where going?’
‘We’re going back to the Sunfish.’
‘On the wet?’
‘Yes, on the wet.’
‘Hate wet.’
‘I know.’
The blue head subsided.
Later it popped up again.
‘Where Pod?’
‘I’m still here, Graham.’
‘This storm very rough.’
‘You’re not in a storm. You’re in a box.’
Graham looked about and saw he was right.
‘Hate box.’
‘You have to be in the box. You can’t stand up properly yet.’
‘Graham wonky?’
‘Yes, you are.’
Graham looked at Pod imperiously. ‘Pod be more careful with box.’
‘Yes, master,’ Pod said, with a roll of his eyes.
Later, when they were in the dinghy and heading back to the Sunfish, Graham popped up one more time. ‘Pod?’
‘Yes, Graham?’
‘Pod good friend.’
Pod smiled. ‘Thanks, buddy. You too.’
The room
‘What have you been able to work out about this place?’ Annalie asked. ‘Do you know where we are? Is there any way to get out?’
‘I think we’re still in Dio,’ Cherry said. ‘At least, that’s where I was taken from, and I assume they wouldn’t have taken me somewhere else. Not that that helps us very much. I don’t know how much you know about Dio, but the place is enormous.’
‘Right,’ Annalie said vaguely. Nice as Cherry was, she had decided to let him know as little as possible about who she was, what she knew, and where she was going. ‘What about this room, did you search it? Is there any way out of here?’
‘I don’t think so,’ Cherry said. ‘Apart from the door.’
Annalie got up to have a look. ‘It’s not that I don’t believe you,’ she said apologetically. ‘I just want to see for myself.’
Looking around, she guessed the room had originally been a bedroom, perhaps a child’sroom, because it was quite small. The walls were bare now, but different-coloured patches showed where furniture had once been, decorations too. She got up on tiptoe and tried the boards over the window.
‘I couldn’t budge them,’ Cherry said.
‘I don’t suppose you’ve got a pocket knife on you?’ Annalie asked. They were part of a sailor’s standard kit.
‘I had one,’ Cherry said. ‘They took it off me.’
Will always carried a pocket knife about with him too, but Annalie never had. She made a mental note that if she ever got herself out of this mess she would get one.
‘It’s not going to be easy getting those boards off, then,’ she said.
‘Wouldn’t be much help if we could,’ Cherry said. ‘That window’s tiny.’
Annalie had to admit he was right; the window was so small not even she could have crept through it. She stood on tiptoe and looked out the little gap between the boards. The viewing angle was narrow and showed only the weatherbeaten walls of a neighbouring house, featureless and sheer, with nothing to climb up, no windows to signal to, and no glimpse of any landmarks which might help them work out where they were.
She turned back to the room and studied it thoroughly. She tried the door, just in case—locked; checked the ceiling for hatches or trapdoors—none; looked around the walls for a concealed door or window—nothing.
‘Anything under the mat?’ she asked.
Cherry rolled off it obligingly and let her pull it aside. There was, of course, nothing to see underneath. Restlessly, Annalie paced around the room, looking, listening, feeling. In one corner, she felt the boards give under her feet. She bounced experimentally and the floorboards bounced with her.
‘I think a joist’s gone,’ Cherry observed.
‘Any idea what’s underneath?’
‘Wouldn’t have a clue.’
Annalie bounced one more time and then went back to sit on the floor.
‘So there’s no obvious way out,’ Cherry said.
‘No,’ Annalie said.
‘And whenever they come to the door, they tend to do it in pairs,’ Cherry said, ‘so I don’t like our chances of overpowering them. Unless you’re a master of the defensive arts?’
‘I’m not much of a one for fighting,’ Annalie said.
‘Are you not?’ he said, and smiled. ‘Don’t worry. We’ll get out of here.
