On a cruise ship, the nicest parts of the ship were on the outside, where there was sunlight and views. All the working parts of the ship were tucked away on the inside, where the light never reached. The Blue Water Duchess was a floating island ten storeys high, and her service areas were correspondingly vast. Pod wandered for a time, trying to get his bearings. This turned out to be a little easier than it seemed at first; the crew on a ship like this spoke many languages, and like Pod, many of them couldn’t read. So while there were written signs on the service corridors, they were mostly accompanied by symbols which made it easy to sort out the engines from the plumbing, the kitchens from the laundry, and maintenance from housekeeping. Blossom had been taken on as a maid; if she was still working in the same division, housekeeping was where he was most likely to find her.
He followed the symbols along metal service corridors and up and down clanging stairwells, all lit by the same harsh, unfriendly greenish light. No one really stopped to look at him as they went by; he guessed they all had something to do, and on a boat this large you might never get to know all the crew. The first time he saw a maid coming towards him, he stopped her and said, ‘Excuse me, I’m looking for Blossom. You seen her?’ The maid stared at him blankly, then shook her head and hurried away. He kept going, looking into service bays and storage cupboards and waiting rooms and dormitories, descending and descending through endless levels. He saw no one he recognised, and no one seemed to know Blossom. He descended another level and arrived in a wide corridor. Ahead of him, a maid was slowly pushing a trolley laden with cleaning supplies.
‘Excuse me,’ he began, but before she even turned around he felt a blaze of recognition, and he said, ‘Blossom?’
She turned and her face brightened with joy, then she ran and threw her arms around him.
Blossom
Blossom looked both the same and different. The last time Pod had seen her, she’d still had a little girl’s face; now, she looked even older than Essie and Annalie, although he knew she was younger than they were. She was wearing make-up which made her look older than she was, and she was developing an adult’s bone structure. But more than that, the person behind her eyes was not a child any more. She was delighted to see him now, laughing and happy, but in the split-second before she recognised him, he’d seen a darkness that disturbed him.
‘Pod!’ she cried. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘I got my freedom,’ Pod said. ‘I’ve come to get you out of here.’
For a moment, Blossom stared at him blankly. Then she gave a startled, disbelieving laugh. ‘You messing with me?’ she asked.
‘Nope,’ Pod said. ‘I’m free, and I’ve come to rescue you.’
‘You’re messing,’ Blossom said again.
‘I’m really not,’ Pod said. ‘So, how do we get out of here?’
‘It’s impossible.’
Pod felt a cold feeling steal through him. ‘There must be a way.’
‘If there was,’ Blossom said, ‘we’d all be out of here.’
She explained that whenever the boat was in port, the crew was locked down to prevent them from escaping. All the access doors that connected the service areas to the passenger areas were kept locked; only the most senior crew members were allowed out at these times.
‘What happens if there’s a fire?’ Pod asked.
‘We put it out,’ Blossom said.
‘They wouldn’t even unlock the doors if there was a fire?’
‘Nope.’
‘I don’t suppose you could talk someone into letting you through the doors?’ Pod suggested.
Blossom laughed. ‘Me? No.’ She looked at him. ‘How’d you get in here anyway?’
Pod explained about the claw and the bay filled with pallets. Blossom pulled a face. ‘Once they finish loading the supplies they close the hatch,’ she said. ‘It’ll be closed now.’
Pod pondered some more. ‘What about all the stuff they take off the ship?’ he asked. ‘If there’s clean laundry coming aboard, there must be dirty laundry somewhere too, right?’
‘There is,’ Blossom said, ‘but they lock it up so you can’t get at it.’
‘Are you sure?’ Pod asked.
‘People used to sneak out in the dirty laundry,’ Blossom said. ‘So they made it impossible.’
‘Isn’t there any way off this boat?’
‘Well, I did hear one thing—’ Blossom stopped.
‘Well? What did you hear?’
‘They say someone got out in the garbage,’ Blossom said.
‘What do they do with the garbage?’ Pod asked. The crew of the pirate ship he’d been on and the slave hulk before it had simply thrown all their rubbish overboard, although neither would have done it in port.
‘I heard there’s a barge,’ Blossom said. ‘They open a hatch and all the rubbish from the boat plops out onto the barge and they take it away. I heard that once someone dropped themselves down the garbage chute and escaped that way. But I also heard someone drowned in the garbage because there was so much of it.’
‘Maybe that’s it,’ Pod said. ‘Maybe that’s our way out.’
A look of dark, antic mischief crept over Blossom’s face. ‘Through the garbage chute? You ever smelt one of those things? It’s like all the worst smells in the world got together in one place.’
‘If it’s our only option…’ Pod said.
Blossom grinned wickedly. ‘Okay then. But I need to get some things first.’
She abandoned her trolley and scampered off down the corridor, Pod chasing after her. She led him to a dormitory where many bunks were packed in tightly together, currently unoccupied as all the maids were working. The narrow bunks all had the same cheap bedlinen on them,
