Aunty Figgy comes in as I’m wiping down the surfaces.
“So he’s back safe and sound.” Her voice is dry. She begins to stack the soup bowls on the dresser. “But time is running out, Ebba. You need to focus on your sacred task. It’s not long till the equinox. Find the amulets, save the planet and then you can have all the romance you want.” She turns me around to face her. “It’s important that, until then, you don’t …” She pauses. “That you don’t …”
“Ag, Aunty Figgy,” I snap, throwing the washing-up cloth into the sink. “I’m sorry, but what I do with Micah is none of your business.”
Her lips are squeezed tight as she picks up the pile of plates and bangs it onto the dresser shelf. I’m not going to hang around here with her in one of her moods. She has no right to tell me what I can and can’t do with Micah.
“I’m going to shower,” I say.
Later, as I’m closing the bedroom shutters, I hear the rush of water and run out onto the stoep. It’s raining, pelting down. We’ve needed rain for so long and it’s here at last. The earthy fragrance rises up from the ground and mixes with the smell of wet thatch, and it’s just wonderful. Micah is back and my position on the council is going to help the resistance. It’s a new beginning for Greenhaven, and for us.
I DON’T KNOW what Micah has said to the others, but everyone has calmed down the next morning. I’m collecting the eggs in the hen house when Jasmine arrives to help.
“It’s okay,” I say, a little awkwardly. “I can manage.”
She digs in the nesting boxes and brings out a pair of brown-speckled eggs. “I want to apologise for what I said last night,” she says, not looking at me. She’s turning and turning the eggs in her hands. “And I know Leonid is sorry too. Thank you for making Letti and Fez legal. It’s a big relief.”
“I seriously didn’t leave Leonid out on purpose. I’m really sorry. I’ll get him papers at the next council meeting.” If I can, I add in my head. And if the general is in a good mood.
“That’s okay. We all make mistakes. Micah is back safe and sound, and that’s what really matters. And you saved Lucas.” She hugs me, and I hug her back, grateful that we’re friends again.
“Look at this fat brown hen,” Jasmine says searching under the hedge. “She’s such a pain. She could be laying her eggs in the hen house, but no, she has to crawl in here where no one can find them.”
I hope Lucas has found a safe place to hide like the brown hen. He didn’t come back to the house last night and I’m worried. I’ll find some blankets and pillows and leave them by the holy well later, in case he decides to stay hiding in the forest for a while.
“It’s the Festival of the Boats today,” Jasmine says as we walk back to the house for breakfast. “It’s twenty years today since everyone decided to join their rafts together to form Boat Island. There’ll be music and food and dancing. We stop at the water barrel for a drink and she does a little twirl around the bucket, laughing. “Remember in the colony how we used to dream of going to a party? It would be such fun to go.”
Her excitement infects me. Imagine hearing real music in the open air, and dancing in the sunshine.
Everyone’s in the kitchen already, and I grab Micah’s hand. “Shall we go to the festival today? Shall we go and dance the day away?”
He puts his arm around my waist and waltzes me around the kitchen table. “Why not? Let’s celebrate. I can’t wait to see the guards’ faces when they have to let us through the border post.”
Suddenly I realise what this means. Leonid’s sister – my half-sister, Alexia – lives in Boat City with her mother, Natasja. I can finally meet my only other living relative.
If she wants to meet me. I stop dancing mid-step.
“Leonid,” I ask, my throat suddenly dry, “can we visit your family?”
“I want to meet your family too,” Jasmine laughs, punching him playfully on the shoulder. “Or is it too soon?”
“It’s not too soon. My mom’s been asking to meet you,” Leonid says, as serious as always.
She hasn’t been asking to see me, I think and my heart drops. The daughter of her husband’s lover. She probably hates me even more than Leonid does.
“I think I’ll stay at Greenhaven,” Letti says, glancing at Shorty. “You go, Aunty Figgy. You deserve some fun. Shorty and I can look after the farm.”
Aunty Figgy pats Letti’s cheek. “You two children be good now,” she says.
“That’s sorted then,” Micah says. “We should leave soon.”
Suddenly I’m having doubts.
What if the Boat Bayers find out that I’m on the council? Maybe I should stay at home.
But Micah will protect me, I know. I don’t want to spend another moment away from him, so after breakfast I climb into the carriage with the others and we begin the long journey to the Longkloof.
“AND THERE IT IS,” Aunty Figgy calls as we round the top of the pass and begin the descent through the Longkloof. The road clings to the mountainside like a creeper. Ruined houses litter the slope, doors and windows long stripped away for firewood. Looking over the edge, I see the top of the wall, as thick as the road we’re driving on, and below that flashes of blue sea in a narrow valley with mountains on the far side.
Fez leans out the window, absorbing the new information. “So this strip of sea is – what did they call them again in the old world – a fjord?”
“Yes, but it used to be land,” Aunty Figgy says. “Before the Calamity, this was a lush valley with beautiful houses but, as the sea rose, the valley filled with water.”
“So there are actual houses under the sea?” Fez exclaims. “With furniture and cars and computers and stuff?”
“People took what they could, but yes, they left a lot behind,” Aunty Figgy explains. “Remember, back then Cape Town was part of the mainland. But as the sea started rising and the storms got fiercer, they had to find new places to live. And then the High Priest built the wall and threw everyone out who wasn’t a citizen. Some people built houses on rafts, but if they weren’t in a sheltered place, they couldn’t survive. Leonid’s father – Leonid and Ebba’s father – came up with the idea of lashing all the rafts together to create an island. Then they negotiated with the fisher folk who had lived here for centuries to bring the floating island into the Longkloof, where it would be sheltered by the mountain. Our people contributed the inventions like the water harvesters and the fisher folk knew how to catch food, so they made an alliance, and Boat Bay was created.”
We’ve reached the border post. The guards see me inside and wave us through. Word must have got out that I’m on the council.
Leonid drives the carriage past the harbour, and around the mountainside to the entrance to the fjord. This is the port where the boats berth. Some are dhows, which the fishermen use when they go to sea. We watch a longboat coming into the harbour, rowed by ten men on each side. As it approaches the jetty, six or seven people emerge from a shed. They are carrying brown sacks on their backs.
“Hey, those sacks come from the colony.” Jasmine is sitting up front with Leonid, but she turns and taps on the window. “See that?” She points to a man heaving a sack into the longboat.
“Sacks of dehydrated vegetables,” Fez confirms, leaning out of the window. “They’ve got PTIC on the side: Property of Table Island City. I wonder how long they’ll be able to keep that up. They were running out of growing medium last time I looked.”
“Then it