Chapter 8: Dry Land

Things looked no better by the bleak light of morning.

Frank gave me a cold nod when I sat down at the table. Micah seemed quite happy to talk; Jason and Greta kept asking me what it was like. Mitchell wouldn't even look at me. Tyla and Toby talked softly with Micah about the plans for the new baby. Travis wasn't there. "He's in bed," Greta said. She had caught my glance at the empty space. "Not feeling well. He was throwing up last night."

"Why?" Jason asked. His sister shrugged. "Maybe he ate some bad fish. How do I know?"

I looked away. He hadn't been too careful about eating on the boat. He'd spent too much time watching me. Just watching.

"I need your help with the hull," Toby told me. "We'll get to work after breakfast." I wasn't very hungry.

The water helped. My element. Even underwater scraping barnacles was better than being up above the water with other people. We were checking every boat in the atoll before we worked on the new one with the incredibly rickety sides.

That one would be a job and a half, and test even our ingenuity, I could just tell.

We were done by sunset. I had hoped to take another trip to the ocean floor, but it didn't happen. There was no time. The next day it was raining; we fished.

"How far down can you go?" Greta asked me while we pulled in the nets.

"I don't know," I said.

"You don't know?"

"Go down too far, it gets dark."

"Oh. Is it fun?"

"Why are you talking to me?"

"I'm curious. I don't swim very well." I let her sigh and mutter rude words over the nets. "Don't you want friends?"

"Everyone I've ever thought of as a friend is either dead or turned against me."

"I won't."

"That's what the others said as well."

"Don't you trust anyone?"

"I trust me."

"You can tell me what it's like."

"It's cold. And it's dark. Sometimes there are fish."

"That's like saying the sky is blue."

"It's grey right now," I pointed out. "And at night it's black."

"You know, you have a real talent for being a bitch."

"Thank you. I've had years of practice."

"That's not answering the question," Jason slid down between us, and I jumped. I hadn't heard him coming. "What's it like underwater?"

"Wet," I said. Twin groans met that statement.

"Having fun?" Travis looked much the worse for wear.

"I'm fine," I said bluntly. I felt a little guilty.

"That's not what I asked."

"She's a real piece of work," Jason said. "You want to try to talk to her for a bit?"

"Sure. You two can catch up with us later."

"Huh?"

"Lessons, remember?" He nudged me. "We're only half-way through the alphabet."

"Oh. Right." I got up. "I need to find that sand square."

He caught me gently by my elbow. "You don't need to be so cold," he said. "Why be lonely if you don't have to?"

"It saves pain down the line," I said.

"You can't grasp that we really don't want to hurt you, can you?"

"Haven't you ever heard the word 'freak'?" I asked cynically.

"Yes. Although I still don't know how to spell it."

I managed a little smile.

"Knew I could do it." He pulled me up. "Now why are you so reluctant to talk about what's underwater?"

I looked away. "I went down there once before. I was called a liar, even with proof."

"Proof?"

I sighed. "Go down far enough and you find - well, they weren't atolls. There must have been thousands, tens of thousands of people living there. Old buildings and furniture and all sorts of things. I brought back that book of mine, and some jewellery, and dirt… But even with that lots of people didn't want to believe."

"The myth of Dry Land," his face went light. I mean by that, he paled.

"Yeah," I said. "It's down below us."

"How long have you known?"

"When I was fifteen a trader gave me a flare. Until then I'd never been that far down, because it got too dark. Then I knew."

"And here?"

"It's shallower here."

"But you can get down there."

I looked down and nodded. "Have you any idea how useful that could be?" he asked. "No, I can see you don't - Kayla, one of the problems with atolls is that there's only so much material to build them out of and it keeps getting whittled down by rust and stuff that sinks and raiders and lost masts… if you could bring stuff up from the sea-bed, stuff we could build out of, we could build an atoll as big as we like."

I said nothing. I didn't want to say anything. The thought had occurred to me.

I guess I just didn't want a place where I was only tolerated for my skills. I'd had that before and hated it.

He sighed and hugged me; I stood, stiff and awkward, unsure how to get him to stop. "Think about it," he advised, cupping my cheek in his hand, then moving away.

I noticed Greta looking at us wistfully. "What?" I asked her.