Hostage Three (16 page)

So now that we'd told the mom and her boy that we were going for dinner, we sort of had to. We walked down the beach to the restaurant, where we'd been before, so we knew that it did an amazing puerco pibil, which is a bit like a really slow-cooked pork belly, except it comes served in palm leaves. We sat at a table overlooking the sea, our toes in the sand. We ate our dinner, and Mom let me have a couple of Coronas, which came to the table glistening, cold in the heat of the night, lime wedges shoved into their necks.

Above, the stars were a blanket of brightness across the sky. Nothing like in Somalia, but still impressive, and of course I hadn't been to Somalia then, so I didn't have that to compare it to. As we sat down, Mom pointed up.

— Watch that patch, she said. The Perseid cluster.

— Why?

— Just watch.

So, all through dinner, I kept glancing up at the swathe of star blanket that Mom had told me to watch, wondering what I was meant to be seeing. Then, just as I was finishing my second beer, it happened: a shooting star flared across the sky, sudden as a firework. Then another, and another, little flickers of angled light, like arrows of white fire.

— Shooting stars! I said.

— Meteors, actually, said Mom. The Mayans measured time using the stars, you know. It's how they knew when to plant things, how to orientate their buildings.

— Right, I said.

— Prehistoric European peoples, too.

— Yeah, I said. Like Stonehenge. Where the sun rises through the entrance at the summer equinox.

— Summer solstice, said Mom.

— Oh, yeah.

— But it's not just that, said Mom, who had that faraway look now. Did you know, Amy, that Taurus used to set, in Neolithic times, at the precise point on the horizon where the sun went down on the spring equinox?

— No, I said. But, then, I generally didn't know the things she knew. Mom had, like, three PhDs. Dad said she was the smartest person he'd ever met, and he was pretty damn smart himself – he did something very complicated to do with computer modelling of weather at MIT, which is how he got the job in the bank in the first place.

— Well, said Mom, it's true. The sun would set right on Taurus just that one day of the year. A lot of people think that's how bull sacrifices started: people looked up at the sky, just as spring was about to start, and they saw the sun killing a giant bull made of stars. Then things started to grow again. So they figured that to bring the warm weather back, bulls had to die.

— Obviously, I said a little sarcastically. But they didn't really think it was a bull in the sky, did they?

— Oh, I think they did, said Mom. Another interesting thing, she said, as if she were talking to herself, is that most cultures see a bull. The same as most cultures see a hunter for Orion. But neither of those constellations actually look much like what they're meant to be, like a bull, or a hunter with a bow and arrow. I mean, it doesn't make sense that people see the same things when the so-called images are so abstract. There's a theory that these stories of the stars, and the shapes they made, started in Africa, when all humans lived there. Then, when people dispersed, they took the stories with them. So before writing and religion came along, nearly everyone in the world looked up at the night sky and saw a bull there, riding.

I leaned back in my plastic chair. It was a weird thought, that people used to look up at the stars and see stories they really believed were true. Orion, the hunter, chasing a swan. An eagle. A bull being murdered by the sun.

If I could go back in time, I'd say to Mom, well, I know someone from Africa, and he thinks the Great Bear is a camel, so, you know. But I can't.

— Of course, said Mom, the earth's orbit varies over time. Taurus stopped setting in that place at that time. And religion moved on.

— People forgot about the stars, I said.

— No, said Mom. They didn't. Think of the wise men, how they found Jesus.

— Oh, yeah, I said.

That was what happened during dinner. I'm telling you so you get a sense of my mom, the kinds of things that interested her, but the important thing is what happened afterwards. We were walking back along the beach, hand in hand. Mom was carrying our flip-flops. We were on the hard-packed sand, close to the shore, where the water had firmed it up, darkened it. The moon was huge and round, lighting up a path along the sea towards us that looked like we could walk down it, over the water, to somewhere else.

At the back of my mind, I was thinking of the turtles, so something snagged on my attention when we were passing some big rocks in the surf. I glanced at the rocks. Then one of them moved.

— Mom, turtles! I said, and I pointed.

We stopped.

— Oh, yes, she said.

Close by there was a dune with some grass on it, so we went and sat down. We watched as the turtles crawled slowly up through the white froth of the waves on to the sand. Neither of us said anything, even though this must have taken maybe fifteen minutes. Then another half hour passed, with the turtles moving up the beach. There were two of them, each one as big as a coffee table, leaving smooth trails in the sand behind them. Their flippers swept at the sand, dragging the shells upwards. Their great hooded eyes looked around for danger. The way their mouths were set, it was almost as if they were smiling.

It's like we've been chosen, I remember thinking. Like we've been selected to see this, and it means something. I knew it was a silly thing to think, but I thought it anyway.

We'd chosen our dune well because one of the turtles stopped just below us and started digging its hole. We were practically holding our breath the whole time. We saw the turtle position herself, and then the eggs coming out, miraculously smooth and white, like a magic trick, and falling into the hole. After that, the turtle turned around, ponderous, and filled in the space with sand to keep the eggs safe.

Then, very slowly, it crawled back down to the sea, closely followed by the other one. We kept our eyes on them as they sank into the water, before finally disappearing. There was something about the whole scene – the moon, the giant turtles, the beach where you couldn't see any modern buildings or lights – that was utterly magical and old, really old, like we were seeing something ancient and powerful. And we were, I suppose: turtles must have been coming up to lay eggs on that beach for tens of thousands of years.

— Holy shit, said Mom.

It was the first time I'd heard her so excited about anything to do with nature or animals. Usually it was only the stars, or music, that got her like that.

— Yeah, I said.

— We should tell the turtle preservation people, she said. Let them know where the eggs are. She was still sitting, hugging her knees. Wow, she said. It's just . . . It's a sign, I think, Amy.

— A sign?

— Yes. Like someone wanted us to see that. Like the turtles chose us.

— I know! I said. I feel like that, too!

I was amazed that Mom had also felt it. And I felt even more amazed the next day, when we got talking to that hippy mom, and she told us that she and her son sat perfectly still, further down the beach, till 3 a.m., and they didn't see anything at all. And they were with guides whom they had paid to find them!

But that was the next day, and it might as well have been a lifetime away. For the moment, Mom and I just sat on the beach together in the moonlight and the starlight.

— Hmm, Mom said in her vague, distracted voice. So beautiful.

— Yes, I said.

— I mean, it's like they were telling me something, she said. Like they were telling me to hold on.

— To hold on?

She coughed.

— Ignore me, Amy, she said. That was lovely, that's all. I'm glad we got to share that moment.

She always sounded very American when she said things like that. She reached out and held my hand, then we got up and our legs were stiff, so maybe we'd been sitting even longer than I'd thought. And we walked back to the hotel.

The next day, we did tell the Turtle Watch people where to find the eggs, and they happened to have some baby turtles that had just hatched and were ready to go in the water. So we went with them to watch all these little things crawling into the sea, swimming away, to where most of them would die. When I saw the baby turtles, so tiny, I thought, each one of those had been inside an egg. And the eggs were inside a bigger turtle. It made my head spin: turtles in turtles, like a Russian doll that went on for ever.

And that was amazing, too.

But it was the earlier thing that I remembered, After. It was the way Mom said the turtle was telling her to hold on, and what that must have meant.

So, yes. That was the only sign. A turtle, laying its eggs.

That's not quite what I mean, though.

What I mean is: Mom said it was the
turtle
that was the sign. But it was never the turtle. It was what Mom said: about the sign; the way she got all distant, and talked about holding on.

I noticed the turtle. I noticed the beauty of it, the way it felt like we'd been chosen.

But I didn't notice the real sign at all.

For the first time
, Dad seemed suspicious of where I was going in the evenings. We must have been in Somali waters a week, at least. I was trying to leave the cinema room after sunset. We had just had soup, made by Felipe using tins from the stores, and toasted bread from the freezer. The pirates had taken a lot of our tins, though, to go with their pasta, and I knew we were getting low on plenty of stuff – I knew it from the looks between Dad and the crew, even though none of them had said anything.

— Where are you going? he asked. Why don't you stay and play Scrabble with us, Amy-bear?

— I need air, I said, which was a lie, but was also, obviously, true – we all need air.

— Oh, come on, said the stepmother, to my surprise. It's no good playing without you on my team. Your dad and Damian are too good.

And so I ended up playing one game with them to keep them happy, and, under the circumstances, it was actually kind of fun. The stepmother and I beat Dad and Damian, while Tony read some book about Magellan.

Outside, when I finally got out, there were clouds for once, obscuring the stars.

Farouz was already there, standing at the rail, blowing smoke out over the water. When he saw me, he turned and smiled.

— Hostage Three, he said.

— Pirate, I said.

He grinned. He beckoned me over to where he was standing. Below him, the sea was burning blue.

— Phosphorescence, I breathed. I'd seen it before, but now it was even brighter, like alcohol on fire.

— Pretty, isn't it? he said. Then he touched one of my piercings, the one in the side of my eyebrow. Does this hurt? he asked.

— What, now?

— Yes.

I tapped the silver ball where it protruded from my flesh. I hadn't really thought about it since I'd been kicked out of school.

— No, I said. It hurt when they were done. And in the sun, sometimes, because the metal gets hot. But not now.

— Oh. And what do they mean? He was looking curiously at the rod through my eyebrow, the stud in my nose, the ball below my lip.

— What do they mean? I said dumbly.

— Yes. That is what I asked you.

— I don't know, I said. Don't people do things like this in Africa? I've seen TV programmes. Women with stretched necks, big dangling earlobes, massive sticks pushed through their skin.

He gave me a look that was half-tender, half-patronising.

— In Africa? he said. Africa is big.

Of course it is, I thought, feeling super-stupid. Some African tribes did that kind of thing, but that didn't mean people in Somalia did it, too.

— So you don't know what they mean? he asked, looking at my nose stud now.

— They don't mean anything really.

Farouz threw his cigarette into the sea; it flashed red above the blue glow of the water, then fizzled out and was gone.

— Then why do you have them? he asked. Does your father like them?

I laughed.

— He's never said anything about them, I said. I guess not, I suppose.

Farouz looked at me hard, then.

— You do this to your face, and your father says nothing?

I nodded slowly.

— Strange father.

I said nothing.

We were walking back to the sunloungers when we heard a footstep inside the door to the deck. Instantly, Farouz melted into the shadow under the overhang of the bridge, leaving me standing there alone.

Mohammed opened the door and saw me standing there. He leered at me, came out on to the deck, walked towards me. I was shivering the whole time, even though it was hot, even though I knew Farouz was there. But then what could Farouz do to protect me? Would he even want to protect me?