Raiders' Ransom (34 page)

“Why did you do that?” cries the head. “Now I'm not going to Scotland at all! How am I going to get technical assistance? Can either of you do it?” And it settles back on its neck, looking really upset.

“You know,” I say to Lexy, “everyone reckons this old head is some superweapon from the olden days. But it doesn't exactly act like a soldier.”

The head looks embarrassed.

“I really do need to clear up this misunderstanding. You see, I'm not a military computer.” It coughs. “I'm a gaming system. You know, for playing games on. You'd have thought my name would have given it away, but all those people we kept meeting, they seemed so … eager. They wanted me to
be a military computer so much, I didn't want to disappoint them.”

“But what about when you swelled up big as a house and made all them other heads appear?” I ask. “And the shields you made pop out in the air.”

“A projection, nothing more. It's an aspect of my Infinite Gamer function, designed to allow multiplayer interaction on a large scale.”

Me and Lexy look at each other. “Do you know what it's talking about?” I ask her. “I think it's saying it made it all up,” she says. “Then I reckon you're lucky Lexy didn't let the Scot take you. I don't reckon Jasper would have been too pleased when he found out you were lying to him. Not after he went to such a lot of trouble to try and get hold of you.”

The head frowns. “I suppose you might be right,” it says. “I hadn't really thought beyond getting technical support.” It gives a little bob, which I reckon is it shrugging. “Oh well, I've got this far, I imagine I can last a little longer.” It turns to me, looking a bit more cheery.

“So, what damp outpost of this dreary country are we going to next?” it asks.

“We're going to Lilly's village,” says Lexy. “And I'm going to stay with my aunty. And I'm going to tell Daddy to let everyone go.”

But I've got to shake my head at that, cos I don't reckon it'll be anywhere near so easy to sort things out.

“I've got to help Andy,” I say. “I've got to get him out of the army.”

“But then we'll go home?” asks Lexy.

“And go to Scotland after that?” says the head.

Cat wakes up, and gives a little meow. And now I always know what he's saying.

“Cat reckons we might be able to. He's got a taste for more than just fishing now. And who knows, we might even make it.”

“All right, then,” says the head. “In the interim, we'll need something to pass the time. Perhaps a game?”

Me, Lexy, and Cat stare as something pops into the air next to the head. It's a tiny ball, glowing with bright colors. As it gets bigger, the colors turn into the sea, and the sky, and tiny boats.

“Traveling with you has been fascinating, if rather a trial,” says the head. “I've been inspired to develop an entirely new game.”

The ball keeps on growing. Now I can see tiny raiders, and a little boat with a white sail. Cat meows, and puts out a paw to pat at it.

“It may have a few glitches still,” says the head, “but would you like to play? I'm calling it Raiders' Ransom …”

THE END

The
London
Times/Chicken House Children's Fiction Competition was launched in August 2007. There were over 2,000 entries, keeping the Chicken House's team of readers very busy, their eyes on the lookout for little gems among the towering piles of manuscripts.

Early the next year, the five short-listed stories were sent to the judges: Barry Cunningham, publisher of the Chicken House; Amanda Craig, literary critic of the
London Times;
Fiona Allen, press and publicity director at Great Britain's national book chain Waterstone's; children's librarian Karen Robinson; and award-winning author Malorie Blackman.

After much deliberation by the judging panel and nail-biting tension for the five finalists,
Raiders' Ransom
by Emily Diamand was awarded the inaugural prize.

Fishergirl Lilly Melkun, her steadfast seacat, and her punky pirate pal Zeph will be back soon in a sequel. For news about this and other Chicken House titles, visit www.scholastic.com.

Emily Diamand Talks About

RAIDERS'
Ransom

Emily Diamand won the first-ever
London
Times/Chicken House Children's Fiction Competition with her debut novel
Raiders' Ransom
— a story she started five years ago in a creative writing class. Here, she talks about her characters, her cool last name, and her concern for global climate change.

Q.
Raiders' Ransom
was first published in England under the title
Reavers' Ransom.
What is a “reaver”? Please tell us about the history of this term. Is it commonplace in Great Britain?

A. No, “reaver” isn't a commonplace word in Britain! I took it from a very old word, “reivers,” which dates from the time when England and Scotland were two separate countries. In those days, the border areas were dangerous and lawless, and the reivers were families who survived by stealing and raiding. Many of my relatives are Armstrongs, which is the name of a notorious reiver family, although I don't know if my ancestors were actually raiders! So when I started the book, it just seemed the right word for Zeph's people, because they are also living in a lawless area and raiding to survive.

Q. How did you come up with the raider Family names, like Brixt, Dogs, and Chell Sea? Why is Zeph's Family called Angel Isling?

A. The raiders in the story are descended from people who fled London when the city was flooded, and their names are taken from the districts of the city. But I changed them a little, because people often do change names of things over time. So Angel Isling is taken from an area in London called Angel Islington, and Brixt from an
area called Brixton. In some cases, I liked the idea of taking an area where, in present-day London, everyone is quite well-to-do and posh, and turning them all into pirates!

Q. Zeph dresses in red leathers, and his Family crest features a lion. Has the lion been used in British flags and family emblems in the past?

A. When I first started writing about the raiders, they just swaggered onto the page in their colored leathers and with their animal emblems; I certainly hadn't planned them to be that way. It is true that noble families in Britain have colored flags and animals in their coats of arms, but I don't think that's where the raiders got their colors from, because they are descended from ordinary people who had to flee their homes. Lots of people today wear shirts in the colors of their favorite sports teams, so my guess is that the raiders' colors come from those of the teams their ancestors supported!

Q. All the characters speak in dialects and use vocabulary that is very unique and colorful. American readers figure out the meanings as they follow the story. Did your British readers have to do the same? Or are words like “mog” and “doxy” already familiar to them? What was the basis for your characters' dialects?

A. When I wrote the first chapter, Lilly's voice just came out that way. The way she speaks is a bit like the children I knew growing up in rural England, so I suppose that's a little bit of me in her. And when I started writing Zeph, I had to write him as he is: a hotheaded boy who has almost no education. Then, when I was writing both of them, I started thinking about how things would have changed from our time, and how they might view our world, which to them would be ancient history. That's where a lot of the unusual words came in, because I wanted to show those changes. At the same time, I tried hard to use the words in ways that would let the reader figure them
out. And I don't think British readers have had much of a head start on the language, because I made up some of the words, or recycled ones that are so old that no one uses them anymore!

Q. What else can you tell us about your writing process? Do you share some of your characters' distrust of technology, and did you write
Raiders' Ransom
with pen and paper, or on your laptop?

A. Lilly and her people are scared of technology, but I'd be lost without my computer. I write straight onto the screen and I love the ease with which I can change things around; it would take me forever to write a novel if I had to use pen and paper. But quite a lot of PSAI's personality is taken from computers I've had over the years, because they do seem to be quite grumpy machines! When I was writing
Raiders' Ransom,
my computer's spell-check function kept telling me off for using so many made-up words, and so when PSAI started talking, he had quite a lot of that attitude in him!

Q.
Raiders' Ransom
was the winner of the Chicken House's first-ever children's fiction contest. Did the story change a lot from the time that you won to the time when it was published?

A. Amazingly, it didn't change a great deal. And my human editors have been much more understanding than my computer about all the made-up words and incorrect grammar!

Q. You have a really cool name, especially because diamonds are just what we'd imagine could be found in a pirate's buried treasure chest! Is there a story behind your last name?

A. My last name is actually from Romania, which is a country in Eastern Europe. My grandfather was born there in 1900. When he was fourteen, the First World War started, and by the end of it much of Europe was utterly devastated. My great-grandmother wanted her young son to escape the chaos and the hard, poor life they had, so she
bought my grandfather the best pair of boots she could afford, and he set off walking —west, across the Continent! New boots might not seem like much of a gift, but there were plenty of times when people tried to steal them off him — even the soldiers had bad shoes by the end of the war. Eventually, my grandfather made his way to France. There he met the daughter of an English artist who was living in Paris, and they fell in love. The girl was my grandmother, and that's how I got such an unusual last name.

Q. Why did you choose to have Scotland be the dominant country on the British Isles in the 23
^rd
century, when the story takes place? Do England and Scotland have a history of conflict?

A. There certainly is a long history of conflict between England and Scotland, but that wasn't really why I wrote Scotland to be the way it is in the book. I wanted to show that even in the face of something so frightening as climate change, there can still be hope for the future. I really believe that if we act now, and choose to live less wastefully, then climate change doesn't have to be a disaster for humanity. Greater Scotland represents that hope, because the people there have good lives, even if they are very different from our own. Theirs is the future I would like us to have.

Q. And how did you decide which would be the Last Ten Counties? Were they the ones that, geographically, were less likely to be affected by rising water levels?

A. Pretty much. Unfortunately for people living in England today, much of the east of the country is very low-lying. Our government is already talking about allowing some places to be abandoned to the rising sea – and as you can imagine, the locals aren't very happy about it. When I looked at which parts of England will be at risk of flooding, and then took away the counties that I imagined would be annexed by Greater Scotland, there really wasn't much left of
England as we now know it! Only ten counties, and I think some of those would rather be independent from Scotland.

Q. After the Collapse, the citizens of 23
^rd
-century Great Britain are quite superstitious. Even though the story is set in the future, they are living as if in a pre-industrial past! They hardly know about computer technology from two hundred years earlier, and they think the holographic PSAI gameboard head is a ghost! If the world were to suffer a major climate catastrophe, do you think we'd revert to a “dark age” like that?

A. I really, really hope not. But not everyone in the book is ignorant about technology, and Lilly's superstition and lack of knowledge isn't just about what might happen in the future. If you think about it, the technology we have today isn't universal — in fact, much of the earth's population has never seen a computer and doesn't live very differently from Lilly. These gaps are starkly contrasted in the imagined future of
Raiders' Ransom,
but that's because I based it on what's happening now.

Q. And do you think that cities like London and New York could be largely underwater in two hundred years? Why?

A. Again, I hope not! But London and New York
are
built on low-lying areas of coastline. The two cities both developed where they did precisely because, back in the days when ships were the main way of transporting goods around the world, near the coast was the best place to be for business. But it isn't so great now if sea levels start rising due to global warming …