The League of Sharks (7 page)

‘Oh man-oh-man, I needed that! Read somewhere that when you get really thirsty, like dying-of-thirst-type thirsty, your body shuts down the bit of you that feels thirsty so you don't know you're thirsty. Crazy, huh?'

Garvan didn't reply. He just stared at Junk as if he was the most fascinating creature he'd ever seen.

‘So where am I?' asked Junk. ‘Am I still in Corfu?' No response. A thought occurred to him. ‘Wait. Is this Albania? I was diving in the Corfu strait so I guess I could've come up on the Albanian side. What language do you speak in Albania? Albanian? I don't know any Albanian.' He looked Garvan in the eye and pointed with both index fingers straight down. ‘Albania? Is this Albania? Albania?' Nothing. No response.

The day continued in much the same way. Junk would talk and Garvan would not. Sometimes Garvan would go out and come back with food and water. Day became night and Junk slept.

The following day was pretty much the same, as was the day after that and the day after that and the day after that. Junk lost track of time. He was certain he'd been here more than a week, but he wasn't sure if it had been two weeks yet.

At some point, while he was asleep, Garvan had extended the length of the strap connected to the leather manacle around his ankle. It meant Junk could walk around a little. Not far – a metre or so, and Garvan made sure there were never any knives or other tools left within his reach.

To fill the time, Junk started telling Garvan all about himself. About his home back in Murroughtoohy, about his mother and father and about Ambeline. He spoke a lot about Ambeline. He told the story of that night. Told
him that he was looking for the man who killed her. He told him about La Liga de Los Tiburones … the League of Sharks.

As time went on, Garvan would do more than just sit and stare at Junk. He had a fat book covered in animal hide, stained dark brown, in which he would write or sketch as Junk spoke. Often Junk would ask what he was writing or sketching, but Garvan never showed him or responded to anything he said.

One morning Junk woke to find Garvan was nowhere to be seen. A moment of panic rose in him. He had grown used to his captor being the first thing he saw every morning.

‘Frank,' he shouted. ‘You around?' But there was only silence. Then he noticed a small wooden box next to his bed. It was a cube with sides about fifteen centimetres long. A dozen types of wood had been used in its construction. They were naturally different colours. It was highly polished. There was no hinge or obvious opening, but there was something inside. Junk could hear it rattle when he shook the box.

He spent the best part of an hour examining it before deciding that it didn't open and putting it down. Still there was no sign of Garvan, and after boredom took hold again Junk returned to pushing, prodding and poking the box. Then, suddenly, a corner clicked out. Junk tried the other corners but they didn't move. He realized it was a puzzle box. There was a way to open it; the way just wasn't very obvious. He'd come across something similar in a market
in Shanghai. This realization fired his imagination and he spent the next several hours attempting to figure out the box's secret.

Eventually Garvan appeared. Junk held the box out to him.

‘So come on then, show me. How do you open it?' Garvan placed some food and water next to Junk and left.

It took Junk four days to open the box. In that time he hardly saw Garvan. The big man would come in with food and leave again. When Junk finally worked out how to open the box (the corners had to be turned a quarter, half or three-quarters rotation, and in the correct sequence) he found an intricately carved model of some sort of animal that looked a little like a wild boar.

The next morning Garvan was sitting and watching him when he woke. Garvan spent the whole day with him. They spoke. Well, Junk spoke. He told him more about his life, his family, his travels. Garvan scribbled in his book. They ate together and Junk was happy for the company.

The next morning there was no Garvan but there was another box. This one took him five days to open. Inside there was another intricate carving. This time of a mushroom. Junk thought it an odd subject to choose to carve but he couldn't deny the beauty of the workmanship.

The morning after that, there was no Garvan and no box. Except there was. A few hours passed before Junk noticed it. During the night Garvan had come in and cut the tether leading from the manacle. Then he had
reattached the two ends inside another puzzle box. Junk considered this and he thought he understood. He hoped he understood. This box was his freedom. If he solved this puzzle, he could leave.

This box was the most intricate one yet. How Garvan had managed to make it was a mystery. It seemed to defy all laws of logic. It was spherical in shape, about the size of a cricket ball. Its surface was made up of a hundred or more small polished interconnected wooden blocks. It took Junk two days just to work out how to manipulate them. Press one block and nothing would happen. However, press a specific combination of blocks simultaneously, sometimes as many as ten blocks at once, which was like playing Twister just with your fingers, and Junk could feel and hear some sort of mechanism moving inside. He could then twist the different hemispheres and rotate them. If he did it slowly he could feel the two halves clicking over internal ridges. If he pressed in the right selection of blocks, the northern and southern hemispheres would move but so too would the eastern and western as well as the diagonal, both south-east to north-west and southwest to north-east.

Working out how to manipulate the object was only the first task. Then he had to work out the sequence of
turns needed to ‘unlock' it. It was a code with no cipher and therefore impossible. There were so many possible combinations that Junk could spend years trying them all.

After a week he gave up. He was angry and frustrated. When Garvan came in with food and water, Junk would turn away from him, displaying his annoyance with these silly games through childish petulance. When that provoked no reaction from Garvan, Junk tried another tack and begged.

‘Frank, this is killing me. My head's just gonna explode. Please, just give me a clue, show me how to start, anything. Nudge me in the right direction. Please.'

Garvan just looked blankly at him. Then he left. He returned a few moments later with a clay bowl, about the size of a dog's bowl. The inside was glazed in a dark green colour. It was full of water and Garvan set it down next to Junk.

‘What's this supposed to be? I'm not a dog.' But all Garvan did was leave. Junk stared down into the bowl of water and saw his own reflection staring back at him. Exasperated, he fell back on to his fur bed and looked up at the ceiling. He would probably never leave this place.

Hours passed. Junk tried to sleep but he couldn't. He curled up into different positions until he found himself staring directly at the spherical puzzle box. He gazed at it for a long time, hardly blinking.

And then he saw it.

The individual blocks were different colours, various shades of light and dark. A small group of them had lined up perfectly and the areas of light, dark and in-between all matched. There was an image there. This wasn't just a puzzle box, it was also one of those games that kids play where you have to slide tiles around a grid until they form a coherent picture.

Reinvigorated, Junk sat up and started to manipulate the sphere, looking to match similar areas of hue to see if he could work out what it depicted.

Then he remembered the bowl Garvan had brought him. What did it mean? It was a clue. He was sure it was a clue. Garvan was helping him. But how? It was just a bowl of water. There was nothing else to it. He lifted the bowl carefully and looked underneath. Nothing. It was a bowl. Terracotta on the outside, Lincoln green on the inside and holding nothing but water. He took a sip. Yep, just water. He put the bowl down again and the movement caused the water to ripple. He stared into it as it settled. There was nothing else. It was empty. Nothing inside. Just water and …

In a flash of inspiration, he suddenly knew what the picture on the spherical puzzle box was. Now he just had to recreate it.

It took him another three days of trial and error. Moving the hemispheres of the box this way and that until his own face was staring back at him from one side of the globe. The only other thing that had been in the bowl of water was his own reflection.

When Junk made the final turn, the sphere made a resounding last click and simply came apart in his hands. He unwound the leather strands from the top half and he was free.

Junk stood up and stretched his legs. He had been sitting for hours, desperately trying to solve the conundrum. He edged over to the door but stopped as he reached it. What if it was a trick? What if Garvan was waiting outside for him with a gun or a knife or whatever?

He moved to the window nearest the door, but it was too high. He grabbed a chair from the table and, with difficulty, because of its size, he shunted it over to the window. He scrambled up on to the chair and looked out. His view was blurred by the translucence of the glass. As Junk touched it he realized that it wasn't glass. It wasn't cold to the touch like glass would be. It was more like plastic. He could make out vague shapes. Trees. There were a lot of trees. Bushes. General greenery. Blue sky. Nothing seemed to be moving. And nothing resembling the distinctive size and shape of Garvan.

He jumped down from the chair and looked around for a weapon. He couldn't see anything so he riffled through cupboards and drawers. There was a small chest that had been just out of his reach while he was tethered. He opened it up and was puzzled by what he found inside. Clothes. Thing was, they were all far too small for his host and just the right size for him. He pulled out a pair of trousers and a pair of thick boots made from light brown animal hide. Then there was a grey shirt, similar to the
one he was wearing but a fraction of the size. Finally there was a jacket, also made from animal hide but a darker brown than the trousers and boots. Junk got dressed. Everything fitted him perfectly. Had Garvan made these for him? He must have done. That caused a dilemma for Junk: should he play to his captor's game? Should he wear the clothes, which was clearly Garvan's intention, or cast them aside and refuse to be manipulated like that? It occurred to him that the only alternative was to stay in the massive shirt, which was ridiculous; he could hardly walk in it without tripping up. This one time, he decided, he would do as his jailer wanted, but he wouldn't like it. Though the jacket did look cool. It looked like the sort of thing Clint Eastwood would wear in a spaghetti western. Junk's dad was a huge Sergio Leone fan and together they had seen them all.

Once changed, Junk moved to the door. He reached out and took a hold of the handle and turned it. The door unlocked with a satisfying thunk and Junk pulled it back.

Sunlight spilled in, blinding him momentarily. He closed his eyes and saw a collection of nebulous shapes floating through his field of vision. One of them was a silhouette that resembled his captor. When he opened them again and blinked half a dozen times until the world outside came into focus, there was no one there. Just a veranda leading to three wide steps down to the green and brown earth.

Junk moved forward, outside, down the high steps to where the grass started to grow. Another step to where
it became thicker, healthier. The scent of the flora around him and the warmth from the sun brought with them a feeling of calm and for a moment he remembered running, barefoot, through the grass behind his house back in Murroughtoohy. Just then, he heard a snort from behind him and he was ripped from his reverie. He turned to see Garvan sitting on a sort of chair-swing back up on the veranda. Junk had walked right past him. How had he missed him?

Junk and Garvan stared at one another. Garvan made no attempt to get up and come after Junk. He sat and looked from under heavy-lidded eyes, but Junk was still scared. In his head, he was sure Garvan was about to pounce on him, pin him down and then drag him back inside and shackle him up once more. Junk backed away slowly until he was a good distance from the cabin and then he turned and ran as fast as he could.

Garvan reached over to a beaker of cool water, lifted it to his lips and drank deeply. It was a hot day.

*

The boy had passed the tests. He was intelligent and resourceful. It was a good sign. He'd worn the clothes. Garvan was pleased about that. He was proud of his handiwork. He had never made anything so small and fiddly before. For a moment the pit of his stomach twisted as the skeleton of a thought flitted through his mind about what was coming next. He wasn't looking forward to it, but there was no way to avoid it.

*

Junk ran and ran. The terrain was ever-changing. One minute he was running on lush, moist grass that felt like velvet underfoot and the next the grass vanished, replaced by dusty, dry brown earth, pitted with small, sharp stones.

The further he moved from the cabin, the heavier the foliage became. The cabin was in the middle of a dense forest of impossibly tall trees. It reminded Junk of the redwood forests of northern California. His parents had taken him on holiday to America when he was very young, barely three years old. The only thing he could recall from that whole seven weeks was one solitary moment when he was all alone in a forest, surrounded by giant trees. It was like being in prehistoric times. Junk wasn't sure if he had made that connection at three. That might have come later, at around six, when his fixation on dinosaurs kicked in.

And now, as he ran, he made that same connection. He stopped to catch his breath. He listened for sounds of Garvan pursuing him but heard nothing. In fact, he realized, he heard nothing at all. No wind rustling through the leaves. No animals scurrying in the undergrowth. Nothing. Then somewhere, a long way away, he heard the screech of some sort of bird and it startled him into running again.