THE SECRET
We are woken by Mayumi, and for a moment I think that she has been left in charge, and that Mr Zamora has gone. But at ten sharp, he emerges from his hut as normal, as though nothing has happened, despite the courtyard being churned to mud with the water spilt from the buckets. When he speaks, his voice is raspy from the smoke.
‘Morning children,’ he leers cheerily. ‘Sister Teresa has been taken to a hospital on the mainland, and Luko is accompanying her. As for the troublemakers who started the fire . . .’ He pauses, and fixes his bloodshot eyes on Mari and me. I glare back. ‘They will be relocated to workhouses as soon as I receive a suitable placement for them from the government.’ Shock lances through me, and Mari grips my hand.
‘He’s blaming us for the fire?’ she hisses, but I don’t care about that. I care about what he said next: a workhouse?
He holds up a piece of paper. ‘I am sending the request now, and expect to have a reply within a week. They will be relocated separately, of course.’ He smirks, then places the letter in his breast pocket and starts down the hill.
My hate has crystallized: it sits in my chest, hard and shining. Useful. He thinks he’s won, but all he’s done is given me strength. A week, and we’ll be gone, but together, and not to workhouses. Mari and I head for the cliff.
The forest is reduced to scorched trunks, and we run to avoid the cinders burning our feet.
‘I’ve already thought it all through,’ she says. ‘We can salvage some materials from behind the outbuilding – they left plenty of wood and nails and Luko should have any tools we need. The main problem will be waterproofing, but as long as the boat isn’t too badly damaged, I’m sure we can fix it. We’ll need oars, of course. How long did you say it took to get here?’
‘About two hours.’
‘Of course it will take longer than that to sail there. Maybe half a day.’
‘How will we know the wind is right?’
‘We keep an eye on Siddy, of course.’
‘And if the wind isn’t in our favour?’
‘We row.’
‘I’m not sure we could row there.’
‘We can. It’ll just take a long time. But if the current helps us—’
I stop in the middle of the path. ‘You seem to know exactly what to do.’
‘I’ve been planning on fixing the boat for a long time. The only thing that stopped me was I had nowhere to go. And no one to go with.’
Warmth floods through me. All I can think to say is, ‘Thank you.’
She rolls her eyes. ‘Thank me when we get it floating.’
‘You don’t have to come, you know.’
Her face falls. ‘You want me to go to the workhouse?’
‘Of course not.’
‘Do you not want me to come with you?’
‘Of course I do.’
‘And can you sail? Do knots?’
I shake my head.
‘That’s settled, then.’
Climbing down the narrow path involves a lot of controlled falling on my part. I snatch at tufts of grass and send pebbles scattering. Mari is a lot more graceful than I am though she uses only one hand. When we reach the spit of sand she is barely panting. The red-painted boat sits just below the water line in the shallows, mast arrowing up, tied to a stake by a length of stinking green rope. It looks more like a fishing canoe than a rowing boat, and I know this is a good thing, because they are made to be light and strong, carried to and from the water every day.
‘Here it is!’ She makes a ‘ta-da’ movement with her hand. ‘First job, pull it out.’
It is not an easy job. Though the boat looks light, sand has filled the bottom and made it heavy as stone. I see instantly why it has sunk – a long graze near the lip of the hull where it must have scraped a rock.
‘We need to tilt it,’ says Mari. ‘Tip it over to get the sand out, then we can pull it ashore.’
We roll up our trousers and wade in. I take a firm grip of the underside of the boat. It is rough with barnacles and I wince as they scrape my fingers. Mari joins me, hooking her shoulder under the lip of the boat.
‘On three. One . . . two . . . three!’
We heave. The boat rocks minutely. Mari counts to three again and again. Each time we strain so hard we sink, sending the sand around our feet swirling. Slowly, achingly, it begins to shift. ‘Keep going!’ cries Mari. I push and push until finally, with a great rush of water, the boat comes unstuck and rolls.
Sand pours out, and Mari sloshes around the other side to steady the boat and make sure it doesn’t turn all the way over and smash the mast. The boat begins to lift slightly, with its damaged side up out of the water, and for the first time since reading Nanay’s letter I feel a small seed of hope lodge next to the worry in my stomach.
‘Now you go that side and pull,’ Mari orders, pointing to the front of the boat. ‘I’ll push.’
This part is easier, with the seal of the ocean already broken. We drag it clear of the tidemark and collapse on the sand. The boat sags sideways.
‘Now what?’ I pant.
‘Now, we steal.’
Mr Zamora refuses to break his writing routine to keep an eye on us, and so Mayumi is left to control us as best she can. I feel sorry for her, but her soft approach means Mari and I have plenty of time to work on the boat. The other children also make things easier, because without a schedule to occupy them the boys also ransack the wood-pile for material to build tree houses and forts. It is easy enough for Mari and I to take what we need, which is not as much as I’d feared. The hull of our boat is virtually hole-free, and we patch up the crack at the lip as best we can. We steal a rusty bucket from Mayumi’s cleaning cupboard, for bailing.
Aside from shaking off Kidlat when he tries to follow us, the sail presents the greatest challenge. A single bedsheet lets the wind weave right through, and even with two it barely flutters. I steal three more when it is my turn to do the laundry, and we layer all five, one over the other, and stand with them stretched between us at the cliff edge. The wind shuttles across and catches in the sheet, and Mari is dragged off her feet.
‘I think that will work!’ She laughs, brushing mud off her knees.
After three days, the boat floats at the end of its green rope. After five days, we have made three oars out of poles and boards bound together – Mari insisted on a spare.
‘What shall we call it?’ she asks.
‘What do you mean?’
‘All boats need names,’ she says. ‘It’s good luck.’
We both go silent, thinking. Finally Mari snaps her fingers. ‘I’ve got it. Lihim.’
‘Secret?’
‘Our secret.’ She smiles.
On the sixth day Mr Zamora returns from town with a letter. He brandishes it at Mari and me at dinner. ‘You may want to take today to say your goodbyes. I’ve had letters from two workhouses keen for children – good for sliding into spaces between machinery.’ His face seems more skull than skin as walks away to his hut, whistling.
‘Why are you smiling?’ says Tekla to Mari, her voice harsh. ‘Those places are horrible. You could lose a hand – oh, wait.’
Some of the other girls giggle but Mari looks right at Tekla. ‘You should be kinder. Your face will be as vile as his soon enough.’ She leans her head into mine. ‘First light, yes?’
I nod, looking around the fire. No one seems much upset by our leaving. Only Kidlat is watching me, though even he has pulled away the past few days. I suppose if you push someone away enough, they will stop trying. The small pang in my chest is swallowed by determination. We are going to get back to Nanay: we will.
I barely sleep, and as soon as light gleams from the courtyard through the shutters, I hear the creak of a floorboard above my head. I creep past the sleeping girls to where Mari is waiting with a pillowcase in the courtyard, her face alight with excitement. She points at Siddy. Siddy, in turn, is pointing towards the front of the orphanage.
Without a word to each other, we snatch as much fruit as we can from Luko’s stores by the firepit, and take off at a run. The forest is blackened and quiet, the ground ashes, the smell of woodsmoke still hanging in the early morning air.
I hesitate at the top of the cliff, my heart pounding. The shadow of Culion Island is pinkening in the sunrise. It seems an impossible distance, and I am afraid of what we will find there. But then Mari takes my hand and squeezes it.
‘Come on.’
We plunge down the path and I land in a bundle by Mari’s feet.
‘We did it!’ I cry, but Mari is not looking at me. Her eyes are wide, staring up the slope behind us. I turn. This is one thing we haven’t planned for.
There, making his unsteady way down the twilight cliff, is Kidlat.