In the Dark Spaces by Cally Black

Author:Cally Black
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: ebook
Publisher: Hardie Grant Children's Publishing
Published: 2017-06-26T00:00:00+00:00

TU TAOLALA!

(YOU STUPID!)

I stomp back to Captain James and whistle at him in Garuwa. ‘You stupid! Why didn’t you learn fast? Now I’m stuck here.’

‘Weku, my girl, calm down,’ he says. ‘Speak English.’

‘I’m not your girl,’ I say. ‘Never mind you’re the one who made a shit of it, I have to hang here all night with no dinner and no bed.’

‘Well, I’m sorry. I did the best I could. I’ve been electrocuted on the way into this place, tied to a wall for four days, beaten around the head, starved, terrified and left to piss down a drain. That I got to twenty-eight words was a miracle for an old man like me.’

‘You have to try harder!’ I yell.

Captain James sighs. ‘Yoisho. Don’t be angry at me, Weku. Please? I’ll be glad for the company.’

I slide down the opposite wall and sit there with my back against it, burning at the old man, burning at being left behind by Wooloo.

‘Do you get lonely here, Weku?’ he asks.

I glance at him through my eyebrows. ‘I have the squad.’

‘No, I mean lonely as in you miss humans. You miss speaking to people who understand you,’ he says.

‘I lived my whole life as a stowaway on ships. They only spoke to me to chase me off,’ I grumble.

‘Really? Your whole life in hiding?’ he asks. ‘You and your little cousin?’

I shrug, cos I don’t want to talk about it.

The captain nods along like he understands. ‘And now, for the first time, you’re part of something.’

‘I know I’m not meant to be here. And there’s plenty Garuwa that don’t want me here, but they like me, the squad. Some of them call me “sister”.’

‘Oh, girly.’ The captain shakes his head.

‘My name’s Weku.’

‘I worry for you, kid,’ he says softly. ‘I have a grandkid your age. You should be living in a family.’

‘I can’t,’ I snap, cos I’d take that option any day for me and Gub, but there’s no way I’m ever gonna be in the kind of family the captain’s talking about. Sixers don’t know what it’s like for kids like me. ‘For now, I have the squad,’ I say.

Antonee nods. ‘That’s not a family. Maybe they’re nice to you, but if they were ordered to lock you up, or sell you to a zoo, they would.’

‘They wouldn’t!’ I shout. I bury my face in my knees. They would. Never mind how much they like me, they do whatever Tootoopne tells them.

‘Don’t be angry with me. If I could get us both out of here right now, I would. I’d take you back to live with my family.’ The captain lowers himself to the floor opposite. He don’t know he’s talking about impossible things.

Never mind how hard I work to teach him the words, I work even harder not to like him, cos captains die. Captains always die.

‘You save my life daily, kid,’ he says. ‘You put in so much to teach me the thirty.’

‘I do it cos Tootoopne tells me,’ I say.

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