Maggie's Door by Patricia Reilly Giff

Author:Patricia Reilly Giff
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780375890390
Publisher: Random House Children's Books
Published: 2003-09-09T04:00:00+00:00

FOURTEEN

SEAN

Enough to eat, a place to sleep. The rocking of the ship that made the passengers and even a few of the sailors ill didn’t bother Sean at all.

He was used to the sea, to his brother’s currach. He remembered the roll of the waves, higher than any house in Maidin Bay, the rush of salt water slapping against the sturdy boat.

Once he had even been swept out and under just outside the bay. He had opened his eyes to see a green world filled with bubbles, and then light as he came to the surface, gulping and choking, and felt Francey’s fingers grasping him first by the hair and then by the sleeve of his jersey to drag him up and up and finally into the currach.

He’d had a bald spot on his head all that fall, and Nory had teased him that he looked better without that mop of red hair.

Nory.

If only he could tell her about the things that had happened to him.

He worked from halfway through one night until late the following night. He remembered Mam saying, “I work from dark to dark.” He could almost see her, hands on her hips, angry. But he couldn’t even see the dark, couldn’t see the day.

He was in the galley with only the flame from the lamps to brighten it, or in the passageway to bring tea to the families that were rich enough to have their own cabin. It was Garvey who went up on top and told him when the sun was shining or the rain spitting.

What Sean did was stir pots of soup for those rich families who had shoes and rings, unlike the poor wretches that he caught glimpses of between the decks. There were two different worlds on the ship, almost like the green world of water he had seen against the clear world of air up above.

The pots he stirred were never empty; they were filled with shreds of meat, and old vegetables still covered with some of the gritty soil they’d been taken from, and water they kept adding to the top.

He dipped endless ladles into those pots to pour into thick white bowls and then brought them to rich men’s cabins. Sometimes he and Garvey dipped their fingers into the soup to pull out a small chunk of yellow turnip as it floated by, or a cabbage leaf. Their fingers had blisters, but it was worth it to have their stomachs filled, as long as the cook didn’t see what they had done.

The cook was a massive man who ate more than six passengers put together, and chewed endlessly with his great toothless mouth open and soup running down his beard. He threw knives and plates, and kicked and punched at anyone nearby when he was angry.

Sean felt a sharp clout on the back of his head. “You can dream with the fishes,” the cook said. “I’ll send you up top with the garbage to be thrown overboard.”

Sean bent his head.

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