20.
Emily had been a little worried about being God’s apprentice. It sounded such a big, important job that she thought she should be acting grown up and serious. Zeus telling her to do nothing had taken a weight off her mind and she relaxed into the summer and enjoyed being eleven.
Sometimes she used the wormy telescopey thing. When she looked at home, or Annie, she felt sad and cried, so when she did use it, which wasn’t very often, she visited Petra. She liked visiting Mulo; it was remote and beautiful, just like Camillo, her asteroid. She watched Petra and her mum and dad, Jasmine and Mario, going about their daily chores; fishing, cooking and gardening, maintaining the lighthouse, taking weather readings and looking after the twins. They lived such a different life, right on the fringe of society.
Although Petra was sometimes sad and grey, she normally glowed golden with life and happiness. Once or twice Emily got close to Petra and listened to her thoughts. She was all sweetness and honey. Emily tried not to peek too much, she felt like she was invading Petra’s space, and what’s more Petra seemed to know Emily was there and kept looking around trying to spot her.
Sometimes Emily just sat and enjoyed the garden, listening to the cicadas. If Theo the owl was around, he came and two-wit two-wooed and winked at her.
‘Cicadas,’ Emily said, as her and Zeus lay out the sheets of thin plywood ready to start work on their boat. ‘There’s no cicadas.’
‘There are too,’ he said.
‘They’re being very quiet.’
‘Cicadas are very quiet.’
‘No they’re not!’ exclaimed Emily. ‘They’re happy, jolly things that sing all day, and keep the beat by clicking their wings.’
‘The reason cicadas are so happy is that they’ve just emerged into the light after spending seven very dark, very damp and very boring years underground. Camillo’s cicadas are just four years old. They have three years of winter to go.’
‘Dolphins, gannets and squirrels?’ asked Emily.
‘No.’ said Zeus. ‘If you plant a few more lettuces and talk nicely to Castor and Pollux, I’m sure they can be arranged. Red squirrels not grey.’
Emily found that she could mark out the plywood using the plans in her head, but it was just as well they had plenty of it as neither Zeus nor her had used a saw before and they had a few false starts. Once they’d cut the plywood, they drilled holes along the edges and stitched the pieces together using copper wire then laid fibreglass along the seams to hold it all together and make it watertight. Tape and tack, stick and glue, before long they had a boat; a boat that would float, but which was far from finished.
Zeus arrived once a week for breakfast, then Emily and him would pull back the old tarp that covered the boat, and work until lunchtime, joking and chatting. Zeus was good company when he was relaxed and every bit as charming as his sons.
Sometimes Emily didn’t see Azziz and Jesus for weeks, other times they were around for breakfast every morning, laughing and joking and drinking lots of coffee. They extended the garden to make space for more lettuces and built a little greenhouse in a sheltered corner so Emily could grow them in the cool winter months when they worth their weight in gold.
Sometimes Emily walked along the beach and hung out at their place.
She cheekily asked Jesus to teach her to walk on water.
‘Mind over matter,’ he said laughing. ‘Are you ready for lesson one?’
‘Oh yes!’ she said.
‘Grab a board then,’ he said, and they paddled out into the waves.
At first Emily couldn’t even lie on it without falling off, but by the end of the summer she could stand up and hang ten.
‘It’s better than walking on water,’ joked Jesus.
The sentry slugs could tweak the pertubator that made the waves, which explained why there’d been so many big wave days since Jesus and Azziz had arrived. It also explained where all of Emily’s lettuces had been going!
Azziz was up to something. When he wasn’t hanging out with his girlfriends, who changed weekly, he went for long walks through the forest and cane fields and was often up with the sentry slugs researching on the Internet.
One morning he arrived at Emily’s cottage with freshly baked Afghans, cornflake biscuits with thick chocolate icing and a walnut on the top.
Yum!
‘My favourite,’ said Emily. ‘Thanks!’
While Emily drunk two cups of hot chocolate and munched her way through the Afghans, Azziz downed three espressos and smoked one of his rollie cigarettes; his eyes rolling back at every puff. Then he broached the subject of the sugar cane. ‘Em, my dear, can I make something out of the sugar cane? Not sugar, something else. It’s one hundred and ten per cent sustainable and leaves no carbon footprint. All I need to do is to build a small processing shed tucked away out of sight. It’ll blend in nicely and there won’t be any noise, smoke or nasty smells.’
‘Of course you can.’
‘And can I build a little beach, ba, ur...ar, cafe under the palm trees with a view out over the surf break? It’ll be real cool and rustic like, built out of driftwood from the beach and palm fronds with comfy sofas and bean bags that will swallow you up.’
‘Will you need your coffee machine back?’
‘No, I’ve...um…arr...I’ll order a big Italian one. Thanks,’ he said, and gave Emily a big kiss.
She felt her cheeks go all warm and pink as she blushed.
How embarrassing, I hope he doesn’t notice.
Enzo went everywhere with Emily. Normally he was in his antimatter cage, tucked away in her pocket. If Negrita was around, he played with her but quickly vanished from sight if they had company. At night he snuggled up with Negrita once she was back from hunting.
Cupping him in her hand and gazing in to his swirls of lava, Emily said, ‘Poor thing. You must have been so lonely and scared when you were out in space.’
Emily loved the little diary that Zula had given her in Timbuktu. Like Enzo, she always carried it with her. That way, it was there if she saw something the needed sketching, and she’d have it with her if she got abducted by aliens or fell through one of those worm holes into another dimension. It was all but full and she often looked back over the sketches of camels and sand dunes, and read the little notes she’d made about poo picking, sand surfing and all the funny things that happened along the way. It seemed such a long time ago now, and so far, far away.