Emily Taylor - The Apprentice

  4.

  It had been a busy morning, Emily felt bushed. She stretched out on the grassy patch on top of the bluff and closed her eyes, luxuriating in the warm sunshine and listening to the cries of the seagulls and the gentle swoosh of the waves far below.

  Cheerful twittering woke her up. A small blue bird was perched on a twig just above her, singing her wee lungs out.

  If she’s going to be so darned happy, why can’t she go do somewhere else?

  Emily was about to swing a hand at it but was beaten to it. There was a blur of black, the twig snapped and the blue bird was gone, its last few notes and some feathers left hanging in the breeze.

  A little black cat rolled at her feet, wrestling with the ball of feathers.

  ‘Let it go,’ said Emily, trying to pry the bird free.

  The cat looked at her with big green eyes, snarled and dug a claw into her arm.

  ‘Ouch! Let go!’

  The cat hissed and spat little sparks, setting Emily’s hair on fire. She kicked it away and batted the fire out, leaving the acrid smell of burnt hair hanging in the air.

  ‘You’re a cagoon,’ she said, leaving it to its catch. ‘We’ll have to make friends.’

  Emily walked back down the path between the giant boulders, heading for the beach. Breaking a hand of ripe bananas off one of the trees, she munched on them as she walked, leaving a trail of skins behind her.

  ‘A girl cannot live on bananas alone,’ she said to one of the sheep as she crossed the paddock. He looked at her quizzically and ambled away, not caring a toss about her and her bananas.

  Zimp!

  Zeus appeared beside her, making her jump.

  ‘Shall we go fishing?’ he asked, holding up a couple of nylon hand lines.

  ‘Let’s!’

  They sat in silence on the rocks at the end of the beach and fished. Emily had tried fishing in the canal at home once and caught a slimy eel that even the cat wouldn’t eat.

  Banana didn’t make great bait, it kept falling off the hook, but eventually they had five little fish, just enough for dinner. Collecting driftwood, they lit a fire and, once the flames had died down, they cooked the fish in the glowing embers.

  ‘Are you happy to sleep out tonight,’ asked Zeus. ‘I’ll stay with you and we’ll sort things out in the morning before we visit Psyche.’

  Sleeping on the sand under the stars, it was just like being in the desert and soon Emily was dreaming of surfing down sand dunes in the dark with her friends Zula and Ijju. Her dreams turn to nightmares and she awoke, bathed in sweat, just as a huge blue slimeball, which had been pursuing her though the plantation, was about to munch her.

  Yuck! Horrible and gross!

  Waking up didn’t free her from the torment of the slimeball. Comforting as it was to have Castor and Pollux watching over her, a slimeball could always appear beside her and gobble her up before they could get it.

  While the slugs weren’t going to make a snack of her, they weren’t much better. Lovely as Castor seemed, the thought of a huge yellow slug the size of a hippo sliding around on the surface of Camillo, mating and munching on roast slimeball, gave her the willies.

  Then she thought of his precious yellow bits and smiled.

  Slugs and their yellow bits, I’ll have to have a sneaky peek!

  ‘Zeus, can we build a house? Not a big one. Just big enough for me with thick walls to keep the slimeballs out,’ was the first thing God heard when he opened his eyes next morning.

  ‘Big thick walls, slime proof,’ Emily repeated, just to make sure he’d got the message.

  ‘Let me wake up,’ he pleaded, as he rubbed his eyes. ‘I’m not good in the mornings.’

  ‘Let’s swim then!’ said Emily, grabbing his arm and pulling. ‘Come on!’

  They splashed into the sea and Emily pushed him over. He came up spluttering then dived back under. Strong arms picked Emily up and she was spun around and thrown. She screamed as she sailed through the air, landing with a big splash ten metres away.

  Back on the beach, Zeus said, ‘Let’s draw up some plans and we’ll get on with the job after we’ve visited Psyche, the factory asteroid.’

  Emily drew plans in the wet sand with a driftwood stick then fetched her diary from where they were sleeping. It was one of her few possessions and she kept it carefully wrapped up in plastic inside the leather pouch Zula gave her. She always carried it with her, either slung over her shoulder or in the secret pocket inside her belly-dancing outfit.

  It was full of sketches of camels, animals and oases, with a few words here and there to help her remember things.

  Emily opened it on a new page, wrote Camillo and underlined it, then flipped over a couple of pages, thinking that she’d probably having something interesting or funny to say about being dead, that was, once she’d got her head around it. She drew a plan of the cottage on the next page with a sketch of how it would look. It was really simple: two windows and a door at the front, with an old sofa on the veranda for her to lounge on. It’d be tucked in by the rocks, giving a view along the sweep of the beach and out to sea. There’d be a main room at the front with a wood burning range at one end. She added a brick chimney then pencilled in a bedroom, bathroom and laundry at the back. She put the bedroom at the sea end so the morning sun would come streaming in her window and wake her up, then she drew another bedroom, just in case she had visitors. Most importantly of all, the walls were thick and completely slime proof.

  Emily was worried about slimeballs. She didn’t like the look of them. They sounded disgusting and horrible, and were scary and dangerous to boot.

  ‘Zeus, what say a slimeball lands beside me?’ she asked.

  ‘Scream and run!’ he said, obviously finding it humorous. He thought for a moment then added, ‘There’s a wonderful piece of human wisdom I came across recently which would be perfect advice for if a slimeball lands beside you, If in danger or in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout!’

  ‘It’s all right for you to joke,’ she said. ‘You can just teleport to safety while I’m being pursued by a rampant slimeball, devouring everything in its path!’

  ‘Get used to the idea. When you lived in England, did you wake up in a cold sweat having nightmares about being pursued by a twenty ton double-decker bus? There it’s buses, here it is slimeballs. Same size, both dangerous.’

  ‘But a big, red bus is not going to have Kew Gardens for breakfast, then London Zoo as a light snack before lunch; trees, bushes, screaming children, big fat mamas, giraffes, monkeys, crocodiles, elephants and eleven year old girls, the lot!’

  ‘We’ll get you thick walls!’

  ‘Do you need any other clothes?’ asked Zeus, looking at Emily’s torn and blood-stained belly dancing outfit.

  ‘I’m quite attached to these,’ said Emily, swinging her hips and doing a quick belly dance. ‘But some more clothes would be wonderful. Can we go shopping?’

  ‘There’s not many clothes stores in the Asteroid Belt. There’s not many humans up here, but there is a store for us anodes, all two hundred and fifty-seven of us. If we do wear anything, we’re more into practical stay dry, deflect incoming lasers type clothing, than the look at me, look at my belly button type clothes you teroids like. You’re welcome to have a look. It’s on Psyche. We’ll stop by there, then you can go online shopping with Castor and Pollux, they’ll enjoy that.’