The Keeper of the Octopus, page 10
Pippy took in the graceful curve of their necks and the way they carried their proud heads. She noticed their tails anchored them to seagrass and they swayed as the current pushed or pulled. Glittering light filtered in through the water, and the seahorses were dancing.
Taking in the beauty of it all, Pippy squeezed Octavia’s arm. She felt a squeeze in return, the soft press and pop of suckers. This was better than any dream; this was real. Pippy felt so connected to Octavia, to the ocean and its creatures, and to the world all around her.
With full hearts, Pippy and Octavia eventually made their way back to the cove.
Sitting on a rock as she dried herself off, Pippy chatted with Octavia, who bobbed up and down in the water, never taking her eyes from her.
‘There are so many seahorses down there,’ smiled Pippy, in wonder. ‘I had no idea they were even there, but of course, you know these things, don’t you? You know so many things.’
But then Pippy stopped talking and frowned. Like a wave crashing into her, she realised that the Calamary brothers could destroy all of this, too. Pippy’s heart swelled like the great ocean herself − she could not let this happen!
Pippy spent the rest of the afternoon hanging about the wharf. She’d heard the Calamarys were due back at two o’clock and she was keeping a close eye out for them.
She saw Captain Whiting sail up the river and Pippy caught her mooring lines, helping tie her boat up to the wharf.
‘Hello, young Pippy Cocklebiddy,’ yelled Captain Whiting. ‘How’s your Uncle Isaac getting on?’
‘Hello, Captain Whiting,’ said Pippy. ‘He has his good days.’ Pippy didn’t wish to say too much; she felt protective of her uncle.
‘Excuse me, Captain?’ said Pippy, as Captain Whiting leaped onto the wharf. ‘Has Portablow ever had travelling fishing boats come in to fish like the Calamarys?’
Captain Whiting puffed on her pipe, staring up the river. Pippy could see her mind ticking over. This was the reason she liked Captain Whiting; she always took Pippy seriously and never treated her like a bairn.
‘I’m not happy about the Calamarys fishing here either, Pippy,’ said Captain Whiting. ‘But it’s not entirely unheard of for fishers to sail around the world to get their catch. Why do you ask?’
‘I’m just worried about the damage their net is doing to Skiffy Bay,’ said Pippy, hanging her head. ‘What if it triggers a chain of events and the balance of the sea is lost again?’
‘You’re talking of the old folklore story … the fight between the Octopus and the Sharks?’ said Captain Whiting, thoughtfully inhaling on her pipe.
‘I don’t think the sharks were to blame for the imbalance of the sea,’ said Pippy softly.
‘Well, they probably weren’t,’ agreed Captain Whiting, narrowing her eyes at Pippy. ‘Other things could well have contributed to the situation. You know, your mama once asked me about this very same thing.’
Pippy’s eyes widened; this was a surprise.
‘What other things might have contributed to the imbalance of the sea?’ asked Pippy, following Captain Whiting as she headed towards the wharf offices.
Captain Whiting tamped her pipe down with more tobacco. ‘There could have been a multitude of things. It was a year of unseasonal weather, and many creatures behaved strangely, not just the sharks. I think that might have been the year of the great drought, too … Goodness, Pippy, this all happened hundreds of years ago. There might be something in the fishing logs, of course.’ Captain Whiting stopped suddenly, her palm resting on the now-open door to the offices. She glanced at Pippy. ‘I must have a good look through them one day, but there’s just so many of them. They’re all downstairs in a storage room, stacked on shelves as high as a mizzenmast. It’s dark, so you’d need a candle.’
Pippy’s forehead tingled. She knew she was onto something here.
‘I’m off then,’ said Captain Whiting. ‘Off to the tavern for a quick bite with Elderman Whatmore and Mr Hedland before those Calamarys get back. Good day to you, young Pippy.’
And she walked away to the Frayed Knot, leaving the wharf office door wide open behind her.
Pippy’s palms went all sweaty. She knew everyone was at the tavern, and she really wanted to have a quick look at those logbooks. Captain Whiting had opened the door, almost like an invitation …
Pippy glanced around the wharf before casually making her way into the office.
I’m invisible, I’m invisible.
She closed the door quietly behind her and softly called out ‘hello’ to make sure no-one was there. She found a candle and hurried downstairs into a vast but dim storage room.
Placing the candle on a small table, Pippy climbed up a rickety ladder. She ran her hands along the spines of hundreds of old Portablow fishing logs before pulling out two volumes, grunting as she heaved each one down. She plonked them onto a larger table in the centre of the room and dust motes wafted in the air, spiralling all around her.
As Pippy stifled a sneeze from the dust, she noticed her hands were trembling with excitement. One by one, she picked up the old logbooks to check their spines. She settled on one dated in the year 1680–1689 and flicked through the pages to 1681, the year the Keeper of the Octopus came into being.
Pippy scanned through columns of dates with their corresponding ship names, captains and tallies of their seasonal catch. In a separate row there were recordings of wind direction and weather descriptions, and other miscellaneous notes had been scrawled in the margins.
Moving from January through to March, Pippy’s eyes darted up and down. She sped through April, May and June, going back over pages to check she hadn’t missed anything.
Names and numbers were soon beginning to blur in front of Pippy’s eyes. She had found absolutely nothing to support her suspicions that the sharks weren’t responsible for the imbalance of the sea. She found nothing in July, August or September … until something caught her eye. She ran her finger back through the column again, on the last weeks of August.
There!
It was a log entry listed for a fishing boat that had come all the way from the Americas, called the Emilia.
Five thousand seals was a catch so big Pippy couldn’t even comprehend it. She closed her eyes and in her mind, she listed all of the events that may have caused the imbalance of the sea. Captain Whiting said there’d been a drought, which meant there’d been no rain, which meant there’d been no run-off into the river to grow algae to feed the fish. And there’d been no bonney upwelling either. The seals may have been forced to leave the safety of Teetering Island to look for food, which had become scarce. And then the Americans arrived and took away all the seals.
The seal colony was the key. It was the sharks’ main food source.
‘After the Americans left, the sharks at Teetering Island were left starving,’ whispered Pippy. ‘That’s it! That’s the reason they left their waters. This is what tipped the balance of the sea, causing the fight between the octopuses and the sharks.’
And this was why the role of the Keeper was created. To keep the sharks in check, to retain the balance of the sea by guarding the river and ensuring the safety of everybody in the village of Portablow.
The imbalance of the sea was caused by us, thought Pippy. Not by the weather or Mither or Teran, or the sharks. It was mankind and their very own greed. The sharks were wrongly blamed for it.
The Keeper of the Octopus was created on a misunderstanding.
Snapping the logbook shut, Pippy sneezed as a cloud of dust billowed over her. She’d come searching for answers about the imbalance of the sea, but what she’d learned left her mind reeling.
Her thoughts were interrupted by a loud cheering noise coming from outside. The Calamarys were sailing up the river! Pippy put the logbooks back on their shelf, blew out the candle and hurried upstairs.
As she walked past Elderman Whatmore’s office, Pippy noticed a large book sitting open on the desk that looked very similar to the logbooks in the storage room. Curious, she ducked inside and saw that it was a logbook, the most current one. Next to it was another bound book titled ‘Shipping Inspection’.
She scanned the last few entries in the logbook. It looked much the same as the one she’d read, but after the tally of each of the Calamary’s catches was a percentage number and the letter ‘A’, which had been circled.
‘That’s strange,’ murmured Pippy. ‘What is that figure?’
Pippy quickly read the inspection report for the Gutted Mullet, which stated: ‘All neat and orderly, 12x fishing baskets and 2x hemp rope purse net, 2x3 metres.’
‘That is a lie,’ Pippy said to herself, gritting her teeth. She closed the books and ran outside just in time to see the Gutted Mullet mooring.
Pippy’s stomach churned as rough as the sea as the Calamary brothers began unloading their catch. Piles of fish were dumped onto the wharf. There were gropers, morwong and rock cod, all fish who lived in reefs. Piled on top of this were black bream, tuna, mako sharks and even a dolphin.
Pippy’s eyes brimmed with tears as an enormous indigo blue shark landed with a splat. These sharks were sleepy, gentle creatures, graceful and harmless.
‘This is worse than before,’ Wally said, hobbling up beside Pippy, his face pale with disgust.
But the worst sight of all was when Pippy and Wally saw an albatross caught in the Calamarys’ smaller nets.
Pippy wailed as her eyes darted around, searching for Fairweather.
‘Is it him?’ stammered Wally. ‘Pippy, is it him?’
‘I don’t know,’ moaned Pippy. She couldn’t see Fairweather anywhere. They pushed through the villagers and jumped up and down, trying to get a closer look at the bird on the wharf. The albatross had a broken beak, hanging there lifeless and limp. Catching albatross was a cruel and frowned-upon practice of some fishers, aimed at stopping the birds from stealing fish out of nets.
‘Where is Fairweather?’ wailed Pippy, her throat thickening. She glanced up at the mainmasts of all the moored boats as Wally searched the Norfolk pines, looking for him in the branches.
Pippy pushed through a group of old village fisherfolk who had also seen the dead albatross. They drifted away, their eyes downcast.
‘What a disgrace,’ one old fisher complained to the other. ‘They’ve got to be stopped.’
‘This is getting out of hand, they’re taking too many fish,’ said another.
‘Fancy doing that to a beautiful bird! We’ll be cursed,’ bemoaned a third fisher, shaking his head sadly.
The albatross was a good omen to all fishers and this would be seen as more than just bad luck.
Yet there were other villagers who held no such qualms. They continued to clap and cheer and jostle each other before diving in for the spoils of the bycatch. But it was more than the villagers needed and at least half the catch remained unclaimed, left to rot and stink upon the wharf.
At last, Pippy spotted a flash of white up ahead.
‘There he is!’ Pippy called to Wally. Fairweather was perched on a bollard away from the crowd. Pippy hurried to him and knelt before him, gently touching his chest. Wally caught up with her, blinking away tears as he stroked Fairweather’s tail feathers.
‘Thank you, Mither. Thank you,’ whispered Pippy, her voice soft and raspy as Fairweather chirruped, tilting his head this way and that as he looked down at them both.
Anger roiled around inside of Pippy. Wave after wave was building inside of her, like a brewing storm.
‘It’s high time something was done about this,’ said Pippy, her voice low. Even though she was just a bairn, she was determined to try to stop the Calamarys.
‘But how, Pippy?’ whispered Wally, a note of hopelessness creeping into his voice.
Pippy stood up and turned towards the Gutted Mullet.
‘I have to get another look at those fishing nets,’ said Pippy. ‘I can’t do it now, but when night falls, I’m going back aboard.’
It sounded like a promise, a line drawn in the sand. Wally gazed at her beneath his fringe, open-mouthed in admiration.
‘Count me in,’ breathed Wally.
When darkness blanketed the village and everyone was asleep, Pippy crept from her bed and dressed in her darkest coloured clothes. She left the cottage quietly, moving with stealth. But she was obviously not stealthy enough, as Fairweather heard her and took off after her.
Wary of being seen, Pippy listened to the night before making her way over the back fence to Cairn Cottage.
Wally slipped into the night beside her and they hugged the shadows, slowly making their way down to the river.
We’re invisible, we’re invisible …
The wharf was silent as they approached the Gutted Mullet. Pippy heard the whoosh of Fairweather landing upon the mainmast, the lapping of the river against hulls and the plinks and plonks of the moored boats.
Bracing herself, Pippy leaped from the wharf, landing nimbly on the deck of the Gutted Mullet. Wally was keeping watch; it was just too hard for him to keep his balance on the boat, or make a quick getaway.
In the grey light of the night, Pippy tiptoed to the hidden net at the stern. She located the springy decking plank and stepped on it, pushing down hard with both feet. The lid creaked and opened as she jumped back.
Pippy ran her hands over the net, poking and jabbing at it with her fingers. She tugged at the fibres, surprised at how strong they were. They don’t feel like hemp rope, thought Pippy. They don’t have any stretch or give at all.
‘Buonasera, little bambina,’ came a voice from the blackness. It was Arazio Calamary, sitting in the dark, his back against the mainmast.
Pippy jolted in fright, her heart beating like a stormsail in a gale.
‘Ah, I see what you are up to,’ said Arazio, rising to his feet to move towards the rail. ‘I cannot blame you. As for me, I cannot go against the tide. I have no choice. We are a family, no? I’m sure you comprendere. Please continue, and do not worry about me.’
Arazio gave Pippy a quick bow before climbing over the gunwale and onto the wharf. He greeted Wally in the shadows, but then he quickly turned and leaned back across the rail to whisper to Pippy. ‘Oh, and do not look in the toolbox by the mainmast, bambina. I do not think there will be anything in there, like cutters, to help you …’
Pippy could only just see Arazio Calamary’s smile. He turned back to Wally and spoke to him softly. Wally seemed animated and hopped around, pointing at his foot. Arazio finally walked away and Pippy exhaled.
‘You orright, Pippy?’whispered Wally.
‘All good,’ said Pippy, jigging on the spot. ‘I won’t be long.’
Pippy couldn’t believe what Arazio just told her. She scurried to the mainmast and, sure enough, there was a toolbox propped against it where Arazio had been sitting. She opened it and quickly found the cutters. Returning to the stern, she tried to snip through one of the cords of the net. Her hands were barely big enough to wrap around the handle.
With a grimace on her face, Pippy finally managed to cut a small piece of the net off. She held it up to the moonlight, the core of it glittering as she turned it over in her hands. The net appeared to be reinforced through the centre with some sort of metal.
That’s why the net is so strong, thought Pippy, stuffing the piece into her pocket.
Fairweather swooped down from the mainmast to perch at the stern, softly chirruping at Pippy. She weighed the cutters in her hand against the weight of her conscience.
If the Calamary brothers capture Octavia, thought Pippy, with a dry swallow, this might just give her a fighting chance.
Pippy was the Keeper of the Octopus. She’d made a promise to help Octavia. What would Mama do? What would Papa do? But both parents were long gone and Pippy could only work this out by herself.
Pippy stared up into the night sky and prayed to Mither to forgive her.
She quickly cut through the net at several places where it attached to the reel. She snipped through the latticed netting on the underside, so the cuts would be less noticeable. In some places Pippy managed to sever the net all the way through, but in others she could only partially cut it, leaving threads of rope and metal. Her small hands just didn’t have the strength to squeeze the cutters properly.
But it’ll weaken the net, thought Pippy. And if Octavia was ever captured, the net might give way under her massive weight.
It wasn’t long before Pippy’s hands cramped with every snip. When she’d finally cut along the entire length of the net, she hurriedly put the cutters back in the tool box. She left everything on the boat as she’d found it and, tiptoeing in the remaining shadows, Pippy confessed to Wally what she’d done as they made their way home.
‘I don’t blame you,’ said Wally, quietly opening the door to Cairn Cottage. ‘Grannie says that the Calamarys will reap what they sow.’
Pippy gave Wally a lopsided smile and headed over the fence to Bittern Cottage.
Crawling into bed exhausted, Pippy stretched her numb and aching hands. They were covered in little cuts and nicks, and she slid them carefully beneath her pillow as she curved around Mussels. The old dog huffled a contented sigh, but Pippy was feeling far from calm. The waves of anger were still there. She only hoped that what she’d just done was worth the risk.
Pippy was skimming along the bottom of the river, swimming upstream. She traced her fingers through the silky river weed, touching the tips of burrowing pipis and clams. Billows of silty mud rose like clouds behind her as she passed bottom-feeding mullet and a golden perch who stopped and stared at the sight of her, open-mouthed as she glided by.
Pippy recognised the pylons of the wharf, encrusted with clumps of freshwater mussels. She swam past barnacle-encrusted boat hulls and heard the plinks and plonks of moored vessels as they bobbed up and down. She’d never swum up the river before. It was warmer than the sea, but the water wasn’t as clear. She couldn’t see very far in front of her.
