Mariah Mundi and the Ship of Fools by G.P. Taylor

she twisted the silver chain around her neck.
    ‘Why didn’t you speak when we met last night?’ Mariah asked.
    ‘I don’t. Well, not when I first meet someone. I didn’t like the look of you – you seemed ordinary. Lorenzo isn’t ordinary, he has his own skyship and a boat that goes under water and a father who is a genius … What does your father do?’ she asked, her words gushing like water from a tap.
    ‘He does nothing,’ he replied. ‘He’s –’
    ‘That’s why you are ordinary,’ she went on clumsily. ‘I even bet that you went to school. I had tutors and my father employed children to play with me.’
    ‘I’m not surprised,’ Mariah muttered, hoping Biba would be struck dumb with the fear of bears yet again.
    ‘I think I should take you around the ship. My father owns it and soon the Triton will be seen as the fastest ship in the world.’
    ‘I don’t feel too well,’ Mariah tried to say as Biba pressed a plate of toast and butter into his hands.
    ‘Just a matter of food,’ she said sharply. ‘They say that if you eat, it makes you well. I try to avoid eating at all costs. I have a theory that we can get all the goodness we need from the sun – just like plants.’
    ‘What if you live in Greenland? The sun doesn’t shine for weeks,’ he asked as he attempted to eat the toast that tasted somewhat unusual.
    ‘It’s not the eating, but the digestion that I don’t like,’ she went on as if she wasn’t really interested in anything he said. ‘Anyway, I will never go to Greenland again.’
    ‘Were you there for long?’ he asked casually.
    ‘Just a few weeks. My father owns the harbour where Lorenzo Zane designed the Triton . That’s where they built the skyship.’
    ‘Did you see it?’ asked Mariah.
    ‘I flew in it,’ she replied, and she spread out her arms like wings. ‘It took us all the way to Nova Scotia and then we sailed back to England on the Ketos .’
    ‘And what about the polar bear?’ he asked dangerously.
    The question silenced Biba. She took a boiled egg from the tray and held it in the palm of her hand. Biba looked at it for a moment and then crushed it in her fingers.
    ‘Casper shot it. He said he’d shoot anything or anyone that tries to hurt me,’ she snapped. ‘Why were you on the gangplank walking into the sea? I thought you would have drowned quite easily if Charity hadn’t saved you.’
    ‘I can’t remember. It all seems so unreal. I can recall going into my room and then nothing else. I dreamt I was over the sea, following someone, an old friend – but that couldn’t be, he’s dead.’
    ‘A ghost – is that what made you do it? A ghost … Who was it?’ she gabbled. ‘My father once paid a man to talk to the dead. We went to his house and furniture started to move and dance about. There were voices coming from the walls. He said he could converse with the departed, but Casper found his assistant hiding in a cupboard. So he locked them both in and left them there.’ Biba paused for breath.
    ‘Why should your father pay to hear people talk to the dead?’ Mariah asked as a thread like a memory of the night before wound its way into his mind.
    ‘Because he never does anything without knowing what they say,’ she quipped as she skipped from the room. ‘I think you should dress and then I’ll take you on a journey …’
    Mariah got up from the bed and dressed. Every fibre of his body tingled. He looked in the mirror and saw the face of someone older, a stranger. He remembered a moment of what had happened. It was a glimpse of Topher standing in the room, the pool of water about his feet. This time he could see the eyes of the boy. They were dark and empty. The life had been taken from them.
    It took him longer to dress than he thought possible. His body ached and every nerve seemed to be on fire. It was as if he had shrunk in the night, for everything he put on felt as if it had been made for another. Remembering what Charity had told