Chapter One

The boy clung to the rail with a death grip as the ship lurched violently in the storm. 

It was sinking. 

All around him was darkness and the roar and crash of waves as the ship buckled and rain lashed down. The wind was shrill and whip-sharp. But for all the noise, the ship was empty of people. Where was everyone? The boy ran along the deck, slipping and sliding to the wheelhouse.

It was deserted. 

He sprinted down the length of the ship, hurtling below deck to the captain’s quarters. He pounded on the door, desperate to be heard over the sound of the thunder and the howling of the wind. But it was impossible. 

The door opened suddenly and the first mate slipped out, a long leather pouch clutched in his hand. He started when he saw the boy, and quickly hid his hand behind him. 

“Sir, the storm—” began the boy, but the man shoved him aside and hurried down the passage. 

The boy held on to the side for balance and stumbled into the cabin. The captain was lying in his bunk, fast asleep. The room had been ransacked: drawers were hanging open and books had been tossed all over the place. The ship listed sharply and the debris on the floor slid to one side of the room where water was pooling,  creeping darkly over fallen books. 

The boy froze in shock. The crew had known they would be sailing into a storm. Why was the captain asleep so soundly? Why was the whole ship asleep? Apart from… 

He stormed out of the captain’s cabin and scrambled up to the deck. A lifeboat had been lowered into the sea, and the first mate was getting ready to climb down, accompanied by a man the boy recognized as the ship’s cook. 

He stared at the men, a cold fear clamping around his heart as the rain-soaked through him. “Marco!” he screamed. “What did you do? Did you drug them?” 

The first mate looked back and shrugged, not even bothering to deny it. 

Rain pelted the men as they prepared to get in the boat. Something snapped in the boy, and he raced toward them and plucked the leather pouch from the first mate’s pocket. 

Yelling, the men gave chase as the boy sprinted away down the ship. Lightning lit up his running figure. The ship groaned and shifted. The men stumbled and one fell as the boy doubled back, jumping over the fallen man and speeding past his furious companion. The first mate took out a knife that flashed silver in the gloom of the night. He ran fast, closing in on the boy as water  filled the deck and crept up his ankles. 

It was over. The ship was going down, and it was too late to save anyone. The boy wailed in anguish as he threw himself over the side and into the lifeboat. The ship tilted and groaned, making a huge cracking sound as it broke apart. The men ran to the railing and yelled at the boy, but the rain blotted out everything as he rowed swiftly away. The last he saw of the ship was it careening jerkily off course. 

The boy screamed into the wind and wept for his lost  friends.

Chapter Two

The baby turtle scuttled down the golden beach, wet and gritty with sand.  Bit by bit scores of others emerged,  their shiny black bodies, flailing limbs,  and beady eyes glinting in the early 

morning sun. They scampered toward the water, their little legs scuffling over  the freshly turned-up sand. A bale of  tiny turtles—all eager to make their first meeting with the sea. 

Razi laughed as he ran after them,  careful not to step on any of the little creatures. The sight never failed to amaze him and lift  his spirits. He’d seen it a hundred times, coming early to  this stretch of beach to watch the newly hatched turtles  running into the sea at sunrise. There was a white one  among them, an albino turtle, the pattern on its back  etched out in shiny black lines. It was lagging behind  and in danger of getting lost. 

“Go on! Go, your friends are leaving!” called Razi. He  knew not to touch it and so he hoped his voice would  cheer it on instead. Sure enough, the white turtle perked  up and scuttled after the others. 

Overhead a yellow-beaked ibis wheeled past. Razi  kept an eye on it in case it tried to attack the babies. The sea was a grayish blue, deepening gradually to  a brilliant turquoise with the rising sun shining on  the waves. Coconut trees fringed the beach, their wiry  trunks twisted like swaying cobras. 

Standing on the shoreline, Razi watched in awe.  A wave came in, drenching the baby turtles as they  swarmed up to meet it. They hopped into the water,  greeting it playfully. Razi held his breath. This part  always worried him. The turtles looked so little and  fragile. But the whole lot of them swam away happily,  dots of black on the rolling blue waves surging into the  great ocean.

He sat cross-legged on the sand and watched them  bob away. They disappeared quickly, swimming away to  their new lives. He knew that turtles always came back  to the very same beach they were born in to lay their  own eggs. So someday when Razi was an adult he could  be back here and see the babies of one of these same  turtles. 

It was a lovely feeling. But it couldn’t completely  dislodge the sadness that dimmed Razi’s world, no  matter how much the sun shone and waves danced. 

The sun rose higher and prickled his skin. Then he  saw something bobbing in the water. Something dark. Razi squinted into the horizon. The turtles were all  gone, but this was too big to be one of them anyway. Whatever it was, it was heading toward land. The sea glittered a brilliant, sparkling blue now, and  the dark object swirled closer and closer to the shore  with every wave. 

It was a boat. 

Razi stood up. This wasn’t a fishing boat like the ones  on Serendib. This boat was plain and simple, with no  sail or outrigger, and, as it moved closer, Razi saw it had  some strange lettering etched on the side. 

Foreign letters, thought Razi excitedly. Where had the  boat come from?

It dipped into a wave and then lifted up, a solitary  blot on the empty ocean. As it surged closer, Razi saw  something droop out over the side. Something small  and bunched. 

A hand. 

An actual human hand! Someone was in the boat! Razi staggered back, jabbing his foot on a pointed  shell. The pain hardly registered as he watched the boat  bobbing closer. He looked around the beach wildly to  see if there was anyone to help. But, as usual, it was  entirely deserted. 

The boat swirled closer and Razi froze. Was he going  to have to get into the water? Dread clawed his heart at  the prospect. 

A gull squawked overhead, startling Razi. It was the  jolt he needed, and he ran into the sun-warmed water,  soaking his clothes as he waded quickly toward the boat. 

This is okay, you can do this, he told himself over and  over as he tried to ignore the water rising to his chest. Razi reached the boat and looked over the side. An  egret swooped by and darted off again, leaving the echo  of its cry. 

Razi gulped. 

Lying in the bottom of the boat, sunburned and still,  was a boy.

Chapter Three

“Okay now,” said Razi. “Stay calm,  stay calm, this is serious. Just BE  CALM.” 

With all his strength he pulled the  boat out of the sea and dragged it up  the beach, making a groove in the soft  sand. 

The boy was on his side, cheek  pressed against the bottom of the  boat. His eyes were closed and his  expression was blank. His lips were  parched, and his skin was covered in patches of white where salt had dried. Even his clothes  were dried up, and they rustled like paper when Razi shook his shoulder. 

His eyes remained shut. 

“Um, hello,” said Razi. “Er, listen, are you alive?” The boy was as still as a stick. The sun beat down on him mercilessly, frying his already parched body.  He had to be moved to the shade and given some water immediately. 

Razi took a deep breath and carried on talking to the boy, despite feeling foolish. “So I’m going to move you over there. Get you out of the sun.” He leaned into the boat and grasped the boy under his arms. 

To his surprise, the boy slid out easily as if he was no weight at all. Razi dragged him all the way up the sand to the shade of the coconut trees and laid him down.  Out of the sun’s glare, it was instantly cooler, and there was a soft breeze too. 

The boy twitched, his eyes fluttered open slightly and then closed again. 

Razi almost cried with relief. 

“Now, that is good,” said Razi, trying to sound encouraging. It had worked for the turtle, after all. “You  stay here—I’m going to look for some water.” He stood up and looked around.

Something out at sea caught his eye. Another boat,  identical to the one the boy had been in. There were two men in the boat, and the taller of the two was standing up, gesticulating furiously at the beach while the other rowed to shore. Razi couldn’t understand any of this. What was going on? 

Razi emerged from the trees and walked down the beach to meet the men. The tall one, who was strongly built with close-cropped hair, immediately jumped into the water and ran to him. To Razi’s alarm, he gripped him by the collar and lifted him off his feet. 

Razi tried to scream. He blanched at the man’s furious expression. 

“Marco!” said the other man, coming up the beach.  “That’s not him.” 

The tall man shoved Razi away. He seemed angry that he’d got the wrong person. Razi turned to run,  terrified. He had to get away from these men fast. 

“Where is he?” yelled the one called Marco. He rounded on Razi. “You! You must have seen him.” Razi shook his head hard. Was the man talking about the boy on the boat? He wanted to say something,  anything, but couldn’t find the words. 

“He must be around here somewhere,” said the other man. “That’s his boat over there. We’ll find him.”

“Find him and kill him,” said Marco, kicking at a  scuttling crab. 

Razi began to tremble. The boy was lying unconscious just yards away from them in the shade of the coconut trees. He was weak and barely alive, and these men wanted to harm him. He couldn’t let them do that. 

“Oh! D-do you mean the boy in the boat?” said Razi,  finding his tongue at last. 

Marco stopped and turned around. “What do you  know?” 

“N-nothing,” said Razi, which was true. He pointed toward Galle town, then carried on less truthfully. “He asked me where the closest town was, and I told him it’s a mile up the beach. So he ran that way.” 

Marco came toward Razi slowly. His thick neck and meaty shoulders made Razi shrink away until he backed onto the side of their boat. 

“When was this?” said Marco, breathing into Razi’s face. 

“An hour ago.” 

“Why did you say before that you hadn’t seen him?”  The man spoke slowly, making the words sound doubly dangerous. 

Razi swallowed as he tried to think of a reason. “I  wasn’t sure what you m-meant. I m-mean, ‘Where is he?’ doesn’t mean much, d-does it? Now, if you’d said,  ‘w-where’s that boy who came on the boat…’” He was blabbering and Marco was looking at him with deep suspicion. He should shut up before he brought some serious damage down on himself. 

“I see.” Marco still spoke slowly and deliberately. “If I  find out that you’ve been lying to me, I will find you and  I will kill you. Understand?” 

“O-of course,” stammered Razi. “That-that sounds  clear enough.” He caught himself before he blathered on anymore. 

With that, Marco and his accomplice got back in the boat and rowed off.

Chapter Four

Razi watched the boat heading in the direction of Galle. 

He exhaled and pressed his hands to his forehead. What had he gotten himself into? He looked back toward the unconscious boy, his foot clearly visible for anyone to see. 

He had to check that the boy was all right and then get out of there as fast as he could. 

Razi ran to collect some fallen King coconuts. Once he’d found a pointed stone, he managed to pierce one, making a terrible mess, and felt the welcome squirt of cool coconut water on his face. 

He went back to the boy and lifted his head up, tipping the King coconut slowly against his mouth. Half of the water sloshed out but the boy stirred awake and soon began to lap it up. He took in a good amount and then lay back down, his eyes closing again. He smelled of salt and the brininess of the deep sea. Razi felt a chill in spite of the heat of the day. 

“Er, looks like you’re a bit better then,” said Razi,  edging off and sitting back on his heels. 

The boy opened his eyes. His face furrowed slightly and his eyes traveled all around him—taking in the jewel-bright sea, the shell-strewn beach with the boat pulled up high on the sand, and the bunches of bright orange King coconuts in the tree above him. 

He blinked in confusion and tried to sit up. “Huh?” “I said it looks like you’re feeling better,” said Razi,  even though the boy probably couldn’t understand him.  He was clearly from a faraway land. “You’re safe.” The boy looked at Razi for the first time. “Where is this?” he said, speaking Razi’s tongue easily. “Serendib,” said Razi. “You’re on the island of  Serendib.”

The boy lay back wearily but there was a hint of a  smile on his face. He touched his chest and his clothes rustled again. 

Razi stared at the boy. The rustling sound wasn’t coming from his clothes after all. There was something long and cylindrical hidden inside his shirt. 

*** 

The boy slowly began to lift himself up until he was leaning against the tree. 

“Here,” said Razi, prying the coconut open into two halves. He showed the boy how to scoop out the soft,  pulpy insides. The boy took the coconut and scarfed it down gratefully. Seeing he was still hungry, Razi pierced open another King coconut for him, all the while keeping an eye out for the two men. 

“What’s your name?” asked the boy, after taking a  long swig of coconut water. “I’m Zheng.” 

“I’m Razi. I live in the town down the beach from here. How come you speak our language?” He glanced nervously at the sea. Would the men be back? And was it all right to leave the boy in this state? 

Zheng wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.  “Oh, I speak loads of languages. I don’t mean to boast, but I can’t think of a language I don’t know even a little of. Been all over the world, you see.” 

Razi frowned. So much for not boasting. 

Zheng put down the coconut and gave a small sigh.  “Listen,” said Razi. “I don’t like to hurry you while  you’re like this, but you need to get out of here fast.” “Why do you say that?” 

“Because a man called Marco means to kill you.” The boy startled and dropped the coconut, water slosh ing over his legs. He scrabbled around as he tried to get up. “Hold on!” said Razi. “I didn’t mean that fast!” Zheng stared at him with such panic-stricken eyes that Razi felt instantly sorry for him. “Who are you?”  said Zheng. “Are you working for Marco?” 

“No! He and another man came ashore in a boat soon  after you did.” 

“Marco is here?” Zheng got up and staggered around like a crab before he managed to straighten up. “Wait, where are you going?” said Razi, following  Zheng as he stalked around in a panic. 

“I don’t know. Just away. I’ll figure something out. I  always do.” 

Razi could hardly leave him now. Zheng was shuffling inland in his ragged clothes, tired and weak, barely able to stand.

“Wait, Zheng.” Razi ran up to him. “There’s a place  near here where you can rest for a bit.” 

Zheng turned back and looked at him hopefully.  “Come on!” Razi led the way up the beach, threading through the coconut trees to the abandoned fisherman’s hut he knew was there. “It can’t really be seen from the beach. You’ll be safe while you hide and think of what  to do.” 

The hut was just a minute up the beach, small and coconut-thatched. There was a single wooden window that didn’t close very well. The corners were full of cobwebs, and the door hung lopsidedly off its hinges. It wasn’t great, but it was safe. 

“Would anyone come here?” said Zheng. 

“No. It was abandoned a long time ago. No one comes to this beach at all. I only come here because of the  turtles.” 

Zheng relaxed visibly and settled on the hard earth floor, stretching himself out. 

“What’s that rustling noise coming from your shirt?”  asked Razi. 

Zheng paled under his sunburn. “I’m not sure what you mean. I think it’s my bones creaking.” Razi suppressed a chuckle. Whatever it was, clearly  Zheng didn’t want Razi to know.

“Thank you for everything,” said Zheng. “The less you know about any of this the better. Marco is a dangerous  man, and Cook isn’t too sweet either.” 

“Don’t I know it.” Razi leaned against the window.  “He’s already threatened to find me and kill me if I was lying to him. And I was.” 

Zheng shook his head in confusion. “What are you  talking about?” 

“Marco asked if I’d seen you. I said you went to town  and sent him the wrong way.” 

Zheng’s face turned sour. “Oh no. He’s not someone  you want to cross for any reason.” 

“What about you, though? Will you be all right?” “Of course,” said Zheng, leaning his head against the wall and closing his eyes. He seemed to have become more relaxed after reaching the hut. “I’ve been in all sorts  of situations. When you work on a ship and have been all  over the world, you’re ready for anything. Reminds me of  the time we had to fight off pirates. Not that it happened  just the once, but this one time was particularly tense,  because I had only one working arm at the time.” Razi had no idea how seriously to take any of this. He  was curious about Zheng, though, and felt responsible  for him after rescuing him from the boat. “Who are you?  How did you come to be in that boat?”

Zheng’s face screwed up, as if he was trying to hold  back some emotion. “I was on a merchant ship that  sank.” 

“You’re a ship’s boy, then?” 

Zheng nodded. “It might not sound like much. But I  was very close to the captain, no less. And I’ve been all over the world. Been doing this since I was eight, and  now I’m twelve. Imagine that.” 

That was impressive, but Razi wasn’t about to admit  it. He was twelve too, but he had never even left the area  he lived in. 

“Where did you say you were from again?” said Zheng. “Galle,” said Razi. “It’s a town about a mile or so up  the beach from here. There’s nothing else around. If  you go up the beach the other way there’s a village, but  that’s even farther away than Galle.” 

“What were you doing here then?” 

“I was watching turtle hatchlings. There are always  loads of them here. I like to see them go safely to the  sea. Did you know that’s why they run to the sea so soon  after birth? It’s so they’re safe from predators.” 

“That’s nice,” said Zheng, though he didn’t look  too interested in the turtles. Which wasn’t surprising  considering he was running away from a maniac who  was trying to kill him.

“I’ve got to go now. My mother will be waiting for me.  We usually have breakfast together before she goes to  work. Good luck, Zheng.” 

“Ah, breakfast… Can’t remember the last time I had  it,” said Zheng, a mournful expression on his face.  “Well, goodbye, Razi. Thank you for everything.” 

Razi nodded and turned to go. He stopped at the  doorway. He couldn’t very well leave Zheng without  food. The coconut pulp was hardly anything. 

He turned back to Zheng. “Don’t move from here. I’ll  bring you some food and water and then you can be on  your way.” 

Zheng looked thrilled. “Could you hide my boat as  well? If Marco comes back, it’ll show him where I am.  I’d do it myself if I wasn’t so weak.” 

“Sure.” Razi smiled. He’d move the boat, bring the  food, and that would be the end of that.