Hong Kong Young Writers Anthologies Fiction 4-7 2019 | Page 124

“Well, I can’t change it now, can I? I’m already here.”
He grinned at me and crouched down. I noticed that he had his own sponge and bucket with him. “I’m
Brendan. Who’re you?”
“My name’s Daniel.”
As we cleaned the kitchen floor, we remained mostly in silence, sometimes requesting to pass a sponge or more water
to each other.
“So, this ship’s pretty big, huh?” I cringed.
“Yeah, it’s supposed to be used for trading. When’d you get on here? I thought they told everyone as soon as they got
on.”
“Oh, I got on last time we docked. No one came to tell me anything.”
Brendan looked at me strangely. “You don’t know very much about this ship.”
I started sweating. Would he ask me who I am? Would he call the captain on me? Would he beat me up? “Ah. Well,
you see, I didn’t exactly pay to be here.” It’s the truth.
“That’s not allowed. You could get executed in front of everyone.” Then Brendan leaned closer. “But don’t worry.
I won’t tell anyone.”
After we were finally finished making the floor squeaky clean Brendan led me to the deck. The sea salt stung my nose
and the crashing of the waves made me feel queasy again. “Did I ever tell you I don’t like the sea?” He ignored me,
instead, he led me to a table where a map was held down by four stones. He pushed a finger onto what I was guessing
was where we had come from.
“This is where we first came from. Great Ming.” He pointed to part of China. “That’s
China.” I corrected.
“What’s China? This is Great Ming. What are you talking about?” He didn’t seem to question a lot of things I said or
did that were wrong.
He then moved his finger through the empty areas between land. “We stopped in different areas of China to pick up
more people and then went to Malacca.” He pointed at where Malaysia would be. “We passed through the Straits of
Malacca. Now we are on our way to Ceylon.” He pointed near India before continuing.
“You know, most people got off the ship at Malacca. You know why there are so few people on this ship now?” I
looked around. Although the second in command had said there were around a hundred people, Brendan was right.
It looked like there was almost no one around.
“Seas around Ceylon are pretty rough. The docks there used to be constantly full of ships. But then strange things
started happening. First, small boats disappeared. It was understandable. Many people blamed it on bad luck and
rough water. Then, slowly, more and more boats disappeared. Then bigger boats, until entire ships were
disappearing with people on board. No one wanted to stop there.”