“Well, you’re young,” the man said. “We were all young once, eh? Right. Then we’ll get you dried off. Get you a bite. We’ll be all snug in our slip in a couple hours.”
“Thanks,” Mack said. “You saved our lives.”
“Don’t thank me. Thank my daughter. She’s the reason we were looking for you.”
“You were…what?”
“Go on below, she’ll explain it all to you. And maybe you can get her to cook you an omelet.”
Stefan led the way down the narrow stairs to the cabin. Here was light and warmth and the smell of food. Mack could almost—not quite—forget that he was on a tiny vessel in the midst of a vast ocean filled with sharks.
A girl sat at a cramped table. She had dark skin, incongruously blond hair pulled into a ponytail, and brown eyes. She was drinking a cup of coffee, gulping it—not sipping.
She looked up at them with no sign of surprise. “Which one of you is it?”
Stefan, fully recovered despite still being wet and having a piece of seaweed draped over one shoulder, said, “It’s me.”
The girl cocked her head to one side. Then she laughed. “Don’t waste your time flirting with me, mate. You’re a fine-looking fellow, no mistaking that. But I’m not looking for a fine fellow, I’m looking for a magnificent fellow.”
She looked shrewdly at Mack. Like he might be worth something but still wasn’t quite what she’d been hoping for.
“You’d be the one,” she said. She half stood, reached out her hand, and Mack shook it. He felt calluses. This was not a girl who obsessed over moisturizing. She had done lots of physical work in her life. Mack noticed things like that. Her shoulders were strong; her gaze was direct and not even a little shy.
“My name’s Jarrah Major,” she said.
“I’m Mack. This is Stefan.”
“Have a seat, boys. Don’t worry about the wet clothes; you’ll dry soon enough.”
Mack sat. He was still stunned and scared and feeling a little stupid. “Your dad said you were looking for us. How did you…”
Jarrah laughed. “Long story short, I’m the girl you’ve come here to find. I’m the second of the twelve.”
Nineteen
One of the rules of Great Literature is: show, don’t tell. But one of the other rules of Great Literature is: don’t go on and on with boring scenes where nothing happens but a lot of talking.
So let’s just have a quick glance at what Jarrah told Mack and Stefan on the way into stunning Sydney Harbour, and then move on, shall we?
Jarrah’s father, Peter Major, was a journalist. A “journo,” as she said. He was also an avid sailor. Which is only important because that’s how Jarrah came by the boat she took to meet Mack as he fell from the sky.
Jarrah’s mother is more important to the story because she was an archaeologist who was leading the first ever expedition inside Uluru.
Uluru was a gigantic rock in the middle of the Australian Outback (no, not Outback the restaurant chain, Outback as in the vast Australian desert).
No one even knew there was an inside to Uluru. Until Jarrah’s mother, Karri. Karri and Jarrah were both Indigenous names. Karri meant a type of eucalyptus. And so did Jarrah.
Using all the latest ground-penetrating radar and other hi-tech toys, Karri Major had discovered a network of caves deep within Uluru. Being an Indigenous Australian herself, and a member of a local clan, she was able to convince her people that it would not be sacrilege to drill a small tunnel to reach those caves.
Which she did.
As soon as they docked, Jarrah’s father drove them to Sydney Airport. Mack and Stefan had to be careful at the airport because the plane they’d been snatched out of had landed. There were reporters and cops and just mobs of milling people all around as the spokesman for the airport explained that something very unusual had happened on the flight.
Yes; very unusual.
Mack and Stefan were listed as missing. Turning up alive and well right then would just delay things for hours.
“Problem is,” Jarrah’s dad said, “it’s a long wait for the plane to Ayers Rock.”