Skip to content

50 welcome credits for a limited time

They are yours when you join. Use them within 7 days.

Join free

Plastic Sea (FR) — What's Left, Page 17

By Inkroost · Published

Log in to see this page

Page 17 of What's Left is for signed-in readers. Logging in brings you straight back here — and an account is free if you do not have one.

Transcript

Case 1 : Roka jaillit à la surface, agrippé à la bouée orange, en criant. Au loin, un petit morceau de l’île dérive. Roka : « BAMYA ! » « GRANNY ! » Case 2 : Silence. Roka flotte seul sur une mer calme et déserte. Un chapelet de capsules de bouteille aplaties — le collier de Biber — dérive près de lui, et le petit canard jaune en plastique de Bamya se dandine vers lui.

Image description

Roka remonte à la surface en criant le nom de Bamya et de Granny ; puis, seul dans la mer calme, il regarde un chapelet de capsules de bouteille et un canard jaune flotter vers lui.

About this chapter

In the dark at the bottom of the sea, something is counting. On Candyreef, a candy-coloured island of floating trash, Roka wakes to a water bag in the face from his street crew, lifts breakfast from the old woman who would have fed him anyway, and tells the kid who follows him that he doesn't owe anybody. Then the gulls lift all at once, and a Maw eats half the island. A day and a night alone at sea later, the Garden Ship fishes him out and orders him to walk its treadwheels for fish heads. Roka is nobody's slave, so he goes looking for something to steal instead, and breaks into a barnacled case dredged from the seabed. The silver dust inside climbs into his arm and says hello. It is polite. It is curious. It wants every human dead. And it has just started counting again.