Noah’s Ark? When sea levels had risen in the Bible? I honestly think it was the cleverest thing I’d ever heard. Because that was just like us, wasn’t it? Floating along after sea levels have risen and maybe most people have died. I know Noah wasn’t on his ark for very long – only forty days, or something like that – but him and his friends were stuck on there with a whole load of animals, and that might actually have been more annoying than all the people here. Living with a crowd of lions and owls and badgers and everything would have been a nightmare. That would be much worse than Old Albert having food in his beard, or Stinky farting in his sleep – though, on the plus side, Noah was on an actual boat and not a crazy living jellyfish, and he could land that boat on the shore without being attacked by kriks. Yeah, maybe it was just luck Dr Jones chose Staring Crone to speak straight after Pete’s ‘almost-escape’. But I think not. I think some of the other people knew what she was going to say. I’m not sure Dr Jones was surprised. Staring Crone’s talk was definitely the second big thing which made us rethink our chances of escape.

It took a while to get the room quiet again, and there were a lot of people who had something to say – though it was mainly to repeat what Staring Crone had already said, using different words. But eventually, Dr Jones managed it. Then she spoke to Staring Crone again. ‘What do you think we can learn from those stories?’ she said.

There was another long pause. Staring Crone didn’t immediately look as though she had noted the question, but then there was a movement in the hair, a flicker in the matted mess in front of her mouth. ‘What can we learn?

‘Uh . . . we can learn that people survived. The stories are told by people who survived.’

Chapter 4

4

Survival was the thing I most liked to spend my time thinking about. It was probably the thing we all most liked to think about. But after Staring Crone’s talk and Pete’s almost-escape, there was the possibility that what had just been thinking might now become reality, so it felt like legitimate planning rather than time-wasting, staring-into-space daydreams.

I was still unclear about the actual details, especially anything that involved getting myself off the Jellyfish, but I always liked to spend at least an hour a day picturing myself on land again, walking on ground that didn’t move beneath me and wasn’t covered in slime. The kriks didn’t feature in my fantasies. Definitely not. It was more about me just walking around in golden sunshine (unrealistic), my long blonde hair blowing in the breeze (also unrealistic as my hair’s brown) while eating buckets and buckets of fruit (possible, maybe).