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were sailing along between two islands. The port-side one looked barren and empty. The starboard side one was just as barren-looking but it was definitely inhabited. You could see that because there was a huge sign there, erected at the end of a jetty.
    The sign had been hand-painted with what must have been a scraggy brush and a hand that was none too steady. It read THE TOLL TROLL IS:
    And next to that there was a rack to hold another sign, which could be changed around as needed. The sign at that moment read IN . I assume the other side of it bore the word OUT .
    But we were unlucky. The IN was up.
    Next thing we saw was that slung between the two islands was a huge net. It could be lowered or raised by means of slackening or tightening a couple of ropes. We were unlucky with that too. The net was up and if we carried on sailing we’d have sailed right into it and have got tangled up like a shoal of fish in a sky-trawl.
    â€˜What the –?’
    Peggy treated herself to some cursing.
    â€˜What’s going on, Gran?’ Gemma said.
    â€˜I don’t know. But cut our speed or we’ll be right into that damn net.’
    Gemma reeled the sails in and Peggy shut the solar down.
    And then the noise started. It was quite a racket. It sounded like someone taking a look at a sky-cat’s intestines while the cat was still conscious. Botcher seemed to get the same idea, as he leapt up and scurried under a sail bag and tried to put his paws in his ears.
    â€˜For the love of –!’
    The man on the shore was big and broad and he was wearing a skirt, or maybe it was a kilt of some kind, and he had large, muscled arms, covered in freckles and red hair. And he was playing some sort of bagpipes. But it was obvious, from the way he was playing them, that lesson number two in the Teach Yourself the Bagpipes correspondence course had not yet arrived.
    After about thirty seconds, the ear torture ended. He stopped playing in order to swat at a whole swarm of insects that were bothering his beard. But no sooner had he swatted them away than they came back, like they couldn’t live without him. So he gave up on the pipes and he bellowed at us, long and loud.
    â€˜Ahoy! You there!’
    â€˜What is it you want?’ Peggy yelled back. ‘We’re just travelling. We’re an old lady and two kids. We don’t have anything.’
    â€˜Everyone’s got something! And if you want to sail between my islands, you’ve got to pay.’
    â€˜Just told you, we don’t have anything. Lower the net and let us pass.’
    â€˜No way, old timer. You pay the toll or you don’t go nowhere.’
    â€˜â€œYou don’t go
anywhere”
,’ Peggy corrected him. ‘You don’t say “
you don’t go nowhere
”. That’s a double negative. Watch your grammar. I’m trying to get these children to speak nicely, and bad examples of common usage don’t help that.’
    The big beardy one didn’t answer her. He put his bagpipes down, swatted away a few more of the insects that were bothering him, picked up a large harpoon that could have come off a sky-whaler, and fitted it into a gun fixed to the jetty.
    â€˜You pull to, or you get blasted.’
    Peggy swore some of her swears again.
    â€˜I need this like a hole in the head, you red-bearded idiot!’ she yelled at him.
    â€˜You don’t pull over, you’ll
get
a hole in the head,’ he yelled back. ‘This size.’ And he pointed at the harpoon.
    I saw Peggy look at me with what had to be reproach, but she didn’t say anything. Maybe she knew I hadn’t been keeping my eyes as peeled as I might have. Maybe the situation could have been avoided if I’d been a better lookout, but we couldn’t avoid it now.
    â€˜OK,’ she said. ‘I’ll bring the boat over.’
    She turned the wheel and guided us towards the jetty.
    The red-bearded, muscly one stood watching