Polly Judd

Polly Judd is the protagonist of Spindrift. She is thirteen years old, a student at the School aboard the generation ship Spindrift.More than anything she wants to be a Colony Pathfinder when Spindrift reaches Gloucester.

Appearance

Polly has dark curly hair which she wears in a big ponytail tied with luminous green elastic — in zero gravity it escapes into a floating cloud around her head, which frustrates her. She carries a silver locket around her neck that tells the time in a small voice.

Her everyday clothes have a cheerfully practical, slightly chaotic character: baggy grey trousers that look like they are mostly made of pockets, a white sweatshirt with a snowflake logo, and red canvas shoes, with her books crammed into a battered old satchel.

Family

Polly lives with her mother Angharad, a biologist who works at the ship’s bio-reactors; her Granddad Rhys, a senior engineer and expert on the gravity wave motor; and her younger brother Ieuan. Four years before the story begins, her father and her older brother Alun were killed along with twelve others in a catastrophic accident in the hub motor — they stayed at their posts knowing it would cost them their lives.

Her grandmother, Grandma Varvara — a formidable headspace programmer who lives separately — is another important figure in her life. The Judds and the Williams family have been at cross-purposes for as long as anyone can remember, a feud so old that no one in Polly’s generation even knows what started it.

Character

Polly is brave in the specific way of someone who is genuinely frightened but acts anyway. She is impulsive — she speaks before she has worked out the best way to say things, raises her hand before she has decided to, and acts on instinct in moments of danger. She is deeply loyal and honest, with a strong sense of fairness that can tip into stubbornness, and a temper when she is frustrated or unjustly dismissed.

She is clever and academically engaged — she got full marks in Intermediate Planetcraft Module 6 and is becoming rather good at headspace programming. She draws well, better than she realises. She is less naturally gifted in zero gravity, but honest enough to admit it and determined enough to keep trying.

She carries her father’s death with a quiet, steady grief that shapes everything. Granddad Rhys’ words — “your father would say you should do what you think is right” — are what she returns to when things are hardest.

Role in the Story

The story begins when Polly is visited in the night by a figure resembling her dead father, who urges her to find Cinnabar. This sets her, together with her friends Ivy and Milo, on an investigation that leads from a mystery in the ship’s cargo ring to first contact with an ancient galactic intelligence — the Song — and ends with Polly named its Singer of Songs.