The boat bumps into something solid. Knocked forward into their clothes, Kira yelps.
Callum ricochets off his knees. ‘Christ!’ Groaning, he rubs his forehead. ‘What the hell was that?’
Face-first in fur, Kira struggles upright. She’s never been one for yoga poses, and that one damn well hurt. ‘God knows.’
‘Just once.’ Callum shakes his head. A red, knee-shaped mark mars his skin. ‘Just once, I’d like a warning. You know, one of those voices that have been telling you to wake up.’
Kira twists in the boat and gasps. ‘Callum.’
‘All it has to say is CLIFF, or COLLISION.’
‘Callum!’
She’s star-struck, snow-blind, stunned. He has to look, has to marvel: half in the water and half on the sand, they’ve bumped up onto an island.
It’s toy-sized, smaller than Erik’s cave with golden, grass-patched sand. Pebbles form a scattered boundary. A tired shrub cradles scarlet berries, smelling of a musky spice. In the centre laps the most inviting pool she’s ever seen.
Oh. Oh. The size of a gnarled old dinner table, the vivid water glitters, as cloudlessly blue as the river. It doesn’t pull. It doesn’t lure. It’s there for one thing. ‘Bathtime!’
The boat rocks and shudders as Kira scrambles out.
‘Huh?’ A thump behind her. ‘Ow. Thanks, Kira,’ Callum calls. ‘More injuries. Just what I need.’
‘You’re welcome.’ Hopping across the scorching sand, Kira plunks into the water.
It’s glorious. What’s even more glorious is removing her clothes. It’s a weight lifted, a purification, a sacred religious rite: no one has ever valued nudity quite as much as this. The balls of her feet scrape mossy stones as she wriggles out of her knickers. Glorious. Glorious. Spending days in filthy clothes is bad enough, but days-old knickers are disgusting.
No more. Wringing and rinsing as fast as she can, she flings her sopping clothes to the sand and plunges underwater.
Shivery. Glassy. Bubbling. Hushed. Clean, cool, bluish, greenish, and Kira comes up beaming. ‘It’s amazing.’ She turns, up to her neck, the softness billowing about her limbs. It’s silky, soaking into her skin. The water seeps through to her bones, and like its own kind of dirt, the clammy, cloying feeling of the forest melts away. Even her mind is clearing: like a painkiller easing an ache to a throb, her worries don’t seem so bad.
‘Are you sure you’ve not jumped into a death trap?’ Callum pads across the murmuring sand. ‘There could be anything in there. Piranhas. Jellyfish. Jesus, it’s hot.’ He inhales through his teeth, his toes scraping audibly in on themselves. ‘Maybe that’s where the sirens hang out.’
Kira peers down through the ripples. ‘If it is, they’re the worst seductresses ever. They’d have to be the size of a seahorse.’ She smiles to herself. ‘If you’re going to be seduced by a fish-sized siren, you deserve whatever you get.’
‘Very funny.’ Callum’s padding stops. ‘Sofia just said to be paranoid. Ouch.’ He inhales again. ‘Did it occur to you that it could be unsafe?’
‘No.’
‘You wanted a bath, so you took one.’
‘Yes.’
‘Do you remember what else Sofia said?’
Kira cranes her neck up at him. ‘No?’
‘Of course.’ Crouching beside the pool, Callum eyes her. ‘We are on an island. Who lives on an island? Who specifically must we avoid?’
He takes a beat to wait, raising his eyebrows in a way that says come on. Come on. Come on. Come on.
Oh.
Several things ripple right through Kira. Fear, cold. Idiocy, hot. Pride, hotter, and the need to save face, the hottest of them all.
‘Well, yes. I thought about that.’ She didn’t. ‘But look. This place is tiny.’ She cuts her eyes away from him, the better to mask the lie. ‘If he’s hiding somewhere, he’s not even a seahorse. He’s a, I don’t know’—she waves a hand—‘like, a mollusc.’
Callum snorts. ‘And if we’re deceived by a mollusc, we deserve whatever we get?’
‘Damn straight.’
He shakes his head, tracing the water, and shakes it again, and again. ‘I’m not going to mention the fact that you didn’t think this through, because you’re right, there’s no daft, alluring fish.’ He nods at the pool. ‘What about in there?’
Kira peers down through the ripples again. ‘I’m pretty sure it’s fine.’ She hopes. The bottom of the pool is blurry, but solid: pebbles, rocks, and slick brown algae. Pushing down a curl of unease, she makes herself paddle around. No smell beyond salt and the spicy berries. No hand around her ankles, no chasm, no bite; only a sense of cocooned serenity, difficult to distrust, already washing clean her doubts. ‘I can’t see anything.’ She tips her head back so her hair floats out. ‘When else will we feel this clean?’
Every inch of her is thoroughly scrubbed before Callum is convinced. ‘Ahhhh.’ He sighs a gusty sigh, casts the pool a longing look, and yanks his T-shirt over his head. ‘Fine. Fine. Your cleanliness convinced me. But if we die in a ghastly way…’
‘Yes, yes.’ Kira tries not to look at him, and tries not to heat. ‘It’s on me. I’ll take the—hey!’
She jerks up a hand in a stop sign, even as her belly does a flip. Unashamed, he’s shed his jeans and is poised to bathe in his boxers. ‘No, you don’t. You have to wash those.’ She dips a sharp finger at his underwear. ‘Please. For the love of God.’
For a second, she thinks he might listen.
For a second, she’s a fool.
‘As you wish, my lady.’ With a smug smile, Callum jogs backwards and merrily starts to run.
‘Callum!’ Kira yelps, but too late. Churning the pool with a colossal splash, he bombs in front of her face.
‘You called?’ All innocence, he surfaces in the midst of the roiling waves. ‘I was just making sure my underwear got clean. You know, for the love of God. Oh, and funny thing.’ He settles against the rocky sides of the pool, tapping the stone with his fingers. ‘I can’t see you up here, but the underwater view is spectacular.’
Her body thinks first, and she splashes him. Her mind catches up, and she splashes him again, rushing with heat and curling her toes and pinching her thighs together. The cheek.
He’s seen her cheeks. All of them.
Kira’s head has never felt so hot. She splashes him again.
‘Oi!’ Callum shields his face with his arms. ‘Beast! You’re the one who chose nudity over dignity, or whatever. I’m only a simple man.’
‘Even simple men have balls to kick.’ Kira lifts her chin and meets his eyes. He can embarrass her to the ends of the earth, but nothing will force her from the pool. Nothing is stealing this halo of calm.
As long as he stays on the surface.
Tipping her head back, she lets the water muffle his chuckles. The ripples cover her ears. His paddling recedes to a pulse. She stretches her legs, flexes her toes, and gazes up at the sky. She could almost be back at the thermal baths. Ringed by peaks, the air was sharp, but the water steamed and the sky was deep and—
The pool around her churns. Taken by surprise, Kira loses her balance, plunging underwater. With a shout, Callum scrambles onto the sand.
At the second shout, Kira splutters back up, water in her nose and honeyed in her throat the way no water should be. At the third, she scrapes her hair from her face, a sodden, slapping curtain. ‘What’s wrong with you?’ she croaks. ‘I was starting to relax.’
Wiping her filmy eyes, she sees. Callum is tromping back toward her, grinning in a slightly shellshocked way with a glistening fish in each hand.
‘Fish!’ he crows.
Kira blinks. ‘I can see that.’
Animatedly, he points to the river. ‘Look!’
Perplexed, she looks; and as she looks, she inhales. In the river around the island, in a delicate, splashing storm, leap a fanciful, fantastical, bizarre array of fish.
Sparkling rainbows and wings of scales. Silver bodies an
d mermaid tails. Dipping in and out of the water, the fish arc toward them. Kira’s lips curve to a speechless smile. In a rush, a swarm, splashing and tinkling like a rock-pool waterfall, the fish encircle the island. It seems a shame, a betrayal, something sad and stolen, to break their brightened flight, but as Callum hastens back to the water, Kira lets him. If they don’t eat, they won’t get much farther; and if they don’t get to the ice plains, all this will have been for nothing.
When it’s over, though, she’ll be veggie for life.
‘Amazing.’ Callum extends his arms, laughing in the wet, sludgy sand beside the boat. Another fish slaps into his chest, and Kira’s stomach growls. She’d be foolish to spurn convenient food.
A second fish, almost a third, and Callum scoops them up. ‘The job’s a good-un.’ He heads back toward her. ‘Man provide for woman.’
Kira smirks but says nothing. He looks comical enough as it is with his boxers sodden, sand in his leg hair, and his prizes held like babies. He doesn’t need her teasing, too…and he is catching them food.
Resting her chin on her hands, Kira sighs. The fish are surging away again, dipping toward the blue horizon in a blur of glittering light. Smiling, she follows their dreamy path. Between them and the wing-lit birds, she’ll never have painter’s block again.
‘Dinner,’ Callum proclaims loudly. The last of the rush glints away.
Kira shakes the brightness from her eyes. ‘How do you propose we cook them?’ she asks, allowing a hint of a tease. ‘Does man make fire, as well as provide? We’re a little low on supplies.’
‘Have faith.’ Callum lifts a finger for silence, squats beside his bounty, and raises a newly dead fish to his mouth.
Revulsion writhes up from Kira’s stomach, stronger than the squirrels in spades. ‘Callum!’ She covers her mouth with her hands. ‘What are—that could kill you.’
Callum waggles the lifted finger. ‘Mmm.’ His forehead creases, and with it his face. Kira’s words grind to a halt. ‘Mmm.’ Pulling a tiny white bone from his mouth, he motions for Kira to eat. ‘Dig in.’
A half-grimace twisting her face, Kira stares. ‘Really?’ she says dubiously as he bites, and bites again. With his lidded eyes, and the peace between his brows, he could be caught in rapture. ‘Because that does not seem like a good idea. In fact, it’s extremely gross.’
Cheeks bulging, Callum shrugs. ‘Sofia said we could eat them out of the water, so I did. It could have gone terribly, but’—he swallows, whole-heartedly smug—‘it didn’t. Trust me.’ He nods at the sandy pile. ‘Sofia was right; they’re delicious. And unless that bishop-fish does turn up…’
He trails off with a drawn-out shrug.
‘I’d really rather it didn’t.’ Reaching over the side of the pool, Kira lifts a fish between finger and thumb. As much as her belly bawls foodfoodfood, it also threatens to heave. They could do without food poisoning. They could do without any kind of poisoning. ‘Getting close enough to eat it doesn’t sound wise if we’re not meant to hear it talk.’
Laying his skeleton bare on the ground, Callum leans in for another. ‘It can’t if it’s in my stomach.’
Grinning, he returns to stuffing his face. Kira regards her own helping. Food. Poison. Poison. Food. She sighs, a resigned, solitary huff. How many dinners are literally going to fly into their arms?
‘We should go,’ she says a short while later, when the fish have been demolished. Dropping their translucent bones, she arranges them neatly on the sand by the rim of the sighing pool: a tree trunk, four branches, the ground. A flag that, once they’re home, no one will understand. ‘We’ve probably already stayed too long.’
Her reluctance mirrors in Callum’s face. ‘I know.’ His eyes fall to her bone design. ‘Oh.’ He tilts his head to the side. ‘I saw that in the hobbit-hole.’
Taken aback, Kira frowns. ‘Really?’
‘Yes.’ Callum traces it lightly, thoughtfully, before reaching for his clothes. ‘It was scratched into the wall. If we ever see another living soul, I’ll ask them what it means. Hey!’ His expression brightens. ‘Bone-dry!’
Kira groans. One hand holds a sock. The other holds a bone. ‘Terrible.’ She fills her face with contempt. ‘You’re terrible. I’m going to get dressed. Turn around.’
To her surprise, he does. For a moment, Kira studies him, girlishly enthralled. Broad back, muscled arms. His jeans hug his hips when he stands. She smiles. That’s what you get for being a ski instructor, or chopping endless wood. If he was a summer lifeguard, all the girls would drool.
‘Done?’ he asks over his shoulder. Kira shakes her head, staccato. Now, more than ever, is so not the time.
The second they’re settled, the boat sails away. Kira lolls against the reeds. Raking back his hair, Callum does the same. The heat has already reclaimed him. Sweat films every inch of skin; the pool made it bearable, but now it’s back, arid, vengeful, and, well, bone-dry. Tracing infinity signs on Kira’s leg, he smirks. She can say what she likes. He’s funny.
He’s also a desert, baked and cracking. They filled up the water pouch from the pool, but it’s one pouch versus the world. He’s a parched, dry-lipped, gasping fish.
He’s also a cartoon. Callum dips his other hand in the river. He should have been more careful on the island; either the burn, the bruises, or both are throbbing, and his hand is as heavy as sin. An oversized thumb, scarlet from a hammer. A pulsing hand, trapped in a door and ballooning to the size of his head.
A soft snore flutters from his feet. Callum smiles, but it’s jaded. Call him paranoid, and it may be true; but Kira was snared in a dream and left in the snow to die. Who’s to say it won’t happen again? If the dreams returned, they could be stronger, tethered with chains, not ropes. He could wind up watching her smiling in sleep, growing frail in her fictional life. She could die, and he’d be left knowing that he just had to keep her awake.
Callum rubs his eyes. She was fine last night; he watched her “Every Breath You Take”-style, but by morning, she was alive and kicking, dandy, righter than rain. The screwball Kyo, with about a hundred bats in the goddamn belfry, have either lost interest, think she’s dead, or are concocting another wonderful plan that doesn’t involve her dreams.
Callum yawns. Half an hour. She can have half an hour, or until something weird appears. Pinching his arm, he scratches his head, sleepily stretching his legs. Whether or not they need oars, in this sunless heat, in this ruthless world, he can’t help feeling that they’re literally up the creek without a paddle.
She’s singing. Standing in a dark room, watched by faces, upturned, tilted, charmed. She’s singing, and…afloat?
She looks up. A stone ceiling rocks bare inches from her head, and she frowns. How peculiar.
The song is peculiar, too. Changing on its own whims, it lilts beyond control. It’s a sea shanty, an aria, an Arabian dance; she can see deserts, merchants, travellers, snakes forming in the dust from the air. She’s motionless, bodiless, made up of images. Her lips don’t move. Is she singing at all?
Her eyesight stripes with light, and she drifts. Of course she’s singing. It’s her lullaby, her siren’s call. Spreading her arms, she floats to the floor. Landing, alighting, flighty, spritely, with a kingfisher’s grace—a blackbird, a lark—she fills her airy lungs and—
Chokes. The song scratches her throat. She coughs, her windpipe pinched like a straw. Her stomach heaves, trying to breathe. Her vision splinters. The faces sneer. Her lungs close up, but the song grows stronger. The arid dust becomes arid air.
The dark room parts like butterflies, and the heat swallows her whole.
The song is all around her as she drags herself from sleep. Kira opens her gungy eyes, squinting blearily at the sky. So bright. She angles her head away, protesting in her throat. Why is someone singing?
She’s still on the boat. Rocking unsteadily, it threatens her sea legs, inviting a meeting with her stomach. If anyone would be singing, it’d be Callum, but the voice is too fe
male, too tuneful, and sounds nothing like Biffy Clyro.
Like a slap, her mind sharpens.
‘Callum!’ The word is a croak in her sleep-stuffed mouth. Sofia’s warning shrieks in her head, and she struggles upright.
Her chest grows cold. Horribly, perilously low, Callum is leaning out of the boat.
Kira gasps. His T-shirt has ridden up. He’s on his knees, back arched, hair falling over his face, and as she scrabbles toward him, grasping for anything, he tips gracefully into the water.
‘No!’ Kira screams, scrambling for the reeds. He drops like a bomb but sinks in silence, two arms swirling him round. Her head is a roar. No. ‘Call—let him go!’
Callum’s head lolls. The arms tighten. As she plunges hers in after him, he slips out of reach.
‘Callum!’ Kira yells, but he doesn’t respond. The black-eyed woman holds him close, her body bare and her short hair streaming. Smiling, she pulls him into darkness. ‘No!’
Kira plunges both arms deeper. Far below the surface, the havsrå laughs. A remnant of the lilting song bubbles to the surface, and as the boat bobs on, unfailing, unaware, she and Callum are gone.
‘No!’ Kira beats wildly at the reeds. It’s impossible; he can’t be gone. Not so fast, not so— ‘Stop! Turn around. We have to go back!’
If the boat has a mind, it ignores her. The wrinkled water falls behind, the singing drifts to nothing, and Callum doesn’t reappear. Kira’s head screams. Her blood beats fast like a panic attack. She digs her nails into her arms, her neck, her cheeks. Maybe she never woke up; maybe she’s thrashing around, lost in another nightmare. Maybe the world will start swirling, breaking down and fraying, and someone will call her name.
She keeps pinching until her skin stings. ‘Callum!’ she shouts when nothing happens, no one calls. Flinging herself against the side of the boat, she stares through the water with tense, strained eyes. Empty bar her manic reflection, wavering above the black. No havsrå. No Callum.
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