Between Sea and Sky

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Between Sea and Sky Page 16

by Nicola Penfold


  All Clover’s brightness and enthusiasm is gone, and she’s just sad and worried. She yawns.

  “You should sleep too,” I say. “Shall I get you a hot drink?”

  Clover smiles at me. “Nah, I’ll be fine. There are extra blankets you can use, in that storm trunk,” she says. “Do you mind?”

  I shake my head as Clover climbs across to Pearl’s sofa, and even though I thought Pearl was already asleep, she opens up the blanket for her little sister to curl up next to her.

  I should sleep too but my mind’s racing. I open up the trunk. There’s a whole storm kit here – candles, matches, blankets. I start to lift out the blankets, and notice a stack of papers at the bottom.

  I glance over at the girls. Their breathing has changed – they’re both sleeping already.

  Some of the papers are photos – loose, for anyone to see, and I can’t help looking. Clover and Pearl as young children, Atticus looking fit and lean, and a woman who must be their mum – tall and graceful, with long golden hair just like Clover.

  Clover’s just a toddler – fat, pink arms, moon smile. In some of the photos she’s gaping with happiness, in others she’s crying. I think of Barnaby. It could be the end of the world if Tally left the room, but show him something shiny and he’d soon start to laugh.

  Pearl’s more serious in the photos, harder to read. She’s not looking at the camera, she’s just looking at her mum, studiously, like she’s trying to learn everything about her. Like she already knew that storm was coming and she had to make the most of her.

  Mum would have had the photos framed and arranged around our apartment for everyone to see. I guess it’s different at sea. Harder to keep things safe.

  The jars of sea glass are in the trunk too. Pearl must have put them there for safety, even though the sea glass has probably survived a thousand storms already.

  Under the jars there’s a pile of distinctive yellow envelopes wrapped around with string. From the District Controller, says a stamp on the front of each. They look quite new and not a single one’s opened. Maintenance isn’t the only thing Atticus hasn’t been keeping up with. No one on land would dare ignore official correspondence.

  I wonder if Ezra’s hounding them for rent, or wants them to up their targets for the ship? Or maybe Ezra does want to take over their farm entirely, like Pearl worries he does. It’s not my business to look. I take out a couple of blankets and shut the trunk back up, then lay on the opposite sofa to Pearl and Clover and bury down to sleep.

  Light from the edges of the skylight presses at my eyelids, but for a moment I don’t open them. I just listen. Clover’s snuffled, rhythmic breathing – as familiar to me as the waves, with her occasional porpoise snorts.

  Nat’s almost silent, yet his breathing seems louder than any noise Clover could make because he’s still new. Though I am getting used to him. We couldn’t have saved Mum’s greenhouse without him last night.

  The wind and the waves have quietened. The storm’s moving on. I leave Nat and Clover sleeping and lever myself out through the door, on to the platform.

  I blink. Outside the sea has strewn the platform with seaweed, and it’s brown and green and slippery. But underneath its leathery skin our home is intact. The wood stayed together. The knots held.

  Later I’ll throw back the seaweed and sweep away pools of gathered water, but right now I know where I’m heading. Past the repurposed narrowboats: Dad’s, where he should be sleeping; mine and Clover’s, which barely looks touched; Nat’s, with a shutter hanging off and a smashed plate he forgot to tidy away.

  Oyster cages have toppled over. Some of them will have been lost out to sea or fallen down to the bottom. There’s always damage after a storm. That’s the way of life out here. You’re always repairing after the last storm, getting ready for the next.

  The greenhouse floats serenely at the edge of everything, like it’s forgotten its bolt for freedom last night.

  Be alive, be alive, I whisper under my breath.

  I was so angry with Nat for bringing the chrysalises. The winged, scaled creatures I offered up to the sea in exchange for our father. The book in the library says they might have come from as far away as northern Africa. Thousands of miles of sky, over mountains and sea and deserts. Of course the sea would want something that’s travelled so far.

  Be alive, be alive, I repeat.

  There are three butterflies on the floor as I go in. Wings torn. Dulled colours. I don’t need to get any closer to see that they’re dead. Did they come together at the end?

  “No!” yells a voice behind me. Nat’s. His hair is wet and tousled from last night. He pushes past me to kneel down beside his precious butterflies. “No!” he says again, a stifled sob behind his words. He looks up at me. “It’s my fault, isn’t it? I did it.”

  “It was the storm,” I say quietly.

  “But I shouldn’t have brought them here.”

  I shake my head uneasily. “They can’t all be dead. They can’t be.”

  Be alive. Not for me, but for him.

  I walk around the tiny, circular path of the greenhouse. There are other butterfly bodies lying on the cracked tiles – broken, battered. But the sun’s rising in the sky, blinking its light through the clouds, and live butterflies spin out of their hiding places.

  Nat croaks with relief.

  Clover’s in the doorway. “How many?” she asks, surveying the broken butterflies sadly.

  “Seven, so far,” Nat says sombrely.

  Clover looks at me with a blank stare.

  “We need to clear up,” I say, exhausted. “When the tide comes in, we need to be ready. Dad—”

  “We should give them a funeral,” Clover says, interrupting me. “The butterflies. So we can say a proper goodbye, like we did with Mum.”

  She crouches down next to Nat.

  “That was different,” I say. “That was marking Mum’s life, because we loved her. We should think about Dad now.”

  “I loved those butterflies,” Clover declares, her sea eyes wide. “And Nat did. Every single one of them.” Clover’s words hover in the air, like she’s written them out in the sand.

  “We have to wait anyway. The tide,” Nat adds, gesturing helplessly at the water. The grey expanse of sea, and the arms of the bay around us, not quite letting us go.

  I nod. “A funeral then. So we can say goodbye.”

  Clover picks dandelion flowers and makes a carpet of yellow in an old toy boat. Dad carved it once out of driftwood. It was our favourite plaything, until we got older.

  Clover’s brow puckers. She adored that boat. I can still hear her peels of giggles, and one day wails – genuine grief – because she wanted to fit into the boat and sail away, and knew she’d never be small enough. It was a year or so after Mum died.

  “Dad wouldn’t mind us using it,” I offer. “You’re right, the butterflies should have the right send-off.”

  “Like Mum…” Clover’s voice breaks.

  Mum was going to be cremated like a regular compounder, but Dad couldn’t stand it. He didn’t want her on land a moment longer. He broke Mum out of the hospital morgue with George and they brought her back to our platform together. They put her in our best rowing boat and we laid her out with flowers from her greenhouse and cast her off.

  Mum was the best thing we ever gave to the sea.

  When she was far enough away, Dad threw in burning rags. We hadn’t expected that, Clover and me.

  Water.

  Fire.

  Air.

  Spirit.

  “Can I do it?” Nat asks gingerly, standing to the side as Clover bends down to pick up the butterflies.

  “I don’t mind,” Clover says, almost eagerly.

  I pull her back gently.

  “Nat should. He brought them,” I say.

  “Don’t start that!” Clover says.

  I shake my head again. “He found them. He grew them. Even last night, we’d have lost all of them if he hadn’t j
umped in when he did.”

  Clover nods quickly, understanding, and puts the boat with the yellow flowers down in front of him.

  “They’ve lost some of their colour,” Nat says, as he picks up the butterflies.

  “They shed scales in the storm,” I say.

  “Scales?” Clover looks puzzled. “Like a fish?”

  “Butterflies are called lepidopterans, from Ancient Greek. Lepis is scaled, pteron means wing.” I don’t know why I’m saying this now. Somehow I feel I need to, like it’s important for the dead butterflies that someone knew what they were. Like when Dad said all those things about Mum, the day we said goodbye to her.

  That she was the best mother in the world.

  That we were her best invention.

  That we would miss her forever.

  Nat looks at me curiously. “Insects of the order lepidoptera,” he says.

  “Yes,” I say, meeting his gaze. “Their wings wear out over time. If they’re touched or…”

  “Thrown about in a storm,” Nat finishes miserably, laying the delicate bodies in a double row in the little sailing boat.

  Clover squeezes his arm. “You weren’t to know. You don’t normally get storms like that in summer.”

  “I found them by Billy Crier’s windmill. I knew about summer storms,” he says. “I should never have brought them to sea.”

  Clover won’t let us launch the boat until she’s had chance to change. I know exactly what she’ll pick. She comes back from our cabin in her white dress, with an appropriately sad look fixed on her face.

  “Farewell, butterfly friends,” she says, as Nat places the boat in the water and gives it a little push. “You’ve got your angel wings now.”

  “They barely lived at all, did they?” Nat says sorrowfully.

  “They still mattered,” I say fervidly. “We won’t ever forget them.”

  Nat looks across at me strangely, and I wipe away the tears that have fallen down my face in rivulets of sadness. There’s a last flash of dandelion-yellow in the grey sea, and the tiny boat disappears into the waves.

  “Shouldn’t we be going?” I say to Clover, once we’ve sent the dead butterflies off into the sea. “To check on your dad? Tide’s almost in.”

  Yesterday we had to manhandle Clover back from setting out on her own, today she’s stalling.

  “Yeah,” Clover says, watching Pearl, who’s sweeping the platform with a broom. Returning some of the seaweed and washed-up shellfish to the water.

  “Are you OK?” I ask her.

  Clover’s eyes are fixed on the land. “Sometimes I see why Pearl wants to stay here forever,” she says heavily. “If we never went to land, we wouldn’t find out anything bad, would we? The whole of the rest of the world could die, and we wouldn’t even need to know.”

  “I know some of the compounders who work in the hospital, Clover. They’re good people. Good, clever people. I think your dad will be fine.”

  Clover looks at me nervously. “You’re not just saying that to make me feel better?”

  “No,” I say, swallowing. “I wouldn’t do that. We’re friends, aren’t we? We don’t lie to each other.”

  Clover stands abruptly. Her eyes dart to Pearl, who’s stopped sweeping and is standing tall, alert on the edge of the platform. We both look to the water to see what’s stopped her.

  A boat.

  “It’s George,” Clover says, going to stand next to her sister. “Good old George. He’ll be coming to check we’re OK after the storm, won’t he?”

  Pearl glances across to me nervously. “He’s got someone with him.”

  “Is it Mum?” I say, but even as the words leave my mouth, I see it isn’t. The person with the old boatman is taller, thicker. They’re not standing as straight. A lump forms in my throat.

  Clover and Pearl are side by side now.

  “You should hide!” I cry. “Quickly.”

  Pearl shakes her head. “It’s too late. They’ve got binoculars. They’ve already seen us. All of us.”

  There’s a finality to Pearl’s voice that cuts into me. Clover’s white dress blows up and around her. Could she still pass as a ghost now?

  “Maybe George brought someone to help with the storm damage,” Clover says, uncertainly.

  Pearl shakes her head. “He wouldn’t. He’d know Dad wouldn’t want that.”

  “Then why has he brought someone? You don’t think…” Clover stumbles over her words. “You don’t think he’d have said anything? About the butterflies?”

  “He said he wouldn’t,” Pearl whispers.

  “He’s kept quiet about us all these years. Surely he wouldn’t have betrayed us now?” Clover says.

  We look at each other helplessly.

  “We could try and catch them,” Clover starts.

  “There isn’t time,” I say. “We’ve just got to keep whoever it is away from the greenhouse.”

  I edge out of line. We wouldn’t normally be standing in a row waiting to greet new arrivals, especially while the end of a storm is still raging.

  I recognize the extra person as a peacekeeper in her smart, tailored suit. I wonder if Pearl and Clover even know that. Peacekeepers don’t come here, they said.

  George is red-faced and his eyes are flitting about at ground level – he’s not looking at us, not even at Pearl, who takes in their ropes and is wrapping them tight round the tether posts.

  The peacekeeper is watching Pearl and Clover, her eyes wide and hungry.

  “Do you have news about Dad?” Pearl asks George directly. “We’re about to go over.”

  George looks up then, surprised. “To land,” he says to Pearl. “You?”

  “Dad got worse,” she says.

  “You’re not going anywhere. I have a warrant,” the officer interrupts. “To search your farm. We’ve had reports of concealed pollinators.”

  I watch Pearl flinch for just a moment, and then straighten right away, composing herself.

  The peacekeeper is looking agape at Pearl, at her ragged clothes, still damp from the storm. The seaweed in her hair. The shell necklace. The wildness in her eyes. I must have looked at her like that too, that first day. No wonder Pearl hated me.

  I wait for Pearl to turn away or disappear and leave me to fill the silence that’s hanging in the air. I wouldn’t blame her.

  “Butterflies,” Pearl says brazenly. “They started as caterpillars, but now they’re butterflies. We looked after them.”

  “Pearl!” Clover squeaks beside me. I put my hand on her shoulder, to calm her.

  “It’s OK,” I say quietly.

  “But it’s se—” Clover starts to protest.

  “It’s OK,” I say again.

  Pearl turns to face me. The butterflies – they were too big a secret to keep. Pearl’s expression says it all. They’re flying in a transparent dome. How could we even think we could hide them? The peacekeeper knows already. That’s why she’s here. George told on us.

  Nat leads the way. The ropes are limp and everything’s slippery – the platform, the edges of the boats – and water laps up capriciously, still bursting with storm energy. Nat barely seems to notice. He’s found his sea legs.

  The woman notices. She’s terrified and angry with it, like it’s our fault, mine and Clover’s most of all. She stumbles behind us, clinging wildly on to the ropes. I could go ahead with our wooden gangway – lay it out across the wider traverses of water – but why would I do that? Why would I make it easy for her when she looks at me and Clover the way she does?

  “What will happen, Pearl?” Clover whispers beside me. “Will she take me away?”

  “She’s not here for you,” I answer under my breath.

  “But the way she looked at me, Pearl. She thinks I’m an outrage!”

  “Keep quiet. Don’t draw attention to yourself!” I say.

  ‘Peacekeeper’, it reads on a badge sewn on the woman’s sleeve. But I know enough from Nat to know a peacekeeper is never bothered about bri
nging peace. He catches my eyes, frightened.

  It would have been better if the woman had come before the storm. Nat would have been prouder then, more confident. The butterflies were spectacular. The peacekeeper couldn’t have failed to see how much he’d looked after them.

  Today the greenhouse is battered and derelict. There’s seaweed covering everything. The panels are dislodged and cracked. Plants have been pulled up and Mum’s old pots are scattered everywhere. There are briny pools of water on the floor.

  The officer steps inside nervously, clearly worried it’s all going to fracture and come down on top of her. But she gulps, steeling herself, and walks into the middle of the space. It’s Nat she turns to, softer now, like she’s trusting him to help. She thinks he’s her ally, I realize. Not Clover and I, who she sees as some kind of aberration, or George, who skulks between land and sea, blurring the district’s neat edges. Nat is a compounder. A landlubber, just like she is.

  Nat turns away from the officer and puts his hands in his pockets aloofly, and there’s a spark of warmth inside me. He’s on our side now.

  There are butterflies on the nettles and a couple in the corners of the ceiling, their wings beating gently.

  The officer gazes around, bewildered. She’s only seeing the damage and the water all around. How very far away she is from dry land. “Where are the pollinators? The…” the woman pauses and looks at me this time, “butterflies.” She drums her right fingers against the knuckles of her left hand.

  “They’re up there, aren’t they?” I say dispassionately. And then as I watch her frown, and the lost look in her eyes, “You do know what they look like, don’t you?”

  The woman is visibly flustered now – red-faced and embarrassed. “Show me,” she says, losing her patience and resorting back to an order. She directs it at George, who gestures miserably to the top of the greenhouse, where one solitary butterfly is flying.

  The woman steps backwards. Maybe she didn’t believe any of it till this moment. I don’t know what she thought she was doing out here, but I don’t think she expected to find actual butterflies.

 

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