Between Sea and Sky

by Nicola Penfold

  “So you’ll be all right now?” I gasp.

  “I’m getting there,” he says. “Slowly. I’ve been waiting for you. I knew you were coming. I felt it.” He puts two fingers up against his heart.

  Clover’s curled in a chair next to the bed, sleeping. She must be exhausted after last night’s storm.

  “Clover said you went to see Ezra Heart about some butterflies? Butterflies, Pearl?!” Dad says. I can’t read his face, whether it’s anger or astonishment.

  “Yes,” I say, going over to the window where you can see rows and rows of shining panels. The solar fields Nat talked about. That’s where Nat wanted to spend his summer, not out at sea.

  Every so often there’s a wind pump, to suck saltwater back out of the land. Without the pumps this whole area would be marshland. One windmill stands out in the distance – darker than the others, broken. That must be where Nat found the caterpillars. Billy Crier’s windmill.

  “Ezra told you, didn’t he?” Dad says quietly.

  “Of course he did,” I say sharply, looking right back at him. “You don’t not say things like that. We had a right to know.”

  “Pearl,” Dad whispers plaintively. “My precious Pearl!”

  “You should have told us!” I cry.

  “Told us what? Pearl!” Clover says, my raised voice waking her. She jumps up and wraps her arms round me, almost pushing me off my feet. “Dad’s better. He’s better, Pearl! The nurse says he can come home in a few days.” Her voice babbles with happiness.

  “They let you in OK?” I ask.

  Clover laughs. “I turned on my biggest smile, like you said.”

  I smile back at her. “I knew they would. No one can turn you down, Clover.”

  “What did Ezra Heart say, Pearl?” Clover asks. “Will he get Sora off the prison ship?”

  “I don’t know,” I say truthfully, the hugeness of everything coming back to me. “Prison-ship rules aren’t up to him. He doesn’t have the authority, not when people have already been taken there. Only Benjamin Price does.”

  “Likely story,” Clover says angrily.

  “No,” I cut in, glancing fretfully to the door. “It’s true, Clover. Unless…” I pause.

  “He’s out there, is he?” Dad says, observing me and pointing to the door. “You brought him?”

  I shake my head. “He brought me. He got me in here.”

  Dad stares for a moment into mid-air and then starts shouting. “Ezra! Ezra! Show yourself! Your nieces want you!”

  “Pearl! What’s he talking about?” Clover looks at Dad like he’s delirious.

  “Ezra! Ezra!” he’s calling. “You better go and find him,” he says to me. “He was never very good at sticking around in a crisis.”

  Clover runs to the door and puts her head out into the corridor. “There’s no one there,” she says confused. And then indignantly, “What do you mean, nieces? What are you both talking about? You’ve got a secret, haven’t you? What are you keeping from me?”

  Dad shifts miserably in his bed.

  “Pearl!” Clover demands loudly. “What’s going on? Why did Dad say nieces?”

  “You tell her,” I say, looking at Dad. “Tell me too. Why we never knew.”

  Dad turns to Clover reluctantly. “Ezra Heart is your mum’s brother, Clover. Your uncle.” He sighs heavily at the word.

  “An uncle!” Clover shrieks at the revelation. “We have a secret uncle! Pearl?” She looks to me for an explanation, but I keep my eyes on Dad.

  “Why did we never see him?” I press. “Why did we never know?”

  “Siblings are illegal, aren’t they?” Dad shrugs.

  “No!” I rage. He doesn’t get off that easily, even if he did just almost die. “You know Clover and I can keep secrets. It’s our secret too!”

  Dad exhales again loudly, looking to the window. “You saw him the odd time, when you were small, Pearl. But things changed when your mum and I took on the oyster farm. Everyone in the bay thought we were mad to return to the sea, including Ezra. Ezra more than most! He wouldn’t give us any backing, and demanded we still do our shifts on land.” Dad laughs snidely. “But we showed him. We made it work. Vita was always the one with the ideas!”

  “Ezra said it was Mum’s idea to use the growing tower?” I say.

  Dad swallows. “I tried to persuade her against it, but she couldn’t let the idea go. All that space to grow food. She worked so many hours on that site, clearing it. He was the one getting the glory, but it was your mum putting in the hours, on poisoned land, making it all work. She’d seen what hunger could do and she was fixing it. Vita!”

  Dad stops talking, and makes this awful sound, like he’s in pain all through his body.

  I perch on the edge of the bed.

  He takes my hand. “When we found out Clover was on the way, we moored further out in the bay. We thought we could escape everything. Do you remember how happy we were, Pearl?” Dad stops to sigh. His hand is shaking. “But it was too late for your mum. The land and that place had done its worst and she must have brought the sickness with her. I thought I’d got her away in time, but I hadn’t. I hadn’t! Your uncle cut us off completely,” he finishes, savagely now.

  “He says he had to,” I say quietly. I stare back at Dad miserably. “He had to. Because of Clover. Ezra would have had to enforce Central’s rules. Send her off to the Communal Families. It was better to ignore us, he said. Better for him to pretend we didn’t even exist.”

  Clover screws her eyes shut and wraps her arms around her knees. I put my hand on her shoulder to comfort her.

  “Ezra tried a few years ago to get permission for a second child, for one of Nat’s friends, after their mum had died,” I tell Dad.

  “Barnaby!” Clover interjects.

  I nod. “But he didn’t get permission. He couldn’t. Central refused and the child was sent away. Maybe if that had worked out differently.”

  Dad shakes his head wretchedly.

  “Did Sora know?” I ask him suddenly. “About Ezra being our uncle?”

  Dad bites his lip. “No. No one knew except George.”

  Clover draws an angry breath. “George is the reason Sora’s on the ship. He blabbed about our butterflies.”

  Dad puts his hand out. “You can’t blame George. He wouldn’t have thought through what he was saying. Butterflies shouldn’t be a bad thing. I might have shouted about them myself.”

  “I wish you could see them, Dad,” Clover says, her eyes bright now.

  “I’d like to see them,” a voice says.

  Ezra Heart is standing in the entrance to the room.

  “Uncle?!” Clover says melodramatically.

  “Clover!” Ezra smiles gently back at her even as he looks apprehensively for Dad’s reaction.

  “You know who I am?” Clover asks.

  “You’re the spitting image of your mum. And Pearl…” Ezra’s eyes turn to me.

  “I’m like my dad,” I say loyally, worried Ezra will claim me as his.

  Ezra laughs. “Indeed you are.” He turns to Dad. “Atticus. I only just heard you were sick, or I would have gone over to the farm myself to check on the girls.”

  “We didn’t need checking on,” I cut in. “We can run the farm ourselves, Clover and me, especially now we have Nat to help.”

  “Why did you send Sora in the first place?” Dad asks Ezra angrily. “Why couldn’t you leave us alone?”

  Ezra’s face clouds over with frustration. “They’re my nieces, Atticus! My blood. My family. I can’t go on ignoring that.”

  Dad huffs. “We’ve been all right all these years without you, haven’t we, girls?”

  I nod my head. Even Clover does, though she’s gawping at Ezra, sizing him up for all the ways he might be like Mum.

  Ezra takes another step into the room. “There’s the district too. It’s not safe being so reliant on the growing tower. Sora’s been telling me for years now. We’re growing too much, too close together. It wo
uld just take one crop disease and people would starve. Again! Surely you can see that, Atticus? Vita always thought we should use the sea too. I thought she was foolhardy all those years ago, but you’ve proven she was right. You feed the whole ship, for goodness’ sake. Isn’t it time we put all Vita’s work together now, like she’d have wanted?”

  Dad shakes his head slowly. “You want us to work together? After what you did to her!”

  “And what was that?” Ezra cries. “You think I wanted her to die? My sister.” His voice breaks as he says it. “I was clearing that tower too. Lots of people were. No one else got sick like Vita did. All these years I’ve blamed myself, because that’s what you wanted me to do, and my loss was nothing compared to yours, but has it never occurred to you that maybe Vita was just unlucky? That we were all just spectacularly unlucky, to lose her like that?”

  “Unlucky?” Dad spits. “Unlucky her brother turned against her and is stealing her legacy now.”

  “Stealing? Is that really what you think I’m trying to do?” Ezra exhales loudly. He raps his foot against the floor. “Listen to yourself. It’s not a war, Atticus! I’m not suggesting we take over the farm; I want us to work together. If you’d opened a single one of my letters you’d know that!” Ezra looks at me for help, but I turn away.

  I saw George bring the letters on the supply runs. I saw him hand them over and Dad’s face go dark. From the District Controller. I never wanted them openedeither. We didn’t want the world to touch us.

  Clover would have opened them if she’d seen them. Clover would have brought everything out into the open.

  Dad’s scowling like he’s wishing he was anywhere but here.

  “Dad!” Clover exclaims, tugging at his arm. “Ezra is our family! Mine and Pearl’s!”

  Ezra looks at her gratefully. “I thought Sora would be able to do what I couldn’t,” he continues, his eyes back on Dad. “You wouldn’t listen to me, but I thought you might listen to Sora and see it was time to put the past behind us.”

  “What about her?” Dad says, looking down at Clover’s hand on his arm. My beautiful illegal sister.

  Ezra waves his hand in the air dismissively. “Sora wouldn’t say a thing about them, nor would the boy. They’ve lived here long enough to know the consequences.”

  “And now?” Dad says. “My two girls, here on land. Two of them, clear as day. The nieces you claim to care so much about. They’ve been seen by a peacekeeper, Ezra!”

  Clover’s eyes dart across to me helplessly. “We should go back, Pearl,” she says, frightened. “We should go back and never come to land again.”

  I shake my head slowly. I’ve had enough of Dad and Ezra battling about old feuds and resentments and competing over who’s lost the most. None of that matters now. “No,” I say loudly. “That’s not fair, is it? That’s not how it should be. There are butterflies in Blackwater Bay. Butterflies!”

  Clover gazes at me, surprised.

  “You knew there were caterpillars and you let Central take them away,” I say to Ezra. “Why didn’t you stop them?”

  Ezra sighs heavily. “I didn’t think they’d survive here. The land. The saltwater and the toxins.”

  I shake my head. “Don’t you see? The ocean was poisoned too, but if you look at the seaweed out in the bay now it’s like a whole forest! The oysters, and the fish, and the porpoises…”

  “Porpoises?” Ezra interrupts. “In the bay?”

  “Yes!” I say. “And all kinds of seabirds. Nat saw moths, round the lights on our platform. You’re missing all of it because you’re not bothering to look! None of you are!”

  I’m trembling and screaming with rage at both of them. Ezra and Dad.

  I hear voices out in the corridor, but no one dares come in while Ezra is here. He has all this authority and yet he’s letting Central dictate the things that matter most.

  I’d go back to sea and never come here again, but what about Clover and her dreams? What about Nat’s friend Tally and the brother she wasn’t allowed to keep?

  Ezra’s voice wavers. “You’re just like her. Vita.”

  I glower. “You should be like her too! You’re her brother! And you’re District Controller. You uphold the rules and this is in the rules, isn’t it? The return of pollinators? It’s not just words. It has to mean something! We have to make it mean something!”

  The storm’s completely gone now. The sea’s flat and mirrorlike. It’s done its worst for a while and sparkles enticingly.

  Clover and I lead Ezra to the boat. He’s coming back with us to our farm, to see the butterflies. I thought Clover would bumble on like she did when Sora and Nat first arrived, but instead she’s quiet, thoughtful.

  It feels strange that Ezra – District Controller for this whole area – is the one following us down the gravel path. I notice him looking around at the shells and seaweed, the odd bits of driftwood that have washed over the storm surge barrier. Sometimes he’ll open his mouth as though he wants to say something, but then he’ll shut it again.

  “Do you walk here often? By the sea?” I ask.

  “No,” he says shortly. “I should. I should have done.”

  I feel sad for him. Shut up in that house all these years, missing Mum. We missed her too but we all still had each other. What must it be like to live all those years without anyone? Blaming yourself for someone’s death. Hating yourself.

  Maybe he’s right and the land didn’t poison Mum at all. Ezra survived. Plenty of people did. Sora has worked maximum shifts for years and she’s alive, healthy.

  Clover suddenly reaches for Ezra’s hand and he looks down, surprised, and then smiles gratefully. She takes my hand as well.

  “You too, Pearl,” Clover says, nodding her head. “Take our uncle’s hand.”

  I stare at her, my arms hanging limply by my side.

  “Pearl!” she commands. “Hold hands. We’re bound by the same tragedy. We should acknowledge it. Say a blessing for our reunion.”

  “Clover!” I squirm.

  Ezra’s eyes pass over her strangely amused, but he takes my hand anyway. His is warm and rough.

  “You say the words, Pearl,” Clover says.

  “No, Clover!” I say, annoyed with her now, a blush of pink on my cheeks.

  “But you’re the best at it. Please, Pearl,” she says.

  I pull my hands back from them both, breaking the circle. “The wishings don’t make sense out here. You need the tide. And we have to get back, to Nat,” I say to Clover pointedly.

  “Yes, Nat. Sora,” Ezra says, like he’s waking up from an old dream. “They don’t deserve what’s happened. I need to see these butterflies of yours. Gather evidence for Central District. They’ve been playing us long enough.”

  Then he glances around and back towards the salt pond, where that boy is still raking out the crystals. “But another time, we’ll come here – to land again, together. I’ll show you round the Uplands. So much of it was your mum’s doing.” His eyes are wet.

  Clover looks towards me warily, waiting for me to refuse. I look at the growing tower, looming above us, and I nod at Ezra. I’ve hated that place for years but it was Mum’s work. She was a pioneer, Sora said, and Blackwater Bay lost her just like we did. Would things have been different here too, if Mum hadn’t died? Maybe Ezra would have had the strength to push back against the cruel rules from Central District. Maybe Nat and his friends would have grown up playing on the flats with me and Clover.

  Sem sets me off on course, the butterfly book wrapped tightly in a piece of oilcloth.

  “Will Olive be OK?” I ask, just before he casts me away. I can’t get the sight of her out of my head, cowering under Price’s threatening hand.

  Sem nods his head grimly. “She’s been through worse. He’ll still want her for the books.”

  “She never even did anything wrong!” I say furiously. “And she’s been here since she was younger than me, without anyone to take care of her. How can anyone think that’s
right?”

  Sem shakes his head heavily. “None of it’s been right. Ever since it started, none of it’s been right.”

  There’s an angry current rippling through him – his hatred for Benjamin Price runs deep – but there’s a kind of helplessness too.

  “Why don’t you leave?” I ask. Sem’s not like the other prisoners. He’s not locked in a cell. He opens the hatch for deliveries, and with a boat he could leave this place. Slip away in the dead of night and leave Blackwater Bay far behind. It’s not like there are armed guards patrolling the decks. He could have taken my boat if he’d been so inclined.

  Sem indicates back over sloped shoulders to the dank interior of the ship. “Too many people want feeding,” he says roughly. “And where would I go? My old home’s underwater now.”

  “Where did you come from?” I ask.

  A faraway look dances into Sem’s eyes. “A town in the Netherlands. Just a small one. We were known for our windmills!” There’s a glimmer of pride in his voice as he gestures vaguely over the grey water, remembering his hometown. “The sea came in the end. It rose too fast.”

  I blink, not wanting to hear any more of it. Seeing Benjamin Price with Olive, it feels I’ve seen the rotten heart of Blackwater Bay. I can’t listen to more devastation.

  “I should go. The girls might be back soon. Thank you for the food, and for hiding me.” I pause. “If you see my mum,” I say, the words coming out fast, “could you tell her? That I came for her?”

  Sem puts his hand up to stop me speaking. “Things like that, they don’t do anyone any good out here. No one wants more reasons to be in trouble. That applies to those two girls too,” he says deliberately, his brow furrowed, and some of his anger directed at me now. “Life for them is difficult enough.”

  I hear Pearl’s voice in my head, dripping with anger. A regular landlubber wouldn’t get it.

  “I’m sorry,” I say inadequately. “Can you tell Olive I’m sorry too? And thank her for finding me the book?”

  Sem pushes me off, leaning over the water to give a hard shove, to get me as far as possible from the ship.

  I row backwards for a while, through the dark water of the ship’s shadow. The hundreds of tiny windows, like eyes. Tears roll down my cheeks as I move into clearer water, closer to the oyster farm. I wish I’d never even seen those caterpillars.