by Shea Ernshaw
On Saturday we collect all the sawn limbs and pile them at the north end of the orchard. And just after sunset we set them ablaze.
The sooty night sky sparks and shivers, the stars dulled by the inferno we’ve created on land.
“Tomorrow we’ll cut down the dead trees,” Bo says, arms crossed and staring into the fire.
“How?” I ask.
“We’ll saw them down to stumps then burn them out from the ground.”
“How long will that take?”
“A couple days.”
I feel like I’ve been suspended in time this last week, protected from a season that comes each year like a violent squall. In moments, I’ve even forgotten entirely about the world outside this little island. But I know it will find a way in. It always does.
* * *
It takes three days to trim the two dead apple trees and one pear tree down to only stumps. And by the end of the third day, my arms can barely move. They ache just lifting them through my T-shirt in the morning.
We walk through the orchard, examining our hard work—today we will torch the three tree stumps—when Bo stops beside the single oak tree at the center of the grove, the one with the heart cut into the trunk. It looks like a ghost tree, white moss dripping from the limbs, two hundred years of history hidden in its trunk. “Maybe we should burn this one down too,” he comments, surveying the limbs. “It’s pretty old and not that healthy. We could plant an apple tree in its place.”
I press my palm against the trunk, over the etched heart. “No. I want to leave it.”
He lifts a hand to block the sun.
“It feels wrong to cut it down,” I add. “This tree meant something to someone.” A gentle wind blows my ponytail across my shoulder.
“I doubt whoever carved that heart is still alive to care,” he points out.
“Maybe not, but I still want to keep it.”
He pats the trunk of the tree. “All right. It’s your orchard.”
Bo is careful and precise before he lights the three dead trees on fire, making sure we have several buckets of water and a shovel at each tree in case we need to dampen the flames. He strikes a match and instantly the first stump ignites. He does the same to the next two trees, and we watch the flames slowly work their way through the wood.
The sun fades, and the flames lick upward from the tall stumps like arms reaching for the stars.
I make two mugs of hot black tea with cardamom then carry them down to the orchard, and we stay up to watch the fires burn through the night. The air is smoky and sweet with apples that will never bloom because these trees have reached their end.
We sit on a stack of cut logs watching the fires burn for nearly an hour.
“I heard your mom used to read tea leaves,” Bo says, blowing on his tea to cool it.
“Where did you hear that?”
“In town, when I was looking for work and found the flyer. I had asked someone how to get to the island, and they thought I was looking to have my fortune read.”
“She doesn’t do it anymore, not since my dad left.” I lean forward and pull up a clump of brittle beach grass at my feet then roll it between my palms to crush it, feeling the broken fibers before I scatter the fragments back across the ground. I have a memory of my dad walking across the island, kneeling down occasionally to pull up a gathering of dandelions or clover or moss, then rubbing them between his worn hands. He liked the way the world felt. Loam and green. The earth giving up things we often ignored. I wipe the memory away with a quick closing of my eyes. It hurts to think of him. Pain skipping through my chest.
“Do you read tea leaves?” He asks with a quirk of an eyebrow.
“Not really.” A short laugh escapes my throat. “So don’t get your hopes up. I won’t be revealing your future any time soon.”
“But you can do it?”
“Used to. But I’m out of practice.”
He holds out his mug for me to take.
“You don’t fully believe in the Swan sisters, but you believe that fortunes can be seen in tea leaves?” I ask, not accepting his mug.
“I’m unpredictable.”
I smile and raise both eyebrows at him. “I can’t read the leaves with liquid still in the cup. You have to finish it and then the pattern of leaves left inside is where your fortune lives.”
He looks down into his mug like he might be able to read his own future. “Spoken like a true witch.”
I shake my head and smile. It’s hardly witchcraft. It doesn’t involve spells or potions or anything quite so intriguing. But I don’t correct him.
He takes a long drink of his tea and finishes it in one gulp, then extends it out to me.
I hesitate. I really don’t want to do this. But he’s looking at me with such anticipation that I take the cup and hold it between both palms. I tilt it to one side, then the other, examining the whirl of leaves around the edges. “Hmm,” I say, as if I were considering something important, then peek at him from the corner of my eye. He looks like he’s moved closer to the edge of the log, about to fall off if I don’t tell him immediately what I see. I lift my head and look at him fully. “Long life, true love, piles of gold,” I say, then set the mug on the log between us.
One of his eyebrows lifts. He glances at the mug then at me. I try to keep a straight face, but my lips start to tug upward. “Very astute reading,” he says, smiling back then laughing. “Perhaps you shouldn’t make a career of reading tea leaves,” he says. “But I do hope you’re right about my future on all accounts.”
“Oh, I’m right,” I say, still grinning. “The leaves don’t lie.”
He laughs again, and I take a sip of my own tea.
Sparks dance and writhe up into the sky. And I realize how at ease I am sitting here with Bo. How normal it feels. As if this were something we do each evening: set trees on fire and laugh together in the dark.
I don’t feel the gnawing at the base of my skull that usually plagues me each summer—a ticking clock counting down the days until the summer solstice and the end of the Swan season. Bo has distracted me from all the awful things lurking in this town, in the harbor, and in my mind.
“People used to say that the apples and pears that grew on the island had magical healing properties,” I tell him, tilting my head back to watch the waves of smoke spiral upward like mini tornados. “They thought they could heal ailments like a bee sting or hay fever or even a broken heart. They would sell for twice the normal price in town.”
“Did your family used to sell them?” he asks.
“No. This was long before my family lived here. But if the orchards could produce edible fruit again, maybe we could sell it.”
“By next summer, you should be able to harvest ten to twenty pounds from each tree. It’ll be a lot of work, so you’ll probably need to hire more help.”
He says “you,” like he won’t be around to see it.
“Thank you for doing this,” I say, “for bringing them back to life.”
He nods and I touch my index finger, now wrapped with a Band-Aid. The stinging is gone, the cut almost healed. But it will probably leave a tiny scar. My gaze slides to Bo, to the scar beneath his left eye, and I have to ask, “How did you get that?” I nod to the smooth, waxy line of skin.
He blinks, the scar puckering together, as if he feels the pain of it again. “I jumped out of a tree when I was nine. A branch cut me open.”
“Did you get stitches?”
“Five. I remember it hurting like hell.”
“Why’d you jump out of a tree?”
“My brother dared me. For a week he had been trying to convince me that I could fly if I had enough speed.” His eyes smile at the memory. “I believed him. And I also probably just wanted to impress him since he was my older brother. So I jumped.”
He tilts his head back to look up at the sky, sewn together with stars.
“Maybe you didn’t have enough speed,” I suggest, smiling and craning my head ba
ck to look up at the same stars.
“Probably not. But I don’t think I’ll test the theory again.” His smile fades. “My brother felt terrible,” he goes on. “He carried me all the way back to our house while I sobbed. And after I got stitches, he sat beside my bed and read me comics for a week. You’d think I lost a leg, he felt so guilty.”
“He sounds like a good brother,” I say.
“Yeah. He was.”
A breath of silence weaves between us.
Sparks swirl up from the charred tree trunk into the dark. Bo clears his throat, still staring into the flames. “How long has that sailboat been sitting down by the dock?”
The question surprises me. I wasn’t expecting it. “A few years, I guess.”
“Who does it belong to?” His tone is careful, as though he’s unsure if he should be asking. The focus has quickly shifted from him to me. From one loss to another.
I let the words tumble around inside my skull before I answer, conjuring up a past that lies dormant in my mind. “My father.”
He waits before he speaks again, sensing that he’s venturing into delicate territory. “Does it still sail?”
“I think so.”
I stare down into the mug held between my palms, absorbing its warmth.
“I’d like to take it out sometime,” Bo says cautiously, “see if it still sails.”
“You know how to sail?”
His lips part open—a gentle smile—and he looks down at his feet like he’s about to reveal a secret. “I spent almost every summer sailing on Lake Washington growing up.”
“Did you live in Seattle?” I ask, hoping to narrow down the city where he’s from.
“Near there.” His answer is just as vague as the last time I asked. “But a much smaller town.”
“You realize I have more questions about you than answers.” He was built to conceal secrets, his face revealing not even a hint of what’s buried inside. It’s both intriguing and infuriating.
“I can say the same about you.”
I draw my lips to one side and squeeze the mug tighter between my hands. He’s right. We’re deadlocked in a strange battle of secrecy. Neither of us is willing to tell the truth. Neither of us is willing to let the other one in. “You can take the sailboat out if you want,” I say, standing up and tucking a loose strand of hair back behind my ear. “It’s late. I think I’ll head up to the house.” The flames burning in each stump have been reduced to hot embers, slowly chewing through the last of the wood.
“I’ll stay up and make sure the fires are out completely.”
“Good night,” I say, pausing to look back at him.
“Night.”
EIGHT
The orchard looks different. Pruned and tidy, like a manicured English garden. It reminds me of how it used to be in summers past, when ripe fruit would hang bright and vibrant beneath the sun, beckoning the birds to pick at the ones that had fallen to the ground. The air always smelled of sweet and salt. Fruit and sea.
In the early morning I walk down the rows. The three burned stumps send out thin strands of smoke even though they are now nothing but piles of ash.
I wonder how late Bo stayed up, watching the last of the embers turn black. I wonder if he slept at all. I walk to his cottage and stand facing the door. I lift my fist, about to knock, when the door swings open, and I suck in a startled breath.
“Hey,” he says reflexively.
“Hi . . . sorry. I was just about to knock,” I stammer. “I came to say . . . good morning.” A dumb explanation. I’m not even sure why I’ve come.
His eyebrows screw into a confused line, but his lips form an easy half grin. He’s wearing a plain white shirt and jeans that sag low over his hips, and his hair is pressed to one side like he’s just woken up. “I was coming out to check on the trees,” he says. “Make sure they didn’t reignite in the last couple hours.”
“They’re only smoldering,” I tell him. “I was just up there.”
He nods then extends his arm to open the door wider. “You want to come inside? I can make coffee.”
I step past him, feeling the warmth of the cottage fold over me.
Otis and Olga are already inside, curled up on the couch as if this was their new home. As if they now belonged to Bo. There is no fire, but the windows are all open, a warm breeze purring through the cottage. The weather has shifted, turned mild and buoyant—the air blowing in from the sea stirs up the dust motes and scares away the ghosts. Every day that he’s here on the island, in the cottage, I can feel the space changing, becoming brighter.
Bo stands in the kitchen, his back to me, and turns on the faucet in the sink, filling the coffeepot with water. He’s tan after a week outside under the sun. And the muscles in his shoulders flex beneath the thin cotton of his shirt.
“How do you like your coffee?” he asks, turning around to face me, and I quickly flick my eyes away so he doesn’t catch me staring.
“Black is fine.”
“Good . . . because I don’t have anything else.” I wonder if he bought coffee grounds in town before I invited him out to the island. Brought it with him in his backpack? Since I doubt there was coffee here when he moved in.
A stack of books sits on the low table in front of the couch and more books are lined up on the floor, all pulled from the shelves. I pick up a book resting on the arm of the couch. Encyclopedia: Celtic Myths and Fables Vol. 2.
“What are all these?” I ask.
Bo dries his hands on a kitchen towel then walks into the living room. Otis wakes up and begins rubbing a paw over one ear.
“All the books in here are about legends and folklore,” he answers.
I run a finger over a row of books on the bookshelf beside the fireplace. The spines are printed with titles like Native American Legends of the Northwest, How to Break an Unwanted Curse, and Witches and Warlocks: A Guide to Understanding. They are all like this—a library of books on topics of the unnatural, the mystical, similar to what’s happening in Sparrow. Collected by someone and stored in the cottage . . . but who?
“You didn’t know?” Bo asks. Coffee begins streaming into the glass pot behind him, the warm roasted scent filling the room.
I shake my head. No, I didn’t know these were in here. I had no idea. I sink down onto the couch, touching the page of a book left open on one of the cushions. “Why are you reading them?” I ask, closing the book with a thud then setting it on the coffee table.
“I don’t know. Because they’re here, I guess.”
Olga hops down from the couch and coils herself around Bo’s leg, purring up at him, and he bends down to scratch gently behind her ear. “And what about the Swan sisters—do you believe in them now?” I ask.
“Not exactly. But I also don’t believe people drown themselves for no reason.”
“Then why are they drowning?”
“I’m not sure.”
My foot taps against the floor, my heart thuds inside my rib cage—a scratching at my thoughts. So many books. All these books. Placed here—hidden in here. “And what about the singing from the harbor—how do you explain that?”
“I can’t,” he answers. “But it doesn’t mean it won’t eventually be explained. Have you seen those rocks in Death Valley that move across the desert floor on their own? For years people didn’t understand how it happened. Some of the rocks weighed over six hundred pounds, and they left trails in the sand as if they were being pushed. People thought it might be UFOs or some other bizarre cosmic event. But researchers finally discovered it’s just ice. The desert floor freezes, and then strong winds slide these massive boulders across the sand. Maybe the Swan sisters’ legend is like this. The singing and the drownings just haven’t been explained yet. But there’s some perfectly logical reason why it happens.”
The coffeepot has stopped sputtering behind him, but he makes no move to walk back into the small kitchen.
“Ice?” I repeat, looking at him like I’ve never heard a
nything so absurd in my life.
“I’m just saying that maybe someday they’ll discover that none of this has anything to do with three sisters who were killed two hundred years ago.”
“But you’ve seen firsthand what happens here; you saw Gregory Dunn’s body in the harbor.”
“I saw a body. A boy who drowned. That’s it.”
I tighten my lips together. My fingernails dig into the fabric edge of the couch. “Did you really come to Sparrow by accident?” I ask—the question piercing the air between us. Splitting it apart. It’s been nagging me since he showed up, a needle at the very base of my neck, a question I’ve wanted to ask but felt I shouldn’t. Like the answer didn’t matter. But maybe it does. Maybe it matters more than anything else. There’s something he’s not telling me. A part of his past or maybe his present, a thing that rests between the ribs, a purpose—a reason why he’s here. I sense it. And although I don’t want to push him away, I need to know.
The sunlight through the window spills over half of his face: light and dark. “I already told you,” he says, his voice sounding a little hurt.
But I shake my head, not believing. “You didn’t just come here by accident, because it was the last stop on the bus. There’s another reason. You’re . . . you’re hiding something.” I try to see into his eyes, into his thoughts, but he is carved by stone and brick. Solid as the rocks bordering the island.
His lips part, his jaw tenses. “So are you.” He says it quickly, like it’s been on his mind for a while, and I shift uncomfortably on the couch.
I can’t meet his eyes. He sees the same thing in me: a chasm of secrets so deep and wide and unending that it bleeds from me like sweat. We both carry it. A mark on our skin, a brand burned into flesh from the weight of our past. Perhaps only those with similar scars can recognize it in others. The fear rimming our eyes.
But if he knew the truth—what I see what I peer through Olivia Greene, the creature hidden inside. If he knew the things that haunt my waking dreams. If he saw what I saw. If he saw. He’d leave this island and never come back. He’d leave this town. And I don’t want to be alone on the island again. There have only ever been ghosts here, shadows of people that once were, until he arrived. I can’t lose him. So I don’t tell him.