Summer of Salt

by Katrina Leno

  “But it couldn’t have been an islander. We love her just as much.”

  “What about that really pregnant woman I’ve seen darting around here?”

  “I don’t think the babymooners snuck out of the inn in the middle of the night to murder a bird,” I said.

  The truth was, I had no idea why someone would want to kill Annabella. She was responsible for the fiscal success of our tourist season, a source of pride, our sole claim to fame. I couldn’t imagine anyone on By-the-Sea would have wanted her dead.

  “We’re the only newcomers here,” Harrison said thoughtfully, a little quieter. “It would stand to reason . . .”

  “I don’t think you had anything to do with this.”

  “I’m only saying, it would be an obvious conclusion. New birdhead comes to the island; Annabella ends up dead.”

  “Nobody is going to think that.”

  “Well, somebody killed her,” Harrison said. Then he looked at me quickly, a little worried. “I think I’m panicking a little. I don’t know. Perhaps I’d better get some sleep too. Is there any more of that tea?”

  “Go see my mom,” I said, pointing toward the kitchen. “She’ll take care of you.”

  I went out to the backyard. Abigail and Eloise had gone, but Vira was still there, sitting alone, a dark smudge in the middle of the rapidly darkening night.

  She held a bright-yellow umbrella, a tiny refuge against the downpour of rain.

  I sat down beside her, and she put her arm around my shoulder.

  “Fuck, Georgina,” she said.

  I couldn’t answer her. I had begun to cry, and I thought in that moment I would never, ever be able to stop.

  It rained throughout the night. When I woke up, it was still raining and the driveway was under a half inch of water. The door to Mary’s bedroom was slightly ajar, so I went in. She was asleep on top of the covers, still dressed in that black sweatshirt from yesterday. I woke her up and brought her into the bathroom, then handed her a towel and ran the bath. She didn’t protest, just waited patiently while the water filled and I sprinkled bath salts on the surface, something of my mother’s invention that smelled of lavender and camphor and made the room hazy and warm.

  I shut my eyes as she undressed and got herself into the tub, and when I opened them she was submerged to her neck, her head tipped back and her hair spilling over the edge of the tub, already damp and frizzy from the moisture in the air. I sat on the toilet so I could make sure she didn’t fall asleep and drown. She washed herself methodically with a bar of peppermint soap, raising her arms one by one over her head, lifting her feet gingerly out of the water. Her movements were slow and heavy, like she was in pain. The water was milky enough that I couldn’t see into it, but once, when she lifted her neck to wash her face, I saw what I thought was the dark edges of a purple bruise blossoming on her back. When I looked again, it was gone. An effect of my mother’s bath salts or a trick of the eye, I couldn’t be sure.

  When she was done, I handed her a towel and she stepped out of the tub and onto the tile floor. She looked smaller, like she’d lost weight and inches overnight. My poor sister, who loved Annabella as much as I had, who had to imagine, as I had imagined, a murderer flinging the bird against a pole, breaking the fragile, hollow bones that held her together, twisting her wings, ruining her flight forever. I knew that great terrors could shrink a woman, and I knew that my sister would never be the same. That maybe none of us would.

  I moved from the toilet so she could sit down, and then I towel dried her hair and combed it with my fingers, braiding it into a long plait that I twisted into a bun on the top of her head. She smelled like lavender, like fear.

  “I never knew how much I cared about a little bird,” she said when I’d finished with her hair.

  “It’s all going to be okay.”

  “She’s never nested in the Elmhursts’ barn before,” Mary said. “I don’t even think anyone looked there. She was in the rafters, high up. They found pieces of her nest up there. Do you think she was hiding because of the weather? It’s been raining so much lately.”

  “I don’t know. It’s possible.”

  I imagined someone placing a ladder against the loft in the Elmhursts’ barn, taking their time climbing up to Annabella. She was trusting; she was used to people getting too close, taking her picture, measuring her eggs with delicate tape measurers. She would let you put a finger on her head and rub. When she’d had enough, she would nip you ever so gently, like a cat who doesn’t want to hurt you but just wants you to leave it alone.

  “I keep dreaming about it,” Mary whispered. She squeezed her eyelids shut and shook her head back and forth.

  I put blush on her cheeks, because I didn’t know what else to do, because she looked so pale.

  “I think you need some more sleep now,” I said.

  I brought her back into her room and handed her pajamas, waited while she got dressed and then helped her crawl into bed.

  “Is it even bedtime?” she asked, her eyes already closing, her hair quickly soaking the pillow.

  “It’s bedtime. Look, it’s dark outside.”

  Mary looked to the window, where it was, indeed, dark and gray and wet.

  “It feels like I’m still there,” she said quietly.

  “Where?”

  But she didn’t say anything, so I covered her and tucked her in, then sat on the edge of the bed while she struggled to stay awake. I didn’t know what else to do for her, how to help her. She looked lost, too small, a shrunken shadow underneath the blankets.

  “You don’t think it’s weird, to be so upset?” she asked again, eyelids heavier, face relaxing.

  “Of course I don’t.”

  “Because everybody is upset about Annabella, right?”

  “They are. You just need a little rest. When you wake up, Mom will make you something to drink.”

  “You’ll get yours, Georgie. You’ll get yours or I’ll renounce mine,” she said, and her eyelids shut with an almost audible, minute crash.

  I waited a few minutes just to make sure she wasn’t going to get up again, and then I pulled all the curtains shut and turned the lights off and closed the door behind me when I left.

  I got dressed and went downstairs. The inn was packed with people but eerily silent; the birdheads didn’t know what to do with themselves, so they were eating a very long and slow breakfast, and Aggie was quickly running out of food.

  I made myself a plate of pancakes and went into the kitchen, where my mother was sipping a cup of coffee and picking at a muffin.

  “Is your sister still asleep?” she asked when she saw me.

  I nodded and poured myself a cup of coffee. I looked down at the brown liquid as I raised the mug to my lips and paused. “What about if you put something in everyone’s drinks? And if they’re a murderer, their hair would turn blue?”

  My mom smiled and touched my own hair. “It doesn’t work quite like that. Any kind of big thing like this . . . It takes a bit of planning. A lot of time, energy.”

  “But you’re working on something?”

  “I’m working on something, yes, Georgina.”

  “And how long do you think it will take?”

  “A few weeks, at least.”

  “Weeks?”

  “The moon needs to be good again. These are difficult things to do; they take time.”

  “And until then?”

  “Until then, I don’t know. Maybe Charlene will come up with something.”

  “And the birdheads? What if they leave? What if the murderer leaves?”

  “If anyone attempts to leave the island, they will find the ferry to be quite nonoperational,” she said quietly.

  So my mother had broken the ferry and trapped us all on the island with a bird murderer. Probably not the route I would have taken, but I didn’t exactly have anything to contribute, at least not in the way of magic. I had no choice but to wait until the moon was good again, to see what else my mothe
r had up her sleeve, to hope it would be enough to figure out who had killed Annabella—and why.

  That was the most frustrating part; I couldn’t begin to imagine what sort of motive they might have. And what if it was an islander who had done it? Did that make things better or worse? Worse, undoubtedly, because that meant that someone I’d known my whole life had an evil in them that I had never even noticed. My brain cycled through islanders’ faces. I wasn’t even hungry anymore; I left the pancakes on the counter and took my coffee out to the front porch. Everything on the porch should have been soaking wet with the downpour, but the cushions were warm and dry. My mother’s doing, no doubt. And I had a feeling she’d done something to the coffee, as well, because the warmth it provided spread quickly through my body and left me with a feeling just shy of utter relaxation. I bet she’d slipped in a little valerian root, a sprinkle of chamomile, a few muttered, quiet words; just enough to calm down the birdheads who would otherwise surely be beside themselves right now.

  If I’d had any bit of real magic of my own, I’d summon up whoever’d killed Annabella and . . .

  But I didn’t.

  So it was pointless to consider.

  I was almost finished with the coffee when Peter showed up. I hadn’t seen him since the funeral, and there was something about him now, some straightness to his back, a somber way he walked. Annabella’s death was affecting all of us differently, I knew. It was like we were all strangers now.

  “Hi, Peter,” I said.

  “Hi, Georgie,” he said.

  “She’s asleep.”

  “Good. She needs her rest.” He swung a wicker end table over with one hand and sat down.

  “Are you doing okay?” I asked.

  “I don’t know how I’m doing,” Peter said honestly. “The whole thing . . .” He shook his head, wrung his hands together. “I just wish I could do something to help.”

  “We’ll find whoever did this,” I assured him. “The truth will out.”

  “Tell her I stopped by? I was supposed to do some work in the gardens today, but . . .” He motioned at the rain. “I just want her to know I’m around. If she needs me.”

  “Of course.” Though I couldn’t imagine my sister ever needing Peter.

  Peter left, replaced quickly by Henrietta Lee, her thick glasses askew on her face, who moved so soundlessly that I didn’t notice her until she had sat herself in the chair next to me.

  “Geez, Henrietta!”

  “I’m sorry, Georgina. I thought I’d get some air.”

  Henrietta was a tall, thin woman, a reed of a woman. She’d celebrated her seventieth birthday last year, and Aggie had made her a cake in the shape of an airplane, for her late husband, who’d been a pilot. She was quiet, gray-haired, aloof. She generally stayed to herself, and I don’t think she needed much sleep anymore; I’d caught her in the living room at three in the morning, reading books about ornithological case studies in the near dark. Whenever I tried to turn on a light for her, she’d said there was no need: she knew the books by heart.

  “Then why hold them at all?” I’d ask.

  “They’re a comfort. Plus, it’d be a little weird sitting alone in the dark without a book.”

  I tried to imagine Henrietta killing Annabella, but the image felt immediately wrong to me. I had seen Henrietta scoop spiders into the palm of her hand and walk them outside to the grass to live another day. I had seen Henrietta cry buckets of silent tears at the end of every summer when Annabella’s eggs refused, yet again, to hatch. There was no way on this green earth that Henrietta had anything to do with Annabella’s death. It just wasn’t possible.

  “Strange weather we’re having,” she said, looking out over Bottle Hill. “It’s like the island itself is in mourning. Feels a little . . .” She trailed off and looked at me out of the corner of her eye.

  I could fill in the blank.

  Feels a little spooky.

  Feels a little magicky.

  Feels a little unnatural.

  “Nobody checked the barn,” she said after a pause. “She’s never nested there before. She could have been there for days. She could have been there all this time, just nestled up high in the rafters, waiting for her eggs to hatch, with nobody the wiser.”

  “It’s not your fault.”

  “Oh, I know that. It’s not anybody’s fault.” She paused, laughed—but a sad laugh. The saddest laugh I’d ever heard. “Well. It’s someone’s fault.”

  I didn’t like the way she said it. But I couldn’t quite pinpoint why.

  She rose from her seat without another word and walked back into the house. I swear, none of the birdheads knew basic conversational etiquette, like hello and, God forbid, good-bye.

  I took my empty coffee mug back inside. My mother was in the kitchen still, sitting by the window, finishing the pancakes I’d left behind.

  “You shouldn’t drug people,” I said.

  “I’ve hardly drugged anyone,” she said without looking up. “You can buy those herbs anywhere. And you seemed fine with it the other night, bringing tea to Prudence and her brother.”

  “That was different.” I stole back a forkful of pancake. “Mom . . . Harrison said something last night, and I thought it was a little weird. But you know how Annabella only builds her nest when she’s ready to lay her eggs? Well . . . where were they? They looked all over the barn, right?”

  “I’ve been wondering that myself,” she said quietly. “Yes, they looked all over the barn. They didn’t find anything.”

  “So what does that mean? Why would somebody want a couple of useless eggs? They never even hatch.”

  “Why would somebody kill a beautiful thing like Annabella?” she asked. “Why do these people do anything they do?”

  When my mother said things like that—these people—I think she meant everyone in the world who wasn’t a Fernweh.

  Flood

  My mother’s coffee had made me sleepy, but not in a tired way, in a sad way, a mournful way. I wanted to lie down, to close my eyes, to try and forget about Annabella for a while, only my room seemed too empty and lonely, so I went to check on Mary. I found her floating at least a foot off her bed, which proved my theory about why her mattress was so much more comfortable than mine (less use) and also seemed a bit dangerous to me; surely her freshman roommate wouldn’t be as understanding about a floating girl?

  But now that I was up here I realized I wasn’t tired anyway, I just didn’t want to be alone. I tugged on Mary’s arm until she woke up and fell back on the bed.

  “Is it tomorrow yet?” she said, sitting up.

  I unbraided her hair, still damp and now falling curly down her back. “It’s the morning,” I said.

  Mary stretched her arms out and said, “I had a dream I was flying.”

  “That’s not a bad dream to have,” I said, still unbraiding. “Peter came by to see you.”

  She sat up straighter in bed. “Is there coffee made?”

  “Yeah, but I’d make your own pot.”

  “Tainted?”

  “Definitely tainted.”

  Mary swung her legs over the side of the bed but didn’t make any immediate move to stand. Instead, she looked at her feet and the floor beneath them, a good six inches away.

  “Mary?”

  She shook her head, smiled, looked at me, and gingerly put her feet on the ground. I saw an unmistakable wince on her face, the slightest giveaway of discomfort.

  “I’m just a little sore,” she said. She used my shoulder to lift herself up and then swayed gently, as if caught in a breeze.

  She really did look smaller, and like her features had resized themselves appropriately.

  “You’re still floating,” I said.

  She looked down at her feet and laughed gently, a laugh not unlike the trill of birdsong.

  “What would I do without you?” she said.

  “Be burned at the stake.”

  “Or crushed to death with rocks.”

  I
tried to smile, but really I was thinking about Mary’s college roommate again, and about how my sister was no closer to being able to control her powers than she was when she was a kid, getting stuck on the ceiling in the living room or tangled up in the branches of a tree.

  Then she winked, and she was Mary again, no longer something more fragile and lost than the sister I’d grown up with. She left me alone in her room, and I sat on the bed, feeling the coolness of the blankets that hadn’t been slept in. I lay down, folding my arms behind my head, shutting my eyes, and taking a deep breath of rose-filled air.

  The roses were out of control this year. Peter trimmed them, cut them back, but they just kept persisting. They were thriving in this rain; if we weren’t careful, they’d take over the entire house. You wouldn’t be able to see anything of the Fernweh Inn except bloodred blooms and dark-green vines and sharp little thorns. Like Sleeping Beauty stuck in a tower surrounded by things that could prick. Except there weren’t any princes on By-the-Sea. We didn’t need princes; we saved ourselves.

  “Georgie?” came Vira’s soft whisper from the doorway.

  I heard her walk over to the bed and felt the mattress dip as she sat down next to me. I scooched so she could lie down, then I opened my eyes and looked at her. Vira’s signature cat eyes were smudged, like she’d been rubbing her eyes. Her hair was knotted into a bun on the top of her head. She wore black lace gloves, and she smelled like rain.

  It was still coming down; the attic was filled with the patter of water hitting the roof and running down the windows.

  “The streets are starting to flood,” Vira said, nudging her chin toward the outside, toward the enormous double windows that faced the front yard.

  “Really?”

  “Just an inch or two. I saved a kitten on my way over here. It’s in the kitchen now; Aggie is trying to feed it cucumbers. I think I’ll name it Rain.”

  “Poetic.”

  “What are you doing in Mary’s room?”

  “I didn’t want to be alone.”

  “But you were alone.”

  “Now I’m not,” I said, and snuggled against her side. “I sent out a siren call to you, and then you appeared.”