My stomach churned. Guns. Harry said he was keeping his loaded. I pictured a gun pointing at a silver head in the water. And then the pictures were whirling around faster and faster, an eddy pulling me down: metal cages—walls of ice—an orca’s gaping jaws—
I jumped to my feet, gasping for breath. Where was Mam?
I strained to see out over the waves. The Moon was disappearing—a half circle, a sliver—and then she was gone, cut off by the horizon’s sharp blade.
I shuddered. Mam would have come if she could. She must be lying somewhere, hurt or sick or trapped. She was in danger! And here I was, stuck on this stupid island in stupid longlimbs.
My hands clenched into fists. Mam needed me.
A crow’s caw raked the dawn. I looked back at the house. Behind the window, Maggie was asleep, slumped in her chair. She must have lugged it over to keep an eye on me. Her hands splayed across a white page in her lap. The calendar. With last night’s Moon, and four rows of empty boxes, and the blood-red slash that meant Jack was coming home.
Chapter Forty
Speak
I crouched in the bushes outside Nellie’s house. But it wasn’t Nellie I’d come to see.
For weeks now I’d been wasting my time. Playing. Leaving it up to Mam to come back with my pelt, without me doing anything but hiding. Like all I had to do was stay safe, safe, safe.
Safe wasn’t working anymore.
The doorknob turned and Nellie poked her head out, looking for me. I held my breath until she went back in.
A moment later she came out carrying a large, flat box. That must be the painting. The walrus hobbled after her, leaning heavily on two canes. As he lifted a hand to close the door, he tilted sideways.
Nellie watched warily. “Really, I can take it there myself,” she said. “Don’t you trust me?”
“I’m fine, Nellie,” he said, with a sturdy smile. “Let’s go.” But when she skipped ahead, he winced with pain.
Stomp-drag, stomp-drag—with him on those canes, they’d be gone a long time.
The steps faded away. I crept silently to the door. But the moment the knob turned in my hand, I couldn’t hold back. I dashed in, leaped up the stairs two at a time, and threw open the door to the aerie.
I skidded to a stop, staring. My breath caught in my throat.
The books packed the wall from floor to ceiling, row after row, spine after spine. The air was so thick with their magic, it shimmered. There must be hundreds of books, each with its own tune or tale. And one of them, one of them, might have what I needed. Even if it was only clues to patch together, it could be enough. It had to be.
It was Nellie’s song that gave me the idea. That pup turned late from longlimbs. His mother might have seen how it happened. Humans could know. The song skipped over the moment of turning itself. But another might show a pup just as he got his pelt, with words that were chanted, or some kind of rite that made it happen. And that song could be in one of these books.
My jaw set in determination. I wasn’t going to cower on this island forever. I’d get my pelt, and I’d swim off and find Mam, and, Moon willing, I’d save her. I stepped up to the shelves.
The books in the glass case were forbidden. That meant they had the most power. I opened the glass door and squatted down, listening for a thin thread of tune, a murmur of voices.
Nothing.
I didn’t have time for every book. How would I choose? Most of them were clad in cloth, but a few wore leather. One of those was mottled, light brown and dark, like a pelt. There were ridges on the spine, like vertebrae—the bones of a living creature.
I pulled it down and gripped it tight, praying without words. Then I lifted the cover.
Black marks pressed deep into thick, pebbled paper. They marched in straight rows. So orderly. So disciplined. So silent.
Nellie said you read books. What did that mean? Was it a special way you held a book so its voice reached you?
I closed the cover and opened it again. I pressed the book to my ear.
But in the tree cave, Nellie had been looking down at the white book. And I hadn’t heard it singing. Was its voice too soft to hear under Nellie’s? Or did it whisper its words right into her head? How did she ask it to start?
“Please, speak,” I asked politely.
Maybe it worked by touch. I fanned a group of pages. Then I held a page flat and ran a finger along a line. Some marks stood on their own; others clustered together.
“Speak!” I begged, louder.
The marks started spinning in front of my eyes. Was the book trying to keep them hidden? I pressed them down with my finger, but they wouldn’t stay still. I didn’t have forever. I had to find something fast.
I tossed the book on the floor and grabbed another. But it was silent, too—a conspiracy of books. They perched smugly on their shelves, their mouths clamped shut. I threw the book down and jerked out another, and another. They littered the floor, taunting me. The clues to my turning were right here, but they might as well be at the bottom of the sea.
I grabbed the biggest book on the shelf and shook it hard, trying to force the words loose. “SPEAK!”
The door swung open and crashed into the wall.
I whirled around as Nellie burst into the room. Her eyes blazed at the books strewn across the floor, at the pages still shuddering in my hands.
“What are you doing?” she cried. “You’re not supposed to be up here! You’re wrecking Grandpa’s books!”
My face was burning. Anger and despair rose in my throat. I clamped my jaw shut, trying to hold the terrible feelings in.
“You just wait until he gets home!” Nellie’s hands clenched into fists. “Why didn’t you ask me? Why—”
“They won’t talk!”
Nellie stopped, startled.
“The books,” I said. “They talk to you. They give you songs and secrets, whatever you want to know. I asked them, but they won’t tell me one stupid word!”
Nellie was staring at me with a strange, intent expression. She thought I was an idiot. She’d never want to see me again. I’d lost Nellie, and I’d never learn the books’ secrets, and I couldn’t save Mam—
“It’s called reading,” she said. “I’ll show you how.”
Chapter Forty-One
Patterns
When I came back, Maggie surprised me by grabbing me in a hug. She must have thought I’d left last night when she was sleeping.
“How long—” I said, and then stopped. I was going to ask her about the calendar, about Jack and when she was going to call the child-taking people. But if I didn’t say the words, maybe she wouldn’t think them.
Too late. “We still have a little time,” said Maggie, her eyes glistening. Then she went into the bathroom and washed her face for a very long time.
The next morning I met Nellie at the tree cave. She’d brought a book with pictures of an animal called a bear. There were hardly any black markings. I looked at it scornfully. What could a book like this have to say?
Nellie pointed to a mark standing by itself. “That’s a small letter a.” She moved her finger to the center of a dense clump. “And so is that one.”
It was the same shape: a beak curving over a round belly, like a well-fed puffin.
There were patterns! My eyes raced across the page, and I pointed to another a and another.
Nellie nodded. “There are twenty-six letters. Each one can look two ways, so that makes fifty-two shapes to learn. Then you learn the sounds they make. After that it’s just practice.”
I worked with Nellie all morning. A, B, C, D, E. When she went home for lunch, I traced letters in the sand. I dipped my finger in the surf and drew dripping letters on the rocks.
I went back the next day, and the next. I had to learn to read fast and get back to the aerie and start searching. Every day that passed was another day that Mam could be caged or caught or lying injured somewhere.
When I wasn’t learning to read, I had to do something else, or I’
d be eaten alive by worry. So I swam. Before, I’d gone swimming to explore. Now I swam to get stronger. I had to be ready to take off as soon as I had my pelt. And if Maggie called the child-taking people, I’d have to swim off in longlimbs. I couldn’t let them take me away from the sea.
Every morning I woke before dawn and swam as hard as I could before first light. Out to the rock where I’d pulled Nellie, five times out and back without stopping. Then I climbed the cliff, shook off the wet, and snuck inside to put on a dry pair of shorts. I always held the stone selkie in my palm for a moment before switching her to my new pocket. She was my courage. I needed to be even braver now, for Mam.
When I heard Maggie fill the kettle, I came out rubbing my eyes as if I’d just woken. I ate a bowl of cornflakes and headed out the door, with Maggie calling after me yet again to be sure I didn’t let anyone see me. I still hadn’t told her about Nellie and the walrus, and now it felt too late. She’d be disappointed in me. She’d worry, and start coughing. It was better not to tell.
Then I worked with Nellie in the tree cave. All the way to O, P, Q. Then to X, Y, Z. But we still weren’t done! I had to learn how to put the letters together. Sometimes a pair of them made a whole new sound. I had to memorize where they acted differently than they should have.
A hard swim back to Maggie’s, and then I spent the afternoon and evening doing my chores, and more and more of hers as her cough got worse. Sometimes it sounded like she couldn’t breathe. She had something she called pills, small and round as fish eggs, and she’d take one and go to bed in the daytime. So I cut wood and piled wood. I swept and scrubbed the house before she could. I brought her fish and mussels so she wouldn’t have to go to the store as often.
As I worked, I was always watching for letters. I ran my fingers across them—on the calendar, on boxes, on cans of food—putting the sounds together so they flowed into words.
At night I shut the door to the bedroom and pretended to go to sleep. When Maggie turned out the lights and her steps dragged to her room, I snuck out the window. I set the stone selkie beside me on the rocks, and I thought about Mam and prayed to the Moon, until somehow I fell asleep.
I was at the tree cave with Nellie. I read the bear book aloud without stopping. I looked up with a flash of pride. But with my next breath, I slammed the cover shut.
“What?” said Nellie.
“This is stupid,” I said. “I don’t need to know about bears. I need . . . I need . . .” A wave slapped the rocks below. I thought of Mam, and my chest grew tight. I took a deep breath. “I need songs and stories and the lore of the sea.”
Nellie nodded. “I think I know something you’ll like.”
“Go get it now,” I urged.
“Why are you so impatient? I’ll bring it tomorrow.”
I wanted to tell her there wasn’t time, but I forced the words back down.
The next day she brought a book with lots of letters and only a few pictures. I started reading aloud. It was the story of the selkie wife. I read faster, and then I wasn’t reading aloud anymore, but in my own head.
Nellie pulled another book from her pack and started reading silently beside me.
I read and read, clawing my way through the words. It was hard work, but I finished the story before Nellie got up to go.
I scuffed at the stones as she ran off. I’d spent the whole morning on a story I’d already heard. Where were the clues to my turning? The books with magic? I thought back to the walrus and the story he wouldn’t tell, so powerful it gave nightmares.
I had to get back into the aerie.
An amazing smell greeted me as I opened the door. Maggie was setting a platter on the kitchen table. She lifted her head with a smile.
“Come on in, Ocean Boy. Do you like chocolate cake?”
I’d never smelled anything like it before, so rich and dark and sweet. She cut thick slices and set them on plates. Three fat layers bound by glistening ribbons of filling.
I’d never eaten much of Maggie’s food before, but she’d never baked before, either. I took one tentative bite.
That cake spoke to something in me I hadn’t known existed. A kind of hidden . . . humanness. Suddenly I was shoveling the cake into my mouth.
Maggie fiddled with her fork. “You’ve been working so hard around here, I wanted to make you something special.”
I nodded my thanks.
“I wish . . .” Her eyes were glittery. “I wish I wasn’t sick. I wish I knew what Jack would do one day to the next. I wish . . .”
I stopped with the fork halfway to my mouth.
She sighed. “I wish I could do something for you. In case—”
I didn’t like where this was going. “You made me a cake,” I said. And I held up my plate for another slice.
Chapter Forty-Two
The Theft
Nellie didn’t want to take me back to the aerie.
“I don’t think Grandpa’s ready to have you near his special books,” she said.
“If we do it right, he’ll never know.” That didn’t convince her, so I went on, “It’s just, now that I can read, I want to choose my own books. Some of them could . . . call to me.”
Telling the truth worked. Nellie got her determined expression.
“You’re right. I need to choose my own books, too. Half the time I don’t know if a book is for me until I start reading. Let me think.”
In the end, we figured it out together. Nellie would tempt the walrus from the house by offering to carry his painting gear to a beautiful spot. She’d get him settled and leave him there until high sun, which she called noon. Then she’d go back to carry his gear home. That would leave us all morning with the house empty, and he wouldn’t catch us by surprise.
He leaped at the offer.
The first day, when Nellie came back and led the way inside, she looked guilty. “He told me how thoughtful I was,” she said. “It felt rotten.”
And then she opened the door to the aerie.
Finally! I strode to the shelves. The last time I was here, I’d shouted at the books to speak. Why, they’d been speaking all along! I ran my finger down a spine. “Tales from the Hearthside,” it proclaimed, as bold as thunder.
“What are you looking for?” said Nellie.
She was taking a big risk for me, but I still couldn’t tell her. “Maybe stories,” I said. After all, the story about the selkie wife had been packed with truth.
I chose a book of folktales. Nellie and I stretched out on the floor and read in silence. Every once in a while I glanced up at her. She was flipping pages quickly, chasing her story through the book.
Me, I trudged along. Reading was hard work, and my pages turned slowly. There were ghost ships, and mermaids, and a boy who rode a turtle to a world under the waves. I could smell the brine and hear the roar of the surf. But the sun was rising higher and I still hadn’t found a single word about selkies. I drew in a quick, anxious breath.
Nellie misunderstood. “Don’t worry,” she said. “Grandpa won’t come back until I fetch him. But we’d better go now.”
We put our books back. Then we stopped by Nellie’s room so she could get her backpack.
It wasn’t anything like Tommy’s room. She had shelf after shelf of books of her own, and a table with paper and little pots of color, and a row of rocks and shells. Next to her bed a small, round table held a lamp and a picture in a frame. I stepped closer. The picture showed Nellie with a man and a woman. The woman had golden hair and Nellie’s gray eyes; the man had dark brown skin and Nellie’s mouth and black hair. They both had their arms around Nellie.
“Is that part of your clan?” I asked.
“I guess you could say that.” She pulled her pack out from under a pile. “It’s my mom and dad.”
An endless week passed the same way. I’d be there when Nellie came back from taking the walrus, and then we’d run upstairs to the aerie. Each day I read faster. But in the aerie’s stillness, time was tightening aroun
d me like a net.
One morning I found a book about seals in the far north. I read, hoping to find something about the wise ones. Snow and slush and ice; a low, gray sky—it pulled me deeper and deeper until I fell into a waking dream. I was in my pelt, turning with a flick of my flippers, an effortless swish of my tail. In the distance, Mam lay on an ice floe. Then I saw three black dots creeping toward her—two eyes, a nose—a polar bear! I put on a burst of speed and vaulted onto the ice with a ferocious growl. As the polar bear reared up in surprise, Mam and I hurled ourselves into the water and sped away. . . .
“What are you reading now?” said Nellie.
I startled back to the aerie and slammed the book shut.
“Stories,” I said, disgusted.
Stupid stories. I’d been reading for days. Page after page, book after book. And what had I found? Nothing. Not one single clue. Not even a hint of magic. I wasn’t one splash closer to my pelt and swimming off to help Mam.
I stormed back to the wall of books. Words had power. That day in the cove, they’d gathered Mam’s pelt. They had to help me now.
I shoved the book back on the shelf and tugged out the one next to it, a small, thin book with a dingy paper cover. I tossed it on the floor, opened a page at random, and read:
“Sometimes the child of a selkie and a man is born—”
I gasped.
“What?” said Nellie.
My heart was pounding so fast I couldn’t answer.
Suddenly her head jerked up and she leaped to her feet. Then I heard it, too. Labored steps were approaching the house, stomp-drag, stomp-drag—
The walrus had come back on his own!
“Quick!” whispered Nellie. “Down to my room!”
In a flash we were bounding down the stairs. We flew past the front door—the knob was turning!—skittered around the corner, and flung ourselves through Nellie’s door. She landed on the bed. I slid and sat on the floor. We stared at each other wide-eyed.
My fingers were throbbing. I looked down: I was still clutching the book.
“NELLIE?” shouted the walrus.
The Turning Page 15