The Storm Keeper's Island

by Catherine Doyle

  Fionn touched the lighter to the wick and the flame came alive in his hand. The tide rose above the mouth of the cave. He held the candle in the last foot of space above the waterline as he attempted to swim towards the entrance. The wind was tugging at his collar, trying to help him along.

  Fionn’s lungs were burning. He started to sink. The cave threaded seaweed into his hair and hid cockleshells in his shoes as it drowned him. Eels stroked his face, and all the while, the voice crooned to him in the blackness. It was gentle now, the careful whisper of a smiling serpent.

  I know you, Fionn Boyle.

  I remember you.

  Do you remember me?

  The words rattled through his bones until they were in every inch of his skin, every drop of his blood. The fist around his heart tightened.

  The voice grew louder.

  I remember you, it cooed. Your soft heart. Your quivering soul.

  I have a place for you in the darkness.

  No. Fionn squeezed his nails into the wax. He would not surrender to the darkness. No matter how leaden his legs, how heavy his head … no matter how tempting it was to give up, to inhale one lungful of water and float away into the eternal blackness …

  I have a place for you beside me.

  The ravens swept inside the cave, canopying over him in a plume of shrieking feathers. They pecked at the candle, stabbing his fingers until they bled.

  Fionn tightened his grip. No.

  He would not give in, even though he was exhausted.

  He would not give in, even though he was afraid.

  He would not give in, not yet.

  Fionn pushed off the ground and kicked his legs, the candle in his fist bobbing dangerously along the waterline. He surged upwards, his head cresting the water and slamming into frenzied wings and vicious beaks. The wind pulled at his hair. This way, it seemed to be saying. Follow the memory.

  Up ahead, a streak of white sky arced across the mouth of the cave. Somehow the waves were being held back, just enough that Fionn could stand on his tiptoes. He gulped at the air, jabbing the blazing candle at the ravens as he squinted at the shard of light.

  There was a lifeboat angled across the entrance to the cave. It was small and flat and bright orange, with ropes looped along the side and a motor whirring at the end of it.

  Standing in the middle of the lifeboat was Fionn’s father.

  Fionn understood with sudden, deafening clarity.

  The candle in his fist was Cormac.

  And Cormac had come to rescue him.

  Fionn waded towards every wish he had ever made turned to flesh and bone before him. Through beaks and feathers and darkness, his fingers fastened tightly around the wax. When he had almost made it to the mouth of the cave, with two litres of saltwater now gurgling in his stomach and a flock of angry ravens at his back, Cormac Boyle leaned over the side of the boat and flung out his hand. ‘Let me pull you in, lad!’

  Fionn blinked the water from his eyes – he couldn’t tell whether it was the ocean or his own tears that were stinging him now, only that the candle was burning too quickly and his father was speaking to him in a voice that was both foreign and familiar.

  Fionn took his father’s hand and something exploded in the centre of his chest.

  Every chamber of his heart was thrumming with recognition.

  ‘Watch that candle!’ Cormac shouted, one eye on the sputtering flame as he heaved him up. ‘Keep it lit! That’s it, lad. I’ve almost got you. Up you come!’

  He pulled him up over the lip of the lifeboat. Fionn tumbled in and rolled on to his back, panting at the glittering sky. His father peered over him, wearing the same burning curiosity. He had the same nose as Fionn, the same dark hair that curled a little at the ends, the same long legs and narrow shoulders.

  The same sea-blue eyes.

  It was like looking up into a distorted mirror – a spectre of Fionn’s future and his past standing over him.

  ‘Are you all right, lad?’

  ‘I –’ The boat lurched and Fionn nearly slid out of it. He grabbed on to a rope, brandishing the dying candle like a sword as his father pulled him back in. The storm flung them out to sea, the boat dipping to one side as the rain beat down on them.

  Cormac hunkered over the edge and steered it alongside the island as the tide pulled the vessel down, down, down. There was a gaping hole in the lifeboat. A rock must have slashed it lengthways when it was hovering in the mouth of the cave.

  They were sinking. And fast.

  As the sea rose to meet them, everything fell into place with sudden, sickening clarity.

  Today was 14th July 2006.

  Today was 14th July 2018.

  His father was about to die, all over again.

  Fionn staggered to his feet, the flame no bigger than a peppercorn as he wobbled across the little boat. ‘My name is Fionn Boyle!’

  Time stuttered for one long heartbeat.

  His father looked up at him, a glint sparking in his eyes. ‘I know your name, lad.’

  The sea hiccoughed, and Fionn stumbled.

  Cormac flung his free arm out to steady him and Fionn clutched his sleeve so hard he ripped a hole in it. The candle was a puddle of wax now – he had ten, twenty seconds at the most.

  ‘You’ll be brave now, won’t you, Fionn? I need you to be brave for what’s to come.’

  The tide turned and a mammoth wave smashed up against the side. Fionn almost tipped over. His father pulled him back, his hand clasped around his middle so that he was anchored to him.

  Fionn looked up at him.

  ‘Please don’t let go,’ he said, his throat bobbing painfully. ‘Please don’t leave me.’

  ‘You’ll be all right, lad,’ said his father, his blue eyes glistening. ‘You’re the strongest of us all. You’ll see.’

  The water lapped at their knees. ‘Are you ready, son?’

  Fionn shook his head. ‘No, no, no, no, no, no, I’m not ready, I’m not ready.’

  His father threw him out of the sinking boat.

  Fionn tumbled through the air and landed on the cliff steps with a painful thud just as the candle went out.

  The island shuddered.

  The storm howled its goodbye.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  THE WARRING WISHES

  Fionn scrabbled up the steps on his hands and knees, the sea nipping at his ankles. The world reset itself, the clouds moving through the layers above him, until he was home again with the same storm hanging over him. When he was almost at the top of the steps, where the stairway bled back into the cliff, he sneaked a glance over his shoulder. The waves were starting to settle and the rain had run itself dry.

  The lifeboat had been swallowed up in the salty layers of the sea.

  His father was gone too.

  It was as though he had never been there at all.

  Are you ready, son?

  Fionn replayed those words over and over as he climbed.

  Faces peered over him, Douglas Beasley’s moustache twitching vigorously as his voice boomed across the island. ‘He’s alive! He’s right here on the steps!’

  At the top of the cliff, Ivan pushed through the gathering crowd and extended his hand to Fionn. ‘Well, this is a miracle.’

  Fionn took his hand, and a jolt sparked in his fingertips. Ivan’s eyes grew wide as moons and behind them Fionn saw the jarring emptiness for the first time. There were no irises, just the all-consuming blackness of a soulless existence. His grip slackened and Fionn wobbled on the edge of the cliff. He grabbed Ivan’s jumper, the neckline stretching to reveal a tattooed swirl underneath.

  ‘I knew it,’ he gasped.

  Ivan stumbled backwards, pulling Fionn with him, up over the cliff and on to the sodden grass. They stared at each other for one horrified moment, before Ivan peeled his lips back and said, ‘Did you hear her? Did she speak to you?’

  Fionn staggered to his feet. ‘Sh-she’s buried,’ he said, his chest heaving. ‘She’s g
one.’

  ‘Then why has she summoned me?’ Ivan sprang up after him, his eyes bright with glee. ‘She will wake when the boy returns.’

  ‘Wh-what?’ said Fionn, backing away from him.

  ‘She will rise when the Storm Keeper bleeds for her,’ he said giddily. ‘She will come to power with descendant souls. And the darkness will rule again.’ He glanced once at the clearing sky and then sank back into the gathering crowd, a grin painted across his face. ‘We’ll meet again, Fionn Boyle.’

  Fionn had barely managed to catch his breath when Elizabeth Beasley pushed her way through the search-and-rescue party and seized him by the shoulders. She pulled him close until they were almost nose-to-nose, her coal-like eyes flashing. ‘Is it you?’ she said, shaking him. ‘I can’t see. I can’t tell.’

  Bartley appeared beside her. ‘Gran,’ he said, trying to tug her away. ‘Let’s just give him a minute.’

  ‘Oh, be quiet, Bartley! You almost lost it for us today! I’m trying to see if you managed to do it right!’ She narrowed her eyes, spittle foaming at the sides of her mouth. ‘No, you don’t look very different at all,’ she said in a low voice. ‘It must have worked then, Bartley. I think it must have worked.’

  ‘Gran, just leave it.’

  Tara shoved Elizabeth Beasley out of the way. ‘Unhand my brother, Betty. He’s been shaken enough for one day.’

  ‘Fionny!’ She flung her arms around him and hugged him tighter than he had ever been hugged in his life. ‘I thought you were dead!’

  Shelby was hovering over Tara’s shoulder. She swung the towel from her shoulders and draped it around him like a cape. ‘I knew you’d make it back!’

  ‘I was so scared,’ cried Tara. ‘I thought you were gone!’

  ‘I’ll tell you about it when we get home,’ said Fionn, his voice shaking just as badly. ‘We need to get back to Grandad.’

  The storm had taken a chunk out of the cliff-side and dropped the sea out of the sky – what had it done to Tír na nÓg, the little cottage on the headland? What had become of the Storm Keeper?

  The same dread was dawning in Tara’s eyes. ‘Let’s go,’ she said.

  ‘Let’s run!’

  And they did.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  THE UNEXPECTED EMERALD

  Talk of storms and sea caves travelled after Fionn and Tara on the wind, the day made brighter by the Boyles’ triumph over the sea, a story that would go down in the annals of Arranmore like so many that had gone before them.

  The sun chased the clouds from the sky and poured warmth back into the island as they ran far away from Ivan and the Beasleys and the dark imprint of Morrigan rippling somewhere deep in the earth.

  When they reached the gate of their grandfather’s cottage, Fionn and Tara froze. The front door had been blown off its hinges and one of the windows was broken. The storm had uprooted the briars and flung them all over the garden path.

  Inside was just as bad. There were candles everywhere, coats and hats and chairs strewn across the floor like confetti, and the cupboards in the kitchen had been turned upside down. Most of the shelves in the sitting room had toppled over and one of the armchairs had been thrown against the wall.

  In the middle of it all sat their grandfather. He was on the floor by the fireplace, staring vacantly out of the window. Above him, the candle on the mantelpiece had gone out.

  ‘Grandad?’ said Tara nervously.

  ‘I’ll talk to him,’ whispered Fionn.

  Tara picked her phone up from the kitchen floor, one end of her charger still dangling from it as she wiped the screen with a tea towel. ‘At least this survived,’ she muttered.

  Fionn hunkered down in front of his grandfather. ‘Grandad?’ Fionn waited for the storm in his eyes to pass, for the recognition that didn’t come. He took his hand and squeezed it. ‘Where are the matches, Grandad? I need the matches.’

  His grandfather looked at his hand as though he was only just noticing it. ‘I don’t know.’

  Candles carpeted the ground, rolling this way and that in the breeze that had followed them inside.

  ‘Here,’ said Tara, tiptoeing over the mess. She held out her hand, a small box of matches sitting inside it. ‘I found these in one of the cupboards.’

  The glass trough on the mantelpiece was still half full with wax but there were two inches of water along the top. Fionn heaved it across the room and tipped it out of the front door, then dried the surface with his towel. He set the trough back above the fireplace and lit the wick inside it. It flickered softly, at first, as if it couldn’t quite remember how to burn. Come on, thought Fionn. Burn better. Burn faster.

  The flame climbed and began to thrash, and finally the scent trickled back in, filling his nostrils with the sea. Fionn righted the armchair and moved it as close to the fireplace as possible. ‘Sit here a minute, Grandad. You’ll feel better soon.’

  His grandfather sank into the chair, his eyes closed as the scent pushed itself back into the sitting room.

  Tara brought him a cup of tea. ‘One tea bag left in for exactly two and a half minutes and a thirty-millilitre splash of milk, just the way you like it.’

  He took it without saying anything.

  Tara and Fionn set to work re-stacking the candles on the shelves. They tidied the coats and hats back on to the rack and put the kitchen back to the way it was supposed to be. They boarded up the cracked window with a piece of wood they found in the shed and managed to put the front door back on its hinges after four attempts. It creaked awfully, and left an inch-gap along the bottom, but at least it closed. They could worry about the rest of it tomorrow.

  When they finished fixing up the cottage, Fionn helped his grandfather into bed, removing his boots and giving him a clean, woolly jumper to wear. Back in the kitchen, Tara’s phone was ringing.

  Fionn fanned the duvet over his grandfather and tucked it up to his chin.

  ‘Thank you,’ said his grandfather.

  Fionn hovered uncertainly. He felt like he had swallowed the island and it was trying to climb back out of him. There was so much he wanted to tell his grandfather – the story of his first adventure, how his father had come to rescue him, how he had looked at Fionn with eyes full of recognition, how they had fought the sea together until the very last moment, and how in the end, Cormac Boyle had been the bravest of them all.

  And then there was the After – Fionn’s fingertips jolting at Ivan’s touch, the emptiness in his eyes, the sound of Morrigan’s voice, too awake. Too near.

  She will wake when the boy returns.

  He swallowed hard, remembering the words his grandfather had spoken to him only days before.

  Fionn, the day you stepped off the ferry, the island woke up.

  And so did Morrigan.

  There was only one person in the world who could understand any of this, and he was a million miles away now.

  Fionn peered down at his grandfather and in a small voice he said, ‘Do you know who I am, Grandad?’

  His grandfather looked at him for a long time. The clouds shifted inside his eyes, streaks of blue trying to push through the storm. The lines in his face grew deeper, the ghost of the storm stealing the last fleck of colour from his cheeks. ‘You know, it’s a funny thing, lad. I don’t know who you are.’

  Fionn’s face crumpled.

  ‘But I do know that I love you,’ his grandfather said as he closed his eyes. He smiled then, and it seemed as though the sun was rising somewhere inside him. ‘How very peculiar.’

  Fionn waited until he felt like he could breathe again. ‘I love you too, Grandad.’

  Back in the kitchen, Tara was sitting at the table with a plate of hastily made ham sandwiches, scrolling through her phone. ‘Is he OK now?’

  Fionn slumped into the chair beside her. ‘I hope so.’

  She slid a mug of tea to him, the milky liquid sloshing over the side. ‘Bartley and I never got to make our wishes, Fionny.’

  ‘What?�
�

  ‘I pushed him out of the cave before he could open his mouth. It took every bit of my strength … then the cave dragged me into the darkness and I couldn’t fight it. Wherever I went, I wasn’t near that magic. At least not the good kind.’ She tapped her phone, her voice barely more than a whisper when she said, ‘But what if my wish came true anyway? Mam just rang me. She’s heard what happened.’

  Fionn froze with the mug in his hand.

  ‘She’s coming out on the first ferry tomorrow morning.’ Tara’s dark eyes were shining in the dimness. ‘She’s coming back to Arranmore, Fionn.’

  * * *

  In the bathroom, Fionn turned the shower on and peeled his clothes off. He had to tug extra hard to get his jeans off, and when he finally managed to fling them across the room, something flew from the pockets and landed in the sink with a plink!

  He peered over the bowl and found an emerald winking back at him. It was exactly the size of his palm – big and heavy and almost perfectly round.

  In bed that night, he put the stone on the bedside locker, marvelling at the tinge of green that hung like mist around it.

  ‘What’s that?’ yawned Tara, her lids already at half mast.

  ‘I’m not sure,’ said Fionn, blinking at it in the darkness.

  Sleep was tugging at him, the day’s events floating away until only one thought remained: He didn’t feel any different now than he did that morning when he woke up. If Tara’s unmade wish had worked, then perhaps Bartley’s had too somehow.

  Or perhaps Fionn had never deserved the gift in the first place.

  If he had been any less exhausted, he might have dwelled on this a second longer, acknowledged the frustration that was niggling at him, but sleep was calling out to him, and so he went willingly, the emerald winking him goodnight.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  THE STORM KEEPER’S ARSENAL

  Fionn woke up at midnight, feeling like he might take flight. His skin was tingling all over and his teeth were vibrating in his mouth. He was full up with something that made him want to shout at the top of his lungs and laugh until all of his breath ran out.