Doug scratched his chin and grinned. “I see good news travels fast. Who told you?”
“Doesn’t matter,” I said, not wanting to believe it. Suddenly, someone — or something — pulled my hand hard from inside my pocket.
“It was amazing, bro,” Doug said. “Really amazing. I ran into her less than a week ago . . .”
I gulped. A week ago? I thought. What was I doing a week ago?
“On Friday,” Doug added.
What was I doing on Friday? I thought. I racked my brain but I couldn’t remember.
“I met her outside the Greenlock Pub and bought a basket of fresh mussels,” he said, talking like he was reading a romance novel. “I came up with the idea to tell her a few of the words that I’d taught myself from that book of yours . . .”
“It’s called the Enchanted Language,” I said, trying to sound like I knew what I was talking about.
“Well obviously,” Doug said. “And I was all like —” Doug slapped his hands together. “Man, you should have seen her face!”
I felt sick. My brother was clearly enjoying this. “What do you mean?” I asked in a scratchy voice. For some reason my mouth felt dry.
He tackled me onto his bed with a rugby move and ruffled my hair with his hands, like he always did whenever he was happy. “My little brother is so very curious!”
I tried to get free, but even with both hands it would’ve been unlikely. “Doug! I want to know what happened between you and Aiby!”
I blushed. He immediately stopped laughing and let me up. Then he placed his hands on his thighs and calmly asked, “Wow, Finley. Don’t tell me you like that girl too!”
“No, I don’t like her!” I yelled far too loudly to sound convincing. I calmed myself and did what I do best: make stuff up. “I do some work for them, is all. Aiby always says I don’t make enough of an effort or understand what she means. You know how girls are, bro. I just never know what to say, so I was hoping to get some inside tips. You know, just between us guys.”
To my complete shock, Doug bought it. “Oh. Okay. Now I get it. I almost had a heart attack. For a second there, I thought we were fighting over a woman. Wouldn’t that have been weird?! This morning, for instance, when we were on the boat . . .”
“YOU WERE ON A BOAT TOGETHER?!” I yelled, grabbing him by his shirt with my free hand.
“Dude, get your hand off me,” he said quietly and pushed me up against the wall. “And don’t yell. If dad finds out about this, I’m dead meat.”
“What’s with the boat ride, Doug?” I asked him quietly.
“It was Dogberry’s boat,” Doug said. “Since the old man died, no one uses it anymore.”
Mr. Dogberry had died of a heart attack three weeks earlier. His farm was on the inland, not too far away from the ruins of the old, broken-down mansion that once belonged to the Lilys (which no longer existed on account of a stone giant walking over it).
“It looked so pathetic just sitting there all alone with no one to use it, so . . .”
“I don’t care about the boat, Doug,” I said. “I want to know about Aiby.”
“She didn’t care who owned that boat,” Doug said with a grin. “Actually, she told me it was a really nice boat.”
I sighed and rolled my eyes. Not for the first time, I wondered if Doug was messing with me.
“So we paddled toward Callakille and Robha Chuaig. When we got closer to Reginald Bay, Aiby asked me to stop. She sat there and looked at her house for a while. Then we crossed the bay until Rona island, and . . . well, let’s just say I was lucky I had gas for the motor when we got there because it was an exhausting ride.”
I’d been asking dad to take me to the islands for years. To So Rona, Raasay, Scalpay, and Skyle. Or at least Crowlin and Sgeir Thraid and the Sgeir Dhearg twin cliffs. I would’ve settled for Guillaman — I just wanted to try to send a few messages in bottles so I could figure out how the ones I’d found had gotten to Applecross.
“And then what?” I asked.
Doug shrugged. “We got to the island trail. No one was there except for us. She was looking out at the sea, sniffing the air, and looking for some rocks to bring back home. That’s when I . . .” He trailed off.
My eyes went wide. “You what, Doug.” It wasn’t much of a question. I knew what was coming.
“I kissed her,” he said.
I felt like I’d become a tree, my roots planted deep beneath the floor. I thought of all the cusses and curses that Sammy Monkfish had written in his dirty notepad, but none of them accurately captured the spirit of what I wanted to say.
“Actually,” Doug said. “I didn’t really kiss her. Let’s just say I hugged her and I tried to kiss her, and wow . . . you should have been there. It was like trying to smooch a frozen porcupine.”
I squinted. “Really?” I asked.
He shot me a weird look. “Yep. I got stone cold rejected.”
I breathed a quiet but deep sigh of relief. Neither of us said anything for a solid minute.
Maybe Doug can read that label Aiby gave me, I realized. I handed him the label. “Can you read what this says?”
He held the label comically close to his face and read slowly. “Do not wash for any reason. Insert one object into pocket at a time. Above all else, do not hold the hand.” Doug looked up at me. “What the crap is this?”
“That’s all it says?” I asked. “Nothing else?”
Doug continued reading. “In case of problems, place the label inside the pocket.” Doug handed the label back to me. “So what does it mean?”
“Oh, nothing,” I lied. “I just wanted to see if you had really learned how to read the language.”
I quickly put the label inside my pocket. Just like that, the hand in my bottomless pants pocket released its grip. I sighed, massaging my freed fingers.
Doug shrugged and walked toward the door. “You know what?” he said, turning back to face me.
“What?”
“We’re the same age.”
“Who?”
“Aiby and I. She said she’s sixteen, just like me.”
“Great,” I mumbled.
“What?”
“Nothing. Nothing.”
If Aiby was really sixteen, it meant I was at least two years younger than her.
“More bad news,” I mumbled.
The following morning, my dad drove me to Reverend Prospero’s place. I obeyed my mother’s command and wore my only suit.
“I look like a penguin,” I said.
“No, you look like a young man,” Dad said, which probably really meant, “I pity you.”
Dad’s mood hadn’t improved from the previous evening. In fact, it had gotten worse. All the way from the farm to the village, my dad chewed his nails and said next to nothing.
After he dropped me off at the reverend’s house, Dad said he was headed to the village pub where he was supposed to meet up with another farmer. I asked if he was having problems with his sheep, but he just left me in a cloud of exhaust.
“Let’s go talk to Mr. Everett,” the reverend said. He grabbed a horrible black hat off his coat hanger and slapped it on his head. I’d seen him wearing it a lot lately to protect himself from the heat, which was hilarious for two reasons. First, it looked really tiny on his gigantic noggin. Second, Applecross hardly got any sun with all the clouds in the sky.
I followed the reverend as he walked. “I don’t understand what my new job is, Reverend,” I said. “All my dad told me was that I’d be a ‘beach tester.’”
The reverend kept walking quickly along the road. “Neither do, I actually,” he said. “But it could be fun, don’t you think? I mean, you’ll be on the beach!”
“Are you sure?” I asked.
“No,” the reverend admitted. “But if Mr. Everett really needs a young man t
o test the beaches in Applecross, and he can pay for it, I don’t see why it shouldn’t be you. If nothing else, it’ll add to your résumé.”
I had my doubts, but I kept them to myself.
It turned out that the job was for real. Mr. Everett was an eccentric, retired professor who had opened a small tourist shop in Applecross for some reason. The Curious Traveler’s front window overlooked the main square, if you could even call it a square, and he almost always sat in a wicker chair right by the shop’s door. He had recently added a desk so he could play cards with himself.
As soon as he saw us coming, he gathered up his cards and slipped them into his pocket. “Hello, Reverend,” he said, and gave me a funny look.
I bent over to pick up a card that had fallen on the ground. I noticed that underneath the desk there were some multicolored bugs — just like the ones that had crawled out from Adele Babele’s hair.
Weird, I thought.
The strange card was a grimy, yellow jack. But the weirdest thing about it was that the jack’s face looked just like a dog’s.
I gave it back to Professor Everett. He thanked me and quickly pocketed it. “The editors of a tourist book called The All Together World called me a while back. You two know about them, right?”
I shrugged. I had never been a tourist. In fact, the farthest I’d gone was across the country to watch my brother’s team lose at rugby.
“They’re making a new edition for Scotland,” he said, glancing through his glasses at some notes. “The most requested topics of interest were beaches and waves, because of the surfers. They’re looking for unique places to surf, which they refer to as hot spots. In short, they need someone to spend a day on each beach in the area to document the waves and beach conditions.”
“Are they also willing to pay something for Finley’s time?” asked the reverend.
“Of course,” Mr. Everett said.
The reverend gave me a hard pat on the back. “What do you say, Finley?” he asked. “Granted, you aren’t really dressed for the job.”
I sighed with relief and immediately loosened my tie. “Anything’s fine with me if I don’t have to wear this dumb suit,” I said. “When do I begin?”
Mr. Everett smiled. “We’ll get you started shortly,” he said. “Just give me some time to call the guys from the guide to update them. Do you have a method of transportation, Finley? A boat, or maybe a motorbike?”
Reverend Prospero laughed. “Perhaps he has a car, Mr. Everett? And a beard? He’s just a kid!”
I rolled my eyes. “I have a bicycle,” I said.
“That’ll do,” said Reverend Prospero. He explained to Mr. Everett that my salary should be paid to the church. Then he tipped his funny little hat and headed back down the road.
Mr. Everett looked me up and down. “You should probably wear some clothes that are more comfortable next time,” he said.
I rolled my eyes. “Thanks, Mom,” I said. “The suit was a great idea.”
Mr. Everett frowned, then produced some keys from his pocket. He handed me one. “This is for my new tenant in the apartment at the back of my shop,” he said. He handed me another key. “Use this if the door’s locked. Leave your things back there, and take a notebook with you. Is there anything else you need?”
“Oh, yes,” I answered, pocketing the keys. “Can I take Patches to work with me?”
* * *
And that was how I became the first beach tester in Applecross history. Believe it or not, the job was actually kind of challenging. First, I had to highlight the position of every beach on a map of Applecross. Second, I had to use a towel to measure the beach’s space to see how many people could be tanning there at the same time. Third, I had to use a tape measure to determine how far into the sea the water remained shallow. Fourth, I used a graduated scale to measure the average height of the waves. Finally, there was a questionnaire to fill out about the sand or rocks, nearby cliffs, seaweed deposits, and any nearby landmarks like the arched rock of Ard na Claise Moire. I was required to stay on each beach for three hours. After all that, I had to give each beach a rating of one to five stars based on everything I’d observed.
As I worked, I obsessively imagined the conversation between Aiby and my brother, word for word. When I wasn’t doing that, various other questions filled my mind.
Why was the world so unfair?
What was I doing with my life?
What is the meaning of my existence?
Why wasn’t I born a dog, like Patches, so I could be happy just chasing seagulls like he was doing right now?
I sighed. I wasn’t depressed, I was just in shock or something. But there wasn’t anything I could do about that, so I decided to focus on my new job the best I could.
I rode my bike back and forth along the coastal road, stopping every time I found a beach where I could lay my towel down for measurements. After that, I used the measuring tape and the weird tool that measured the waves to collect data, then wrote it in my notebook. As long as I kept myself busy, my mind stayed off Aiby and my brother at least.
I did occasionally start to wonder about Professor Everett. Even before the Enchanted Emporium had opened, I suspected he knew more about magical things than what little he claimed. I once found a strange list of names inside his store that included the Lilys and the Askells. Mr. Everett also seemed like the kind of person who said one thing while thinking about three others.
Eventually, Doug and Aiby crept back into my thoughts, so I tried to think about my dad’s sheep and why he’d seemed so worried that morning.
I thought about sheep for the rest of the day. It was really annoying, but much better than the alternative.
The second day of work, I almost got run over by Jules’s terrible red van. He was a maniac on the roads, what with his windows down and ABBA blaring from his stereo. The first time he drove by me, he waved and smirked at me while forcing me off the road. I ended up in a ditch with my bike on top of me.
I was livid. Immediately, I jumped back on my bike and pedaled toward town to complain to Reverend Prospero. That man and his van needed to be stopped, no matter the cost.
As it turned out, I wasn’t the only one who wanted the reverend’s help. There were a few people standing outside Maelrubha church, and my dad was among them.
I climbed off my bike. “Shh, Patches,” I whispered. “Let’s sneak closer to hear what they’re saying.”
My dad and the others were in the middle of a heated conversation. Some of the participants seemed upset. Others just shook their heads in the typical Scottish manner and impatiently waited for their turn to speak.
“Three of my sheep disappeared in one week!” one farmer said. “And I saw a fourth trying to jump the fence today.”
“Yes!” another farmer said. “Mine are acting strange too!”
“And someone cut my shrimp net,” one of the fishermen said. “The entire thing was torn apart. I’ve never seen such a thing before.”
“Well I heard my sheep bleating at the moon!” a third man said. I thought the idea of a were-sheep was hilarious, but no one seemed to be laughing.
Another man held out a piece of rotten wood for the group to see. “This is a piece of my fence. It looks like some thing took a big bite out of it!”
Another man stepped forward to look at it closer. “Interesting. I found some bones close to the woods, and let me tell you . . . they’re from an animal. A big one.”
A few farmers gasped. One of them made the sign of the cross, which I thought was a little overdramatic.
“Something destroyed my shrubs as well!” a woman cried. “It looks like they’ve been burnt, but no one saw a fire.”
“It’s thieves! It must be thieves!” a man shouted.
“But why would anyone bother us?” another said. “I mean, why would anybody poke two holes in my boat
s? It just doesn’t make sense.”
I saw heads shaking, hands gesturing wildly, and arms crossed in suspicion. The most amazing thing about the scene was that fishermen and shepherds were united in something for once. Typically, they would only see eye to eye if there was a conflict with someone from somewhere outside Applecross, like Lochalsh or Skyle. I’ve known from an early age that the Scottish love nothing more than to draw lines in the dirt and pick sides. So while it was possible the problems were just silly superstitions and coincidences, the fact that all these people were united in concern made that seem unlikely.
“It all started when they opened the camping area,” said a man with a sour face.
“That’s nonsense, Barragh!” my dad said. “What does that have to do with my missing sheep?”
“If it’s not an animal’s doing, then someone stole them!” Barragh said. “And I strongly doubt it was one of us.”
“Gentlemen!” boomed the reverend. “Please — no arguing.”
“And what about the death of old lady Cumai?” Barragh asked.
“She was over eighty, the poor woman. Isn’t that explanation enough for her passing?” dad said.
“But she was so healthy!” Barragh argued.
I realized I’d seen him before, but couldn’t remember where. “Last month it was Dogberry, and now old lady Cumai!” Barragh added.
“You’re being ridiculous, Barragh!” my dad said. “Of the thousand inhabitants of Applecross, more than half are older than seventy. Death is an unfortunate but common result for them. There’s no reason to think foul play was involved in Cumai’s passing.”
“What about the fact that the mill always has its lights on?” Barragh challenged. “A lot of people have seen the lights from the village, but if you go to check, there’s no one there!” His face was flushed.
“Gentlemen, please!” the reverend said. “Let the dead rest in peace, and let us concentrate on the missing sheep.”
“And the fish,” one of the fishermen said.
“I say we need a detective,” another said.
“Maybe a vet would be better — a real vet, not just a farmer,” one man said. Then he glanced at my dad. “No offence, McPhee.”
Compass of Dreams Page 4