On Hurricane Island

by Ellen Meeropol

  “Who is Cyrus?” Gandalf asks Austin.

  “Another cousin. He’s Army, works at the facility. He’s outside now on lookout.”

  Terrific. Another man she would much rather not depend on.

  Norah hugs Gandalf and Austin. “See you back in civilization.”

  Leaning heavily on his wife, Henry walks slowly towards the cave mouth. He stops halfway and looks across the shadowy space at Gandalf. His expression is hard to read, both crushed and expectant.

  “I’m sorry,” he says.

  Catherine brushes her finger along the line of his jaw. “Tell her the rest.”

  Henry looks down at his feet. “If there’s an inquiry, I’ll testify in your favor,” he says, then continues to the cave entrance.

  Gandalf nods, not knowing how to respond. As they disappear into the narrow corridor, she misses Norah dreadfully, even her rigid opinions.

  Austin hands her a bottle of water and an energy bar. She unwraps one for herself. “You’ve had almost nothing to eat. No wonder you can’t stop shaking.”

  Ten minutes later, Austin says it’s time. Gandalf’s heart tumbles into her belly. It beats wildly, churning the energy bar.

  “I’ll help you,” Austin says, handing the flashlight to Gandalf. “Hold this.”

  “It’s still raining,” Ray says, “but less. We’ll hug the rock wall and take it slow and easy. And quiet.”

  Ray goes first, then Austin and Gandalf. A man stands sentry outside the cave entrance; he must be the Army guy Austin mentioned, the cousin. Gandalf glances in his direction, to whisper thank you, but here’s something familiar about him. Something awful. She switches on the flashlight and shines it on his face.

  His eyes are cornflower blue. She knows those eyes.

  Her brain flashes back to a white metal room barefoot at the airport, and two men come in. One man has a raspy voice and he stands behind her and grabs both her arms, binding her wrists together, and she kicks back at him. This man, with blue eyes, stomps his boot on her bare feet, just before he smothers her face with a black hood, a hood of fabric so close against her mouth and nose that she knows she will suffocate. Troll and Blue Eyes.

  Gandalf stares into the man’s cornflower blue eyes and screams.

  57. RAY, 11:27 P.M.

  When the professor screams, Ray whips around in time to see Austin grab the flashlight. The beam splashes through rain, breaks up into sparkling reflections against the shiny granite wall, then pierces the sky.

  “Turn that off,” Cyrus shouts.

  A second light shines down on them from the cliff top. It seems instantaneous, it happens so fast. A loud noise blasts Ray’s ears, and they are all inside the noise. Pieces of rock jump up from the path and skitter in the gray smoke. For a moment he can’t see Austin and he panics because it’s his job to protect her, and then it’s okay because she is right here.

  “Get down.” Cyrus pushes Gandalf and Austin towards the wall, shoving them into the narrow “V” where cliff meets ledge. They curl up close into stone.

  Smart man. Maybe Cyrus isn’t as Army as he thought. Ray moves closer to the women. “Are you both okay?”

  Austin nods. “Get down here with us.”

  Ray steps closer. But he can’t move fast enough, and there’s more loud noise, a series of booms coming from above, and there’s Austin screaming “Pops” and then a hollow, empty-sounding thump. The cliff tilts, and Ray is in the air. He sees Nettie’s face, her mouth smiling, and she’s telling him to be careful, to protect his head and so he does, curling his arms around his face and neck. Then she’s saying something else, telling him something else, it’s about Austin, and he gets worried again because where is Austin and then he remembers he wants to talk to her about the carved initials. He wants to ask her about the letters, about what was in them. She’s a smart girl, Austin is, and has probably figured it out without him. But she’ll have questions about Aunt Margaret and Angelina, and it will be good to finally talk about it openly and maybe after all of this, Nettie will find peace about the grandmother she never knew.

  But he has lost Austin again, and then Nettie’s face is gone too, and the noise is gone, and the lights are no longer reflecting against the cliffs, and everything is red then black, and where is Austin, and he is falling.

  58. AUSTIN, 11:32 P.M.

  “Pops!” Austin screams.

  Right in front of her, Pops flies apart into pieces, and everything turns red. Bright crimson parts of him arc into the air and then tumble silently off the smoky cliff. They fall towards the quarry water below, pursued by streaks of fire, splashes and the echoes of gunfire.

  She falls to her knees and leans forward over the edge. She stares down through smoke to the place where he disappeared. The quarry water is deep, Gabe told her that summer day. Bottomless. Raindrops make small ripples in the red puddle around her on the ledge.

  Cyrus fires three shots into the air, up towards the cliff top.

  “Everyone down. Get close to the wall and stay low,” he orders. “That’s Tobias up there and he’s aiming for you ladies.”

  Austin feels a tug on her hand. It pulls her through the rain and wisps of smoke and scorched smell into the shadow of the cliff.

  In the wet and the smoke and the fear, Austin huddles with Gandalf, feeling the older woman tremble. Austin is here, her body pushing into rock, and at the same time she isn’t here at all. How can Pops be blown apart, pieces falling through the quarry water? He has always been right next to her, sticking close, even all the times she pushed him away.

  Her first childhood memory is sitting with Pops on the rocks behind the house, at the cusp of coastline and bay. It could have been the day her mother dumped her with Gran and Pops and took off, though Austin doesn’t actually remember that part. Gran was a teacher and had to go to work, but Pops stayed home from fishing that day. He told her a rambling story about the island wood fairies, and they built their first fairy house together.

  Over the next weeks and years, they built many tiny dwellings among tree roots. Pops insisted that the dwellings had to be made entirely of natural materials—of sticks and bark, pebbles and twigs and seaweed and pinecones. When they finished each one, Austin would lean against his scratchy wool shirt, smelling of pinesap mixed with rotting sea life, and he would reward her with a lesson in seagull talk. “I never went to college,” he told her, “so seagull is the only foreign language I speak.” He did seem to converse with them, though he refused to translate the nasty parts. “They’re pretty raunchy, those gulls,” he confided to her little-girl self.

  She wipes her eyes. He still has that green wool shirt, although the body inside it has softened and drooped. Why hasn’t she hugged him more, why hasn’t she been nicer these past few years, instead of making fun of his weather watching? Instead of always talking about leaving Maine. Leaving him.

  She looks past Gandalf’s arms, past Cyrus’s body shielding them, to the water. How can Pops be down there, when he was just next to her? The sorrow in her throat swells, squeezing her windpipe and stealing her breath. Gandalf seems to know and hugs her tighter. Austin tries to look past her own memories into the now, at what she has to do. But it is all too huge, too impossible, without Pops.

  “Listen up,” Cyrus says. “Tobias is up there and he has totally lost it. I reckon that Henry and the others got by safely, since I didn’t hear gunfire before. We need to move back into the cave, away from Tobias’s line of sight. Come. We’ll figure something out.” He holds his hands out to the women.

  59. GANDALF, 11:46 P.M.

  “Now what?” Austin asks Cyrus between sobs when they have retreated back into the cave.

  Gandalf still cannot quite grasp who Blue Eyes is. Except that she remembers Austin was there, too, and she was Apricot then. Right now it is hard to think beyond the shaking and the pounding of her heart, and the fear clogging her throat.

  “We need a way to get past Tobias,” he says.

  There is some
thing, Gandalf thinks. Something Austin said, back before her grandfather exploded into pieces. It was something Margaret said and then she remembers.

  “The back entrance,” Gandalf says. “It was in Margaret’s letter, remember? Perhaps Tobias does not know about it.”

  “Where is it? Where does it go?” Cyrus asks.

  “Spiders,” Austin hiccups, and points to the back of the cave.

  Cyrus follows his flashlight beam into the dark shadows and returns a moment later. “I found the back exit. I’m not sure exactly where it comes out, but it’s better than …” He doesn’t finish his sentence, but Austin and Gandalf follow him.

  Standing outside, Cyrus peers through the rain in one direction and then the other. He points. “I think it’s this way. Let’s go quickly. Tobias has heat-sensing equipment and he could find us again at any moment.”

  Walking along the narrow ledge and holding onto Austin, Gandalf estimates that even if they’re going in the right direction, the back entrance only gained them fifty yards or so, but hopefully that’s enough. Thank you, Margaret.

  She presses tight against the wet wall, but images of Austin’s grandfather in pieces materialize in her path, threatening to trip her. It is colder now. Needles of rain prick her face, then become frigid snakes twisting down her neck and lopsided chest. That makes her miss her breast prosthesis, and her laptop too, but it doesn’t matter because the shivering is back, bigger than anything, bigger than the quarry and the storm and her fear. Shivering has taken over her whole self, freezing her heart and squeezing water out of her eyes. She is so cold and so tired. She cannot walk another step. She cannot hold the groaning inside anymore, and a sound comes out. She slumps against the cliff.

  “Come on,” Cyrus urges. “We’re almost at the end and then it’s downhill to the cove.”

  Gandalf hears rumbling above them. Pebbles tumble down, slowly at first, then faster. Bigger rocks follow, plunging around them with more force.

  “The cliff’s collapsing,” Cyrus yells. “Press yourselves tight against the rock.”

  Austin again curls up and makes herself small. Gandalf nudges her into the space between her own body and the cliff wall. She wants to close her eyes but she cannot and she watches rocks slam onto the ledge, stone crashing into stone. Some bounce and splash into the quarry water below. Clumps of earth follow. Three large branches and a rifle plummet through air onto stone.

  Finally a large figure pinwheels down. He drags a rope and broken spruce trunk with him, all flailing limbs and howling screams. He smacks onto the ledge, bouncing once. Gandalf winces at the crack of his head against granite.

  “Stay back, ladies.” Cyrus points his gun at Tobias. “He might just be stunned.”

  Now the rumbling is inside Gandalf’s chest. It roars up into her throat and explodes from her mouth. When she howls, Austin lets go and stares at her. Gandalf stands up, anger flooding her veins. She steps closer, next to the blue-eyed Cyrus with the gun.

  Tobias is sprawled prone on the rock, head turned towards her, his eyes closed. Rain falls on his exposed cheek and the back of his neck. His right leg is bent at an impossible angle, clearly broken, so he can’t run even if he wakes up. Both arms stick out above his head, and his hands hang off the ledge into the empty black air. Those rattlesnake hands, compact and square and swift when he smacked her face, are flaccid now. She trembles, remembering those squared-off fingers holding the knife. She touches the scabbed slash across her cheek. Even now, when his hands are not coiled to strike, are unable to hurt her, they hold power.

  He lifts one shoulder, opens his eyes for a few seconds, then moans.

  One push would do it. One firm push or better yet a kick to his side would roll him off the cliff. It would be payback for Austin’s grandfather, for Norah assaulted by the misogynist jeers of the guys, for the cold and the fear and the ice and the face slaps and the knife. For his foul mouth on Austin’s breast and his ugly hand shoved down her pants. For his threats to Jess and his lies about Ahmed. She pictures Ahmed’s face. She has to think about that, when she can once again think analytically. About the past and about the email she sent. Did she get Ahmed in trouble, and was she willing to do that because of their history? No, it is the fault of the evil man lying in front of her.

  Hatred mixes with the anger in her bloodstream and it is the most potent and toxic cocktail she has ever felt. She steps closer.

  From behind, strong arms wrap around her shoulders and pull her close. A chest is soft against her back and sweet apricot hair wet against her face. Austin probably wants to help push him off the cliff.

  “Don’t,” Austin says.

  “He deserves it.”

  “He does.” Austin pulls Gandalf back. “But let Cyrus take him in. Tobias will face charges for what he’s done.”

  “I doubt it,” Gandalf says. When did she become so cynical? No, it is not cynicism that she feels; it is fury.

  “Yeah,” Austin says. “What he’s done is probably legal, even though it’s horribly wrong. But we’ll expose it. All of us will.”

  Maybe they will. But it isn’t enough. This is personal. Gandalf shrugs away Austin’s arms and steps forward. She nudges Tobias’s ribs with her foot. He grimaces and opens his eyes. He looks half-dead and probably couldn’t understand, even if she could translate her anger into sentences. She has never spit on anyone in her life, but she tries it and it’s both repulsive and oddly satisfying.

  “That’s for Pops. For hitting me. For the cold. For Norah.”

  Still pointing his gun, Cyrus steps forward and unclips plastic handcuffs from Tobias’s belt. He gives them to Austin. “Cuff him, then get the two of you down to the boat. I’ll stay and guard this bastard until Reuben gets here.”

  “Reuben?” Gandalf asks

  “The sheriff,” Austin says. “Pops must’ve called him.”

  “Can you handle his boat?” Cyrus asks Austin.

  Austin nods, looking stunned. Gandalf takes Austin’s hand. She is probably thinking that Pops will never again drive his boat.

  “Bert’s waiting at the cove.” He flicks his head towards Gandalf. “This is over now. Take her and go home.”

  SUNDAY

  SEPTEMBER 11

  60. AUSTIN, 12:47 A.M.

  It’s rough going down the rocky trail to the cove. The stone is slippery, and Austin sees Pops’s blood, everywhere—in the puddles, in the raindrops, in the rivulets weeping along the ancient cracks in her slicker.

  They make slow progress, pressed along the wet rock. Austin walks without feeling her feet move. She breathes without knowing how air can move in and out of her body, past the thick lump of sorrow wedged in her throat. Gandalf’s hand is a lifeline, and Austin squeezes hard to banish the words she must say to Gran when she gets home. Words about Pops and how he saved her life, and Margaret’s words too.

  At the bottom of the hill, she and Gandalf follow their flashlight beam over seaweed-shrouded rocks. They hang onto each other, staggering through the muck. Mud grabs their boots and won’t let go. Finally they reach the boats where Henry and Catherine huddle in the cabin and Bert and Norah wait in the stern. Their faces are pale and worried, yellow raincoats glowing in the rainy light.

  “You guys okay? We heard shots,” Norah calls out. “You look awful.”

  “Where’s Cyrus?” Bert asks. “And Ray?”

  Austin opens her mouth but can’t speak. Pops. Pops. Pops. She squeezes Gandalf’s arm.

  “Tobias shot Ray. He’s gone. Into the quarry.” Gandalf’s chattering teeth chop the words into sharp pieces. “Then Tobias … fell. From the top of the cliff.”

  “Is he dead?” Norah leans forward to reach for Austin. She grabs her injured leg, and the boat tilts sharply. Bert pulls her back to steady the rocking.

  “Pops is dead, and Tobias looks seriously injured,” Gandalf says. “Cyrus is guarding him until your sheriff comes.” She and Austin help each other into Pops’s boat.

  “Cyrus?”
Norah grabs Bert’s arm. “Can we trust him? He works for Tobias.”

  “Don’t worry,” Bert says. “Ray and Cyrus are kin.”

  That family thing again. Austin closes her eyes. She refuses to cry. Yet. Not until she can sink into Gran’s arms—then she can wail and howl. Arms pull her close, and Gandalf is shivering so hard it’s a vibrating hug. Must be from the cold. Austin makes a mental note to look up the aftereffects of cold torture, so she’ll know how to help her friend, and what to expect in the future. Except that she’s done with this stuff.

  “You’re in shock or something,” Austin whispers. She removes Gandalf’s oilskin and cocoons her in the ratty blanket Pops keeps in the boat for emergencies. Hooking the hood over Gandalf’s head, she spreads the slicker back around her, over the blanket. The empty sleeves flap in the wind like the yellow wings of some exotic bird never before seen in mid-coast Maine.

  “You okay driving the boat?” Bert asks her. “It’s wild out here.”

  Austin nods. “I just aim for the outlet, right?”

  “Don’t even need to aim.” Bert starts his motor and shines his light towards the opening. “The tide’ll suck you out.”

  The cove outlet appears as a narrow slice of darker night in the wet wall of rocks and forest. Austin pushes the ignition button. Pops just had it replaced. Omigod. Pops. Pops. Reversing slowly, she avoids the rocks and follows Bert across the small cove.

  Next to her, Gandalf shivers, and the yellow wings tremble.

  “You cold?” Austin asks.

  “I feel like I’ve been cold forever.”

  “A hot bath will help,” Austin says. “At Gran’s.”

  Gran. How is she going to tell Gran? She wipes her eyes, because first she has to get them home. She steers behind Bert’s boat towards the cove outlet, aware of Gandalf sitting stiffly behind her, drawing the yellow sleeves tight around her body against the wet cold. Austin’s eyes fill again because there’s this thought, on top of losing Pops. Even if they make it safely across the angry sea and even if Gandalf manages to get away, she might never again see this odd woman.