She’d bought that postcard for him, but still hadn’t sent it, feeling awkward, not knowing what to say. Maybe she should call him back? Was he on the road somewhere? He didn’t do mobiles. But suddenly she heard the Lauders’ voices in the hallway. She couldn’t face cheerful right now. She hurried to her room and lay down, pretending to sleep, and was left undisturbed to gnaw over her thoughts.
Later that evening she joined Morgan and Rowena for dinner, which she could only move about her plate. Tomorrow was moving day, no café shifts. All three were preoccupied and quiet. After dinner, Rowena went to her room to make calls in private.
“Hey, Skye?” Morgan sounded cautious. Skye looked up. “How is everything – with Hunter?”
Skye sucked air into lungs that ached “Actually, we sort of...broke up.” She blinked, looking away.
“Oh, Skye-bear. I noticed your eyes. I’m really sorry.”
It was all Skye could do to keep from bawling. “It’s okay, I’m fine. I mean, I’ll be fine,” she managed. “Thanks.”
After a pause Morgan said “Remember how we were talking the other night? About those two guys and other...stuff?” Skye nodded. “Mum talked to me earlier today. She said you were asking about your mother. She said the same kinds of things were happening right around the time that your mum… It’s like it’s all been happening again.”
Skye stared at Morgan. Was she saying her mother had been attacked before she drowned? That thought made her want to retch. But, no – Dad and Skye had been there, so that couldn’t have happened. She stiffened, shocked: they’d been there? She hadn’t remembered that until now. Was it even a memory? “What are you saying?” she asked at last.
Morgan looked worriedly at her. “I don’t really know, to be honest. I know you probably don’t want to hear this, but...maybe it’s a good thing you and Hunter aren’t seeing each other anymore.”
And then Skye knew that Morgan believed the old stories, at least in some form. That her mother had been caught up in them. And that maybe Skye was too.
By the time they’d cleared away the dinner, the rain had stopped. Morgan put music on low and fell asleep on the sofa. Skye pulled on the woolly socks Morgan had lent her and a sweater, dried off a lounger, and settled on the balcony.
Soft music from the apartment blended with the distant crash of the surf. The low dark sky broke, bruised clouds drawing back to reveal the translucence of late dusk.
She’d been offered one life, at the cost of another today. Had struggled to choose right. She didn’t know what was right or wrong anymore. She had barely scratched the surface of the mystery that Hunter was. All she knew was that the reality of her choice, of his choice, hurt so much it was like a scream inside her.
When the cold sent her indoors at last, Skye changed into her sleepwear and lay on her bed under her quilt, waiting for Rowena to finish her calls. Worry for her father lingered, and she wanted to talk to her. But, exhausted, sleep claimed her and she didn’t stir again until morning.
When she woke early the next day, Rowena and Morgan had already left the apartment. She called home. There was no reply, but in the fresh light of day, the familiarity of her father’s drunken moods and knowledge of the painful anniversary dulled her fears. It was status quo. But she was still aware she’d let him down.
Taking out the postcard for him she stared at it, still coming up with nothing but blank. Well, blank, and clichés. What had Ethan said, ‘wish you were here’ kind of thing? Dad had a pretty good sense of humour underneath it all. After a pause, she wrote in inverted commas, ‘Wish you were here’. She was pretty sure he’d take it as meant, and imagined his smile when he read it. She walked into the village and posted it, not looking at the sea there or on the way back.
At The Towers, their last day on the tenth floor had arrived. The flat above Bliss had taken barely a week to sort out, and an agreement had been reached with Alan so-called Noble.
There really wasn’t much to pack. With Annie and some of the part-time staff covering Bliss, Rowena, Morgan and Skye completed the move with just a few car loads. Most of the Lauders’ things were in storage, and a removal company were transporting what they’d need to the flat.
That night, on a divan bed in Morgan’s bedroom above the café, the sound of the sea, so much closer here, alternated as both lullaby and razor. It was the closest thing to Hunter’s presence she had now. She was finding it hard to maintain her protective layer of anger. The fact that he’d left her out of love was zero comfort. After what felt like hours she finally fell asleep.
In the small hours of the night, she woke with a start, her mind breaking free of cloudy memories of her mother, fastening on a thought that had emerged within her dreams: shells. Her mother’s. And the one from Hunter that she’d dropped.
He’d mentioned a token when he’d spoken of humans and Nemaro being together. He’d offered a shell to her when he’d asked her to come with him. And she’d rejected him. Along with the searing pain that knowledge brought, came a spark of hope.
Was there a link between what he’d held out to her and what he’d wanted her to do – join him in his world? The spark of hope ignited. She had to find that shell.
She tried to remember everything about it, and about the moment it had fallen from her limp hand. The shell had been heavy. It would have sunk like a stone when it dropped into the water. Could it still be there, in the Bay, where they’d parted? If she could find it, maybe this wasn’t as over as Hunter thought it was. Maybe it wouldn’t be up to him anymore. She found that she was smiling fiercely. Sleep was impossible now.
Slipping from her bed she quietly dressed, and crept downstairs to the café’s window seat to wait for the dawn and low tide. As soon as the darkness shifted to grey she left for the beach. The lively surf of the previous night had subsided. When she reached the towering rock, the receding tide was nearing its lowest ebb, although shallow waves still lapped the ocean-facing side.
Despite the dawn chill, she’d come prepared for wet versus dry, with her swimsuit ready under her track pants and sweater. Near the water’s edge she removed her clothes, and left them there in a plastic bag. Splashing through the shallow water, she clambered up to where the shell had bounced from sight.
She began by searching every inch of the rock step below the one they’d stood on. Then she moved to the one below, and then the one below that, gritting her teeth as she felt through slippery seaweed, jumping at the occasional scuttling movement beneath her groping fingers. Nothing.
The falling shell had bounced sideways, spinning with the impact. She closed her eyes trying to picture its trajectory. Even if heavy, a small object could shimmy as it fell through water; be moved by currents or drawing waves. The sand just beyond the rock, then?
Climbing down into the sweeping foam, Skye spent the next half hour bent double at first, sweeping from side to side with her hands, then on her hands and knees in the shallow water, sifting through the sand as the ebb and flow of the low ruffling waves joined in shifting the grains. The dawn slowly lightened, but the low sky was dense with cloud.
She frequently checked her position against where she’d stood when he left her, gauging the path of the bouncing shell, correcting when she’d unwittingly moved beyond where she thought her search parameters were, widening those parameters in her fear of missing the shell. She’d thought it was indelibly imprinted on her brain, but the shifted tide line and constantly moving low surf confused her. Panic began to grip her.
The grey morning lightened further. Skye guessed the sun was up above the hills behind the clouds. She stumbled to her feet. The water in a wide area around her was a mess of densely swirling sand.
Verging on despair, Skye tried once more to line up with the rock, with where she believed she’d stood, her hands reaching to Hunter. Taking up her position, she visualised him in front of her. She closed her eyes and saw his face, sharp with determination, his eyes burning, but also vulnerable, desperate not to lo
se her. He’d summoned her then, calling up her love for him, her own real desire for him, and her head had spun.
She’d reached for him...and the shell had fallen. And he’d released her then: from his summons. From his life. She closed her stinging eyes and bent, reaching out, following the trajectory of the shell in her mind until her hands found the sandy bed. She dug, scooping up a watery handful.
She opened her eyes and her palms. Half hidden in wet sand was a small ring-shaped twist of shell, gleaming pearl grey, perfect and heavy. She brushed some of the sand aside and stared at it. Joy raced through her like fire, the relief so warming that the cold touch of the water vanished.
She sluiced water through her half-closed fist and gazed again at the wetly shining shell. There was no doubt whatsoever. This was the shell Hunter had given her. She turned her head and looked out across the grey water, pressing the shell against her lips, her heart racing.
The possibility of what this could mean was overwhelming. She needed to think, to plan this out carefully. She wasn’t giving him up. This wasn’t over, not by a long shot. She was her father’s daughter, for good or ill, clinging desperately to hope, however futile.
Splashing from the water, she carefully set the shell next to her things, feeling the cold bite into her as she did. She dried her arms and legs and pulled her warm clothes on. Safely stowing the shell in her pocket, she returned to the now open café. A few tables already held patrons.
“Nice walk?” Rowena called over the noise of frying as Skye entered the cafe. “Think you just beat the weather.”
“Yes, good thanks,” Skye responded, closing the door behind her, “Got slightly damp.” Heading upstairs to change, she wondered with a slight twinge of shame when she’d got so good at half-truths. Once dry and dressed, she retrieved her mother’s necklace and threaded Hunter’s shell onto it. Holding the chain high she watched it slowly spin. The grey against white was like shadow and light, yin and yang. The three shells clinked softly together as she lifted the fine chain over her head.
Just like a village girl now, she thought, with a shell from her boyfriend. Did even that quaint village tradition begin in the heart of a Nemaro? An ache throbbed through her. Whatever Morgan thought, Hunter leaving her wasn’t a good thing.
Walking to the sash window she pressed her hands against it, wondering where he was. The wind had picked up again, whipping up the water. Heavy breakers surged further out in the bay, filling the air with spume. Her mother would have asked her if she could see mermaids in the waves on a day like this. But Hunter had gone, drawing his people after him. It would be up to her to follow. Could she? Should she?
She pictured herself clutching his shell, walking into that surf to look for him, breakers closing over her head like a nightmare. Her throat closed.
But she was determined to work out a plan. And when she had, she would test her theory and her courage. Soon. His absence from her life was becoming unbearable. She had to see him again. To chase sorrow from his eyes, see his sweet smile. To move through the water with him, maybe forever, or for as long as she could, whichever came first.
Over the next two days Skye painted the spare room at the back of the courtyard, nicknamed ‘the studio’ after Rowena commented what a perfect art studio it would make for Skye when she came to stay. French doors opened from the café courtyard, and another set exited onto the side lane between neighbouring shops. They and the partial clearlite roof meant great natural light.
Rowena had given Skye free reign with colours, and she’d gone for sea-foam green. The cream calico curtains at both sets of doors needed only to be washed, and a few curtain hooks replaced. The studio was an appropriate name as it turned out. Once the back was accessible it was revealed to be a studio flat – one large room with an old kitchen bench in the back, and a door behind which they found a basic but functional bathroom, also filled with rubbish.
It had been storage for a previous tenant’s business, long-defunct, and they’d never come back to claim their things. Skye wasn’t surprised – most of it was junk. Clearing it had been a nil priority while trying to get the café open, but Rowena had made it a priority when getting the living space upstairs sorted, paying the men who’d moved in their furniture extra to take away the rubbish. They left behind a long retro sofa which Rowena had spotted amidst the junk, protected by a drop sheet while Skye painted.
While she worked, her mind hummed along the impossible path the shell suggested, but she was no closer to a solution. Hunter had left her to protect her. He could be anywhere in the world. Anywhere but here. And then there was her dad, not to mention the Lauders. She couldn’t do that to them. And what about her own uneventful but familiar life? Her head spun in endless circles.
Re-painting the studio kept her from losing her mind completely, but once finished, she needed fresh distraction. Her offer to help at the café was kindly but firmly declined by Rowena.
“If you’re really bored, Skye,” Rowena suggested, “The office is overrun with boxes from the move. It would be great to get them out of there and into the studio now that it’s clear. And maybe open a few, and try to find homes for some of it?”
Grateful for the task, Skye carried the boxes one by one from the small office just inside the back door over to the studio, and began to unpack and sort. Some were easy and obvious, like spare linen. Others were less so. She opened a box that contained a jumble of ornaments, paraphernalia and books, and recognised the ‘last minute’ box from a final sweep of the apartment.
She began to lift items out, removing paper and standing the various objects upright. Then she started – a familiar book cover peeped out from under an oven mitt. Pulling it out she stared at it: her mother’s old Hans Anderson’s fairy tales. She’d completely forgotten about it after wedging it between the apartment encyclopaedias to flatten. Morgan must have spotted it in a final check of the bookcase.
At first glance it seemed to have flattened out well. Pleased, Skye opened it carefully, but immediately saw that the pages within were irretrievably corrugated. The lining had begun to lift away inside the front cover.
And when she turned the book over, the entire back cover came away in her hand, broken along her earlier repair, its lining hanging from the book like a page. She compressed her lips against a swell of regret. The soaking in the bay had been too much for it. She couldn’t regret the circumstances of its demise – her first swim in the safety of Hunter’s arms. But it was still a loss.
Could she reattach the cover? Repair the spine again and glue the linings back down? She could keep it, as a memento, maybe. Something to remember not just Mum now, but also Hunter. She pushed back the pain: she wasn’t letting him go – she wouldn’t mourn him.
She turned the detached cover over, and stared. Clinging to the cardboard was a smaller page covered with whispers of her mother’s familiar handwriting. It had been hidden beneath the now detached lining.
Nerves humming, she eased the concealed page free. Her mother had used water-soluble ink, and although the tight press of paper and some of the glue she must have used to reseal the linings had preserved some words, most were little more than a ghostly impression. Skye turned the page over and went still.
Like the written words on the other side of the page, the pen line and colour here had bled or washed away in places, and remained intact in others. But even so, he was unmistakeable. Amidst the tiny illustrated shells, birds, rocks and waves was – Hunter. Her pulse echoed oddly in her ears. Her mother had drawn Hunter.
Hands trembling, she checked the front cover, and found another page hidden beneath the loosened lining there. Carefully removing it she found tiny portraits, pen and ink faces, slightly better preserved. Fair curls around a sly face she recognised, her stomach clenching sickly. Another face, larger and more detailed than the rest, she didn’t recognise. He’d been drawn more than once, and with care. Her mother had taken time over this man’s portraits.
And there –
a child: herself. Clutching the pages, she hurried across the courtyard and took the cordless phone from the office. Returning to the studio she dialled home, her hands shaking so hard she had to redial twice before she got a connection.
It rang and rang. Hanging up, she forced herself to breathe. After a moment, she crossed the courtyard again with the hidden pages, hurried up the stairs, and dragged her travel bag out. Retrieving her mother’s sketchbook, she carried it to the window, opening it to where she’d found the two cut edges.
The hidden pages were a match, as she knew they would be. The words, the rest of the story: could she make it out? The sketchbook read:
But under his spell the mortal girl was wraithlike; awake, yet always dreaming, trapped in a half-life. The Sea Spirit grieved at what she had become. Drawing on powerful magic, he made a way to return his beloved to the sun and the air, without losing her forever.
She’d been certain there was more to this story, and here it was, but so decimated by its soaking in the Bay, she couldn’t read it.
A half-life. Hunter had talked about a half-life. He hadn’t wanted that for her.
She hurried back downstairs and across to the studio where she’d just unpacked Rowena’s old magnifying glass. Under the magnifying lens she made out the word ‘token’ and further down what looked like ‘promise’ and then ‘call...heart’. And then nearly a whole sentence: ‘return to seek him under the sea.’
As she stared blankly at the page, a memory came back to her, sharp and complete: her mother explaining this story to her ten years ago. It had been Skye’s first concept of death. She had been confused about the fate of those drawn below ‘for a time’. “What happened to the magicked people?” she had asked. “If it didn’t last, what happened to them?”
“That’s a good question, Skye.” Her mother had answered. “The sea spirits, although they were so beautiful, were terribly selfish. They took what they wanted, when they wanted it and never thought about the life they had stolen, or what would happen when they grew bored. And they always grew bored. When the person they had taken ceased to amuse them, their attention would drift, the magic would dissolve, and the person would…well, they wouldn’t be able to breathe under the sea anymore.”
Find Me (Immersed Book 1) Page 31