As the water got shallower, the stingers drifted away, until it was only dog and girl swimming to the shore. Moss moved like a mermaid, legs together and swaying, the fabric of her skirts tail-swishing. Soon, it was shallow enough to stand. The waves, as they pawed the shore, had turned shining, shimmering blue. Bioluminescence, Pa had called it when she’d asked him once. It happened when there was so much oxygen in the air, so many stormflowers swirling. Perhaps, soon, that glowing blue would seep even farther into the water, maybe even as far as the reef and beyond that to the horizon. Maybe, soon, all the water would be glowing.
As she stepped from the sea, again she felt a tremor in the sand. She looked up for volcano smoke, but saw nothing. But if it did blow, what then? Maybe they would never leave the island after all, even with a boat. Moss shivered as she turned toward the dunes. High up in the sands, horse-shaped and silvery, Aster was waiting. Moss smiled to the lowering sun in thanks.
She crawled onto the horse, Adder scrabbling up after. She crouched tight over Aster’s withers, letting the horse’s warm body help her own to dry. Aster danced from the feel of the sea salt, tossed her mane to coat it more. She leapt to a gallop in one stride.
And then they were riding hard. Back to Pa and the truths that had been hiding.
The storm came sudden, sharp-biting, rain starting before they reached the pines. Adder tucked in closer, pressing her damp doggy fur to Moss. Aster’s mane rose with the wind.
Was Pa making this storm? Even now?
Moss shivered. The swirl feeling was fierce—had not left since she’d set eyes on the Swallow. She crouched in tighter. She’d never known it so cold on the island. And, still, the volcano rumbled. She felt its vibrations all the way from the ground through Aster.
Soon … soon … time …
She half heard voices on the wind. Though when she turned her head to catch them full, they disappeared. She dug her fingers into Aster’s mane, then rested her head there, smelling the salt-musk of Aster’s skin … that strange, heady, horsey smell.
“What are you, then?” she whispered. She thought of Cal’s scale-shine pattern disappearing. Just like Cal’s land had done. Like the angry man she’d seen. Flickering. Half-real. Rising up. Going down. Moss stroked fingertips against Aster’s neck. “Not a spirit? Still a spirit?” Aster’s ears flicked at Moss’s voice. “Just a horse?”
Aster felt real enough, beneath her, carrying her fast back to camp.
“And were you really in the sea?” Moss said. “Or was Tommy just caught in fever dream?”
What did Aster do when they weren’t watching? Did Pa even know?
Moss grit her teeth as wind pulled her fierce. She would make Pa tell truth. Make him remember. Then they would leave. Before the volcano rumbled harder. Before this storm made the sea too rough. Though there was the anxious swirl inside when she thought about leaving, too.
She urged Aster faster, pressing with her calves. Through the trees they raced, as if Aster were a bird and not a horse, her wings skimming. The winds got stronger, making trees spit their leaves. Flowers on the branches and ground were opening, turning to see them as they galloped close, their petals spreading wide, colors glowing. She watched Aster’s ears flick to them as they passed, saw how she cat-leapt to avoid crushing them. Moss gripped tighter. She was angry with those flowers, too! Stormflowers—not floods—were the real reason they were on this island. They were the reason Pa had come here, the reason, too, that Pa had changed.
“Magical things,” he’d called them. “Wonders.”
But maybe those flowers were not so wonderful at all.
The wind slapped hair to her cheeks. Again, Moss crouched down tighter to the horse, clinging as the wind whipped her dry. She would pull the memories from Pa, too. Make him remember. But the thought gnawed at her—why hide a boat that could be used?
Then they were out of the pines, Moss squinting in the late-afternoon light as she looked across their cove. Cal’s land was still there, the sea twisting before it, gray as a seal’s back. A storm buzzed inside her now, too, urging Aster faster.
But when at last she reached camp, it was quiet. Too empty. The fire embers had been kicked aside and the hut door left open, banging in the wind. Moss leapt down from Aster.
“Pa?” she called, her voice whipping away. “Jess?”
The wild weather had come into their hut and left it messy and changed, as if a whirling-wind had blown through. As Moss stepped inside, Adder ran around it, whirling it further, skittering clothes and candle stubs. Then Adder stopped sudden and barked. She whined and scratched desperate at the dark space beneath their bed.
“What?” Moss said, bending down to see. “Why go so mad?”
She looked under. Squinted at what she saw.
Beneath the bed was a small, soft shape. Not moving. The swirl grew in Moss’s belly, down where the cramp had been. She knew this shape. Adder barked and barked, pushing Moss to go closer. Again, Moss called out for Pa. Again, he did not come. Adder bashed her big head against Moss’s arm, full-urging.
“Calm, puppling,” Moss soothed.
Slow-careful, Moss reached through the dust and cobwebs. When she couldn’t get close enough, she crawled full under. A small body of black-and-white fur lay still. Two old dog eyes stared back. They weren’t glinting now, not bright like they’d once been.
“Jess,” she whispered.
She touched the old dog’s ears. Adder crawled in with Moss and whined at her mother’s side, licked her desperate as if she could lick her awake. Moss wound her other hand in Adder’s so much warmer fur. Gentle-careful, she kissed Jess’s snout.
“Dead?” she whispered. “Gone?”
She did not understand it. Why now, when they were just about to leave? Why ever? She pressed fists to her eyes when the tears came.
Jess … Jess … The flowers sung beyond their hut, the note high in the wind.
She wanted to cry out too, wanted to cry her old dog back.
Soon Adder’s whines went to whimpers also and she rested her chin on Jess’s back, her eyes slits.
Moss remembered Jess that morning. She’d been no more sick, or old, than other days, had she? Moss wished she’d stroked her nice-good, given her a special limpet or periwinkle.
Soft-slow, Moss carried Jess from under the bed. She was almost pure bones, sagging skin. How had Moss not noticed? Adder whined again as Moss set Jess down on the fraying rug. Moss tickled beneath the old dog’s chin where Jess liked best. She remembered Jess whirling and spinning on the sand. Remembered her barking and dancing for snacklings, balancing on her back legs. Remembered being with her as a Small Thing. Back on that boat. Back at …
Moss stroked Jess’s snout, over and over, as she remembered. There was somewhere else she’d been with Jess.
The memory was dusty, tucked in the back of her mind. As she stroked Jess’s fur, it came a little clearer.
Jess had sat in dirt with a mud-stained snout. Her tongue lolling. She was all legs, so much smaller.
Moss almost smiled to remember it. Was it the first day she’d ever seen the dog? She couldn’t remember anything before it. Where was that?
Tail-wagging, Jess had sat beneath a wide, tall tree. It was hot. They were somewhere green, with trees. There was a house—a real house like the ones in the books, made from wooden planks and glass windows. Jess had licked Moss’s ear.
Now Moss felt the sensation again. She reached up and touched where she remembered the dog’s tongue from that day. Salty-rough. Warm. That tongue had licked all the way from the top of her ear and down to her throat.
She’d been paining, she remembered that too now. Jess had licked where it hurt.
Moss shut her eyes to remember, buried her face in the old dog’s fur again. This wasn’t a vision. It was Before, another memory. It was coming easier.
There was more.
Moss had followed Jess. Out of that garden and into a street like in the books too, one with colorful tr
ees and cars. Pink blossoms. Moss had followed that black-and-white feathery tail to a place with boats. All waiting in bobbing lines. Wooden pathways in between. A … harbor. Jess had led her to a man with long, pale hair who was kind to them both. There’d been a storm coming that day, and she had told him so. He’d smiled at her as if she were the most important person in the world.
“Magic how you know that,” he’d said.
That was the first day. She remembered now. There were many more days.
She remembered … it all. She was beginning to.
She left Adder whining soft beside her mother and moved away to lean against the bed. She breathed one deep breath, then another. It was like she’d just arrived, gasping like this. She stumbled outside to find different air there.
At the fire pit, she looked up to Pa’s cave. Colored mist was above it. The Experiment? Now? Again, she heard the volcano rumble.
Did Pa know about Jess? He deserved that. And she deserved knowings.
She went back to fetch the old dog, wrapping her in the softest rabbit pelts she could find. Outside, Aster was pawing and dancing. Moss grabbed a tuft of mane and vaulted quick to her back, careful to keep Jess wrapped close-tight to her chest. After only a few strides, Moss heard Adder racing after them, claws scatter-digging at the dirt, whines high on the wind. Moss whistled for her to run with them. And they went, wind-fast.
Pa stood outside his cave like he’d been waiting. Aster skid-stopped before him, skittering on the ledge.
“My girls,” Pa whispered. “Come back.”
Adder ran around him in a circle.
Moss held out her arms to show him Jess, tucked in the pelts, but Pa wouldn’t look. And there were a thousand words inside Moss’s head, and a thousand things she needed answers for, but all she could do was stare at him. Pa was bare-chested, even with the worsening weather. His skin sank inward below his ribs and hung loose around his collarbone. Thin as his dog, he was. How had she not noticed that oldness of him, too? And there were colors smeared across him—oranges and yellows streaked his shoulders, gold swirled around his belly button. Crushed stormflower petals. Pa was not even shivering, despite the biting wind. Were the flowers still working, then, keeping him warm?
“Been trying to bring in more spirits,” Pa said, pointing to the building clouds above. He moved his hands through the air as if drawing swirls. “Trying to create a new world.”
Moss coughed through scent-thick air. There was a smell behind that heavy scent that was different, too—like burning wood, but sour. Again, Moss held out Jess, but Pa acted like he couldn’t see. Pa moved his hands through the air, making his swirls smaller. Spirals now, winding down. She was a little scared of this Pa, but she stayed, holding Jess, waiting.
“Found any more spirits on the sand?” he said. “Has my Experiment worked once more?”
Aster danced beneath Moss as he came closer. It was like he was in another world, swirling and moving. Moss touched fingers to Aster’s withers to soothe her. Careful-sure, Moss slid from her. She held out the coverings with Jess inside them, and looked at Pa straight.
“I found Jess where you said I would,” Moss said, “in the dark space beneath the bed.”
Pa blinked hard in the light from the setting sun. Sudden-quick, he whirled away, backed up toward the cave. “No,” he whispered. “Not yet. No dying yet. Not the cycle for it!”
He tumbled through the covering across the entrance, getting tangled, still not looking at his dog. Moss followed, carrying Jess, heady from the air that got full-stronger when she came inside. She took a breath of sea air with her.
“Stay,” she told Adder, pointing to where Aster was outside.
She took a moment to see in the sudden dark. Mess was everywhere: books strewn about, pieces of the Experiment half done, a fire raging in the grate too big, and that strange sweet-sour smell. Stormflowers floated or were crushed in the vase on the table; they clung to the ceiling and bookshelves and walls. She felt another tremor beneath her feet.
“Jess,” Pa murmured. “Jess, Jess …” He pulled books from the shelves and held them in his arms. “I’ve been waiting for her to come; she’s taking her time …”
Moss looked at him careful. Pa hadn’t believed her? Didn’t want to? Couldn’t … see?
“Pa,” she said again. “Jess has gone. She’s dead.”
Throat-tight, she walked across the cave and gently placed the wrapped-up Jess at his feet. He glanced at his dog, then fast-sudden back to the fire as if he were burning that glance away. Adder whined from the entrance as Moss untucked the old dog for Pa. He made a tiny noise, like a dog’s whimper itself.
“Not dead,” he said. “Dreaming.”
Blink-quick, Moss got an image of Pa sleeping with Jess curled in his arms: tight-cozy together. Not an image from their hut, but from their boat, long ago. Thoughts and memories were getting easier now, coming fast.
Following Jess to the Swallow.
That first day.
Jess started this.
“Pa, you need to talk to me.”
No more forgetting. No more trying not to see.
Pa poked the fire with his ebony branch until glowing embers rose. He shook all over, as if he had winds racing through his veins. He was murmuring words so fast and low they were hard to catch and hear: whirring winds too. He opened a book and flicked through.
“The rain it rains without a stay,” he murmured, “in the hills above us, in the hills …”
She recognized these words, had heard them before when Pa had read to her and Cal.
“… the sea calm as a clock … And our little lives are rounded with a …”
These, too, were story words: some of Pa’s favorites. She came closer. When she grabbed his arms for him to look at her, he didn’t see her either. His mind was where the words were: in the sleeping and sailing and flooding of these stories. He was gulping the flower-air, drawing more inside him.
“Have you heard what I’ve said at all?” she asked.
As Pa poked the fire again, she realized what the sour-strange smell was. In the embers were pages torn from books, burning in scrunched balls, then fluttering up to mingle with the flower petals. There were book covers, too: hard-spined books, burning whole. Moss gasped as she realized. He’d started this morning at camp, and now he was continuing: burning the books in the cave, murmuring their words. Sure enough, as she watched, he sent the book in his hands to the flames.
How could he? They were her stories, too, her knowings of the rest of the world! Pa couldn’t just get rid of them as if they meant nothing!
“Stop this,” she screamed.
He tore a new page and sent it, scrunched, to the fire. Words burned and shriveled, flew up on the heat. She ran at him. Grabbing his arm, she wrenched the next book from his hand, prying it from his fingers.
“The island needs them!” he shouted, clutching tight another armful of books off the shelf.
“Our stories, Pa!”
She saw words from the burning page caught in the air:
… a kind of light … ran together … ribs ached …
She remembered that story! It was start of the exciting part, where the characters worked out what they’d lost.
“The island needs them more than we do!” Pa said.
Moss rescued Jess from where the flames had risen, carried her farther away. Pa chucked another book to the flames.
“We must save the island from flooding, Moss!” he cried. “… The last safe space in the world!”
She looked at him slow. “But the rest of the world hasn’t gone, Pa. There were no floods. No floods are coming here!”
Now she felt this more than ever. In the bones of her knowing, down-deep. Like how she felt there were more memory-thoughts lurking inside her too. But he whirled away, found another book from the shelf, and tore out pages.
“No!” Moss yelled, reaching for it.
Again, he turned from her. “We give the stories b
ack … We feed it! The island will stop rumbling hungry then.”
“’Tis the volcano that rumbles, Pa!” she said. “Burning books won’t stop that!”
Or … would they? Moss felt as if she knew nothing anymore. And Pa was full-flipped, not listening. But he was full-certain in what he did with these books.
How many flowers had he eaten already? Moss got sudden panic: If Pa was so deep into dreaming-fever, how could she get any answers from him? And if he got worse? Spiraled and spiraled until he was nothing more solid than a piece of kelp on the tide?
She didn’t want that Pa.
But she needed to know.
“Pa, listen,” she said. “You tell me what’s true! You do it now!” She forced him to look at her. His pale blue eyes were red-rimmed and watery. “Then you’ll come with us to the Lizard Rocks, and we’ll leave this island. It’s time.”
“Leave?”
She nodded at the sharp flash of doubt in his eyes. “Do you remember?” she whispered. “Do you know what’s in those rocks?”
The swirl inside her grew. It was running through her blood, around her insides. A tiny wind, whooshing: a kind of energy. Pa gripped so hard at the books, he made marks in their covers. And the wind from the sea blew in, taking her still-damp coverings and billowing them out, making the firelight dance higher.
“The Swallow isn’t wrecked,” Moss said. “Cal found it in the Lizard Rocks. But you know that already, don’t you?”
Quick as a weaselmouse, Pa tore more pages and threw them to the fire. Moss stretched forward to pull them back, but already the flames licked at them, then swallowed, getting hotter as they chewed. Sucking on her burned fingers, she watched the words turn to smoke.
… wish I had amnesia … showed me a place so different … sand and …
Pa shook all over. “No boat, no more …”
Maybe this was where all his sicknesses had been leading. To this full-blown fever. Total Blackness. To the Pa she knew—or thought she did—disappearing full. As she tried to make him move from the flames, he grabbed her shoulder.
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