“Really now?” Adam couldn’t picture Quince writing anything, let alone an article in a reputable city paper. “Well, it certainly piqued my interest and my editor’s.”
“At least someone in London took notice.” Placing his glass on the side table, Quince slouched lower in his chair and folded his hands over his chest. “So what do you need to know?”
As the smell of sweet pipe tobacco hit his nose, Adam was glad he asked Immanuel to stay behind. Even if it didn’t have the burn of cigarettes, the pipe would have set him on edge. Watching Quince blow the remnants of smoke from his nostrils, Adam reached into his breast pocket to find a small pad of paper and a pencil. At least looking the part of a reporter would save him the hassle of remembering every detail Immanuel would demand later.
“Tell me about the island itself. I know it’s quiet now, but I’m sure it has quite the history.”
Adam was immediately sorry he asked. For the better part of an hour, Quince spoke of pirates and Vikings and parts of history Adam had apparently slept through in school. By the time they reached King George III, Adam’s head swam with drink. Setting his drink aside, Adam straightened and focused waited for a gap to speak as Quince’s tail finally reached his lifetime.
“It’s the smallest of the islands around here. Most people are fishermen or fishwives. Lots of men don’t want to be fishermen anymore. They want bigger and better, so they go off to the city and never come back. We’ve been dwindling for generations. The weird ones are me and Byron Durnure. We’ve stuck around.”
Adam nodded and replied before the other man could go on, “Do you know anything about the monolith in the middle of the island?”
“The monolith?” he asked, his gaze running over Adam suspiciously.
“The stone circle. Miss Larkin got very cross with us when we got too close.”
He scoffed into his drink. “She would. They think the stones are sacred. That they can take you to the land of faes if you’re made of the right stuff.”
“The faes?”
“They don’t call it that, but that’s what it is. Faerie nonsense that should have died when reason reached the island. We got plenty of legends, changelings and fish people.”
“Can you speak more about those legends?”
Mr. Quince shifted in his armchair. Adam followed his gaze to find it resting on an outcropping of rocks outside the window. Between the waves lapping and the considerable distance, it was impossible to tell if anything inhabited them besides sea birds, but somehow Adam felt there must have been seals sunbathing. When Quince turned to find Adam watching him, he ran a tired hand over his salt and pepper stubble.
“I don’t want you writing this down. I don’t want loonies coming here to see if it’s true.” He took a sip of his gin and waited until Adam set his pencil aside to say, “The locals believe that the seals can change into beautiful women. That sometimes they lure people to their deaths or fall in love with human men. It’s just a sailors’ folktales.”
“So you don’t believe it?”
“I don’t take it as gospel like the ones who’ve never left.”
“From the way Miss Larkin spoke of you, I thought you had always been on the island.”
“I left to get some schooling. Thought I might become a university man. When my father died, he left me enough money from smuggling to study natural philosophy. He thought I could do better, get off the island for good.” Casper’s light eyes darkened, fading as he clutched his glass tighter. “Didn’t come to pass. The island never lets you go. Not without a fight.”
“And what about your mother? Was she happy to see you back?”
“My mother,” he replied, his voice sharpening. “She up and left before I could scarcely remember her. The last thing I remember is her patting my sister Hilda on the head and slipping out the front door without so much as a look back at me. She died not long after.”
Staring down at his notepad, the word reverberated through his mind. At some time the day before, he and Immanuel had read the statistics of a faceless woman, never knowing she was Casper Quince’s mother. Adam tapped the page with the end of his pencil and made a note between two lines to tell Immanuel.
“I’m sorry for your loss.”
Quince grunted and took a long swig of his drink.
The words tumbled out of Adam’s mouth before he could stop them. “I also lost my mother as a child. I don’t think you ever get over it, even if you were young. Mine died of consumption the same year my father did. My older brother ended up raising me and my sister. He caught it and died a few years back.”
“Consumption’s a nasty business. Your sister still alive?”
Adam nodded.
“You’re lucky.”
The older man’s jaw hardened as they lapsed into silence. Without asking Adam if he wanted anymore, Quince refilled his glass and downed most of it in one glug. His eyes trailed to the sea again before snapping back to Adam with a shake of his head. Clanking the glass on the side table, he settled back into his chair.
“What else you need for the paper? I need to get back to my rounds.”
Staring down at his notes, Adam took a grimacing sip of liquor. “I won’t include it in the article, but I’m curious about the legend you mentioned. It sounds familiar. For the life of me I can’t remember the title, but my mother read it to me. Some Danish story about a mermaid. Is it the same thing?”
“They call them selkies.”
“I must have been mistaken, then.”
“Like I said, it’s a bunch of hogwash. It’s a nice excuse when your woman runs off and leaves you with a brood of brats and nothing else to show for it. The same story appears wherever the Vikings stopped.”
“Really? That’s curious.”
“It’s just a seaman’s fantasy. You’ll want to talk to Byron about the generators before you leave. That should be the draw to get people here.”
Adam nodded, pretending to jot it down. “So have the selkies gone the way of the faeries in these parts?”
Smoke spilled from the bowl of Quince’s pipe, twisting in on itself until it nearly formed the shape of a figure. Limbs danced in slow motion only to be dashed with a sudden exhalation as he raised his sea green eyes to meet Adam’s. “One can only hope.”
Chapter Fifteen
Skulls and Shells
Immanuel stood on the weather worn path, watching Adam as he disappeared down the fork in the road without looking back. His chest tightened as he waited for Adam to turn around or at least cast a glance in his direction, but he never did. Fiddling with the strap of his satchel, he realized he had forgotten to mention to Adam that he didn’t know where Byron Durnure’s laboratory actually was. He had never asked. The island was small enough that he could only circle for a few hours at most, but even if it was far simpler than London, it didn’t mean he wasn’t afraid of getting turned around.
The wind stirred, whipping his hair against his face and bringing with it the taste of the sea. The further Adam withdrew from him, the more certain Immanuel was that he could feel something deep within the island. It reminded him of what he felt when he tried to manipulate air or water. A web of energy just out of sight, that if viewed from the right angle glowed. Watching a rolling puff of breath disappear into the aether, Immanuel smiled at the thought. Magic truly was all around them. At that, a strange thought crossed Immanuel’s mind.
Opening his satchel, Immanuel felt around the bottom until his fingers brushed against the cold, brassy surface of the vivalabe. Immanuel balanced the device in his palms, watching a beam of sunlight reflect off its coffered surface until it glowed. A pulse deep within the metal reverberated through Immanuel’s hand with each tick, but he knew if he put the vivalabe to his ear, he would never hear the whirl of internal mechanisms. Whatever powered it, it didn’t require winding or gears. Magic, his mind whispered. A series of concentric, crisscrossing lines encircled the outer surface like the face of an astrolabe. As Immanuel clicke
d the raised spot on the vivalabe’s equator, the heavy lid fell back to reveal a more intricate surface lined with minute markings he still hadn’t discerned. They seemed, to his limited knowledge, part alchemical, part astrological, and some with no known origin. He had nearly left it home, tucked in his dresser under a heap of handkerchiefs, but the thought of it being away from him was too much. Peregrine once told him it had chosen him. From the moment it rolled out of a broken flower pot, he had cherished it and its uncanny ability to make sense of a world he was only beginning to understand.
Balls of colored marble and stone the size of caviar ringed the perimeter of the dial. For a moment, the balls didn’t move or change color. Immanuel eyed his piece, which always appeared as a piece of white quartz, when he spotted a stone he had never seen before transforming from a piece of red glass. It was a striated fleck of sandstone the color of a canyon at dusk. It had to be Adam. In Immanuel’s hand the body of the vivalabe shuddered, and in an instant the rest of the balls began to transform. Pieces that had once been yellow or green morphed into varying shades of blue and teal, except for two, the white quartz and the orange sandstone. The blue and aqua balls raced across the surface of the dial as if they had been hit by a billiard cue. A gasp escaped his lips before he could stop it. There were so many of them. He was accustomed to seeing half a dozen on a good day in London to several dozen if he opened it at Interceptor’s Headquarters, but he had never seen it hone in on such a large area. Even at headquarters, it only focused on a hallway or wing of the building, so why had it focused on the entirety of Seohl-wiga Island?
Staring down at the vivalabe’s face, he watched as several sapphire balls continued to move as if the people they represented paced or walked a beat while others bobbed in a dull line. Studying their position on the plane, Immanuel looked over his shoulder to the sea in the distance. If he squinted, he could just make out the dark shapes of boats on the horizon. Fishermen, they had to be. Turning back to the metal device resting in his palm, he watched how the brightest and most precious of the stones gathered together, gliding fluidly across the plane as one unit. Immanuel closed the lid before opening it a moment later only to find the vivalabe hadn’t changed. His breath faltered as he gave the plane one last look before carefully tucking it back into his bag.
The vivalabe had only ever tracked those with magic or abilities. He had never seen it littered with so many stones of the same color, let alone that many clustered together. From what he knew of the vivalabe’s power, the color usually represented the individual’s abilities or personality. Having dozens of blue chips of marble and glass in such a small area would have to mean most, if not all, of the island’s inhabitants had water-centric abilities.
With each step down the oak-lined path, Immanuel turned the idea over in his mind. He had never met a magical creature, apart from practioners, so it was possible that the vivalabe could pick up selkies, but even so, that would mean there were dozens or even over a hundred clustered in one island. No, that couldn’t be. When Miss Larkin’s daughter pointed out where the seals resided, he had only seen forty at most. No, this had to be something else, though dozens of practioners in such an isolated place still seemed unlikely. Then again, he came from a long line of alchemists turned scientists, and if magic ran in their blood, perhaps the islanders had interbred until magic became common place. But how had the Interceptors not noticed? They could have staffed an entire outpost with people from the islands, and that would certainly lighten their load and that of the Special Branch.
At the top of the hill, Immanuel opened the vivalabe once more, orienting himself against the clusters of practioners scattered nearby. Perhaps the Interceptors only cared about cultured city practioners, who spoke proper English and came from households of good name. The thought sent a flare of anger through his breast. He had seen enough of that at the museum to last a lifetime.
Following the winding path through the trees, Immanuel’s thoughts slipped away at the disconcerting silence. Only a moment before he had been surrounded by waves crashing and the call of seabirds over the distant bells of boats, but it was as if he had stepped into a bubble, where he could hear only the crunch of his steps. As Immanuel hurried around the bend, his eyes fell upon a ring of grey stones jutting from the tall grass. Casting a glance the way he had come, Immanuel took a cautious step toward the circle. Even though no one was near to see him trespass, it felt as if a pair of eyes stared back from each tilted stone. Taking a step, he waited for the overwhelming rush of energy to paralyze him and send him scrambling for the path but nothing came. Adam must have been far enough away to no longer amplify his energy.
Crouching beside the nearest stone, Immanuel gently laid his hand upon its weathered face. A faint note rang through his mind as he felt along the stone’s grain until he reached a slight indent. Narrowing his eyes, he could barely make out the shape of a letter or symbol carved so long ago that only a shadow remained. Immanuel didn’t know why he wanted it or what he meant, yet it seemed right to move from stone to stone, repeating the process until he confirmed each stone had once had meaning. Miss Larkin had called it a sacred place, and in this bubble in time, he could understand why.
At a Sunday dinner, the Earl of Dorset had told him about great stone monuments scattered across the British Isles and around the world that followed the path of the sun or heavenly bodies, aligning at the proper moment to create a beam of light that would have dazzled the ancients. In the lush glen, Immanuel couldn’t imagine the crooked stones aligning with— Clicking open the vivalabe, Immanuel tapped the invisible button again until the plane of balls disappeared. He had only seen the vivalabe used to align magic once, when Lady Rose had ripped it from his grasp and oriented her sigil against the device’s readings. At the time, he had been too busy trying to stay alive and stop her ritual to pay attention to how she had achieved the alignment.
Stepping into the center of the stone circle, the symbols ringing the edge of the vivalabe appeared to sharpen. As he stared at them, ink darkened one symbol after another, jumping across the dial without warning. It was trying to tell him something he couldn’t understand. Turning toward the sun, the symbols changed faster until suddenly they stopped. A gentle breeze blew across Immanuel’s cheek and into his golden hair. He moved to step out of the circle, but instead of walking across the grass, Immanuel stepped through it. He looked down and did a double take. His foot was through the ground, swallowed up by grass and dirt, yet he wasn’t falling. It was as if his feet rested on something he couldn’t see just below the surface.
Immanuel’s heart quickened. He couldn’t see anything below his calf. Standing still, he waited for the initial shock to wear off. Easily lifting his foot, it reappeared through the grass without disturbing a single blade. It was an illusion. Feeling ahead with his toes, he found the edge where the step dropped off. Cautiously, he walked down until he had descended up to his neck. Below the surface, his hands shook. The air was colder and damper than that surrounding the standing stones, but at least it was air. Taking a deep breath, Immanuel plunged beneath the surface.
“No wonder she didn’t want me here,” Immanuel whispered in awe as he reached the final step.
Light streamed down through the veil. From the bottom of the step, Immanuel marveled at the standing stones surrounded by millions of roots stretching into the cavern along with the canopy blooming above them. Immanuel crept ahead, his eyes sweeping over the carved and pigmented murals lining the walls. Sand littered every crevice, catching the light to give the twisted dragons a twinkle in their eyes and the lolling tongues of beasts a phantom sheen. The patterns tangled overhead into a never ending briar of stone. At regular intervals, sconces of oil flickered. Following the hall of beasts past empty passages and rooms hidden by shade, Immanuel could smell the remnants of a cooking fire over the scent of fish and herbs. There was no fear of discovery, no race in his blood with the sense that someone would appear at any moment. If it hadn’t been f
or fires blazing to light his way, he would have thought the hall had been abandoned long ago. Holding his breath, Immanuel listened for any sign of life and was met with the rhythmic pulse of the ocean rumbling faintly through the cavern. Sand crunched beneath the soles of Immanuel’s shoes as he took a hesitant step toward the sound. As his footfalls reverberated off the stone walls, Immanuel wondered if some vagrant practioner had converted an ancient barrow into a home.
None of the walls appeared to have writing or symbols, but each carving had been carefully incised to link into intricate murals of life beyond the labyrinth. Some reminded him of wallpaper with twisting vines and knots repeating across the expanse of the wall while others depicted underwater scenes laden with fish and submerged flora of every conformation. Gently running his fingers over the tentacles of two braided squid, Immanuel marveled at how shells had been crushed and set into mortar to create a mural of fantastical beauty. He clenched his weakened eye shut and stared closely at a bright orange shell that formed one of the kraken’s suckers. It wasn’t a species native to the British Isles. It was too bright to be. During their holiday in Dorset, he and Adam had gone fossil and shell hunting near the tidal pools, and while their quest had uncovered several pretty cockles and an iridescent conch, none were this vibrant. Somehow this one had made its way from the tropics to the grotto. Stepping back, Immanuel’s eyes widened as he tried to count how many shells didn’t belong. With every surface coated in broken shells, there had to be thousands. But why? Why had anyone taken the time to gather foreign shells when they easily could have used glass or tiles or simply paint murals as they had the others? Why go through all this trouble?
Careful to muffle the sound of his footsteps in to the cavern, Immanuel approached the threshold of the nearest room. The moment he reached the darkened entrance, his foot sank a hair into the stone below. Immanuel stumbled back, fearing he had triggered some long hidden trap. A hiss leaked out in the shadows only to be replaced with blazing light so bright it sent tears to his damaged eye. Four saucers of flaming oil ringed the expansive space, amplified by the mirrored glass sunk into every surface. The walls glowed with old Venetian mirrors broken into minute pieces beside shards of sea glass in every color, transforming the room into an otherworldly Versailles. In the center of the room stood a slab of solid white marble atop a dais served as an altar.
Selkie Cove (The Ingenious Mechanical Devices Book 5) Page 17