by Lauren Wolk
The first cottage was just as Mr. Sloan had said. Empty. No furniture. No curtains in the windows. Even the stove was gone, nothing left but a hole in the ceiling where the pipe had been.
Worse, someone had pulled up the floorboards so nothing remained except the frame.
I imagined that they’d gone to feed the big fires that had burned outside the hospital. For roasting geese, I had supposed.
Beneath where the floor had been, the dirt was all dug up.
More holes.
I closed the door behind me and headed for next cottage.
Like the first, this one had no furniture or floor at all. And, as before, the ground was all holes and mounds of loose dirt.
I wondered what he had been digging for.
And whether he had found it.
This time, I carefully stepped between the holes and made my way around the cottage, looking for whatever wanted to be found.
If I hadn’t, I wouldn’t have seen what was carved on the wall in one corner, just level with my eyes.
Another lamb.
Beside it, someone had carved something else.
A feather.
I remembered the ruined letter that had been stuck to my tiny chest. Its “lambs.” Its “little feather.”
I heard Osh calling me in the distance.
I ran my fingers over the lamb. It was no bigger than my open hand. And the feather, no bigger than my finger.
“Coming!” I yelled back.
I left the cottage and took off at a run, down the lane and straight to where the others waited for me, all of us eager to be going now.
I did not know what I was leaving behind, still undiscovered.
Or what else was waiting, across the water, on the mainland.
Chapter 17
On the crossing from Penikese, Mr. Sloan huddled in the stern, shivering and ducking at the mere suggestion of spray coming over the bow, and I felt guilty at the pleasure of a warm June afternoon while he suffered.
“Miss Maggie makes the best soup in the world,” I said. “She’ll fix you up in no time.”
When I said the word soup, Mr. Sloan finally smiled. “I would be obliged,” he said, “for even an old ear of corn. Soup would be heaven.”
Miss Maggie gave him a wry look. “Far from that,” she said, “but it should help put you right.”
“Here,” Osh said, pulling a twist of oil cloth from his pocket. Inside was a stash of jerky he carried, just in case.
Mr. Sloan unwrapped it and immediately tore off a bite, chewing hard, and closed his eyes, holding the jerky in both hands near his mouth, like a squirrel with the last of the winter nuts.
When we reached Cuttyhunk, I ran ahead to fetch Cinders so Mr. Sloan wouldn’t have to walk, while Miss Maggie went to the post office where Mr. Johnson kept the telegraph machine. We all knew that he’d send for the police in Falmouth and then, with his next breath, begin to spread the news that Mr. Sloan had been held captive in the leprosarium by a mysterious southerner.
The islanders were used to calamity. When a hurricane blew through, as one had just a year before—tearing off roofs and casting boats up on the shore—everyone suffered at least a little. And when a ship wrecked in the Graveyard, people sometimes died—mariners or lifesavers or both—and everyone on the Elizabeths felt the stab of such disaster.
This was different.
When word got out about Mr. Sloan, excitement would spread like heat lightning across the islands.
There would be talk of nothing else.
“What was he digging for?” I asked Mr. Sloan as we all sat at Miss Maggie’s table, eating soup and bread. There wasn’t much in the garden yet beyond spring onions and baby kale, but she still had some potatoes and carrots in the root cellar, and cooking had brought them back to life. So had butter. And I believe that Mr. Sloan would have eaten an old shoe if she’d served it to him hot.
He sounded a little like Mouse while he ate, purring and blinking as he bent low over the steam rising from his bowl.
“Let the poor man eat,” Miss Maggie said. “You can ask him questions later.”
But Mr. Sloan shook his head. “No, please, it’s quite all right. I’m happy to tell you what I know.”
He sat up straight. “What was he digging for?” he repeated thoughtfully. “I didn’t know that he was digging. I saw him only when he came to leave food every morning and take away my . . . chamber pot.” He turned pink and looked away from Miss Maggie. “I’m sorry, ma’am.”
“Nothing to be sorry about,” she said with a frown.
“He dug holes all over the island and even in the cottages,” I said.
Which seemed to surprise Mr. Sloan, but then he nodded and said, “Which must be why he stayed on Penikese for so long. He was digging up the island. But what for?”
“Treasure, maybe?” I said.
Which drew something like a laugh from Mr. Sloan. “What treasure? Lots of geese on Penikese but none of them laying golden eggs.”
“So you can’t say if he found anything before he left?”
Mr. Sloan shook his head. “All I can tell you is that he was cruel. And more than cruel, for leaving me to die when he might have set me free before he sailed off in my boat. I couldn’t have chased him. And he busted up my radio so I couldn’t call for help. No one would have come to Penikese for days, maybe weeks. He could have gotten clean away.” He swallowed hard and I was afraid he might start to cry again.
“That’s enough now,” Miss Maggie said.
But Mr. Sloan held up his hand and said, “Oh, I’m all right. A little talk won’t do me any harm.”
He nodded to me and spooned up some more soup.
“You don’t know anything more about him?” I asked.
He paused, looking back. “I can tell you what he asked me,” he said. “When we first landed on Penikese, he pulled me ashore and to the top of the bluff there by the pier and said, ‘Where did she live?’”
“Where did who live?” I asked.
“That’s exactly what I said! Those very words. And he replied, ‘The leper,’ as if there were only one. As if I knew anything at all about those people.” He raised his eyebrows and shook his head. “It was long after they left before I went over to live.”
“And then what happened?” I asked.
“I told him I didn’t know a thing about the lepers except where they’d lived and died. I showed him both places. The hospital and the cottages. The graveyard. And then he looked around and back at me and said, ‘What about the nurse?’”
Mr. Sloan shook his head again. “I think he was a bit daft. Or he just didn’t understand that I hadn’t been there when the others were. I told him that. I told him again that I didn’t know anything about a nurse or the lepers or anything else about any other humans who had ever lived on Penikese. Period.”
Mr. Sloan ate the last of his soup and bread and leaned back with a sigh. “But that wasn’t good enough for him.”
At this point, Miss Maggie fetched some bandages and told Mr. Sloan to roll up his pant legs so she could have a look at his scrapes.
Osh and I grinned at each other as he tried to put her off and she bullied him into it. “If you insist,” he finally said, baring his knees.
I washed out my bowl and stood in the doorway waiting for Osh, but he tipped his chin at me and said, “Go on home. I’ll be staying here.”
Miss Maggie looked at him curiously.
“In the barn,” he said, turning his hat in his hands.
“I’ll be fine,” Miss Maggie said.
“Just the same,” Osh said.
Mr. Sloan closed his eyes and began, very softly, to snore.
“Help me get him to bed and I can promise you he’ll sleep till morning,” she whispered.
“Just the same,”
Osh said again. “I’ll be nearby if you need anything.”
He came to stand with me. “Will you be all right by yourself?”
To be honest, I didn’t much like the idea of being alone like that and I nearly said so. But I did like how Osh wanted to look after Miss Maggie. And I did like how he knew I could look after myself.
“I’ll be fine,” I said. I touched his sleeve. “Will you come home in the morning or will I come to you?”
He put his hand on my head. “I’ll be home at first light,” he said.
I had never said such a good-bye to Osh, but I said it now and went out through the door without him.
It was odd to spend the night alone on our island. Mouse tried to take Osh’s place by saying very little and sitting quietly among his painting things.
I lit a lantern when it got dark and carried it with me wherever I went, which wasn’t very far in such a small place. My bed was in one corner, Osh’s in another. The rest of the space was for cooking and sitting, a table and an easel.
Our washtub, where we occasionally did a proper laundry, followed by a proper bath, was outside. So was our fishing gear. And everything else.
I sat by the cold fireplace and considered reading a book, but I’d read everything I had. I thought about practicing my sums, but that seemed a poor way to spend this unusual solitude.
What, I wondered, was done best alone? That, I decided, was what I should do.
But there was nothing I could do that was not better with Osh there.
And so I started to think.
Not about anything in particular.
I didn’t try to solve a problem. Or chase an idea. Or invent a notion.
I just let my mind drift. And I let my body follow it. First, in the chair by the fireplace. Then at the window, looking at the sea. Then out through the door and onto the beach, to lie in the cool sand, my head pillowed on my laced hands.
Mouse followed me, though not in a straight line, and then sat next to my head and licked her paws until something scuttled through the grasses nearby, and she gave chase.
The stars were enormous. They pulsed as if they were breathing.
I heard something splash offshore. A bass, perhaps. Or a diving bird.
A huge sand flea, heavy as a pebble, jumped first onto my chest and then onto my cheek, and I lurched upward, batting it away before it could bite me.
I rubbed the spot where it had landed.
Beneath my fingers, my skin was soft and cool. Smooth. Even the little birthmark on my cheek.
The little feather.
The little feather I’d always had.
Even before I’d drifted to this shore.
Chapter 18
I stood up, very still in the darkness. The sea was louder than it had been a moment before. The stars bigger.
I went carefully back inside the cottage, retrieved the lantern, set it carefully on my small table next to my bed.
The cinnamon box was on my windowsill.
I opened it slowly. Took out the letter. Unfolded it. Held it in the lantern light and read again:
if I could
for now
hope you
bright sea
better off
lambs
little feather
I left something
day it might help
I remembered the carvings on the wall of the cottage on Penikese. A small lamb. Alongside it, a little feather.
I put the letter back in the box. Carried the lantern to our one small mirror. Turned my face. Examined the mark on my cheek.
A little feather.
Dr. Eastman had written that there was no third baby. Just one sent to New Bedford. One buried.
But the letter in my hand, as ruined as it was, told me a different story.
I read it again. And again.
Then I took its mysteries to bed with me. And found them waiting in the morning, right where I’d left them.
I was up and washed and dressed and out the door before daylight was more than a pale idea.
I met Osh beyond the bass stands, coming home.
He stopped at the sight of me.
“Miss me, did you?” he said, almost smiling.
I nodded. It was true. I had.
But that was not all.
“I think I know who my real parents are,” I said.
And the almost smile was gone, as if it had never been.
He walked past me, past the bass stands, down over the bluff and across the sand bridge that was nearly dry for once, the tide dead low.
“You’d best be along to Miss Maggie’s,” he said brusquely as I hurried to keep up with him. “The police will be there soon. You and Mr. Sloan can tell your tales together.”
Outside the house, he stopped only to grab a bait net and a pail before heading for the tidal pools at the base of the rocks where minnows and sand eels often found themselves stranded.
He began to scoop them up and into the pail. They flashed silver in the early light.
“Osh,” I said. “What’s the matter?”
But he didn’t answer me.
“Are you angry?” Though I couldn’t see why he would be.
He looked at me and away again.
“I’m not angry,” he said. “Do what you have to do.”
“I will,” I replied. “Like you said I should. You said I should pay attention to things. Remember?”
“I do,” he said.
“Then why are you upset with me?”
He looked at me, full on, and I could see how sad he was.
“Am I not real?” he said.
I didn’t understand what he was saying until I realized what I myself had said.
“Osh, you are the most real thing in the world.”
“But I’m not your father,” he said.
“Of course you are,” I said. “But you’re not my only father. And you’re not my mother.”
“I know that,” he said.
But he turned back to his work until I said, “The letter you gave me. It said little feather. And there was a carving in one of the cottages on Penikese,” I said, grabbing at his arm. “Osh, stop.”
Which he finally did, with a sigh.
He turned the net inside out, dumping three sand eels into the pail and then sluicing in some water so they could breathe. He set it aside and sat down on a nearby rock. I sat next to him. The rock was cold and a little wet and not at all comfortable.
“I found a carving of a lamb in the cottage, like the one on the grave marker but smaller,” I said. “And next to it a carving of a little feather.”
Osh looked at me intently. “Like the one on your cheek?” he said.
I nodded.
“You think that means something.”
I nodded again, more slowly. “I do,” I said.
Osh moved his pail into a bigger wedge of shadow so the fish would stay cool.
“I suppose it might,” he said.
“Two lambs. Two feathers, one of them right here.” I touched my cheek. “Patients came from all over the world to Penikese. From islands off Africa. Off South America. Where people have skin more like mine than yours. And one of them was a mother who lost one child to the mainland, to an orphanage, where he had nobody at all.”
I felt as if I would cry, but I tried hard not to. “If you were that little baby’s father, would you be able to send another one off to live all by herself, same as the first?”
Osh shook his head. “I would not,” he said. “No matter who was willing to take her.”
I took his hand in mine.
“I think this little feather on my cheek means something. I think it means the second baby didn’t die. I think it means they sent that baby to sea in an old ski
ff and didn’t tell anybody. I think it means that the grave with the lamb marker is an empty grave.”
He looked down and away.
I thought about the graveyard on Penikese.
“If I’m right, then my parents are dead,” I said. “The lepers who are buried out there. Susanna and . . .”
“Elvan.” He looked sad now in a different way. He laid his open hand on my cheek. “I’m so sorry if that’s true,” he said.
“It’s all right,” I said. “You had nothing to do with anything except saving me.”
Osh looked at me curiously. “You wanted to prove that you weren’t from Penikese,” he said, “but now you seem almost glad to think that you are, Crow.”
“I know,” I said. “I am. But that doesn’t make any sense. Why would I want that? To have parents who died from a terrible disease? To have parents who had sent me out to sea in a leaky skiff? When I was just a new baby?”
Osh smiled at me, but it was a sad smile. “They had the best of all possible reasons for doing that,” he said. “For trusting the sea to take you safely away and deliver you safely to a different shore.”
“What reason?”
“They loved you, Crow. They didn’t want you to become ill, like they were. And you said it yourself: They knew how lonely Jason was in that orphanage and they wanted something better for you.”
He wasn’t smiling anymore when he said, “I wonder what he’ll do when he finds out he has a sister.”
Chapter 19
I helped Osh catch bait for a while and then ate some porridge with him, a little honey on top, before I went out to tend the garden, so consumed with my thoughts that the chore was done and over with before I knew it.
I poked my head in the door and said, “I’m going to Miss Maggie’s before I dig clams. Do you want to come along?”
“I do,” he replied, “but not until after the police have left. I’ll fish for a while. You go on. But here,” he said. “Give them this.” He handed me a piece of paper rolled into a tube and tied with a bit of string.
“What is it?” I asked.
“That man,” he said. “Don’t get it wet.”