Beyond the Bright Sea

by Lauren Wolk

  I couldn’t climb up and throw him the treasure, leaving him on the ground with Osh and Miss Maggie. Once he had what he had come for, he might decide to leave no one behind to sound the alarm.

  I climbed a little higher and then stopped on a branch that reached out to one side, nothing beneath it but open air.

  “I’m afraid,” I said, clinging to the trunk as it trembled in the wind.

  “Go on!” he yelled. “Or I’ll give you a better reason to be afraid.”

  But I stayed where I was, whimpering and cringing, while he paced and growled below me, jumping up to snatch at my ankles, but falling short.

  “I can’t,” I cried. “I can’t!”

  With a final growl of frustration, he dragged the table close and climbed up into the lowest branches.

  I waited as he climbed closer.

  And closer.

  And I jumped.

  I hit the ground and rolled straight onto my feet running, running, across the yard and into the house, slamming the door and shooting the bolt as he lumbered after me, bellowing, and threw himself against the door, pounding on it, raging.

  And then, suddenly, nothing.

  I ran to a window and looked out to see him charging back to the tree and up onto the table, back into the branches as fast as he could.

  I had been pretending in the tree. Shaking and whimpering to bring him up with me. But now I began to tremble with real fear, shaking all over as I went to find Osh and Miss Maggie.

  I found them in her bedroom, rolled up tightly in wet bedsheets, like mummies.

  When I pulled their gags, they both shouted questions but I paid no attention, unrolling them from the wet sheets and unbinding their wrists and ankles. He had used picture wire torn from the backs of the paintings Osh had given Miss Maggie, and their wrists were bleeding.

  Once I’d set them free, I fell back panting and crying on the floor, both of them holding me and each other, too.

  “Where is he?” Osh said.

  When I told them what I’d done, Miss Maggie tightened her grip. “That was very foolish,” she said. “And very smart.”

  “I thought he had hurt you,” I said, my tears like sea-memories on my cheeks. “I thought he would kill you if I went up the tree and threw down the treasure. And me, too.”

  Osh said, “You did the right thing,” and we ran to the window looking out on the yard and the hornbeam tree.

  Morning was nearly upon us, the rain little more than a blowing mist, and at first nothing seemed amiss.

  But then, as we watched, the big tree began to shake.

  I heard a roar threaded through with scream.

  And Mr. Kendall came tumbling out of the tree, a large limb falling with him, hitting the ground first, then the big man himself. I swear I felt the impact, though I’m sure it was just the idea of the fall that shook me.

  He lay under the tree, unmoving.

  “Stay here,” Osh said as he unlocked the door, but Miss Maggie and I followed him out into the yard.

  “Run and fetch some rope from the barn,” Miss Maggie yelled as she ran.

  And off I went as fast as I could.

  When I dashed into the barn, the sheep scattered in all directions like corn popping.

  “It’s just me,” I said. “It’s just me.” But they bleated and wailed as I grabbed a coil of rope and ran for the door and across the windy yard to where Mr. Kendall lay on his belly beneath the hornbeam tree.

  He looked as mean as ever.

  “He’s not dead, is he?” I said.

  “No,” Miss Maggie said.

  Osh took the rope and made a lasso out of it. “Come help me,” he said, and Miss Maggie held one side of the loop, Osh the other, so they could more quickly slip it around Mr. Kendall’s ankles and pull it tight.

  He huffed, but he didn’t wake.

  Osh pulled the rope taut and wound it next around one wrist and then, fast as he could, the other, cinching the two together, the rope surely burning and pinching as he worked.

  And Mr. Kendall opened his eyes.

  When he tried to move, he found his legs bent up behind him. When he tried to stretch them out, they yanked on his wrists. He made a terrible sound. Like someone was pulling his teeth out. And we all flinched when he began to bellow, but the rope held firm.

  “He’s too big for us to pull,” Miss Maggie said to me. “We need Clover.”

  Who was sleeping in his stall, the wind, for him, a lullaby.

  When we pulled open the Dutch door, he startled and swung his big head around to find out who was up so early.

  But he didn’t make any fuss at all when Miss Maggie heaved a saddle onto his back and cinched it tight.

  “Good boy,” Miss Maggie said again and again as she led him out of the barn and into the wind. “Good, good boy.”

  And he was a good boy until we came up close to Mr. Kendall, who was still bellowing so loudly that Clover dug in his heels and threw back his head.

  “There now, boy,” I said, patting his cheek. “There now.”

  “Can I have your kerchief?” Osh asked Miss Maggie.

  She gave it to him, and he gagged Mr. Kendall the way Mr. Kendall had gagged them.

  And then we three stood and stared down at our giant catch and at one another. I don’t know what I looked like, but the two of them were a mess.

  “I’m going back to be with the sailor,” I said, handing Clover’s reins to Miss Maggie.

  “And I’m going to tell Mr. Johnson to send for the police,” she said.

  At the word police, Mr. Kendall thrashed harder and screamed wordlessly into the gag.

  “They won’t be able to cross for a while. Until then, we’ll put him with the sheep,” Osh said as he tied the end of the rope around the pommel of Clover’s saddle.

  But first I waved them a little away and said, “He’ll talk about this. He’ll tell them about the treasure, won’t he?”

  “Let him. He’s a madman. Treasure in a hornbeam tree? They’ll laugh. And if they come looking, they won’t find a thing.”

  He was right. “I’ll get it down,” I said.

  “Oh, be careful, Crow,” Miss Maggie said, her eyes full of worry.

  “I’ll be all right,” I said. “The tree won’t even feel me.”

  I climbed onto the table and then up into the lowest branches and then higher, hanging on hard.

  The tree still swayed a bit in the last of the big wind, and I felt the fear I’d pretended earlier. But up I went, branch after branch, until I reached the bundle of gold and jewels still tied tightly to the tree trunk, all of it hidden by the crow’s nest that had held fledgling birds not so long before.

  The knots in the wet and swollen rope were loose, and I figured that Mr. Kendall had already struggled with them while the branch he stood on sagged further and further toward breaking. In no time at all I had worked the knots apart and pulled the bundle free, looping the rope into a handle, but ready, if I needed both hands, to drop the treasure to the ground.

  Before I descended, I looked out across the yard and saw Osh helping Clover drag Mr. Kendall through the mud toward the barn where the sheep and the pigs and the cows in their stalls, and the rock doves in the rafters, would keep an eye on him until the police arrived.

  Miss Maggie, walking backward, waved at me nervously and then tucked her hands beneath her chin. “Be careful, Crow!” she called.

  Then down I went, never moving my feet until I had a branch tightly in my grip, down and down and finally onto the tabletop and then the ground, the bundle heavy, my legs weak, shaking a little, as I wondered what to do with it now.

  Chapter 38

  Getting back home to the sailor was more important than hiding the treasure again, so I said good-bye to Miss Maggie and set off down the path, my wet and dirty
nightshirt flapping against my legs, my feet bruised and battered, but my hopes high.

  Surely the police would be along soon to take Mr. Kendall away once and for all.

  Surely the sailor would be awake before the day was done.

  I longed for Mouse in my arms, sleep, Miss Maggie’s soup, and an hour with no fear in it as I struggled to drag myself and my cargo across the channel and up the beach to our cottage.

  The house waiting on the other side was no longer tumbled and tossed, and I myself felt more solid, too, despite the exhaustion that threatened to put me down as soon as I was inside, the door shut, everything peaceful, finally.

  The sailor was as I had left him, neither sleeping nor awake. Just still.

  Mouse told me that she wanted to roam, now that the storm had moved off to the north, so I let her out and shut the door again.

  And felt immediately alone.

  It was odd, and sad, but I felt more alone with that sailor lying there than in all the time I’d been waiting for him.

  If only he would open his eyes.

  I knew if I sat down I would fall asleep, so I went outside, behind the cottage, and stripped off my nightshirt.

  The cistern was overflowing with all the rain we’d had, so I spent two pitchers of it on my salty, sandy, weary body.

  The water was cold and clean and wonderful, and I felt much better as I stood in the warm wind and thought about the treasure I’d rescued from the hornbeam tree.

  In the end, I decided that the cistern would make a good hiding place, at least for a while. At least until I came up with something better. Or gave it away.

  I imagined Nurse Evelyn and Dr. Eastman, opening the heavy package I might send, reading the letter inside.

  And Jason at the helm of his own ship, a crow on its pennant.

  Or, better yet, both. And more, besides.

  Once again, and hopefully for the last time that day, I dried myself off and put on some clean clothes, amazed by the power of such a small accomplishment to restore my good mood.

  Then I took the bundle out to the cistern, climbed up the ladder fixed to one side, tipped back the lid, and slipped the treasure into the water. It would be easy to see, resting on the bottom of the tank, but only if someone came looking for it.

  The sailor was awake when I went back into the house.

  He didn’t make a sound, but his eyes were open and on me as I crossed the room. They blinked slowly, twice, and then closed again.

  I touched his cheek, but he didn’t wake again.

  He would, though. I knew he would, properly, and soon.

  I imagined the look in his eyes. The sound of his waking voice, perhaps a caw as hoarse as mine had been when I’d washed up on this very shore. The smile when he discovered that I was his sister, and he my brother. How happy he would be to have found me, though I had been the one searching.

  Osh came through the door soon after.

  I’d never seen him so battered.

  “Gone,” he said. “This time in handcuffs, leg irons, and a hood.”

  I let out a long, shaky breath that I hadn’t known I’d been holding.

  “I’m all wet, Crow,” Osh said when I put my arms around him and laid my cheek against his chest.

  “I don’t care,” I said into his shirt.

  And I felt him sigh, too, as he wrapped me up in his arms and said, “Let’s try not to do any of this again. At least not today.”

  I stepped back, smiling. “Or tomorrow, either,” I said.

  The sailor woke again later that day. Perhaps the smell of Miss Maggie’s soup restored him to his senses. She had brought fresh bread, too, and a spice cake from the grocery.

  “Mr. Higgins delivered it himself when he heard about our night,” she said, unpacking things from her basket. “Everyone’s happy that Mr. Kendall is gone, hopefully for good. They were quite impressed that you helped catch him, Crow.”

  Which is when I heard the sailor waking. He tried to sit up.

  “Lie still,” Miss Maggie scolded, hurrying to the bed and gentling him back against the pillow. She laid her hand on his forehead. “Lie still.”

  He looked at her, his eyes slowly clearing, and at Osh who stood behind us, and then at me.

  “I saw you,” he said, his voice weak. “On the ferry, I saw you.”

  I wanted to tell him everything, all at once, but there was time. “Yes, that was me,” I said.

  His eyes were just like mine.

  “Am I on a boat?” he said, looking around at the collection of wreckage that Osh had turned into our home.

  “No,” I said. “You’re on an island. The little one off Cuttyhunk.”

  “Penikese?” he said, and my heart bloomed.

  “No, not Penikese,” I said. “What do you know about Penikese?”

  “I know to stay away,” he said. And closed his eyes again.

  Chapter 39

  He wasn’t my brother.

  I wanted him to be, but he wasn’t.

  “Your name isn’t Jason?” I said. I sounded like Mouse. Small.

  “Quincy,” he said, “after where I was born, but call me Quinn. Everyone else does.”

  But I was not anyone else. I had prayed and hoped and believed—really believed—that I was not just anyone else.

  I didn’t want to be, but I was.

  When the sailor closed his eyes again, I stood up from where I’d been kneeling next to his bed.

  And I went slowly out onto the beach.

  And I sat in the bow of our landed skiff and watched as plovers and pipers stenciled the sand with their quick feet, in search of bugs and baby crabs. As periwinkles etched the beach with their purple trails, and sea foam blew off the waves and tumbled across the beach as if longing for a dog to come out and play.

  Mouse came, instead, but she ignored the sea and its foam. Even the birds with their quick feet. Even the periwinkles. Everything but me.

  She climbed into my lap and tucked her sleek head under my chin, against my throat where she could hear my pulse and I could feel the small thunder in her chest.

  She understood me exactly, as we sat there.

  And so did Osh, who had come out to find me just sitting, my face glazed with tears.

  “You must think I’m awfully foolish,” I said, though my throat had a hard time managing both breath and talk. “You were right all along. He’s not Jason.”

  “You are the one who was right all along,” Osh said. He stood next to the skiff and put his open hand on my head. “Nothing wrong with what you wanted.”

  Mouse wiped my cheeks with her head and then washed her own face, purring all the while.

  I tried to smile at Osh, but I couldn’t quite manage that. “You said I should be satisfied with what I already had.”

  He nodded. “I did. And one of the things you already had was a brother. And you still do.”

  When the sailor named Quinn woke again, he found me, as before, near his bed, waiting to help him heal.

  “Why did you ask me about Penikese?” he said.

  “Because I thought that’s where you came from,” I said, straightening his blanket.

  “Penikese?” he frowned. “Nobody’s from Penikese.”

  “I am,” I said.

  And I was stunned when he drew back a little.

  But then he caught himself and looked me up and down, and said, “You don’t look sick.”

  “I’m not,” I said.

  “But you were born there? To lepers?”

  “I was born there,” I said. “To lepers.”

  And over the next two days, while I helped Miss Maggie nurse him back to health, I told Quinn some of my story, and why I’d thought he might be my brother.

  I did not tell him about finding the treasure.

 
That, I would save for Jason, if I ever found him.

  On the third day, when I knew him well enough, I showed Quinn the tattered letter that had been tucked inside my swaddling when I arrived in that leaky skiff, and told him more about how I had filled in the gaps, with Nurse Evelyn’s help.

  He studied the letter and the few legible words that remained.

  “Read it again,” he said, handing it back to me. He settled against the pillows and closed his eyes. “But all of it this time.”

  “I did read all of it,” I said.

  “Not just the words there,” he said, nodding at the paper in my hands. “The ones that used to be there, too.”

  I didn’t know how I was supposed to do that, but then I remembered what Osh had said about knowing things, and I looked at those words and imagined my mother writing them or saying them while Miss Evelyn wrote them down, and I thought about how to revive what might have been there before the sea got to it.

  Slowly, pausing often, I read, “I would keep you if I could, but I don’t have any choice except to let you go and hope that someone good-hearted will find you. This letter is all I can give you for now. This and a ring for your finger when you’re old enough. I hope you will think of me when you wear it. I’ve named you Morgan for a nurse here, Evelyn Morgan, the kindest woman I’ve ever known. It means bright sea, and that is how I’ll think of you when you’re gone and I’m here without you. I pray that you’ll be better off than your brother was in the orphanage where they took him after he was born. If you ever come to Penikese looking for signs of me and your father, I hope you’ll find the lambs, which we carved for you, and the little feather, too, to match the one on your face. I hope they lead you to where I left something that won’t save me or your father or any of us here. But I pray that one day it might help you and your brother, too.”

  I looked up, expecting Quinn to be puzzled at those last lines about something left behind, but he had fallen asleep as I was telling him that story, which was all right with me.

  I folded the letter up again and put it in the cinnamon box and took out the ring my mother had sent with it. It was still too big for my finger, but it would fit soon.