Journey's End

by Rachel Hawkins

  Still, she followed Bel out of the cave and back onto the beach. Not only had the rain stopped, but the sun had broken through the clouds, turning the ocean a shimmery blue-green that seemed better suited to the Bahamas than northern Scotland. It was pretty, though, and for a moment, Nolie tipped her head back, sucking in a deep breath of clean, salty air. Out here, it was easier to pretend they’d just imagined that boy. Things like that didn’t really happen, did they?

  When she turned to look at Bel, her friend was pale, her expression troubled.

  “You aren’t going to tell your da about this, are you?” Bel asked, and since Nolie hadn’t expected that question, it took her a second to reply.

  “Are you?” Bel repeated.

  Nolie shook her head, confused. “No, I won’t. What could I even say?”

  Bel tugged the sleeves of her rain slicker over her hands. “I don’t know.”

  They stood there in silence for a second, but then Bel looked down the beach toward the harbor. “My dad and Jaime are back with the boat,” she said. “I’d better go see them.”

  Nolie wasn’t sure if Bel really wanted to see her family, or if she just wanted to be alone for a while, so she just nodded. “Okay, cool. See you tomorrow?”

  But Bel was already dashing down the beach, leaving Nolie to stare after her.

  • • •

  When Nolie got back to the Institute, her dad was downstairs in the big room that had probably been used for dining back when this was a regular house. He was sitting at a table, staring at a bunch of computer printouts, and made a little grunt of greeting when Nolie said hello.

  She thought about asking when they could go back to the house, but instead, she heaved herself up onto the table near the window, her feet kicking in the empty space. “Dad?”

  “Nol?” he said, without looking up from the papers in front of him.

  She glanced back out the window. It had turned out to be such a pretty evening after the grossness of the morning. The weather could change quickly like that in Scotland, Nolie was learning.

  It was weird, but on sunny days like this, the fog was creepier. On cloudy days, the fog seemed to blend into the sky and water, but with the bright blue sky and the water not looking nearly as hard, the fog stood out even more, and it seemed to roll and seethe like something alive.

  Shivering a little, Nolie turned her attention back to her dad. “Before the scientists came, what did the villagers think the fog was?”

  That made her dad look up, his eyes blue behind his glasses. “Oh, all kinds of things,” he said, putting his papers on the desk and giving her his full attention. “There are lots of different legends. Like maybe it was the edge of the world past that fog bank and you could just sail right off. Or that it was the blue men of the Minch.”

  Nolie wrinkled her nose. “Blue men of the Minch?”

  Laughing, her dad nodded. “All kinds of magic things in Scotland. The blue men are like . . . mermen, I guess is the closest thing? The Minch is the water between Scotland and the Hebrides islands, so the idea was that they’d lure sailors into the water and wreck their ships, that kind of thing. But there was nothing about fog in those legends, so it never caught hold. And of course there was stuff about witches and curses and ghosts and who knows what.” He laughed a little. “That’s nothing new, though. Go anywhere in Scotland, and you’ll find a dozen stories like that. There’s a castle south of here that they say the devil built, and supposedly the loch there has a mermaid.”

  He smiled and shook his head, but Nolie could tell that even if the scientist in him couldn’t believe those kinds of stories, he still liked them.

  She did, too, and now she had a pretty big reason to believe them.

  “Do you ever think that maybe the legends aren’t wrong?” Nolie asked, hopping off the table. The floor creaked under her feet as she moved closer to the window. This was her favorite spot in the whole house, and she imagined the people who used to live here loved it, too. Killer fog or not, it was a pretty view.

  Her dad chuckled again, and she heard the scratch of his pen as he moved back to his work. “Mermen and curses?” he asked. “It sure makes a better story, Nol, I’ll give you that. But I’m not really in the business of believing those kinds of things.”

  Nolie understood that, but she wanted to point out that life was way more fun when you believed in all kinds of things.

  She said that to her dad now, and he looked up at her again. He’d had a gray streak in his beard for years, but it seemed wider now, and there were deeper lines around his eyes when he smiled at her.

  “I agree, Nolie Mae,” he said. “But science is fun, too. And hey, years ago, science and magic were basically the same thing.”

  “But what if there were something magic that happened that science couldn’t explain?” she went on, still thinking of Albert in that cave. “Like, okay. Those people who have disappeared?”

  Her dad was watching her, his elbows resting on his knees, and he nodded, encouraging her to go on.

  “What if . . . what if one of them came back?”

  Her dad raised his eyebrows and tilted his head down a little, looking at her over the rims of his glasses. “Well, then we’d just say they hadn’t really been lost,” he started, and Nolie fought the urge to groan, frustrated.

  “No, that’s not what I meant. I mean . . . let’s say someone disappeared a hundred years ago, and then they came back, but looked the same as they did the day they left?”

  That was getting a little too close to the truth of it, but she was curious to hear what her dad would say.

  To her relief, he didn’t laugh, or wave her off, or say that was impossible. Instead, he mulled it over, fingers drumming on the arms of his chair as he leaned back.

  “If that happened,” he finally said, “there would be a lot of research to do. Tests to run. The anti-aging people would be all over it, of course, not to mention every magazine in the world. Every newspaper.”

  Nolie knew that, but still, the thought of Albert strapped into machines, people running tests on him, his face all over the internet . . .

  For the first time since she’d seen him walking on the beach, she really wished Bel had been right, and that it was only some kind of prank.

  Changing the subject, she asked, “So what do the people in the village think now?”

  “It’s hard to tell. I think they like the idea of it staying a mystery, because it helps their tourism industry. People want to come see something they don’t understand, and if we work out what it is, they might stop coming.”

  “Makes sense,” Nolie said. “Would people go see Loch Ness if they didn’t think there was a big monster in it?”

  Dad’s chair creaked as he leaned back. “Exactly. The people who’ve disappeared aren’t a mystery. Their boats sank. But that’s not as romantic as vanished without a trace into a strange fog.”

  Nolie turned away from the window. “None of that seems romantic to me.” She thought again about all those faces on the back wall of Bel’s parents’ shop. “It’s just sad.”

  Her dad nodded. “That it is. Which is why it would be nice to figure out what’s making the fog. If we got into it, saw what’s what, we might be able to recover some of the boats. Give closure to the families who’ve lost people.”

  Scooting his chair back up to the table, Dad tapped the papers in front of him with the end of his pen. “It would also be nice to know why it’s getting closer.”

  The words made Nolie blink, and for some reason, she immediately thought of Albert MacLeish, or the boy who claimed to be Albert MacLeish. Albert in the cave, and the little rowboat in the other, bigger cave.

  “Closer?” Nolie asked, coming to stand behind her dad as he flipped on the computer. “What do you mean?”

  Her dad rubbed a hand over the back of his neck. “That’s wh
at the data says,” he told her. “It’s nothing all that new—the Boundary fluctuates by a foot or so all the time, but now it’s two meters closer to shore, and that happened overnight. We’ve never registered a change that big before, or that fast.”

  It couldn’t be a coincidence, Albert showing up and the fog moving nearer to shore, could it?

  “What will you do?” she asked. “If it comes closer?”

  Her dad pushed away from his desk. “Well, not much we can do. It has to be an atmospheric disturbance of some kind, and if I had to guess, I’d say the fog will move back soon enough.”

  He got up then, walking toward the kitchen and the coffeepot, and Nolie trailed behind, fidgeting with the ends of her scarf. “You don’t think the fog could, like . . . eat the village, do you?”

  Pouring himself a cup of coffee, Dad glanced over his shoulder at Nolie. “The fog doesn’t eat people, kiddo. It’s a weather thing, not a monster. I promise.”

  Hearing him say it like that, so calmly, should’ve made her feel better, but instead, it just made Nolie feel worse. It was easy for Dad not to think something weird was happening when he didn’t know about the hundred-year-old boy who’d just turned up. “What about the lighthouse?” she asked.

  When her dad just raised his eyebrows at her, Nolie said, “Bel said there was an island out in the fog, and that it might have a lighthouse on it.”

  Her dad made a kind of humming sound, picking up his mug and taking a sip. “Well, you’ve been here all of a day, and already gotten more information out of the locals than we ever have. We found the lighthouse on our readings, but no one would ever confirm that it existed, or when it had been built. We sent one of the drones to take pictures of it just the other day.”

  Excited, he turned back to his computer and opened a file. A blurry black-and-white shot filled the monitor. “The drone didn’t come back,” he told her, “but it sent a couple of pictures before it crashed.”

  “Or got eaten,” Nolie corrected, but her dad just smiled, shaking his head.

  “The fog doesn’t eat things, Nol. But look, there’s the lighthouse.”

  He tapped the screen, and Nolie could just make out a tall tower with a white spot at its top. That had to be the light, but the picture was so blurry, it was hard to tell. Then her dad clicked another file, and there was the tower again, a dim gray blob, only this time, no white spot.

  She remembered what Bel had said on the beach that first day, about a ghost in the lighthouse. Of course, Bel had also said she wasn’t sure there even was a lighthouse out there, but here it was, in black and white on Dad’s computer.

  Nolie leaned closer to the screen. “Did the light go out?” she asked, and her dad squinted.

  “We’re not sure. Can’t even tell if that was a light, to be honest. The weather conditions made seeing anything pretty tough.”

  “But this happened just a couple of days ago?” Nolie asked, and her dad nodded.

  “Yup. Lot of interesting stuff happening at the Boundary right now.”

  “Yeah,” she muttered, still frowning at the blurry lighthouse. “I’ll say.”

  CHAPTER 10

  “YOU’RE SURE YOU WANT TO DO THIS?”

  Bel had asked Nolie that at least a dozen times already, it felt like, but looking at her friend’s pale face as she clutched the straps on her life jacket, it seemed like she should probably ask again. For a girl who seemed to like all kinds of scary things—ghosts, monsters, really bright wellies—Nolie was clearly a little more cautious when it came to boats.

  “’Course,” Nolie answered, her voice a lot braver than her face. “Can’t come to Journey’s End and not go out on the Bonny Bel, right?”

  “Shuddup,” Bel said, elbowing Nolie slightly. Before Bel was born, the boat had been called the Foghorn, a joke about the Boundary, but her dad had rechristened it after her. When she was littler, she’d liked that, having a boat named after her. Lately, though, it seemed more embarrassing than anything else.

  But Nolie smiled, looking relaxed for the first time since she’d set foot on the boat. “It’s so awesome to have a boat named after you!” she insisted. “If the SS Nolie Mae were a thing, I’d tell everyone.”

  “Of course you would,” Bel said. She’d only known Nolie for a few days, but she was beginning to understand a lot about how her new friend worked. Nolie had a personality to match all that bright red hair: loud, fun, and definitely a standout.

  Even when she was clearly scared.

  The boat ride hadn’t been their original plan for the day. Nolie had walked down to the shop that morning, and they’d both wanted to search the beach for Al. However, other than the boat—the Selkie—there was no sign of him. Not even footprints in the wet sand. And after about an hour of calling for him and searching the cave, they’d come back up to the harbor just in time to see the Bonny Bel getting ready for its noon trip. Bel had suggested the ride, thinking Nolie might like to see the Boundary, and also pointing out that they might get a better, wider look at the beach from out on the sea.

  Nolie had agreed easily enough, but it had been clear from the second they’d set foot on board that this was not Nolie’s idea of fun.

  The boat rumbled away from the dock, and Nolie dropped her hands to clutch the railing.

  “You promise no one’s died on this boat, right?” she asked Bel, but before Bel could reply, her brother Jaime appeared at her side, his dark blond hair wind-ruffled, his cheeks red. He’d put a slicker on over his long-sleeved T-shirt, and he was wearing a pair of hiking boots even though their dad always wanted him to wear wellies. Jaime had always liked to rebel in little ways.

  “Not a single dead body on this boat in years,” he promised Nolie, then winked. “Well, none we tell the tourists about.”

  “Jaime,” Bel chided, punching her older brother in the arm as Nolie seemed to turn as gray as the sky.

  “Teasing,” he promised, and then he ruffled Bel’s hair like he always did. “So this is Nolie,” he said, turning back to smile at her. “Yer da’s one of the scientists at the Institute, yeah?”

  Nolie nodded, swallowing hard, and Jaime glanced at Bel, eyebrows raised. “You ever been on a boat, Nolie?” he asked, and she shook her head so fast her red hair flew around her face in a blur.

  “Nope. I’ve never been a boat person, I guess. I have a motion sickness thing?” She said it like a question, but there was no doubt she was going from gray to green now. So maybe it was less that Nolie was scared, and more that she was afraid of throwing up. That made sense.

  “Ah, no worries, lass,” Jaime told her, patting her shoulders. “This ride is as gentle as they come.”

  Bel knew for a fact that wasn’t true, but when Nolie’s grip on the rail eased, she was grateful Jaime had said it.

  “You gonna come up top for the show, or stay down here?” he asked them.

  Bel took one look at Nolie’s face and knew there was no way she was getting her up the winding metal stairs that led to the top deck. There were rows of benches up there where people could sit and take pictures of the Boundary. Bel’s dad and Jaime took turns either driving the boat or working the microphone, giving the tourists all the facts on it: There were records of it for the past five hundred years, but no mention before that; there were over forty known disappearances in the fog; in 1933, scientists from America had come to study it; and now no boats were allowed any closer than the Bonny Bel would be getting.

  It was a routine Bel had heard hundreds of times, one she could do in her sleep. One, she thought, that she might have to do one day. Simon had done the lecture before he went to uni, and if Jaime decided to go next year, there’d be no one but her until Jack got a lot older.

  “We’ll stay down here,” she told Jaime, and he nodded before heading for the stairs, his boots clanging against the metal.

  “So will you give me t
he tour?” Nolie asked, interested.

  Leaning on the rail, Bel peered out at the Boundary as the boat chugged closer. “You probably know most everything he’ll say,” she told Nolie, jerking her chin up to where they could already hear Jaime greeting people over the mic.

  “Then tell me the parts you don’t tell the tourists,” Nolie said.

  Bel paused to think about it. “They never mention the wee island that’s in the fog. Or the legend that there’s a lighthouse on it.”

  Nolie flexed her hands on the rail. Her knuckles were bright red, and Bel could’ve kicked herself for forgetting to bring gloves. “There is a lighthouse,” she said. “I saw it.”

  Bel flinched. “What?”

  “My dad said they sent a drone into the Boundary last week,” Nolie suddenly said, the words coming out in a rush. “It took pictures, and you could see the lighthouse in a few of them. In some it was lit and in others it wasn’t. Like it had gone out.”

  Bel twisted her ring. Maybe that was why Mum had been so against the drones? Because it would mess with the lighthouse?

  Had her mum even known the lighthouse existed? If she had, she’d certainly never told Bel. “Do they think they’re the ones who put out the light?” Bel asked.

  “They have to be, right? It’s the only thing that makes sense. Which means . . . Bel, do you think Albert coming back is because my dad accidentally put out the light?”

  Bel could only shake her head, trying to get her thoughts in order. The Institute sent drones. The light went out. Suddenly, a boy who should’ve been dead a hundred years ago was back. All of it had to be connected, but what did it even mean? Suddenly she wished they’d spent more time looking for Al that morning, even if he’d been hiding from them.

  Nolie was watching her, shivering a little from the wind and the spray kicked up by the Bonny Bel. They were getting closer to the Boundary now, the wall of fog rising up from the water, and even though Bel had been seeing it her whole life, had made this same boat trip more times than she could count, it still made her heart seem to rise up in her chest, and she could feel the hair on the back of her neck stand up.