The Boy from the Sea

by H L Macfarlane

  But I didn’t want to be alone. The silence was deafening, like the still air outside. If I was by myself I would cry until I got a migraine and threw up and then I’d cry some more. I didn’t want that. I wanted to stay in control of myself.

  The doorbell rang.

  “What the fuck?” I murmured, tightening the blanket around myself and wondering if I could simply ignore it. But then I figured it was probably the police needing a second statement, so with some effort I got to my feet and dragged myself to the door.

  But when I opened it I discovered it wasn’t the police. Nor was it a neighbour checking that I was okay, or a misplaced pizza delivery, or any other person I could imagine calling on someone at eleven in the evening.

  It was Lir.

  Lir, dripping wet, barefoot, teeth chattering as he forced a smile on his face.

  “Can I come in?”

  Chapter Eleven

  I stared at Lir, mouth agape and silent, for far too long. My mind was blank. I couldn’t comprehend that he was standing right in front of me even though all evidence pointed to the fact he very much was. Eventually I asked what seemed to be the most pressing question, given the fact that he was dripping wet.

  “How did you get here?”

  “Well, it's o-only 1.2 miles across,” Lir replied, sounding nonchalant even though his voice was shaking. “It was pretty easy for me to –”

  “You swam here?”

  “How else w-would you explain why I'm dripping wet?”

  He had me there. Yet my brain wasn’t working; it was torn between the attack on Terry and Lir’s bizarre, impossible appearance in front of me. Truly, I didn’t know what to say or how to feel.

  When it became clear I wasn’t going to respond he elaborated on his presence at my front door. “I didn't like the way our conversation ended so abruptly,” he said, gazing at his feet. Then he lifted his head, bright, keen eyes locked on mine. “Something told me you felt the same. So can I come in?”

  It took me another moment of processing Lir’s soaking clothes and shaking shoulders before I sputtered, “Y-yes! Yes, come in. You must be bloody freezing. I'll turn the shower –”

  “Grace.” Lir reached out for my elbow beneath the blanket I was hiding in, brow furrowed in concern. I cringed at the touch of his frozen fingertips. “Are you alright?”

  There was no point in lying to him. My entire evening had been too unreal – too terrifying – for me to ignore. “No,” I admitted, “I'm not. But...I'm glad you're here.”

  I really was.

  I was just about to ask Lir to take off his shoes when I remembered he didn’t have any on. I didn’t have it in me to ask where they were. “Up here,” I said, indicating for Lir to follow me up the stairs to the bathroom. “There are some fresh towels on the radiator already; leave your clothes by the door and I’ll stick them in the wash.”

  With my blood-covered skirt.

  He gave me a careful smile. “You don’t have to do that.” And then: “What happened to you, Grace? You’re so pale. Did –”

  “Shower first,” I cut in, pointing towards the bathroom without looking at him. “I think I can find an old pair of my dad’s pyjamas for you to wear.”

  A pause. Then: “Thank you.”

  It was with the same numbness that had carried me through the evening since Terry’s attack that I searched my parents’ bedroom for some clothes for Lir. I didn’t even put the light on, though it would have helped my search immensely.

  Eventually I found a pair of Ferguson tartan pyjamas. They had a drawstring on the trousers so they’d at least fit Lir okay…even if the top half ran the risk of swamping him. My dad was in good shape but he was a giant of a man, after all. From observation I knew Lir was just under six foot tall.

  When I returned to the hallway I saw that Lir had found the wicker basket my mum used all my life to take the washing downstairs. It was waiting by the closed bathroom door, wet clothes neatly folded inside. For some reason this made me laugh a giddy, uncalled-for laugh that felt entirely inappropriate for my current mood.

  I picked up the basket and replaced it with the pyjamas, resting an ear against the door to listen for…I didn’t know what. I could hear the sound of rushing water and literally nothing else. What was I expecting? I wondered, heading downstairs towards the utility room. For Lir to be singing? Reciting his intentions for showing up at my door out loud? How did he even know where my parents’ house was, anyway?

  That last question finally seemed to spark my brain back to life, and I became far more aware of what I was actually doing. I picked out Lir’s top from the basket – it smelled of salt and dark water and cold air. I knew that was because of the sea but, for some reason, I figured his clothes would have smelled like that even without the night-time swim.

  After I turned on the washing machine I curled up on the couch, then paced the living room, then went into the kitchen to grab another champagne flute in case Lir wanted some prosecco. It occurred to me that he probably wanted something stronger – he’d been drinking whisky in the pub – but when I scoped out my dad’s study I saw he only had his ‘special occasion’ whisky on a glass shelf, which I absolutely didn’t dare touch.

  When I returned to the living room I found Lir relaxing on the couch, curly hair gently steaming from the shower. He was wearing the trousers part of my dad’s tartan pyjamas but not the top half. He’d rolled the cuffs up a couple times; clearly they were much too long on him.

  “What happened to the rest of the clothes I gave you?” I asked, perching myself down a respectable distance away and rearranging the blanket I was still huddled into. I should have changed whilst Lir was in the shower – now I was stuck in lingerie with nothing but the blanket to protect my modesty. God, I was an idiot.

  He huffed out a laugh. “It absolutely drowned me. Besides, it’s roasting in here. How can you even stand being under a wool blanket?”

  I didn’t reply, though my reddening cheeks answered Lir’s question without a need for words. His eyes lowered across my frame then back to my face, and he laughed harder than before.

  “You’re so weird, do you know that?” he said, leaning back against the couch without taking his eyes off mine. They were creased up in genuine amusement. “I don’t understand you at all.”

  “There’s not much to understand,” I replied, somewhat discomfited by his amusement. I pointed at the prosecco. “Do you want some?”

  Lir shook his head. “I had plenty to drink in the pub. Drowning my sorrows after you ran away and all. Max said David and I were the most pathetic pair he’d ever seen.”

  “I find that hard to imagine.”

  “You’re very honest tonight.”

  I stilled at the drastic change in conversation, then chose to pour myself a glass of prosecco in lieu of giving Lir my full attention. “What do you mean by that?”

  “I mean,” he said, sidling over on the couch a few inches in my direction, “that you’re not thinking of your responses before saying them. You normally over-think everything to death, don’t you?”

  Earlier, when we’d been drinking in the karaoke room, I’d been pleased that Lir understood my personality. But now I realised he knew far more about who I was as a person than almost everyone in my own damn family – and he’d done it all with barely a word spoken between us.

  “That’s…true,” I admitted. My hands were shaking, which meant my glass was shaking. “I guess I’m just not myself tonight.”

  “Grace.” Lir spoke my name the way he’d done earlier: a plea for me to answer his questions.

  “My neighbour was stabbed tonight. Repeatedly. I saw it all. I don’t even know if he’ll make it to morning.”

  There. I’d said it. Now the horror I’d witnessed earlier had spilled from my own mouth, which meant it had to be real and I had to face it. My hands shook so much I could no longer keep hold of my glass; gently Lir extricated it from my grip and placed it on the table.

  I co
uldn’t bear to look at him. I was so afraid I’d burst into tears.

  “We don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to,” he said, which was somehow precisely the right thing to say. I didn’t want to talk about it. I just didn’t want to have to face the rest of the night alone, either, knowing my life had been forever altered by what I’d seen.

  “Thank you,” I murmured, hanging my head for a long moment before throwing myself back against the couch. I let out a long sigh, then turned my head to give Lir the smallest of smiles. “Really, thank you. I was literally just thinking that I didn’t want to spend the night alone when you rang the doorbell. What was swimming in the dark like?”

  “Kind of scary, actually,” Lir said, slowly moving back into a relaxed posture when it became clear we were moving back into normal conversation. Well, as normal as swimming 1.2 miles across the sea at night just to talk to someone could be. “I’ve swam in the dark plenty of times before but always in lochs or secluded bays and stuff. This was a little different.”

  “You don’t have hypothermia, do you? The water must have been so cold.”

  “Nah, it might have been a foolish thing to do but I’m used to swimming outdoors, even in winter. I know what I’m doing.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “Something tells me you don’t usually go swimming in jeans.”

  “You would be right,” he laughed. “Well, regardless, it was worth it. I’m glad I could be here for you after what happened. And…” Lir shifted over until he was but a foot away from me. There was no doubting the seriousness of his gaze on mine. “I really, really wanted to see you. You left so quickly I couldn’t ask you something I’ve wanted to ask you for a while now.”

  For some reason this took me aback. I fumbled with my words trying to respond. “You – what did you want to ask?”

  Lir cocked his head to the side. “You do like me, don’t you? It isn’t just wishful thinking on my part?”

  There was a moment, then, when I honestly felt as if my heart had stopped and all the air had been stolen from my lungs. This was the moment for me to panic and run away, terrified by the notion of being honest with my feelings and being rejected in the process. But there was no point in denying my feelings or being coy and charming about them.

  Not now.

  “I’ve felt so foolish these past few weeks,” I admitted, running a hand through my hair when it fell over my face. “There wasn’t much about you on social media, and then, you know, I went total psycho and tried to ‘run’ into you in the library or the unions or at swimming practice. I’d like to say I’m not that much of an idiot around people when I like them as much as I like you, but it would be a lie. Well, half a lie. I think the last time I liked a guy as much as you was…possibly never. Ugh, I’m not good at this,” I complained, balling my hands into fists over my eyes so I didn’t have to look at Lir. ‘Mortified’ couldn’t even cover how I currently felt.

  I expected Lir to laugh in my face at such an overt confession of inexperience. Instead, he stretched out a long-limbed leg towards me and curled his foot around my ankle, turning me to face him directly. His hands wrapped around my wrists and pulled them away from my face.

  “Was my ‘I want to fuck you’ face back in the steam room not obvious enough for you, Grace?” Lir asked, all stormy eyes and low, troubled voice that rumbled like the waves outside the window. “Because I’ll be honest: it kind of hurt when you just sat there, not responding to me in the slightest.”

  “I – I didn’t know what to do,” I panicked. “I thought you were going to tell me to stop following you. I thought –”

  “You thought, but you never asked. Then I sat beside you in the library and even tried to get you on your own in the shower room at the hostel and you just…ran off.”

  Oh. Oh. Oh.

  “So you…you like me, too?” I asked, barely daring to vocalise the question.

  Lir shook his head and clucked his tongue, clearly impatient with my slow, plodding brain. “Yes, you fool! I don’t know how I could have made it more obvious. I mean, I literally asked you about your underwear in the bar and you totally ignored it. Kind of hurt my ego, if I’m honest.”

  “I…had to get back home on the last ferry,” I said, which was true but somehow still felt like an excuse. “Not all of us can swim over a mile in the dark.”

  The ghost of a smile crossed Lir’s lips at my comment. When he didn’t say anything I decided to do something utterly outrageous by my standards. Pulling my wrists from his grip I shrugged off the woollen blanket that had thus far protected my modesty, blushing furiously and averting my gaze from Lir’s all the while. “And…yes,” I mumbled. “I did match my lingerie to my hair.”

  I glanced up through my lashes when Lir did not respond after a disconcertingly long time. His eyes roved across my body, setting goosebumps on my skin even though I was burning.

  “Back in the bar,” he said, slowly bringing his gaze back to mine as he pulled on the drawstring of the ridiculous tartan trousers I’d given him, “when I said you were a siren. I wasn’t being specific enough.” He slid a hand around the back of my neck just as he had done hours earlier. Only this time Lir properly closed the distance between us until our lips were almost touching and his breath was hot on my skin.

  “You’re my siren, Grace,” he murmured, “put in my life to lead me to my doom.”

  I kissed him first, that much I was sure of.

  The moment Lir said I was his drove all reason and inhibition from my mind, and I pressed my mouth against his with an earnestness that felt pathetic. But I didn’t care. I wanted Lir, and from the way he pulled me into his arms and moulded his body to mine I had no doubt he felt the same about me.

  There was power in his hungry frame, barely suppressed beneath the surface of his skin. I felt sure, somehow, that he could shatter my wrists and bruise my skin if he’d felt inclined to do so. Yet every one of Lir's touches as he pushed me onto my back and planted kisses along my jawline were gentle, as if he was afraid he might break me.

  I wanted to be broken.

  In an unexpectedly smooth, cocksure moment I rolled on top of him, pinning Lir beneath my hands and thighs. His eyes widened in delicious surprise.

  “If I'm a siren luring you to your doom,” I said, voice low and heavy with longing, “then be desperate with me. Hurt me. Don't be careful with me.”

  It was all the consent Lir needed. With a snarling grin that was so at odds with his innocent grey eyes he broke free from my hold, grabbing my waist and toppling me once more beneath him with a strength I knew I couldn’t escape from.

  Lir was mine, and I was his. So long as his hands roved over every inch of me I could forget all about the horrors that lay just behind my front door.

  PART TWO

  Lir, Age Five

  The second moment that defined Lir’s childhood occurred one month after his fifth birthday. The boy had become fixated on water after learning his parents returned to the sea, so Orla bought him a tropical fish tank full of a wondrous assortment of brightly coloured fish.

  A dozen blue tetras. Ten threadfin rainbow fish. Eight blood orange mollies. Four red swordtails, who often tried to jump out of the tank whenever Lir removed the lid to feed them. Three stripy loaches, who rooted around the plants and gravel like dogs picking up a scent. Two dwarf gouramis, that were inseparable from one another.

  He very quickly learned how to look after his aquatic pets, cleaning the tank, feeding the fish and checking the thermometer and water filter unaided after a mere two weeks of helping his aunt do it. Lir adored the fish, naming each and every one of his new friends after the Greek gods and heroes Orla liked to tell him about before bed.

  His relationship with his only human friend suffered as a result of the fish. Cian Byrne lived next door to Lir’s aunt; Lir met him at pre-school and was due to start primary school with him after summer ended. Lir didn’t think he was looking forward to school – all he wanted to do was watch his f
ish and listen to Aunt Orla’s stories.

  This upset Cian. He hated being ignored in favour of a tank of fish, especially since Lir carefully guarded them so that Cian never got to press his nose to the glass and watch the animals swim the way Lir did. And he wanted to. He thought the fish were cool.

  But Lir didn’t want him anywhere near the tank.

  One afternoon, Cian knocked upon the door and invited Lir to play gods and monsters in the back garden. It was just about the only game that interested Lir these days – so long as he got to be the god. They fought and laughed and shouted almighty curses at one another until, after about an hour, Cian ran inside to use the toilet. Lir didn’t think anything of it; they used the bathrooms in each others’ houses all the time when they played outside.

  Another two hours of playing passed by before Cian was called back next door for his dinner. Lir was hungry, too, so he perched himself on one of the stools in the kitchen and happily watched his aunt cook him fish and chips. Then he fell asleep in the living room watching Animal Planet, clutching his favourite plastic tiger shark to his chest like it was a soft and fluffy teddy bear.

  It was in this way that Lir did not check on his fish for six hours. When he finally roused from his nap – Orla was sprawled out beside him, softly snoring – he gambolled up the stairs, eager to feed his friends and watch them compete for the largest flakes of food.

  The fish were all dead.

  Orla awoke to the sound of Lir screaming. She was immediately concerned; her nephew was a very quiet boy. The moment she found him hugging a tank full of dead, floating fish Orla knew something had gone horribly awry, so she checked the thermometer and saw that the water temperature had increased far beyond safe limits. The filtration system had also been turned off.

  “Oh, Lir, what happened?” she asked, gently pulling the boy away from the tank to sit on his bed, where she curled him protectively against her chest. Orla could feel every one of Lir’s sobs wracking through his body and into her own, making her want to cry with him.