The Boy from the Sea

by H L Macfarlane

  “They’re the same book,” Lir explained, handing me over the much newer copy to peruse. “I’d been waiting for a copy of the original edition to become available for years. When the bookseller told me it was in pretty frail condition I figured it was worth buying the new version so I could read the text without further damaging the original.”

  “Greek myths of the sea,” I read, opening the book to a random page. It was illustrated just as gorgeously as the front of the book, depicting a bearded, tightly-muscled man in the process of turning into a seal in front of several wild, crashing waves. “Does the original have all the same drawings?”

  Lir nodded enthusiastically then very, very gently searched through the old tome to find the equivalent drawing to the one I was looking at. The illustration had lost some of its lustre – the colour had faded in places – but that somehow, inexplicably, added to the piece. It made it ancient and unknowable. A mystery. A myth.

  “This particular story is about Proteus,” he told me as I scanned the picture, marvelling at the detail in the piece.

  “Proteus?” I wasn’t familiar with Greek mythology at all.

  “Proteus was a prophetic sea-god who could change his shape at will,” Lir said, pointing to the man – the god – changing into a seal. “Because he could foretell the future, people often sought him out to know their fates, but he would only do so if they could capture him. Given that he could change form, this was almost impossible.”

  I realised, as I listened to Lir talk with his soft, lilting, born-for-stories voice, that there was something about the very way he held himself that had changed. He relaxed in his chair, head tilting to the side as his eyes grew hazy. It was almost as if Lir was recalling a memory rather than narrating a piece of fiction.

  It was strange and enthralling.

  “But then Menelaus,” Lir continued, completely oblivious to the way I leaned across the table towards him in rapt attention, “who was struggling to reach home after the Trojan War, successfully captured Proteus. The god changed into many things to avoid him – a lion, a serpent and even water itself. Yet Menelaus prevailed, and he demanded to know which gods he had so offended that they would prevent him from journeying home, and how to appease them. Proteus had no choice but to give him this information. If you could find out that you had displeased the gods and how you could fix things, would you, Grace?”

  The question was spoken in Lir’s normal tone of voice and so utterly took me by surprise that I stared at him, mouth agape, for far too long.

  “I – I’m not sure,” I eventually, rather uselessly, managed to say. I searched for a better answer. “I guess, if my life had gone horrendously wrong, I’d want to know if there was some outside force responsible for it. But what if the price to set my life back on course was something I couldn’t, or wouldn’t pay? Aren’t Greek myths full of sacrifices and stuff?”

  “I suppose it depends on how badly you want something,” Lir mused, more to himself than to me. “Some prices must be paid, even if they’re unspeakably evil in some eyes.”

  The conversation had grown too serious in a way I didn’t entirely understand. “Only eating fish, spending all your time swimming and surfing, reading legends about the sea…are you a mermaid?” I joked, trying to lighten the mood. “Or merman, I suppose.”

  Lir was silent for a long, contemplative moment. The hint of a smile coloured his face. “…something like that.”

  I didn’t know how to respond, so I didn’t.

  Chapter Fifteen

  When Louisa messaged me on Monday evening to say that Josh was coming to pick up some of her stuff I wasn’t much in the mood to see anyone. Other than Lir, that was. Especially him. They’d just announced on the news that they’d found a body on Machir Bay on Islay, and they were treating it as a murder.

  The victim was a young man in his twenties.

  Lir had spent the weekend on Islay. He was late in returning, and hadn’t replied to any of my calls or texts for two days. The prospect that he was the victim didn’t seem real. He couldn’t be gone. He just couldn’t.

  When I heard the door unlock my heart leapt. Lir! I thought, skittering down the hallway to throw myself at him. But it wasn’t Lir.

  It was Josh. A wave of disappointment mingled with rekindled fear for my boyfriend’s fate washed over me. “Hi, Josh,” I said, voice flat. I couldn’t even look at him. “Come in, I guess.”

  “Well, hello to you too, Gracie,” he said, smiling brightly as he waltzed past me so I could close the door. He hadn’t been back since the night we slept together straight after Louisa left. It was weird having him standing here with me.

  I followed Josh through to Louisa’s room in silence, not knowing what to say and not really wanting to say anything, anyway. He dropped his head when he walked through the doorway, which he always did when passing through them. Though they shared the same auburn hair, fair skin and green eyes, Josh was tall where his sister was notoriously short. He was taller than my dad, even. But his head never would have actually touched the wooden beam above him if he’d stood up straight. I used to think it was endearing, the way he made himself smaller to ‘fit’ through the space.

  Now I thought it was stupid.

  “So how have you been?” Josh asked me as he opened Louisa’s wardrobe and knelt on the floor to sift through the wreckage of her belongings that I’d stuffed in there.

  “What are you looking for?” I asked, ignoring his question entirely. When Louisa had still lived here her room was a travesty at all times. Clothes were strewn across the floor from an overloaded washing basket, rumpled bedsheets hid whichever novels she was reading late into the night, and her university notes poked out from beneath a pile of plates on her chair. She hoarded mugs and glasses like a fiend, only returning them to the kitchen when I complained about the distinct lack of any drinking receptacles.

  Even when she decided to de-clutter it only ended up worse than before, as she’d get distracted from pulling a pair of shoes or a dress out of the wardrobe that she hadn’t seen in forever and laugh at her previous, ‘uncultured’ fashion sense. This would go on for hours until, finally, she’d get too hungry to continue and would invariably give up.

  During that time I’d have scrubbed the rest of the flat clean, and Louisa always acted surprised when she saw how much work I’d done. ‘You didn’t have to do all that on your own!’ she’d exclaim, though we both knew I did. But then she’d buy us a takeaway and a few bottles of wine to celebrate a ‘job well done’, so I didn’t mind. I liked cleaning, anyway. It kept my mind busy.

  The only time Louisa had ever cleaned her room properly was the day before she left for Australia, and even that was mostly her throwing everything into boxes that she could get away with leaving under the bed. The rest was shoved into the wardrobe and the chest of drawers, though I knew by the time she returned she’d have no use whatsoever for her old clothes and folders full of study materials and research papers from university.

  With Louisa gone I hardly had to clean at all to keep things in an orderly fashion in the flat. It had felt lonely, not having anyone’s mess to tidy up. But that was before Lir – who was just as clean as I was – and I realised it was the presence of another person that I’d missed, not the clutter.

  God, I hoped he wasn’t dead.

  Josh glanced over his shoulder from where he was kneeling, a pair of biker boots in his hands. He sighed. “Nothing in particular. Louisa wanted me to see how you are, in truth. She’s worried about you, Grace. Which means I'm worried about you.”

  When I rolled my eyes it was possibly the biggest eye-roll of my entire life. “What could either of you possibly be worried about?” I asked, moving over to the window to focus my attention on the river. The weather wasn't great; the surface of the water was rough and unpredictable. If it was worse along the coast than it was in Glasgow then maybe Lir was delayed because of it. Maybe it was making it impossible for him to get any phone signal. That had
to be it. But still…

  Young man in his twenties found dead on Islay beach.

  I didn't notice Josh joining me by the window until he was literally right beside me. I clenched my jaw and refused to look at him, so he took a careful step away. “She told me you’re spending all your time with some guy you only just met.”

  “I met Lir in January; it’s mid-April now. I’d hardly say I just met him.” Every word out of my mouth was clipped and careful.

  “She said it doesn’t seem like you’ve been seeing any of your friends for months.”

  “You mean Louisa’s friends?” I corrected, finally looking at Josh just to glare at him. “You know fine well she’s the outgoing one. I found it really hard to socialise with all those people on my own.” I never even had the guts to see them.

  “Did you actually give any of them a –”

  “Did you honestly come here to lecture me, Josh?” I fired back, temper rapidly rising. “Because I seem to remember you completely, selfishly avoiding me when you were my only real friend.”

  Josh stared at me like I’d just shot a puppy. I didn’t care. “Grace, I –”

  I waved off his protest. “You do realise what it looked like to me, right? You told me you’d always liked me, then slept with me, then went back to your ‘totally not serious’ girlfriend who you were going to break up with as if nothing had happened. You said you’d call but you never did. I don’t think you get to judge me on who I decide to spend my time with.”

  There was a long, drawn-out silence as Josh absorbed what I said. He kept his eyes on the window, resolutely not looking me just as I had done to him two minutes before. “You're right,” he said, very quietly. “I've been awful. A total dick. I'm sorry, I really am.”

  The most annoying thing was that I could see Josh meant it, even though I wanted nothing more than to be angry at him for ever and always. But he was clearly genuinely worried about me, even though there was nothing to be worried about – well, not in the way he thought. That my boyfriend may or may not have been murdered was decidedly not something I wanted to speak about out loud, and certainly not with Josh.

  “Things were always going to be weird between us after Louisa left,” I eventually said, which caused Josh to turn his gaze from the window to look at me. His eyes were such a lovely shade of green – closer to blue than mine were – but they weren’t the eyes I wanted to be looking at. Those eyes were as grey as the unsettled river outside, and weren’t capable of sleeping with me only to return to the arms of another.

  “Even without us sleeping together,” I continued, wincing at the notion, “it was really naïve to think that we would be fine after she left.”

  “Yeah, but it’s still my fault,” Josh insisted. Well, at least he was owning up to it. “Can we please try to be proper friends again? No awkwardness, no avoiding each other. Just…friends?”

  Slowly, very slowly, I nodded. Friends I could do. Friends was all I’d ever wanted to be in the first place, before my loneliness made me susceptible to Josh’s drunk confession and insistent fingertips on my skin.

  Then he ran a hand through his hair, which was a sign he was about to push his luck and most probably say something stupid. “You know,” he began, “I’m as well just coming out and admitting this. I was gutted to see you started dating someone just as I manned up and broke it off with Lauren. I –”

  “Don't,” I warned, before Josh ruined everything by speaking another word. “Don't even go there. You want us to be friends? Then keep your feelings in the past.”

  Josh fidgeted with the zip on his leather jacket. “You're right. Again.” He reached out a hand and grazed my elbow. “But something is clearly bothering you. I'm not blind. We used to be able to talk to each other about anything. So just tell me whenever something is bugging you. I really mean it this time.” He let out a self-deprecating chuckle, which was sincere but still sounded manufactured to my ears. It would take time for us to get back to normal, if such a thing were at all possible.

  But I was willing to try if he was.

  Then I thought of the attacks, and if Josh had any knowledge about them since some of them had occurred in Glasgow. I wondered if he’d had to deal with any of the victims directly. But that would mean some of the victims were children, which sent a shudder rippling through me.

  I truly hoped that wasn’t the case.

  I forced a smile on my face. “There’s nothing you need to worry a–”

  The sound of the front door unlocking stole the rest of the words from my mouth, replacing them with a new one. “Lir!” I exclaimed, bolting out of Louisa’s room so quickly I skidded on the floor and almost fell over.

  And there he was, standing in the doorway, shaking from head to toe and so frail-looking it was a wonder the wind outside hadn’t blown him out of existence. Lir’s upper lip trembled as he looked at me, mere seconds away from crying, so I threw my arms around his neck just as Lir wound his around my waist. He squeezed the very air out of my lungs in his desperation to get as close to me as possible.

  “I was so worried,” I whispered into his ear, stepping up on tip-toes to do so. “Have you – did you see the news?”

  “Who is he?” Lir asked instead of answering my question, voice flat and emotionless. His expression had entirely changed from one of fragility to dark, stormy suspicion; I twisted in his arms to see that he’d locked his eyes on Josh, who was awkwardly standing behind us.

  “This is Louisa’s brother, Josh,” I explained, pulling away from Lir to introduce the two of them properly. “He was just collecting some things from her room to send over to her. Josh, this is my boyfriend, Lir.”

  “It’s great to meet you,” Josh said, holding out his hand for Lir to shake. For a long, drawn-out moment I thought Lir wouldn’t take it, but then he grabbed Josh’s hand and shook it as quickly as he possibly could.

  “I wish I could say it was good to meet you, too,” Lir said, “but being held back on Islay because of the weather and then getting caught in it hasn’t left me in the best of moods. So if you don't mind…”

  Josh smiled at Lir, though it was tight and superficial as he replied, “Of course!”

  Lir bowled past him and locked himself in the bathroom without another word, which was closely followed by the sound of the shower turning on.

  “Does he have much of a temper?” Josh asked me, frowning at the bathroom door in obvious concern.

  I didn’t like his question at all, not least because Lir was perhaps the gentlest person I’d ever met. “No. Not even a little bit. How would you feel if you’d been trapped in a storm?”

  His face softened. “I guess after Louisa saying she was worried about you guys I kind of set myself up to immediately dislike him,” he admitted. “Not fair, I know.”

  I didn’t reply.

  After a minute of silence Josh’s shoulders fell, and he moved past me towards the open front door. “I’ll get going, then. But I’ll call you soon, Grace. That’s a promise.”

  I let just the hint of a smile cross my lips. “I guess only time will tell if that’s true.”

  Then Josh left, leaving me alone in the hallway and wondering if everyone who was close to me was going to immediately dislike Lir. It was just as Josh said: it wasn’t fair. But when I tried to picture my parents meeting him my mind drew a complete blank. It was an impossible thing to predict.

  After standing there for far too long I kicked myself back to life and turned on the central heating, then grabbed every blanket I had stored in my wardrobe and threw them on the couch before putting the kettle on. When Lir got out of the shower I handed him a mug of lemon tea, then the two of us cuddled up and watched a film. I couldn’t for the life of me take in what it was actually about, even when the credits began rolling two hours later.

  I resisted the urge to ask Lir what had shaken him up so badly; his expression made it clear that he didn’t want to talk about it. But he clung to me like he was drowning and I was his
only means of survival, so I smoothed his hair away from his face and kissed him until the dead look in his eyes slowly dissolved and he finally relaxed against my side.

  I didn't need to know what happened to him. I was just glad Lir was safe and sound and, most importantly, back here with me.

  Chapter Sixteen

  When I was a child my parents had a boxy, unattractive Volvo Estate for a car. I knew by around age eight or nine that they could definitely afford a much nicer car, but they unconditionally loved the battered vehicle no matter what anyone said.

  Back then most of our holidays together were spent within the UK, since my dad wasn’t keen on flying. We drove everywhere in that Volvo – the Highlands, Aberdeen, the Lake District and, once, all the way down to Cornwall. We'd stayed overnight in a roadside hotel to split the journey down there in two, but on the way back my dad insisted on driving the entire way home in one go. It took him four cans of Red Bull to get through the journey and, when we returned to Largs, he slept for almost two full days.

  He never insisted on driving for so long across a single day again.

  I loved our Volvo trips. My parents would bundle a duvet into the back of the car for me to cuddle into and I’d serenely pass the time playing my Gameboy or reading a book. Eventually I’d feel so motion sick they had to stop the car so I could get some fresh air – or risk me throwing up everywhere. We’d stop every two hours for food and toilet breaks, and sometimes they let me scramble across the little play parks the service stations had just so I could stretch my limbs.

  It never occurred to me that these holidays may have been improved by having a sibling. I was content all on my own, with just my parents for company.