The Boy from the Sea

by H L Macfarlane

  “I bet this place looks amazing in autumn,” I thought aloud, pointing to the willow trees. “When everything’s gone red and orange and gold. Don’t you think, Lir?”

  “The reflection in the pond would be beautiful,” he agreed, kneeling down to slide his hand through the water. He disturbed a shoal of very tiny fish, and he chuckled.

  I frowned. “What’s so funny?”

  “I’m just imagining what the fish think when they see my hand. Am I a giant? An alien? Do they even have a concept of what I am at all, outside of me being a new obstacle for them to get around?”

  “I’ve never really thought about things that way,” I mused, pulling Lir back up to continue our winding path through the garden, “though it’s probably the latter.”

  Lir pondered this for several long moments of silence. When we reached a huge but simplistic maze built of perfectly maintained hedgerows and rose bushes he took a seat on one of the few empty benches situated within it. Most of them were occupied by elderly couples, which I thought was adorable, but Lir took no notice of anyone else.

  He slashed his hand through the air just as he had done in the pond. “Do you think we’d know what a god looked like, if it interfered with us the way I did those fish?”

  “I…what?”

  “Like how people insist terrible tragedies and apparent miracles are an act of God,” he continued, gently taking hold of my hand and pulling it through the air with his own, “do you think we even have the capacity to know what a god or a titan or any other supernatural force is? Or do we just see their acts as obstacles and interference?”

  I tried to consider Lir’s question, though in all honesty I didn’t know what to say. He’d always been obsessed with mythology and tales of gods and monsters but I hadn’t realised he thought about their existence to such a deep extent. Well, insomuch as it never occurred to me that he believed the tales he adored so much were anything more than fiction.

  “Magic is simply science we do not understand,” I eventually said. I couldn’t remember where I’d heard that before, but it seemed fitting.

  When Lir beamed at me I knew I’d said the right thing. “Exactly!” he replied, very enthusiastically. “We don’t understand anything until we actively try to. But once we work things out – bam! It seems so obvious. Which means the gods could be playing with us at all times and we simply lack the knowledge to understand what they’re doing.”

  “For now,” I added on, going along with his train of thought, which made his smile even larger. I loved when Lir was excited about something and wanted to share it with me, even if it was a hypothetical discussion about how humans would react to gods. It made me feel like I was the only one who understood him – the only one who was important enough for him to share his secrets with.

  After a few minutes of rest we continued through the Botanics, admiring the explosions of colour the late-spring flowers afforded the place, and ventured into the forest. It was marginally cooler beneath the trees, something both Lir and I appreciated. I watched him wipe away a drop of sweat before it could roll down his forehead, all the while thinking about his previous comment about removing our clothes.

  “Can we get to Glen Massan from here, Grace?” he asked me when we reached a small clearing at the top of an incline in the trees. The view was amazing, all greens and yellows and bursts of pinks and reds and purples everywhere I looked. I could see the willow-framed pond, which was just a sparkle of sunlight on water from where I stood.

  “The sun!” I cried, ignoring Lir’s question as I closed my eyes to the heavenly rays that hit us a moment later. It broke through the mugginess like a sword, clearing the air even though it made the day even hotter. “Ugh, it feels so good.”

  “Glen Massan?”

  “What now?” I asked Lir, staring at him in confusion. I genuinely could not wrap my head around the words he’d been saying, so absorbed in the joys of being anywhere but the city as I was. But Lir wasn’t annoyed at me; rather, he grabbed my waist and pulled me in for a kiss, though the two of us were too warm and slick with sweat for it to be entirely pleasant.

  He bopped his forehead against mine. “The glen,” he repeated, smiling against my lips, “can we reach it from here or do we have to walk back to the car park and head from there? I’m dying for a swim.”

  God, he was right. A swim sounded amazing right now. I was so glad I’d put on a bikini instead of underwear before heading out today. “We have to go back to the car,” I said, breaking away from Lir to begin heading down through the forest: I’d Google Mapped the journey that morning. “Unless you want a three-mile hike to reach the glen?”

  “Another day, maybe,” he laughed, eagerly following me along the path with renewed vigour.

  Because we didn’t stop to appreciate the scenery we made it back to the car in good time and, after a short drive, arrived in the dirt-and-gravel car park by Glen Massan. The clouds had cleared in their entirety by the time we began walking, the sun punishingly hot as it beat down on the backs of our necks.

  “We’re gonna have sun stroke for sure in an hour or so,” I said, though I didn’t care. It was evident Lir didn’t care, either.

  As we traversed the path through the glen the sound of water grew stronger and stronger until it was all we could hear. The ground beneath our feet changed from dirt and moss and ferns to stone, and then, after an abrupt turn, we were faced with the most beautiful series of pools I’d ever seen in my life.

  “Okay, this might convert me to fresh water over the sea forever,” Lir said, a gleam in his eyes that told me he couldn’t wait to jump in. The water crashed beneath bridges of grey and bone-white stone, formed through years and years of erosion until they looked so deliberate it was difficult to imagine they had formed naturally at all. Other structures of rock looked positively alien, pock-marked with holes and recesses that could have hidden a small child from sight.

  In the distance I could hear laughter, which meant further along the glen we’d meet other people. “Let’s just swim here,” I said, though the current in the water was clearly strong. From the looks of things it crashed into a much larger, shallower pool in the direction of the voices, which would have made for an easier swim, but I wanted to remain alone with Lir.

  He didn’t need to be told twice. In fact, Lir had already removed most of his clothes before I finished my sentence. “Be careful in there,” he told me, before diving off one of the stone bridges with infuriatingly elegant efficiency.

  “You could at least – wait, Lir!” I called out, hurrying to remove my dress and trainers before leaping into the water after him. I immediately regretted it; the water was as bitingly cold as the sun was hot. When I resurfaced I couldn’t breathe. The water was made of a thousand knives all stabbing at my lungs, and if I inhaled they’d go all the way through. But then I grabbed at a rock for support, closed my eyes for a moment, and risked a breath.

  It wasn’t made of knives, merely air.

  “I told you to be careful!” Lir laughed when he caught sight of me. He swam backstroke against the current so well I was almost convinced I could do the same. He made it look so easy. But I knew better: Lir was a pro, and I was not.

  “I n-never thought it would be so cold,” I spluttered. “It’s s-sore!”

  Lir splashed me almost lazily. “You’ll get used to it. Come on, let go of the rock. Let’s swim through the tunnels!”

  It took me a few minutes to get used to it but, true to Lir’s word, after treading water my body finally adjusted to the temperature. It was almost pleasant, especially with the sun beating down on my head. When I swam over to where Lir was waiting for me I looked around, confused.

  “Where are these tunnels, then?”

  “Underwater, obviously.”

  “But the current, Lir!” I protested. “It’s going against us. I don’t think I’m strong enough –”

  “Of course you are,” Lir cut in. He reached over and squeezed my hand. “Come on, j
ust follow my lead, okay?” And then he was gone, diving beneath the water before I had a chance to take a breath. I followed after him in a flurry of panicked bubbles, feeling blindly around me for the hole in the stone I was supposed to go though.

  Once I found it and began swimming I realised that it was, in fact, pretty easy to go against the current, so long as I kept my wits about me and never stopped pushing forward. But when I reached the end of the tunnel and resurfaced for air Lir scared the life out of me by swimming between my legs and placing me on his shoulders. I clung to his head, screaming in fear and delight as he slowly made his way to the shore with me on top of him. He tossed me onto the moss and dirt, collapsing beside me with a voice full of laughter.

  Then we passed a few minutes in contented silence with the sun on our faces, happy to simply exist in this moment, together.

  “This place is unreal,” Lir finally murmured. “I can’t believe how beautiful it is.”

  I turned my head to face him, reaching out my hand for his to interlace our fingers. “We got so lucky with the weather, you know. If it had been raining –”

  “Trust me, I’d have still gone swimming even if it was a bloody downpour,” he laughed, squeezing my hand. “I feel like I can just be – me – when I’m in a place like this.”

  “You know I feel the same way.”

  “I know. That’s why I love you.”

  For a fraction of a second I stilled, then my body relaxed as if it had never known how to do it before. “I love you, too,” I said, shuffling closer to Lir to nestle in the crook of his arm. He stroked my hair the way I always did to him, and we closed our eyes, and allowed our confession to simply hang in the air between us for a while.

  It was weird; neither of us had ever said we loved each other out loud before. But I was certain we’d felt this way since…well, since Lir spent the night with me in Largs. Louisa might have believed I was rushing into things but it simply wasn’t like that.

  Lir and I were meant to be together. That was all there was to it.

  We spent another two hours in the glen, swimming and then sunbathing and then swimming again until the two of us had to admit that we were starving and tired. So we walked back to the car and drove to Dunoon, picking up some pizzas from an American-style diner on the way back to our hotel. Lir didn’t even order fish.

  After we ate we tumbled into bed together, too exhausted to even shower before doing so. It struck me that Lir and I could not have planned our day better if we’d tried. Everything had been so easy and carefree and unbridled from the troubles of our lives back in Glasgow. It truly was a perfect day in every possible respect, from the moment we woke up to the moment we closed our eyes to sleep.

  I did not know, at the time, that it would be our last.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  When we left the hotel it was raining, which was long overdue. We parked my car outside a little place called The Rock Café to eat chips and drink milkshakes, which even Lir, surprisingly, consumed. The next ferry was due in twenty minutes and then we’d continue on our journey around the west coast. Though first, I realised, we had to work out where our next destination was; going by my original schedule we weren’t due to arrive in Campbeltown for another couple of days.

  “I actually meant to bring that up last night,” Lir said between one mouthful of chips and the next. “It’s my aunt and uncle’s thirtieth anniversary today. They’re having a party tonight. If it isn’t too awkward for you I thought we could maybe…go?”

  I knew I was staring instead of answering. But this was Lir, the boy who never talked about his life before university. Lir, who didn’t want his only friend from childhood telling me about his past. Lir, whose parents committed suicide in front of him, leaving him alone in the world.

  But of course he had other family. He didn’t reach his twenties raising himself, after all. And Cian had mentioned an aunt before Lir cut him off in the union.

  “Grace?” Lir worried aloud. “We don’t have to go if you don’t –”

  “I’d love to!” I cut in, far too enthusiastic for my own good. “Of course I do! So did they raise you, then? Your aunt and uncle?”

  He nodded. “Tommy is my dad’s brother and Róisín’s his wife. They took me in when I was six.”

  “So is that when – when –”

  “When my parents went away?”

  The way Lir just went out and said it took my thoroughly aback. But there was no pain in his eyes. No sadness. The fact they ‘went away’ seemed like just another fact to him. I suppose I couldn’t dictate how he processed his grief. It was his grief, and his alone.

  “Yeah,” I said, regretting asking the question in the first place. But to my surprise Lir shook his head.

  “My mum’s sister looked after me for a couple years first.”

  So that was the aunt Cian mentioned. Well, she did live in Bundoran instead of Campbeltown so I guess that makes sense.

  “Why didn’t you stay with her, then?” I ventured. “Did you not get on well?”

  This was the question that caused Lir’s calm veneer to crack. His hand tightened into a fist on the table until his knuckles were bone white, and his lower lip wobbled for just a fraction of a second. Lir closed his eyes and took a deep, shuddering breath.

  “She died,” he said, and that was that.

  By the time we were on the road to Campbeltown all such tragic conversation was long since over, and Lir returned to being happy and excited. It was clear he was pleased to be introducing me to his family. I was too, of course, though as we covered another mile on the road, then ten, then twenty, I grew nervous. When I got nervous I got fidgety. I didn’t want Lir to know I was nervous, so I turned the radio on and searched for a Glasgow-based music station and took my phone out of my bag simply to occupy my hands.

  I had no messages from Louisa, which didn’t surprise me at all given how I left things with her last time, but I did have a few messages from my dad (wishing me a good trip) and from Josh and David. As the woman on the radio told us to expect the rain across the west coast to dissipate by evening I filtered through the messages, a frown forming on my face as I did so.

  Josh’s messages all largely contained the same topic of conversation: Please call Louisa and patch things up. She’s so upset, Grace. I’m not just saying this as her brother. You’re not acting like yourself, and something’s been bothering you for weeks. Please tell me what’s wrong. Has your boyfriend done something to you? You know I’m always here to help. Just say the word.

  I told him I was fine, and that I’d make up with Louisa when I cooled off. Both statements were basically true, after all. Yeah, I had been worried for weeks but it had all been in my head. Well, aside from Terry’s stabbing and David’s attack and my cat going missing and the Volvo being stolen.

  Fuck. So much had happened since March. Had I gone numb to the real things that had occurred in my life during the process of worrying that Lir was somehow responsible for all the horrible attacks in Scotland? When I got back from our trip I’d have to sit down and have a long, hard think about my mental state.

  I turned my attention back to my phone. David’s message read: Really wanted to speak to you the other night. Can we meet up for coffee and talk? It’s important.

  I replied saying I was on a road trip and wouldn’t be back for a few weeks. Though David said it was important it could probably wait until I got back. Besides, it wasn’t as if I was going to travel back to Glasgow just for one conversation. If it was truly important then David would call me, instead – though I shuddered at how awkward such a conversation might end up being.

  Lir glanced at me in concern before returning his eyes to the road. He was driving, since he knew the route to Campbeltown far better than I did. “You cold?” he asked, reaching a hand out to turn the heating on.

  I reached out my own hand to stop him, squeezing his fingers before he returned his hand to the steering wheel. “No,” I smiled, “I’m fine
. It was just a shudder.”

  “Something about the weather report creep you out?” Lir joked. “Or did someone send you something weird?”

  When he tried to spy a look at my phone I turned it away from him. “Just messages from some people. Nothing serious.”

  “From Josh?”

  I stuck out my tongue. “So what if he did message me?”

  “Just because I overreacted last time doesn’t mean I’m not allowed to be wary of the guy,” Lir said. “I mean, he literally left his girlfriend for you. That’s not something you do for just anyone.”

  “Well if he liked me so much he wouldn’t have run off after sleeping with me,” I muttered, then immediately regretted it.

  Lir’s hands tensed on the steering wheel. “He what?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Did you just say you slept together?”

  “It was practically a year ago,” I explained, not wanting this to become more of an issue than it had to be. “Louisa had just left for Australia. We were drunk and I was sad and when Josh told me he’d always liked me I was exactly the right amount of weak to fall for it. But then he went back to his girlfriend, anyway, so to be honest I wouldn’t be surprised if he just used his feelings for me to get out of a relationship he no longer wanted to be in.”

  “That’s…what a fucking arsehole.”

  I could only laugh. “You’ve got that right.”

  “Then why on earth are you still friends with him?” Lir asked, seemingly no longer angry but simply curious. He shook his head. “I don’t get it. I couldn’t be friends with someone who did that. He and his sister seem as bad as each other for wanting to control your life.”

  “It’s not –” I began, but then I corrected myself. “Okay, I suppose it kind of is like that, but things are complicated. Josh and Louisa are like family to me. You don’t just throw away family.”