The Girl Who Lost Her Shadow

by Emily Ilett

  Gail and Kay had often talked about that journey to the southern tip. They knew that was where the Storm Sisters were, two huge rocks standing right on the edge of the cliff. The story went that the Storm Sisters were giants turned to stone many years ago. People said that the Sisters protected the island, calling the ocean to batter hardest against their faces and spare the rest of the coast. As soon as they’d heard the story, Kay was enthralled. She suggested they hike south and look for them and they’d spent hours planning what they’d take and when they’d go.

  But that was before everything had changed.

  Gail turned back to the hillside, scanning the slopes for her sister’s shadow. Where had it gone? She hurried upwards, her eyes darting from side to side until – wait, was that it? Gail straightened, her hand shielding her eyes. There it was. A dark blur, paused near—

  Her stomach flipped.

  The shadow hovered at the entrance to Oyster Cave.

  For a wild moment, Gail thought it was waiting for her. But then it shuddered, the darkness within it trembling, and Gail remembered that she was the one who had chased it away. “No,” she called out, as the shadow slid towards the gaping hole. “Wait!” she shouted, and her eyes widened as she saw the shadow steady for a moment, then twitch and slip neatly into the cave opening.

  Chapter Three

  The cave arched open like an oyster shell, wrinkled and gnarled at the edges and narrowing towards a closed hinge at the back. At the far end, where the rock closed together, a small low opening continued into the darkness. Big enough for a child to crawl through; too small for an adult. Kay’s shadow was nowhere to be seen.

  The cave’s name rippled through homes across the island. Oyster Cave. Everyone knew someone who knew a story about it. Oyster Cave’s where the selkies leave their skins, you can smell the damp fur when the wind’s blowing in the right direction. Did you hear about the boy that went missing in the cave? They found him weeks later, nesting with the birds…

  And, Kay’s voice, last summer: “They didn’t speak for days afterwards. They couldn’t. Every time they opened their mouths, nothing came out.”

  She’d whispered it with something like awe mixed in with her mouthful of spaghetti. Two girls and a boy from her class had spent the night in the cave, had crawled through to the network of tunnels beyond. The next day, they’d stumbled into the village, dull-eyed and silent.

  “Why couldn’t they speak?” Gail had asked as her sister’s nose wrinkled in delight at the story.

  “They were lost in there for hours, Gail. Hours and hours in the darkness, trying to get out. Imagine it.” Kay’s voice dropped. “Maybe they saw something…”

  Their mum grunted, spooning more spaghetti onto their plates. “More likely they frightened themselves stupid with ghost stories,” she said. “But no one knows how far those tunnels go, so don’t either of you be going anywhere near them.”

  Kay grinned and Gail saw her fingers crossed beneath the table when she nodded. Later, skin prickling with stories, Gail had made Kay promise not to go without her.

  But now she had to leave Kay behind.

  Gail pulled the torch out of her bag and stepped inside the cave. Salt stung her nostrils. Her feet felt colder without her shadow and she stamped on the ground to warm them.

  Of course Kay’s shadow would be the most awkward shadow ever. Why would a shadow run away to the deepest, darkest, stinkiest place it could think of? Gail grimaced and shoved her backpack through the hole ahead of her. Falling to her stomach, she wriggled through the gap at the back of the cave, pieces of grit showering her shoulders.

  The tunnel soon opened up and after a metre or so she could stand again. The air was furry, like spider’s legs, and Gail felt the darkness in her mouth like it was a solid thing. Her hands trembled as she switched on her new torch and the tunnel became alive with lumpy columns of rock and knots of shadows.

  Gail shrank back against the damp wall. She moved the torch slowly, shadows twitching and flitting around the light like shoals of sardines.

  “Kay? Kay’s shadow?” Her voice was thin and the rock echoed it back to her, broken and confused.

  Gail inched forwards, the torchlight catching the curve of the tunnel. She rounded the corner and yelped, her breath puffing out in a white cloud of shock as she stumbled backwards.

  There, swimming through the cave wall, was a manta ray.

  It was huge and beautiful, almost as wide as Gail’s outstretched arms, its mouth reaching up to the tunnel roof. Its dark fins stretched out like wings, with flashes of white at their tips, and its tail flicked to the left. Gail’s heart pounded at the familiarity of the shape. This was Kay’s ray. A giant oceanic manta ray with a white underside. She drew it everywhere, always this same shape, until she said it was as easy as writing her own name. How was it here?

  She inched closer to the drawing. Was it ancient? Gail reached a hand to it, breathing softly. Her fingertips grazed the surface and whitened. Chalk. Gail spat on her fingers, rubbed at more of the drawing, and the ray’s edge blurred and disappeared beneath her hand.

  “But this is new. This is—” Gail spun around, her back tensed against the presence of someone else in the tunnels.

  She only saw slips of shadows disappear beyond the torch beam, and the cloud of her own breath in the air. She remembered when Kay had drawn chalk outlines of lion’s mane jellyfish on the tarmac outside their house. They’d glowed there for a week until the rain had washed them off. Here, the cave walls were damp and streaked with lichen. Someone must have drawn it in the last few days. But who would draw something here? And who would draw Kay’s ray? Surely… For a moment, Gail wavered. “No,” she said aloud, shaking the thought away. “She couldn’t have.” Kay hadn’t left the house for a long while.

  The drawing made Gail’s skin tingle, as if something floated past her in the darkness, brushing against her arm. As she turned away, the torch flickered over a smudge in the eye of the ray. Gail hesitated. There was a small hole in the rock face, just a few inches above her head. The ray had been carefully drawn around it. The tingling in Gail’s skin grew as she reached up to the small shelf.

  When her fingers touched something rough and sharp-edged, Gail flinched then pulled it out of the hole. Her eyes widened at what she’d found. A shell, larger than her hand. The underside was a dark burgundy brown with fine ridges like the bark of a tree, and when she turned it over, the inner glowed gently, milky pale with yellow spots. It was a mussel shell, the biggest one she’d seen.

  Gail stroked the inside with her thumb and frowned as she felt something crinkle beneath her fingertips. She tipped the shell away from her and the light revealed a thin layer of tissue paper, folded over and over, slipped inside. Gail pulled it out carefully, opening the sheet until it lay flat across her hand. She realised she was holding her breath and let it out slowly, excitement bubbling in her chest. It was a map. A map inside a shell.

  Shifting her palm so the light could catch the whisker-thin lines, she tried to make sense of what she saw: a series of small drawings sketched across a sharp-pointed finger of land. One drawing was of a pine tree, its middle branch sticking out with a spray of firs on its tip like a hand; next to it was a moon-shaped loch in a low valley. Gail chewed her lip, questions fizzing in her mind. Where was this? And who was it for?

  She stared accusingly at the map, demanding it be less cryptic. Then she looked back at the manta ray. Her finger traced the shape of it in the air, just as she’d seen Kay draw it, over and over again, everywhere she could. Gail blinked. Of course. Someone else knew about Kay’s manta. And they must have drawn this one for her, so she’d stop and find the shell. The map was waiting for Kay, like a secret.

  A flood of jealousy washed through Gail. Kay had never had secrets from her before.

  She turned the map over slowly in her hands. Whoever left this for Kay couldn’t know that her sister was sinking. That she didn’t leave the house, didn’t pick up her phon
e. Whoever left this for Kay didn’t know she wouldn’t find it. And it must be important. No one entered Oyster Cave unless they had to.

  Something whispered like a trapped breeze further down the tunnel and Gail’s eyes widened guiltily. She’d forgotten Kay’s shadow. She had to catch up with it; the map would have to wait. Shoving the shell and paper into her pocket, she broke into a run, her torch beam ricocheting off the walls. The tunnel narrowed so that Gail’s elbows jarred on the rock and she sucked in her cheeks with the pain. The tang of salt creased her nose as the ground began to slope downwards. She’d been running in a steady curve to the right, so she must be close to the ocean now. The air was green with the smell of seaweed.

  Suddenly, the tunnel split into two. Gail pushed her fringe out her eyes and gasped for breath. Which way? She pointed the torchlight as far as she could down each side of the split but could see nothing. Her skin prickled.

  “Kay’s shadow,” she whispered. Nothing happened. She said it again, louder: “Kay’s shadow?”

  This time the rocks picked at her words, shaking them around and around like a handful of grit, until they fell apart.

  How sad shadow, the cave echoed, and Gail’s stomach twisted inside her. She squeezed her eyes shut and marched forward, taking whichever tunnel her feet took her into.

  “It’s not sad,” she muttered, her hands reaching out in the darkness around her. “It’s not fair. I’m lost and—aieeggh—” Gail’s eyes snapped open as her elbow jarred with something soft, but her scream was cut off by a small cold hand pressed firmly over her mouth. A hand belonging to whatever she’d just walked into, in the darkness of Oyster Cave, where anyone could disappear.

  Chapter Four

  Blinking furiously, Gail tried to breathe through her nose. Her hand pressed against the damp rock of the tunnel wall to steady herself, but still, everything trembled. Her knees shook and something watery was happening to her eyes. At least the hand looked human, she thought.

  Gail tilted her head, running her eyes back from the hand up the pale arm to an orange fizz of hair. The hair was smiling at her. That wasn’t right. Gail closed her eyes. When she opened them again, the smile grew broader and the hair twitched away to reveal a girl. When Gail met her eyes, the girl grinned, put her finger to her lips and took her hand away from Gail’s mouth.

  Gail took a deep breath and lifted her own hand to scrub her mouth, but the girl grabbed it mid-journey and began shaking it with delight.

  “Is mise Mhirran,” she whispered, walking Gail hastily back the way she’d come. “Dè an t-ainm a th’ort?” Gail stared blankly at the Gaelic she’d never learned and the girl’s grin widened as she began a strange thumb-and-elbow dance with Gail’s arm. “I’m Mhirran.” She jerked her shoulder backwards. “Sorry about that. I didn’t want my brother to know I’d sneaked off.” Mhirran’s eyes glittered with excitement. “You’re the second person I’ve ever met in these tunnels.” She looked around them. “I don’t know why no one else comes down here, aren’t they just beautiful?”

  Gail looked doubtfully around her.

  “I came in through the Cave of Thieves.” Mhirran was still talking. “How about you? Ooo, did you hear my Morse code? Is that why you’ve come? It went like this. Taptaptaptap tap tapscrapetaptap tapscrapetaptap scrapescrapescrape. It’s how I talk to the stalactites. Listen.”

  Gail stared in confusion at the girl tapping earnestly on the rock. She was Gail’s height but it looked like she should have been taller. Her shoulders were stooped as if they were having a conversation with her knees. Her teeth flashed silvery with braces and she had more freckles even than Gail. Her hair was clementine orange and seemed constantly surprised, and her glasses slid off her nose as she talked, even though her nose was the kind of nose that should really keep glasses up. Gail realised she’d seen Mhirran near the village a couple of times before. She was younger than Gail, ten probably. But she’d never seen her in school.

  “I guess you didn’t hear it,” Mhirran said, turning around.

  Gail shook her head. “I don’t think so,” she said at last, a twinge of apology in her voice.

  Mhirran pushed her glasses up her nose. “Maybe I’m just not loud enough.” She sighed, then immediately brightened. “Which way did you come? Did you come from Oyster Cave or from the sea?” She jerked her thumb backwards towards the fork where the salt had stung Gail’s nostrils. “There’s a drawing near Oyster Cave. Did you see it? He’s so good at them. Is the tide out or did you swim in? I bet you swam, you look like a swimmer. Did you?”

  Gail winced but Mhirran didn’t wait for an answer.

  “I’ve seen dolphins near Seal Cave. They came so close I was scared they were lost. I wish I could have dunked my face in the water to talk with them.” Mhirran paused, threw her head back and gave a series of bizarre clicks and whistles ending with a prolonged squeak. “What do you think?”

  Despite herself, Gail laughed. Mhirran’s impression was uncannily good. “You speak Dolphin?”

  The girl beamed. “I could teach you. I speak all sorts of—”

  “MHIRRAN!” A sharp voice echoed through the tunnels behind them.

  Mhirran rolled her eyes then grinned at Gail. “I have to go, but see you around! You should head this way,” she said, as she pointed to the other tunnel in the fork. “That’ll take you out.” And then she was gone.

  Silence settled around Gail. The dark seemed darker and Gail felt suddenly very alone. Little by little, the rush of Mhirran’s words washed through her. Morse code. Talking with dolphins. The Sea Cave where you can swim inside the tunnels. The drawing at Oyster Cave. Gail’s hand went to her pocket and she pulled out the shell. So Mhirran had seen the drawing too. Gail chewed her lip and froze. Wait, what had she said? He’s so good at them.

  Gail started forward. Mhirran knew who’d done the manta ray. Was it her brother? Hurrying after her, Gail heard a muffled exclamation ahead. A clatter and shout echoed down the tunnel. She hesitated, uncertainty slowing her feet. Why had Mhirran told Gail to go the other way?

  Gail pressed her lips together. She wanted to know who’d done the drawing. She’d just have a look. She’d stay hidden.

  Switching off her torch, she inched forward with one hand on the wall. To her surprise, the tunnel wasn’t completely dark: dusty light hung in curtains ahead of her. Gail stopped before a sharp bend. She could make out words now.

  “You didn’t listen. I told you to let go of the rope when you saw one.” The boy’s voice was lemony-sour. Like all the life had been squeezed out of it. Gail pressed her body against the rock.

  “But I did let go,” came Mhirran’s reply. She sounded strangely subdued.

  “You let go too late. You just stood and watched it go by. It went right past you!”

  “I didn’t see it.”

  “You weren’t paying attention.”

  Silence vibrated through the tunnel. Gail frowned. Apart from it wasn’t silent at all. If she held her breath, she could hear a quiet low whirring, like a motor.

  “I don’t even know why I let you come.” There was the sound of something scraping along the ground. “Keep your eyes open next time.”

  “My eyes were open. They were just looking in the wrong place.” Mhirran hesitated, then her voice brightened. “Did you know that mantis shrimp can move their eyes in different directions?”

  Gail’s mouth bent into a lopsided smile. She knew that.

  “I guess if I had eyes at the end of my arms, that’d be easier. Then I wouldn’t have missed it.”

  An angry snort from the boy.

  “Like starfish. Which don’t even have brains,” Mhirran continued.

  Gail giggled before she could cover her mouth and the voices immediately stopped.

  Footsteps snapped over the stone towards her.

  “Who’s there?”

  Unsure whether to run or reveal herself, Gail spun around, but as she did so, she caught her foot on a rock, lost her balance and stu
mbled forward, tripping onto something hard and wooden which cracked sickeningly beneath her.

  When she opened her eyes, her nose was inches away from a dark splinter of wood which pointed at her accusingly amongst a ruin of planks and nails. Gail tasted blood where she’d bitten her cheek as she fell, and her ribs throbbed. Untangling her ankles from her knees, she glanced upwards.

  “Move.” The word slid like a sea snake towards her.

  Gail flinched. A boy, around Kay’s age, crouched over her. His dark hair was cut short above his face, which was made entirely of angles. His nose was pointed and sharp as a goblin shark and he was holding a slice of wood in his hand, the jagged edge an inch away from Gail’s chest.

  Gail struggled backwards, kicking away pieces of rope. “I’m sorry, I—”

  The boy’s eyes glittered. Gail was pressed against the cave wall. Sweat dribbled over her lip.

  “You’re sorry? That’s it? Do you—”

  He paused, his head turned to one side. Behind him, Gail could see beyond the bend in the tunnel where she’d been listening. She peered into a large cavern, squinting against the thin light which dripped in through a crescent-shaped hole in the roof. Around her, stalactites and stalagmites chewed through the cavern like teeth. Something clanked and popped; the slow whirring that Gail had heard before was sputtering to a stop. The sound was coming from the far side of the cavern where a large wooden chest with a gaping canvas funnel strapped tightly to one side vibrated in gurgles and burps. It looked like a bigger version of what was now scattered in pieces around Gail. Next to the chest was Mhirran. Her cheeks were flushed and her eyes looked everywhere but the boy’s face.

  “I didn’t do anything,” Mhirran said. “It just…?”

  The boy’s thin lips tightened as he threw down the wooden splinter, striding towards the chest, and pushing Mhirran out of the way.