The Girl Who Lost Her Shadow

by Emily Ilett

  Finally, Jake asked, “Do you think I’m a monster?”

  Gail frowned and shook her head. “You’re helping me,” she said firmly. Though even as she said it, she felt the bird’s shadow squirm at her feet, stronger, but still firmly attached. Was he helping her? And would the owners of the shadows which quivered in his pockets have called him a monster? Gail bit her lip. But if he couldn’t help it…

  Jake read the uncertainty in her eyes and nodded. “‘Monster’ is a big word, Gail. And what you name people matters.”

  Gail squirmed as she felt the edges of her own name in her mouth. Gale.

  When Jake next spoke, his voice had dropped to the crackle of the fire’s embers. “Did Mhirran ever tell you about her parents?”

  A squirrel leapt between two trees high above them. Gail shook her head.

  “They died. They were both killed in a storm last year.” Jake caught her expression. “No, it wasn’t me. Lightning struck a huge oak and…” Jake shifted and his pockets twitched and turned. “Mhirran didn’t speak for five months afterwards. Not a word. Her uncle took her out of school. He tried everything to make her speak, but nothing worked. And then, one day, he started talking to her about talking. You know, about all the different ways creatures speak to each other: birds, wolves, crickets… After a while, she got curious. She started reading more about it. The first thing she said, after those five months, was that elephants can sense the warning calls of other elephants through the ground. They feel it with their feet.”

  Jake smiled at the memory. “That was the first time I met her. She was so astonished by it. Her eyes were all lit up. She didn’t care about the wind that kept tangling her hair whenever she sat by me, or about the shadows in my pockets, she just wanted me to say something really loud while she’d stick her fingers in her ears and try to hear it through her feet.

  “We became friends after that, and she told me about all these ways of talking, and of the codes she’d learned.” Jake frowned. “She said that Francis thought that it was just another kind of silence, this talking in codes. But it isn’t.”

  Gail’s mouth fell open. Of course. All of Mhirran’s constant chatter was about talking. She hadn’t listened hard enough. Bird calls and Morse code, dolphin clicks, spiderweb vibrations and whistling languages. Gail bit her lip. And she’d dismissed Mhirran’s words just like Francis had: You talk all the time, but you don’t ever say anything real.

  Jake glanced at the bird by Gail’s feet and continued. “It affected Francis differently. After their parents died, he got really quiet too, but in a different way. He didn’t believe they were gone. Couldn’t believe it. So, when he found out about the storms and the shadows that stuck to storms, he began searching. He was sure he could find his parents’ shadows.”

  The embers of the fire crackled suddenly and Gail spun round, half-expecting to see Francis leaning over her. “So that’s who he meant,” she said. “He said he was looking for two shadows. But he’s not found them.”

  “He’s still looking. Maybe one day…”

  “But the birds, what has he done to them? And why does he want my sister’s shadow?” She flicked her fringe out of her eyes angrily. “He knew she was my sister and he just—” Gail’s mind filled with the vampire squid shape of Francis’s shadow-swallowing machine.

  Jake chewed his lip and the wind tunnelled around him, sending currents which licked at Gail’s face. “What he’s doing to those shadows isn’t right. But…” His face creased into a frown. Slowly, as if he was trying to figure it out himself, he began. “Storms are violent, Gail. We batter and hurl and flood and burn. We are the release of so much anger and energy.” Jake scratched his head. “And it’s like… since that night, a storm began to grow inside Francis’s heart, and it’s just kept on growing.” Jake shook his head. “But there’s nowhere for it to go, so it’s just twisting away inside him.

  “He became obsessed with the hunt for these shadows, staying out all night, not eating…” Jake shrugged. “And the more time he spent with shadows, the more he became lost in his own world. He started experimenting on them, trying to ‘fix’ them, so that he’d know what to do when he found his parents.”

  “He thought he could bring them back?” Gail breathed.

  Jake nodded. “I think so. That storm petrel picture on the shed door: his mum painted it. Both his dad and mum loved birds. It’s why they were in the forest that night the lightning hit the tree: they were bird-watching. What he did to these bird shadows,” Jake gestured to Gail’s feet, “it’s like he’s trying to please his parents by giving back flight to something they loved. And it’s practice for when he finds them.”

  “And me? He wanted me and Kay’s shadow to help find his parents’ shadows, didn’t he?” Francis’s words spun through Gail’s mind. Blood ties and family bonds. It’s the next step. “What was he going to do to us?”

  Jake chewed on his lip. “I don’t know. Maybe he doesn’t even know.”

  Gail stared at the bird’s shadow preening its feathers at her feet. “And Mhirran… She’s…” The argument outside the caves caught at Gail’s throat. She had accused Mhirran of helping him. Francis is my brother, Gail. “She’s not helping him, is she?”

  Jake smiled sadly. “Mhirran?” He shook his head. “She follows him and stays with him and sees what he’s doing and hates it. She doesn’t know what else to do. She slows him down in small ways. Damages his machines, misses shadows when she’s meant to be catching them.”

  A laugh burst out of Gail and surprised them both. “I just thought she was clumsy,” she explained, recalling Mhirran treading on the machine as they moved through the tunnels, and Francis’s anger at her missing Kay’s shadow as it slipped through the cavern.

  Jake frowned. “But he’s her brother. He’s all she’s got left, now. Along with her uncle.”

  Gail smiled as hair the colour of sunrise appeared from between the trees.

  “And us,” she said.

  Chapter Nineteen

  When Mhirran saw Gail, her face lit up then immediately crumpled and words tumbled out of her mouth. “I’m sorry Gail last night I couldn’t stop him I tried but he heard you and today the birds I never thought the shadow would drop you and I wanted to come straight here but I had to follow him and I hid and I let them out. I opened it up Gail and I let them out but Kay’s shadow was so quick and he was coming I had to be fast and she’s gone and I’m sorry.”

  She collapsed by the fire, her glasses sliding hopelessly down her nose. Jake pushed them gently back up.

  “You let Kay’s shadow out?”

  Mhirran nodded miserably.

  “She’s free?”

  Her hair swung up and down.

  Gail catapulted towards her, the shadow flapping at her feet, shocking her into a hug. “You got her out of the chest!”

  Gail squeezed Mhirran as tight as she could, but when she let go, the smile on Mhirran’s face didn’t quite reach her eyes. She turned to Jake.

  “He knows,” she said in the smallest voice Gail had ever heard. “He knows I let them go.”

  A soft wind ruffled her hair as Jake squeezed her arm. “You did the right thing,” he said.

  Mhirran looked at Gail helplessly. “I’m sorry, Gail. I should have stopped him sooner. What he did to you, to those bird shadows. It’s just…” Her voice trailed away as she stared at the crumple of feathers still clinging to Gail’s feet.

  Gail took a deep breath. “He’s your brother, Mhirran,” she finished for her.

  Mhirran nodded, her eyes bright as a blue tang as they met Gail’s. “I knew you’d understand,” she said. Then her mouth twitched and she let out a familiar piercing call. Krrrrrrhuh Krrrrrrrhuh.

  It felt for a second like everything in the forest was holding its breath. Then, in a scrumple of dark feathers, another petrel shadow landed next to Gail.

  “It’s the other bird shadow?” Gail asked, wide-eyed. “Why?”

  The second petrel
reached tentatively towards the shadow fluttering at Gail’s foot.

  “Look. Maybe this is the answer to your problem, Gail,” Jake murmured.

  The shadow at Gail’s feet recognised its companion, sending tingles through her body. She could feel its impatient excitement. “What’s happening?”

  “Watch,” Jake whispered, and so Gail did. She watched the shadow at her feet fluff up its oil-black feathers and open its wings. She watched the second dark blur trill a silent call to the first, and she watched as, slowly, the first shadow dropped away from her shoes, smudging into the second in a spinning dance of darkness. Then, in a spiral of twisting grey, both shadows stretched out their wings and lifted together into the sky.

  Gail wriggled her toes in relief, staring at the birds as they became specks above the creaking trees. “But… I don’t understand.”

  Jake smiled. “There are ties between shadows as well, Gail. Stronger ties than we could guess at.”

  Once the bird shadows were out of sight, Gail tucked her feet beneath her, holding her own edges close to herself.

  “When Kay’s shadow escaped the chest,” Mhirran said, drawing closer to the fire, “it moved so fast, as if it knew exactly where it was going. It moved like ink, like it was swimming over the ground. And it was heading south, Gail. Why?”

  Gail stopped to think. Mhirran was right. Even when she had first chased Kay’s shadow away, it felt like it knew exactly where it was going. Like it was trying to get somewhere.

  “I don’t know.” It hurt that she didn’t. She should know. Kay was her sister.

  “If Kay’s shadow is heading south,” Mhirran said, thinking aloud, “then it’s going in the same direction as Femi and the other boys. If we follow the map he left, then we’ll be following Kay’s shadow too.”

  Gail winced. She’d felt in her pockets for the map when she’d dried off from the loch, but it had gone. “I lost the map, Mhirran. I don’t think we’ll find him without it.” She squeezed the pearl tight in her fist and it bit into her palm.

  Mhirran grinned and pulled the thin sheet of paper out of her coat. “You gave it to me, remember?” she said. “When we were walking to the waterfall.” She turned to Jake. “Do you recognise this tree?” she asked, frowning at the pine with the jagged branch.

  He stole a look and nodded. “You can’t miss it. It’s on its own, metres from where the woods end. From there, you’ll see this path which’ll take you along the ridge over the swamp, down to the bothy and towards the ravine where the river is. Unusual, that.” He tapped the cross on the map. “Choosing a river deep in a ravine.” He glanced at Mhirran’s wrist, now wrapped in a tight bandage. “It’s quite a way, and it’s a scramble in places. You’ll have to go slow.”

  Mhirran nodded. “I’m okay.”

  Jake blinked and looked upwards at the dark clouds. “You’ll get wet.”

  “What’s this?” Gail asked suddenly. She pointed to two circles drawn on the edge of the cliff, close to the island’s southern tip.

  “Eilidh and Mor,” Jake replied, with a strange shine in his eye. “Though not many people know them by those names. Around here, they’re called the Storm Sisters.”

  Gail’s eyes widened. “The Storm Sisters? The giants?”

  Jake nodded. “There’s a place where you can go—”

  “To be sheltered inside a storm,” Gail finished.

  “A hollow cave, between the two sisters. I’ve been there before,” Jake said.

  Gail’s heart beat against her ribs as she stared at them. “This is where Kay’s shadow is going,” she said. “I know it! We were going to go there together, at the next storm. This is where it’s been headed all along!”

  She bit her lip in excitement and drew her finger over the map from Femi’s cross at the river mouth to the two rocks at the edge of the island. There was only a short distance between them. “We’ll stop Femi and then find Kay’s shadow,” she announced, and as she stood, she saw a rustle behind a birch tree. She stepped closer, holding her breath.

  Two eyes, not three metres from where she stood, blinked slowly at her. Eyes like coral glow, like a broken sunset. Gail grinned. A flicker ran through her body, like a breeze was spinning inside her. “Hello again,” she whispered to the cat as it crouched in the undergrowth, its ears flat against its head.

  She heard the others shift behind her.

  For one moment, the cat watched her, then it twitched its nose and turned, disappearing into the forest.

  “Isn’t it beautiful?” she breathed as she turned around.

  She was not prepared for the look on Mhirran and Jake’s faces. Their eyes were moon-pale and alive with astonishment.

  “But—” Mhirran began. “That’s a wildcat. We just saw a wildcat,” she spluttered.

  “A wildcat?”

  Mhirran’s eyes gleamed. “Gail, they’re really really rare. Endangered. I’ve never seen one around here. No one’s seen one.”

  “I saw it before. After the deer herd ran through the woods,” Gail said. Then she frowned. “What is it, Jake?”

  Shadows wound themselves in spirals around Jake’s ears. He tapped the map, close to the edge of the woods. “Someone’s drawn a wildcat on this rock in chalk. I saw it early this morning. Maybe it was this Femi you keep talking about,” he said.

  Gail remembered the drawing she’d seen from high above the loch. It must have been the wildcat. “But why—?” she began.

  Then she stopped. She spun back to where the real cat had been. She tapped her teeth and began to pace. Pacing was what Kay did when she was thinking she should be thinking. Gail knew she was missing something, some connection. She walked up and down, turning the pearl around and around inside her pocket as Jake and Mhirran watched her. The pearl that Femi had left her. The freshwater mussels. The manta ray. The drawing of the hawksbill turtle in Kay’s room. Why would he leave a drawing of a wildcat? Why would he mark his way? Gail stopped and spun round to Mhirran.

  “You said it’s endangered? The wildcat?”

  Mhirran nodded and Gail’s eyes widened suddenly in realisation.

  “They all are,” she breathed. “They’re all endangered. Everything he draws. He isn’t hunting pearls. He’ll know they’re endangered too. He’s trying to save them!” Gail scrunched her forehead together. “Remember, Mhirran. What did you say he drew? A sea lion, a reef of coral…”

  “A sea turtle.” Mhirran stared. “The manta ray. Are they all endangered?”

  Gail nodded. “Or vulnerable. Just like the freshwater mussels.”

  Mhirran opened her mouth and closed it again.

  “That’s why he left Kay the map,” Gail rushed on. “She must have said she’d help him. Before she started sinking,” she added, under her breath.

  Mhirran smiled. “I knew it,” she said. “I knew it! Femi wouldn’t join pearl thieves.”

  Gail pulled the mussel shell out of her pocket. “But what’s his plan?” she asked. “Why would he lead pearl fishers to that part of the island?”

  “He’s told you.” Jake smiled. He was holding Femi’s paper map up against the darkening sky. Mhirran and Gail jostled at his elbows, their hair knotting in the wind that wrapped around him. “Look.”

  There, in tiny letters surrounding the cross, as if it were a compass, Femi had written:

  Gail stared. “A trap? He’s planning to trap them?”

  Mhirran scrunched up her nose. “That sounds dangerous.”

  “And difficult,” Jake said.

  “And stupid,” added Gail, and she caught Mhirran’s eye and grinned. “Alright,” she said. “Let’s go save Femi, trap the pearl fishers and find my sister’s shadow,” and her eyes flashed as the wind spun inside her hair.

  Chapter Twenty

  Trees creaked and groaned like the bones of an old ship as grey clouds rolled towards them. The sky was ragged and heavy with rain. Gail glanced back at Mhirran striding behind her, relieved to have her company on the long walk. Jake h
adn’t come with them. Mhirran had said it was because of the storm coming. “He’s scared of them,” she’d said.

  Gail had laughed. “You’re kidding?”

  And Mhirran had grinned back. “I know, right?” Now she looked up at Gail and nudged her glasses further up her nose thoughtfully. “You seem different, Gail. More solid or something.” She paused. “Did you see your shadow again?”

  Gail pulled a face and shook her head. Mhirran was right: she did feel more solid, less blurry around the edges. But the space beneath her feet was still empty.

  Looking up, she stopped walking and stared. Was she imagining it? She rubbed her eyes. It was still there. A dark patch, small but distinct despite the thunderclouds, was flowing over the grass on a low hill further ahead. Gail’s heart pounded. Even from this distance, she knew it wasn’t hers. It was unmistakably Kay’s shadow, free of Francis and rushing south, just as Mhirran had described.

  “Look!” She lurched forward, pointing. “Do you see it, Mhirran?” Gail asked, hope soaring through her as the shadow dipped from sight into a valley. “Did you see Kay’s shadow?”

  Mhirran beamed at her. “It’s going the same way we’re going. And see over there, too. We’ve found Femi’s drawing.”

  Gail followed Mhirran’s finger until she saw the bright chalk markings she’d first glimpsed from the sky.

  Where the trees thinned, a rock balanced oddly, as if on tiptoe, at the edge of the woods. They drew closer and saw clearly the white wildcat shape. The cat’s tail was lifted like a calligraphic flourish behind it, and its stomach was low, as if on the prowl. Looking for something.

  “What do you think Femi’s planning?” Mhirran asked as they stared at the rock. “How’s he going to trap them?”

  Gail chewed her lip. “I’m not sure,” she said. “But he must have something in mind.” The not-knowing gnawed at her. “I wish we knew how Kay was going to help him… He needs us to do something, I think. Something he can’t do by himself. What could it be?”