How We Became Wicked
Page 24
CHAPTER 31
The Boat from Home
NATALIE WAS LEANING OVER EVA’S makeshift cot, checking her temperature, when she heard an engine in the distance. It had been two days since she’d returned to the cabin with the searchers. Two days of watching and waiting as Eva recovered from her ordeal in the bog. Two days of smiles, of gratitude, of pretending not to know that she was in the grasp of beasts. So far nothing bad had happened. Miranda seemed obsessed with getting the baby healthy again, and Reggie was still committed to his nice-guy routine. But Natalie knew that it was only a matter of time until the searchers showed their true faces. She had to get her family out of here before that happened.
Outside, the engine sounds grew louder. Natalie scooped Eva up from the cot and walked softly down to the jetty to investigate. It was an overcast morning, and that quilt of summer fog was back. But Natalie didn’t have to see to know what was out there—she would have recognized that familiar wheeze and gurgle anywhere. The outboard motor gagged as it dipped beneath a swell, hacking for breath as it came up again. It was her family’s lobster boat. The only question was who would be aboard.
“Maybe Mom came looking for us,” Natalie whispered into Eva’s tiny ear.
Sure, her sister said. Or maybe Grandpa found the keys.
Of course, they weren’t the only ones to hear the motor. Soon the searchers began to gather on the jetty as well. Miranda in the lead, her yellow bee suit pulled up only halfway, the sleeves tied about her waist like a belt. Reggie and the others followed. Natalie’s father was there too, keeping a low profile in the back of the pack.
“There you two are,” Miranda said. Plucking Eva out of Natalie’s grasp, she held her up for inspection. Purple light poured out of Eva’s eyes, illuminating Miranda’s face. The baby writhed in her grip, whimpering. Natalie had to fight the urge to snatch her sister back. She only smiled, grateful for the woman’s kind attention.
“Her fever is almost gone,” Miranda said, passing the baby back. “But still, you should have let her sleep.”
“Sorry,” Natalie said, docile as a fawn. “I heard the boat and got excited.”
“You, um . . . You expecting somebody?” Reggie asked. Behind him the men in yellow shifted nervously. They’d all brought their rifles with them.
Natalie made brief eye contact with her dad. They’d managed not to give themselves away over the last two days, but they also hadn’t come up with anything like an escape plan.
“Natalie, do you know who that might be?” Miranda asked. She put on a smile the way you might slip on a hat. “If it’s a friend of yours, I’d hate for there to be any confusion.”
If you lie, and it’s Mom, then we’re screwed, Eva said.
Helpful as always.
“I think it might be my mother,” Natalie said. “It sounds like her boat, at least.”
“Your mom.” Reggie nodded slowly. “From the island?”
“Puffin Island,” she said—no use keeping it secret, as the searchers had long since guessed. “Yes. I think so.”
The engine grew louder. Soon Natalie could make out the rough outlines of an approaching lobster boat—the peaked stem and exhaust pipe, the level platform and transom. A sheltering roof stood above the wheelhouse, capped with a defunct radar antenna. As the boat drew closer, Natalie immediately recognized the figure at the wheel. Her glowing irises gave her away—it was her mother. Her eyes pierced the fog like a pair of purple flames. Everybody else noticed them at the same time. On the jetty, there was a collective intake of breath.
“Oh my God,” Miranda said, taking a step backward.
Reggie gawked at Natalie. “Your mom is vexed too?”
She nodded.
“You might have mentioned that.”
Natalie gave a half shrug. “I wasn’t sure if I could trust you. I didn’t know you.”
“Well, you do now,” Reggie said. He actually sounded hurt. “You should have told us.”
“I do now,” Natalie agreed. Again she saw the woman in the video. Her bruised, split cheeks. The insides of her skull scooped hollow as a lobster shell. “I know you.”
The boat was close enough now that Natalie’s mom must have been able to see that there were strangers on the jetty. She cut the engine, allowing the lobster boat to coast forward on its own momentum. She hobbled out of the wheelhouse, using an oar as a crutch. Natalie’s mom may have been strong enough to escape the island, but she was still in rough shape.
“That must be how both girls survived it,” Miranda said. She sounded a million miles away. Natalie couldn’t tell if she was talking to herself, or to everybody. Maybe both. “Resistance passed from the mother. Otherwise the chances for both siblings to survive the vex would be . . .”
“Damn near impossible,” Reggie finished for her.
“We need to get a look at this island,” Miranda went on.
“Among other things,” Reggie added. Then, to Natalie: “You know, it really would’ve been helpful if you’d told us about this sooner.”
“I know,” she said, sheepish and obedient. “I’m sorry.”
Her mother had made her way out onto the platform, grabbing at the railing and leaning over the side. She stared at them all through the thick fog. She closed her eyes, rubbed them, and looked again. Natalie couldn’t guess what was shocking her most—the sight of her two vexed daughters, the half dozen strangers in yellow suits, or her missing husband. It was a good thing that her mom had a poker face like a brick wall.
Hey, Eva snapped at her. Wake up. Dad’s trying to say something.
Natalie glanced at her father. His mouth was moving, but no sound was coming out. He shaped a pair of words over and over.
Signal flag.
Damn, Eva said. You should have thought of that.
“I need something white,” Natalie announced.
Miranda and Reggie raised their eyebrows, glancing at each other.
“What do you need it for?” her father asked. It was as much help as he could offer without giving himself away.
“It’s how we communicate on the island,” Natalie said. “A white flag means all clear. If my mom doesn’t see it, she won’t dock.”
Naturally, this was the precise opposite of the truth—a white flag was a signal that something was wrong. The signal for good news was no signal at all.
“Hurry, please,” Natalie said. “She must be worried about me—about us.”
“Give her your shirt, Reggie,” Miranda said.
Reggie only cocked his head, looking skeptical. Miranda glared at him.
He gave in. “Fine. You can have it. But don’t look. I’m bashful.” He pulled his bee suit down and then yanked his T-shirt up and over his head. His skin beneath was pale, his chest lean and freckled. Reggie tossed the shirt to Natalie. The white cotton was warm and moist in her hands.
“Just kidding,” Reggie said. “You can look all you want.”
Natalie’s father shifted his weight almost imperceptibly.
“Don’t be gross,” Miranda snapped. “And don’t forget to pull your suit back up before we leave this quiet zone. I can’t have you bitten.” She looked to Natalie: “You go ahead, honey. Let your mom know that we’re nothing to be afraid of.”
Natalie lifted Reggie’s shirt into the air and swung it in a wide arc back and forth. Out on the boat, her mother went still. Then she hobbled back into the wheelhouse and began to bring the lobster boat in toward the jetty.
As the boat approached, Miranda called out to her, “Don’t you worry, ma’am! Your daughters have been safe with us!” Then, to Natalie: “What’s her name, anyway?”
“It’s Astrid,” she said.
It felt slightly odd to say out loud—on the island they barely used names. There’d always been just one of each of them. Mom and Dad and Grandpa. But of course, her mother had a name. It was Astrid.
“Can you hear me, Astrid?” Miranda called, waving both her hands in the air. “We’re true. We’re
friends. We’re here to help!”
CHAPTER 32
Eliza’s Family
ASTRID WOULD ALWAYS REMEMBER THE day she and her family escaped Goldsport. The same day that their life on Puffin Island began.
They landed on the western shore, beaching the lobster boat on a narrow strip of gravel and sending thousands of terrified birds screaming into the sky. Off in the distance, they could still hear Mother booming. White columns of water flew up as the shells crashed into the bay. But the island was out of range.
The wicked couldn’t touch them here.
Hank helped Ria out of the boat and settled her down on the stones. Her breathing was shallow, and her face had turned pale beneath the mesh of her bonnet. Blood had been oozing steadily from her side, leaving a stain that ran down to her boots. It would turn out that a small length of copper piping had blown out of the wall when her house exploded, plunging itself through Ria’s ribs and into her liver. She would be dead by the following morning. Though Astrid didn’t know that yet. None of them did—least of all Ria herself. That night, as she began to fade, Ria would fight. She’d claw back at the life slipping out of her. And when it finally ended, she would seem, more than anything, surprised.
But that was still hours away.
And ages ago.
In Astrid’s memory, the time stretched. It was as though her mother had sat on that stone beach for years, facing the ocean and breathing hard. The puffins came and went. They laid eggs and warmed them. They fed chicks and fledged them. They flew off to sea and returned and flew off to sea again. Winters froze the rocks, and Ria with them. Summer storms brought the waves up to her chest. Amblin, long wicked, grew old in his locked tower. Astrid and Hank grew older too. They had Natalie. They learned to hunt and to fish and to make do with their feelings for each other. Sometimes it seemed as though there might be something more than friendship between them. Other times it felt like there was nothing at all. Like they were simply an accident—two beans forgotten in the bottom of a can. And all this while, Ria was there. Now she sat on the western shore, looking across the bay at the shattered speck of Goldsport. Now she lay atop a moldy cot in the bunkhouse, cursing at the ceiling as she lost her fistfight with eternity. Now she was buried beneath a pile of stones, in a graveyard at the shadowed foot of the lighthouse.
That was where Astrid had found Eliza’s family back on that very first day. Three graves scratched into the soil. Wooden crosses, blasted smooth by the ocean winds. Astrid could just make out the name carved into the largest cross—Solomon Jones. Eliza’s father. The man who’d traded away everything when Ronnie Gold came to town, told Solomon to be afraid, and offered him a good deal on a wall and some glass.
Beyond the graveyard the bunkhouse door stood open and rusted upon its hinges. A stink of ammonia stung Astrid’s nostrils as she approached. The house was a warren for lean, angry-looking rats—it would take her and Hank months to clear them all out. It was here where Astrid found Eliza’s mother. The woman sat at the table in the common room, slumped to one side in a big chair. It looked like she’d been dead for a very long time. The rats had picked her clean and had carried off all but a few strips of her dress to line their nests. Her bones were the mottled color of coffee, with milk only half stirred in.
After that Astrid went to investigate the lighthouse. She stepped into the engine room and found the generator clicking like a broken clock. A red light was still flashing on the instrument panel. After all that had happened, her father had been right. Puffin Island was deserted, and the only thing keeping the lighthouse alive was a ghost of electricity haunting the old engine. It would actually be her dad’s idea to lock himself up in here. Amblin even took charge of bricking over the windows to ensure that he couldn’t get out once he’d fallen wicked.
Actually, locking himself up in the lighthouse had been her father’s second choice. When Astrid had returned to where they’d beached the lobster boat, she’d found Amblin and Hank wrestling in the shallows. Her dad was trying to get into deeper water, while Hank, still in his bee suit, struggled to pull him out. Ria simply watched, helplessly, as she bled out upon the rock. Eventually Hank managed to drag Amblin back onto the gravel shore and pinned him down. Amblin wept, begging to be let go.
“I don’t want to hurt anybody,” he said between sobs.
“I know,” Hank cooed, pressing his knee into Amblin’s back. “We won’t let you.”
This was the Hank Astrid remembered. A man who was weak and strong all at once. A man who was always afraid and still not a coward. This was the Hank she saw twenty years later, standing on the jetty. He wore a strange yellow bee suit and a look of dull panic. Their eldest daughter stood beside him. In one hand she was waving the warning flag. In the other she held Eva, her little purple eyes ablaze. All around them were strangers bearing open arms and wolf smiles. One of these people, a woman, was calling out to her.
“Hello there, Astrid! I promise that we’re not going to hurt you.”
“I know,” Astrid answered softly into the fog. “Because we won’t let you.”
CHAPTER 33
Home Again
AN HOUR LATER THEY WERE all crammed onto the lobster boat, motoring slowly away from the cabin. Natalie passed Eva to their mother, who clutched the little baby tight against her chest. Then Natalie took over the helm, steering them out into the open water. Soon they were lost in the fog.
Back at the cabin, Astrid had played it exactly right. She’d docked the boat and pretended to be overjoyed to meet the searchers. She’d thanked them for keeping her children safe. When Miranda asked if her group could take a little visit to Puffin Island, Astrid acted as though she were only too happy to agree. She must have realized that if she said no, things would get ugly.
The searchers peppered her with questions as they went. How long had Astrid been vexed? Was she experiencing any side effects other than her purple eyes? Did she know of any others who had survived the process? How long had her family lived on the island? Did she have any other children? What about Natalie and Eva’s father—was he immune as well?
“Oh no,” Astrid answered, speaking up over the drone of the engine. “He wasn’t vexed. Anyway, he’s dead now.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” Miranda said.
To Natalie, she didn’t sound sorry at all.
All the while the fog outside grew thicker. Astrid had Natalie slow the engine to a crawl. Then she asked Reggie to go out on the bow and keep an eye out for rocks. But they were in deep water—there was nothing out here that they could crash into. Her mother must have had an idea in mind.
Reggie glanced at Miranda, getting a nod of permission before leaving the wheelhouse. “I didn’t know there was a shoal out here,” Miranda said, only the faintest trace of suspicion in her voice.
“Oh, it’s bad for miles along this stretch of coast,” Astrid said casually. “That’s why they built our lighthouse, all those years ago.” With this she let one of her hands drift down to the wheel, pulling it slightly to the right. Natalie didn’t know why, but her mother was steering them away from Puffin Island.
“You know,” she went on, “I think everyone should keep an eye out. I got banged up a little bit on the way out this morning. And the boat is riding a lot lower and heavier now.”
For several long seconds Miranda only stared at her.
“Normally I wouldn’t think of taking her out in this fog,” Astrid continued. “But, you know . . .” She nodded down at Eva, snug in her arms. “I couldn’t wait any longer.”
“Of course,” Miranda said. “You must have been worried sick. About both of them.”
“I can’t even describe . . .” Astrid paused, seeming to blink away tears. “I knew that my Natalie could do it. But the baby—Miranda, I am so very grateful to you.” With this she reached out a hand and placed it on Miranda’s cheek. She looked right into her eyes. “I can never thank you enough for keeping my girls safe,” she said, soft as new grass.
For a moment it seemed as if the weight of what wasn’t being said would be enough to sink the boat.
“I didn’t mean to—”
“Of course you didn’t.” Astrid spoke quietly and quickly. They could barely hear her over the drone of the engine. She glanced at her husband, lingering over his face. His broken nose and fresh scars. “Let’s not get into it now,” she said.
“I was being an idiot,” Hank said.
“That’s true too.” Astrid clutched Eva tighter, and the baby squirmed a little in her sleep. At this point she’d spent as much of her short life away from her mother as with her. “Have you had a chance to hold her yet?” she asked.
“Once,” Natalie’s dad whispered. “When everybody was sleeping.”
“So they definitely don’t know that you and Natalie are . . . ?”
“No,” Natalie said. She glanced behind them and saw that the searchers were still talking to one another. Miranda stood in the center of the group, her ponytail lank with fog, her tattooed singer flexing as she breathed.
“They think I escaped from Goldsport,” Hank said.
“Well . . .” Astrid sucked in a long breath through her nose. “They’re not wrong.” Again she put a hand on the wheel, dragging them even further off course.