“The water flooded everything!” she added. “Everywhere! Buildings, trains, cities … all swept away.” Her voice shook, and she did not look at him now. “This is what Pa told me. It’s in Pa’s book.”
She turned the stick sideways, using it as a hook to retrieve a charred feather from the coals. Was she certifiable too? Perhaps this island had made her and the Pa man mad? Her fingers trembled against the stick. Maybe he should feel sorry for her. Because … what, exactly, had she been told? Was it possible that someone could be so entirely sheltered on this strange island so as not to know anything? To think the whole world apart from here had … disappeared?
She pulled a small package wrapped in leaves through the coals toward her and left it to cool away from the flames. Perhaps it was drugs—maybe this was why she was speaking all this weird shit to him.
“You’re from the rest of the world, aren’t you?” she said slowly, almost as if she were talking to a three-year-old instead of him.
Finn chewed his lip. “Not sure.”
“Well … you know things like trains and governments and libraries and schools?”
He stared at her. “Sure.”
“But you don’t remember the storms? The floods?”
He shook his head. “Not any like you say.”
She raised her eyebrows. “Tides swelling, temperatures rising, ice melting, global warming, and the selfish people who used too much … ?”
When he didn’t say anything, she sighed again. “Perhaps the floods didn’t get everywhere?” Cautiously, she added, “Or perhaps Pa’s Experiment even … worked? Maybe the waters went down true-fast and none of it actually …”
Before she could go any further with her crazy questions, he reached across and took her shaking hands from the stick and held them in his.
“I don’t know of any floods like that,” he said. “Anywhere. Maybe you had some floods once, a long time ago, and that’s why you sailed here, but the rest of the world didn’t get them. I didn’t even hear about them!”
She looked away. Gently, he warmed her hands, rubbing his palms over hers.
“I don’t know what you’ve been told,” he added, “but the rest of the world is fine. I’ve just come from it; I’ve seen most of it this past year. No apocalypse! A few bad people doing a few bad things, sure, but nothing like you say.”
She wrenched her fingers back to the stick, which she used to deftly remove the leaves from the cooling package. Spices steamed out underneath.
“The world is not fine,” she whispered. “It … can’t be.”
Finn forced his hazy mind to think. “Well … someday something like what you’re talking about might well happen. I mean, with global warming and floods. But, Moss … ,” he said gently, “… right now, the rest of the world does exist.”
“I know it exists,” she said crossly, “but it doesn’t exist like you say.”
She went back to unwrapping whatever food was in that package. Finn’s stomach growled to get at it.
“Why would I lie?” He rolled his eyes in frustration—why should he have to defend himself to a stranger! Why even talk about this nonsense, when Tommy was still out there, maybe needing him?
“How many humans are there, then?” she asked.
“You mean … in the world?”
“Of course in the world!”
She dug out a shell from the package of leaves and bounced it on her palm to cool it. A snail? He’d eaten snails before, liked them. Especially with garlic butter.
“About seven billion,” he said. “Though I doubt they counted you in the last census, so perhaps there are more.”
“Billion?” She crawled back from him fast, dropping the shell. “No, not billion!”
“Geography was my best subject!” He raised his palms in protest. “Least I thought it was. Until I ended up on an island that doesn’t exist!” He grabbed the shell, unable to resist anymore. “This for me?”
He dug his finger into the snail shell, but its fleshy inside burned him and he dropped it again. Moss grabbed it and dug out the flesh in one easy movement of her thumb. She held it out on her palm, challenge in her eyes.
“Sea snail,” she said. “Don’t they have them where you come from? Don’t any of those seven billion eat sea snails like us? Or is that too strange for you?”
He looked around—at the orange sky, at the thousands of tiny flowers that were still out even though it was getting dark and there was no sun to warm them. He thought of the raving Englishman who believed the world had flooded and had told this girl that, too. He thought of that spooky white horse on the beach. This was easily the strangest place he’d ever been. He bounced the snail, considering.
“I’ve eaten sea snails,” he said, though less confident than he meant as he studied it closer.
She waited. He swallowed it.
The taste was pure salt; the texture, sand in a jelly pot. He tried not to cough when it got stuck in his throat.
“Mmm,” he said, eyes watering.
She surprised him by grinning. Then she crawled toward him, opened up one of his hands, and placed another hot, fleshy snail on his palm. “But that one wasn’t done yet!”
Finn smiled cautiously back. “Believe me, you’re far stranger than where I come from. This place is far stranger.”
She pressed at his palm. “This is a really good one,” she said. “Salty and fresh. Trust.”
So, with her smile so pretty and with his stomach now rumbling, he ate another.
Cal dragged the fish-that-were-no-fish across Lizard Rocks—it were too heavy for a right fishy, not slimy-cold enough, it had hairs vivid-bright as stormflowers, and a million sunspots. It was bloating-sick. Not full there.
Cal stopped to get breath back, placed it to the rock—they couldn’t stay here, not with the sun about to drop. He lifted its coverings and prodded it … this human-fish. It did not whisper back. But Cal did not think it’d given up its living yet. Maybe it were just deep-dreaming sick. Like how the Pa got.
He put his ear to it—this human-fish had breathing yet. Had hope. Cal lifted and hung it ’cross his back, leaned forward to balance. He would make it safe and warm. He’d been washed onto this island too once, after all.
He picked web-toes careful over sharp rocks and past lizard dens—still sleeping and snore-shuffling—toward tunnels deep. He paused to shift heaviness, waited to hear its breathings again. So fragile. Could Cal push his own breath into it, make its chest rise up? Not yet, not here. Here were night breezes, things scuttling-loud, flowers opening and singing.
He could ask flowers for healing for the human-fish? Already flowers were turning, pointing their egg-yolk centers to Cal like eyes. He put the human-fish down to see them right. One was calling loud!
He bent to that flower, easing fingers into still-warm soil. He finger-dipped down ’til he found flower roots. There, he held them like he would like to hold Moss’s fingers, and those roots tingled and tangled. He could pull the flower slow-careful from the ground and hold her in palms. Could bring his head close and touch tongue to her. Taste. She might be sweet-good. He could also take her purple petals and smoke them. Like that, this flower might wake human-fish. Might heal. Might put thoughts into human-fish’s mind.
He bent closer.
“Dreamings.”
Cal thought he heard.
“Water.”
And … softer … maybe …
“Stories.”
This flower might turn the human-fish into something like Pa, too. Put those thoughts in.
Cal let go. Her roots twisted like tiny octopus legs to find earth again. He brushed dirt to cover her. He would not use flowers for healing. Not this time. But he would give something back.
Careful-quick, Cal was on four limbs; this time he went down, down, down, to the slapping ocean. All the way ’til he leaned from rock to water. There, he scooped sea, holding palms together, using webbings to cup cool saltiness. He carried it back.
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A slithering of tail into rock—he saw! Quick as an eye-blink. He paused to sniff, but night air was too fierce for strong reptile scent. He waited, squinting in the dark. Nothing else came.
As he sprinkled water on the flower, her head bobbed. He felt her song around him.
“Salty-fresh! Taste-y!”
She was watching him, yolk-bright. Did she want him to taste her, too? Or did she want to be inside the human-fish instead?
“What is it you’re wanting?” he murmured.
Again, he looked to find the flicker-land. Saw it—there for one flicker-moment! Real.
But as he turned, he saw the lizard was back too, on the rock behind him. It was watching, air-licking, not letting Cal pass. Cal waited, Pa’s tales about fierce lizards strong in his brain. Least it were not full-grown. Cal could fight it, sure, though he would do better if Adder were here. He drew his lips back over his teeth and hissed. Lizard hissed back. Cal thought it were sniffing for the human-fish. But its hard, small eyes turned to the flower instead. It were wondering, thinking, wondering …
“I don’t take,” Cal said. “I leave be.”
Lizard hissed again. Did it want Cal to take the flower after all? Eat it?
Cal did what Moss would do—he thought to the creature, wonderful-kindnesses right inside of its brain. And it turned its fat, solid head to the side, considering, wondering.
The purple flower sang louder; Cal tasted the sweetness of her song, felt its sway. Darting its tongue out, the lizard tasted it too, bobbed its head in rhythm. After one more look to Cal, it went to the flower. Cal felt the reptile’s tongue dart against his leg, spike-sharp as it passed. It settled with eyes closing next to the flower. No fierceness to this lizard now, not like how the Pa had warned of in fire-tales.
Still, quick-fast, Cal lifted the human-fish, shifting it ’cross his shoulders. He moved away into the wide, dark passage inside Lizard Rocks.
He knew the way easy, had practice—earlier, he’d wound seaweed and tied it to rock sides to guide him through twistings and turnings. He went by feel, knowing the rock beneath would be dry, then wet again, before he was there.
Soon, he was in the cave. Where he’d already laid fire.
Cal smelled it—Moss’s birthday surprise, that secret—even if it were so far below. It were like rust and salt, like deep-down-deep.
“Soon,” he whispered.
He thought of Moss’s face as she’d see. Would she smile?
Soon … soon …
Cal lowered the human-fish next to the fire. With coverings he’d taken from Western Beach, he folded the human-fish in tight, like how otters fold their Small Things in kelp. Secure-like. Safe. He lit the fire.
In firelight, Cal saw that the human-fish’s skin was gray, saw how his breath came faster and lighter than flutterby wings. How he faded deep. Cal muttered to keep the fire steady and strong. P’raps the human-fish would not last if Cal went to fetch Moss. P’raps all he could do was make it warm. Stay close. Wait.
Gentle-soft, Cal dabbed water to the human-fish’s forehead. “Not be scared,” he whispered. Because that were what Moss had said to him, back in early days. Because her words had made him warm.
He tried to make the human-fish take water. He did, a little. When he coughed, Cal rubbed the smooth skin across his chest. Then the human-fish’s eyes flickered open. Cal saw them go wide when he saw Cal staring down.
“Do not worry,” Cal said. “I’ll get you strong.”
And the human-fish—this whole new boy lying below!—nodded. A smile went breeze-swift ’cross his lips.
“Dreaming,” he said, looking at Cal. “So beautiful.”
And Cal did not know if this were a sort of thank-you, or a word about him.
Moss woke. The fire was gone and it was shock-cold, even though Adder was tight at her side. Quick-fast, Moss looked across the fire pit. Finn was still there.
Real.
She hadn’t dreamt him.
He was curled like a seedpod, perfect-like. She went across and touched his face gentle-soft. This boy. Finnegan. Proof that the rest of the world was there and safe. Not flooded. That Pa and his scrapbook were wrong.
She hovered her finger over his nose and cheeks, noticing his pale freckles for the first time. She could trace them and make a picture, draw islands in a sea. She looked over his neck and sinew-strong shoulders, over his long, thin arms. He looked … like Pa. She stared harder. With his fair skin and hair, Finn could have been Pa’s child.
“What’s it really like?” she whispered.
Last night Finn said he’d sailed his boat around the rest of the world—said he’d been to at least sixty countries. She tried to imagine it, piecing together bits from the storybooks with the stuff Finn had told her.
Seven billion people. Dry land. So many different animals and plants. So many stories!
She brushed fingertips over Finn’s yellow hair, then checked the poultice on his leg. Still he didn’t stir, not even when she removed the flowers to let his healing skin breathe. Those flowers had made him sleepy as a puppy. Unable to wait any longer, she pulled her coverings tight and clicked to Adder.
She felt Aster watching before she saw her. Ghost-quiet in the trees, the horse’s gaze moved between Moss and the sea. Moss saw dents in the earth from where she’d pawed her hooves. “What is it that you really want?” she murmured at her. When Aster lowered her head, Moss placed her hand against her soft fur. “Can you see the other land out there? Have you known about it all this time?”
The horse whickered, and her ears twitched toward a noise only she could hear. A yes, then. Maybe it was. Or maybe she was just listening to the flowers.
With Adder chasing her heels, Moss went to the cove. The early morning was still starlit. Only a slit of pink, low in the sky, the glittering sea ahead. Behind her, pine trees murmured and sent smells of growing. Even the stormflowers were quieter. It only added to her feeling about what she was about to see. She stood at water’s edge with toes in, looking with the corners of her eyes. Exact same as Cal had shown her. And … yes … it was there! Like she’d known it would be.
Cal’s land.
It seemed right to see it again, now that Finn had arrived.
She squinted at its far shadow—it didn’t look so big after all. It was low to the sea, shaped like a skimming stone. But she’d seen it! She ran fast to tell Finn and Pa.
But before she got to the hut, she heard singing.
Pa?
It skidded her short.
“Our packet is the Island Lass,
Lowlands, lowlands, lowlands, low …
There’s a laddie howlin’ at the main topmast,
Lowlands, lowlands, lowlands, low …”
One of the songs he used to sing, back when he was happy most of the time. Was he healed, flipped out from Blackness? Washed better by the storm? Or, maybe, made happy by Finn’s arrival? She heard Pa’s two-note bird trill next, calling to open the stormflowers. Then she heard flower-song—those high notes on the wind.
She walked closer. Pa was dancing, flinging his arms before him in the lanky heron-bird way that always used to make her laugh … back when they’d dance any time they wanted, night or day or in rain or sun. But this time, he wasn’t dancing for her. Instead, Finn was sitting up, watching … smiling! Moss frowned. Yesterday, Finn had seemed almost scared of Pa.
Moss squinted at something in Finn’s hand. A scallop shell? Pa had given him stormflower-water? But Finn’s leg was healed; he did not need any more flowers! Unless … Pa was telling his stories? That was why he was up and cheerful! Already, she smelled flower scent. But why had Pa made today a story day? Why for Finn?
She strained over the flower-song to hear his words and, yes, she caught tales.
“… the island’s been here for all time … ,” Pa was saying, “… but it only ever has true-magic when there are dreamers here too. Then the flowers open!”
When Pa saw her, he threw his
arms wide.
“Moss-bird! Will you come and hear stories? I could get my book?”
His smile was so wide and his mood so high that a part of her would’ve been happy to sit beside the fire and hear tale after tale, to cuddle in against Pa’s chest as she used to and slip to dreaming.
“Our new spirit likes my stories!”
That stopped her tracks. She looked across at Finn, who waved and raised half his mouth to a smile.
“Not a spirit, Pa,” she said. “Remember what he told us? He didn’t come like Aster or Cal—not from the sea or the flowers.”
Pa bird-laughed. “Well, if I didn’t call this spirit in, you must have! You’ve been doing the Experiment without my knowing, little Moss?” He winked at her, like he knew it already.
Pa was so different this morning. Full-joyous, filled up on the buzz of the island. This was the Pa Moss liked most. But today she stayed wary.
“I’ve been thinking,” he said. “Maybe flower-magic is leaving me and coming to you instead … Maybe soon you’ll control the magic of this place, stop the floods and heal the world of its dark. Would you like that?”
“There are no floods, Pa,” she said, looking to Finn to confirm it. “Not so much darkness as you think.”
But now Finn was grinning at the stormflowers Pa had opened, reaching to touch their petals and then laughing at how they shied away. When he looked up at the trees, he gasped at flowers opening there, too. Pa threw stormflowers on the fire and the air went heavier with their smoking scent; she saw Finn’s eyelids go heavy.
“What are you doing, Pa?”
“Breakfast?” Pa wiggled his eyebrows like they were furry caterpillars, like he used to do to make her laugh. When he pointed to a pot of mussels boiling in flower-water, she shook her head.
“Don’t worry, Moss,” he said. “We’ve a new spirit, is all—it’s what all these recent storms have been leading to, all this recent strangeness.”
She looked across to the “new spirit.” He certainly seemed happy enough. Now he was laughing at how sunlight danced between his fingers as if playing a game.