Songs from the Deep

by Kelly Powell

  As we reach the steps, he slumps to his knees, head bowed as he clutches the blanket to his chest. “A year,” he whispers. “More than a year, and I…” He squeezes his eyes shut, tears slipping down his cheeks. “God forgive me, I did not know what to do.”

  I crouch beside him. “Jude…”

  “I tried to be kind to her. I tried to keep her alive.”

  “And you did.” I place a careful hand on his shoulder. “She’s safe now. She’s free.”

  This does not soothe him as I hoped it might. He presses his forehead to the dock, taking great, heaving gasps like he can’t find air to breathe. “I didn’t… I didn’t dare tell anyone,” he says. “I thought they would kill her. Oh God, I couldn’t…”

  My throat tightens. Tears flash down my cheeks before I can push them back. “Jude,” I say softly. “Jude, you’re not the one at fault here. You didn’t put her in that room. You didn’t bring the knife to her skin.”

  He chokes on a sob, covering his eyes with one hand. I want badly to take him from the harbor; he is still without iron, still too close to the ever-present dangers of the sea. Instead, I wrap my arms around him, pulling him into an embrace. I let him cry into my shoulder as he let me the day of my father’s funeral.

  Drawing away, he wipes his face with the sleeve of his sweater. “I apologize for not telling you sooner. You… You always know just what to do.” His red-rimmed eyes look out to sea. “I hope she’s all right.”

  I bring a hand to his cheek, turning him back toward me. He swallows.

  “She’s home,” I say. “Now we ought to return to ours.”

  He nods. “Yes.” He breathes in deep, steadying himself. “Moira—thank you.”

  His voice cracks like glass. I move my hand to grip the front of his sweater. “I’ll stay with you tonight, shall I?” I look over his face, the tracks of his tears plain even in the dark. “I don’t want you to be alone.”

  Jude nods again. The wind ruffles his hair, the boats around us creaking. Just behind him, something winks above the sheer wall of the cliff. For an instant I think it’s the shine of the lighthouse beacon, but this light is too dim for that, too low to the ground.

  It’s like someone’s lantern—like someone is there at the cliff’s edge, looking down upon the harbor.

  My expression must shift in some way, because Jude chances a look around. The light is already gone, but the memory of it ghosts eerily across my vision.

  “Moira?” Jude says. “What is it?”

  I shake my head even as dread creeps over my spine. “Nothing,” I murmur. Releasing his sweater, I try my best to smile. “Just my eyes playing tricks on me.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  AFTERWARD, SLEEP DOES NOT COME for either of us. I hang Jude’s oilskin jacket on its peg in the entryway, climb the stairs, and settle into bed in the guest room. His iron ring presses against my skin. I draw it off, leaving it beside the oil lamp on the nightstand. The hours pass erratic and fitful, all twisted sheets and half-remembered dreams. Throwing back the blankets, I step out into the hall. It’s there, against the heavy morning silence, that I hear muffled bars of music playing. I follow the tune over to Jude’s bedroom.

  It takes only a moment for me to place it. I recognize this music: slow and mechanical, off-key and dolorous. It’s the tune of Emmeline’s old music box. My heart feels weighed down by the knowing, and even as I close my eyes to listen, I try not to picture Jude on the other side of the door, holding the tiny box that once belonged to his sister.

  As he winds it a third time, I turn away. This, I won’t intrude upon. After the murk and melancholy of last night, Jude deserves a moment to himself. I head to the kitchen and make us both a cup of tea.

  Jude shuffles down the stairs soon after. He appears in the doorway, rubbing his eyes. When he catches sight of me, his mouth curves in a small smile.

  “Oh.” He takes the tea I offer with careful fingers. “Thank you.”

  “What’s the time?” I ask.

  “Just past nine. I’ve observations to do on deck, if you want to join me.”

  We start up the lighthouse and step out onto the narrow gallery deck. A breeze tugs at the hem of my dress. It’s a clear day, clouds streaked thin across the sky, sunlight dazzling the sea.

  It’s been mere hours since we released a siren to those waters. During the night, the two of us had knelt together in the empty harbor, Jude’s sorrow piercing my heart as he cried into my shoulder. Now it’s morning and the past is just a memory. Connor Sheahan and Nell Bracken will be added to this year’s record of siren deaths, their names pressed into the pages of a book and forgotten. I grip my teacup, its heat warming my palms. Far below, white-capped waves break over rocks near the shore. Jude sits with notebook and pencil, but his page remains blank. I think perhaps he has trouble observing the weather when he’s busy observing me.

  I turn and give him the first real look since last night. His dark eyes are still shadowed, auburn hair still tangled. Still Jude Osric. Just something about the way he carries himself has changed. He’s grown up from the soft-cheeked boy he once was. And I realize, too, I am no longer that little girl who came visiting alongside her father.

  The past has altered us into something altogether new.

  He blushes under my gaze, tearing his own eyes away. He begins writing things in shorthand: visibility and wind direction and tide conditions. It’s a routine worn into him, passed down to him, from father to son. The lighthouse is as much a part of him as the moors and cliffs are part of me. Despite the dangers of this island, the horrors of it, there are few who know how to leave. I imagine those who manage it spend the rest of their lives trying to knock Twillengyle soil out from the soles of their boots.

  Twin flashes of silver catch my eye. I look over the gallery railing, but there’s nothing to see. Perhaps a glimpse of sirens as they slipped between the waves. To the west, a group of them bask in the shallows. I can’t tell how many from this distance, but there’s a peace to them, a stillness, the cool composure of hunters at ease.

  “Jude.” I turn my gaze on him, his notebook propped on one bent knee. “How did your uncle capture that siren?”

  His pencil comes to a stop. After a pause he says, “With a net and iron, I imagine.”

  “He didn’t tell you?”

  “We didn’t discuss the particulars, no.”

  I lace my fingers over the rim of my teacup. “I’m only wondering,” I start, “if perhaps he had help. It would’ve been difficult to accomplish on his own, don’t you think? Even more so to keep her hidden away.”

  Jude looks stricken. He sets his pencil down, staring at the open page of his notebook. “That’s certainly a possibility.” He splays a hand over the words he’s written, his voice dipping into a whisper as he says, “You don’t suppose it’s connected, do you? To Connor’s murder? To Nell’s?”

  I recall the shadowy figure who followed us from the pub, the light I saw from the harbor. That person couldn’t be Dylan Osric simply because Dylan Osric wasn’t in Dunmore at the time. It wasn’t his handwriting on the note left in Jude’s entryway.

  Stop looking.

  I bite my lip. “We ought to visit Imogen,” I reply. “If Nell was waiting for a suitor, it could’ve been the killer. Imogen likely knows the person.”

  Jude lifts his head, looking out toward the cliff’s edge. “My uncle has wanted the ban dismantled since the day my family passed,” he murmurs. “But you must know I’ve never… I’ve never blamed them, Moira. The sirens. I never wished to hunt them, to hurt them as he did.”

  “I know.” My fingers loosen around my teacup. “I know.”

  Jude closes his notebook and stands, tucking the pencil behind his ear. He still gazes at the sea, at the sirens by the shore. I press my palm against the railing.

  “I need to fetch my violin,” I tell him. “I left it at the hall.”

  He looks over. His face is awash in sunlight, his cable-knit sweater snu
g across his shoulders. If it weren’t for his bloodshot eyes, I might be inclined to believe last night was nothing but a nightmare. “What of our investigation?”

  Stepping toward the gallery door, I say, “I’ll come straight back from Dunmore.”

  Jude smiles. He tips his head down, the gesture shy, and fidgets with the pencil behind his ear. “All right, then,” he says.

  I hurry down the stairwell to the cottage. In another few hours we might have our answers.

  * * *

  Halfway across the moors I realize I’m still wearing my evening dress from last night and decide to stop at my house in order to change. I would’ve preferred to avoid my mother in the interim, but I find her doing laundry by the side of the house.

  She stands next to the wooden tub, her hands wet and soapy, as she rubs a sheet against the metal ridges of her washboard. Several tin baths are scattered on the ground nearby, filled with water and rinsed clothes. She pauses in her work as she catches sight of me.

  “Come here, Moira.”

  A vitriolic edge accompanies my name when she says it.

  This is precisely what I don’t need right now.

  I walk toward her, keeping my eyes on the tin baths, the sides of the tub. I can feel my mother’s gaze on me like the prick of a hundred needles. “Yes, Mother?”

  I chance a look at her face. She glares, anger emanating like the heat off our stove. I duck my head, penitent, in the hopes of deterring the worst of it.

  “You don’t seem to realize,” she starts, “how many eyes this island has.”

  I wince. “I can—”

  “No.” With the hand not gripping the washboard, my mother gestures sharply. “I’ve no desire to hear excuses. You think you can leave the dance with Mr. Osric and no one notices? I assume you spent the night at the lighthouse?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “I try to give you space, Moira. Really I do. Ever since your father…” She takes a breath. “And I know Mr. Osric has always been a good friend to you, but you’re not children now. Either of you. I would expect—”

  My own temper sparks in response. “My comings and goings are my business,” I tell her. “There’s no need for you to worry over me.”

  She sighs, rubbing chapped fingertips against her temple. It irks me how concerned she seems about islanders gossiping. Rumors unfurl from a glance, a whisper. They mean very little altogether; they simply give people something to talk about.

  “Moira,” she says, and the vitriol in her tone has disappeared, replaced by fatigue. “I just want—”

  I take a step back. “Please,” I say. “Please—just let me alone.”

  I turn away, run into the house, and slam the door shut. My heart pounds against my rib cage. I’m shaking with the knowledge I hold, the secrets I’ve kept from my mother. Two people were murdered, and Jude and I are trying to catch the killer; Dylan Osric tortured a chained-up siren, and we released her out in the bay.

  So many secrets.

  In my bedroom I slip on simpler clothes: a long-sleeved dress of pale-blue cotton. I walk over to the kitchen and steal a seedcake from the batch on the counter. Heading back out, I edge around the opposite side of the house to evade my mother.

  Sparrows flutter from branch to branch as I start on the path to Dunmore. I break off pieces of cake for them, and their whistles follow me until I reach the brick buildings and narrow cobbled streets.

  The market is slow today, as it often is the morning after a dance. Young women in neat shirtwaists and skirts stroll arm in arm, heads bent in private conversation. Mothers pull their sleepy-eyed children from shop to shop. Men go about with their caps tugged low, hands in pockets.

  Brendan Sheahan stands just outside the bakery, smoking. Even from across the street I see his red-rimmed eyes, his face white as paper. I swallow, avert my gaze, and continue on to the hall. I pull the door open and silence envelops me.

  Without music, without people to fill it, the place feels ghostly. Dust motes drift in the light shining through the tall windows. As a child I believed the golden specks to be faerie dust, something able to grant wishes if only I could catch them. I step out from the shadowed entryway, stretch a hand toward the rectangle of light, but the particles slip away, too intangible to grasp.

  Someone coughs. I look up, suddenly self-conscious, and find Peter Atherton leaning against the doorway to the back room. Sunlight threads into his dark hair, lighting the angles of his face. It warms his eyes to amber just as it does Jude’s.

  “Morning, Moira.”

  I head over to him. “I’m here for my violin,” I say. “I left it behind last night.”

  “I noticed. Your coat, too.” He lets me pass into the small room. “You and Wick cleared out quick as anything. He didn’t bring you down to the beach, did he?”

  “And what if he did?”

  “Dear God, Moira, you’re not the police.”

  “Nor is Jude Osric, last I recall.” My coat and violin case are set on a chair next to the piano. I open the case, taking stock of my instrument.

  “No, but he is keeper. I wouldn’t have troubled him if she wasn’t at the shore.”

  I run my fingers along the neck of my violin, down to the bridge, the graceful spruce front. I think back on Jude winding up his sister’s music box, the melancholy tune of it. I close the case and snatch up my coat.

  “Moira, listen,” says Peter, “the Council’s not best pleased. Apparently there’s been discussion over the hunting ban, whether they should be looking at the restrictions.”

  I predicted as much, suspected it at least, but hearing him voice the situation puts a hard lump in my throat. “Why?” I ask. I don’t know what else to say.

  The look he gives me is a sympathetic one—the kind given when there’s nothing left to be done. It’s the look I received from nurses when they told me my father was dying. “You know why,” he replies. “Two islanders are dead and the month isn’t even out. They can’t ignore that.”

  Curious, I hold his gaze. “Don’t you think their deaths odd, Peter?”

  “You’re still going around imagining it’s murder? I’d let that idea sink.”

  I tighten my grip on my violin case. “I’ll do what I like.”

  He rests a hand on the doorknob, releasing a sigh. “There’s going to be a meeting about it—they’re holding it here, a few days from now—if you want to attend.”

  I nod and walk back out onto the sunlit dance floor. I feel Peter’s eyes on me as I leave. Specks of dust still hang suspended in the air, and I want to trap them all in the palm of my hand. But I need more than just fanciful wishes now—I need a miracle.

  * * *

  A hard wind gusts over the moors as I make my way across it. I tuck my chin against my coat collar, the hem of my dress flicking back and forth. My eyes set upon the blue-and-white tower of the lighthouse. Heading up the path, I try the doorknob, on the off chance Jude has left it unlocked.

  Of course he hasn’t.

  I knock my knuckles against the wood. I wonder if he’s still up on the gallery deck, if he’s within the glass walls of the lantern room. Minutes pass. I knock again, my fist hammering the door of the cottage. I look around to the empty garden, the hillsides beyond it. A dark melody whispers at my pulse, quickening my heartbeat.

  Jude knew I was coming back. I’d told him so, hadn’t I?

  The wind changes direction. It pulls strands of hair from my chignon, stings my eyes, and I put my violin case down, turning from the door.

  Against the sun’s glare, I track someone coming up from the harbor. My breath rushes out of me, relief sinking in. Jude must’ve been needed at the docks.

  I step forward and raise a hand to shade my eyes. As the person nears, however, I realize it’s not Jude at all. A smaller boy runs through the heather in my direction—Terry Young, red-faced and wide-eyed. He almost crashes into me.

  “Miss Alexander.” He stares as though seeing something terrible in my plac
e. “Oh God, they told me to find you.”

  Fear pricks my heart. Jude still hasn’t answered the door—and I don’t think he’s inside to answer.

  “What’s the matter?”

  Terry leans over, hands on knees, panting. “Wick,” he says. “Jude Osric.” He glances up. The terror in his eyes is black and hard as stone. “He’s been attacked.”

  And the alarm bells sound, high and clear, from the harbor.

  Sirens.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  WHEN WE WERE YOUNG—I was perhaps nine, Jude eleven—our fathers set us to the task of fixing broken lobster pots. We sat together on the floor of the boathouse, and I threaded twine with a needle, while Jude took up hammer and nails to set the frame to rights. I didn’t see it happen, but I heard it when he slipped, slamming the hammer against his thumb rather than the nailhead. He inhaled, sharp, shocked, right before his mouth opened in a silent scream.

  That’s the moment I seem caught in now. A place somewhere between the shock and the scream. My ears ring as the alarm bells echo, too loud for thought. Cold floods my veins. It feels as though I’m trapped beneath an ice sheet, everything slowing to a halt as the chill steals through me. I run until the harbor comes into view and the ice in my blood turns to fire.

  Men dash from pier to pier, shouting orders over the alarm. I look around, panicked, and my throat closes when I see a group holding Jude down on the dock.

  He’s alive.

  Then I realize why the alarm hasn’t been silenced. Two sirens remain at the pier’s edge, keeping to the water. Their indigo eyes glitter as they watch, and they smile, close-lipped, as though hoping to draw me forward.

  I take careful, silent steps, the surrounding chaos receding like the tide. Slipping a hand into my pocket, my fingers brush metal—my small iron ring. I toss it up and into the sea. It hits the water with a splash, and the sirens disappear, twin flashes of long hair and pale skin diving beneath the waves.