Between Sea and Sky

by Nicola Penfold

  “Mum wanted out of the growing tower too,” I say. “But she’s still stuck in the bay, isn’t she?”

  “She got a pass out here, though,” Clover insists smugly. “She was chosen to research our farm. See, hard work and being clever pay off. That’s why I need to go to your school.” She springs to her feet and smiles. “And lucky for me too that your mum was sent here, because I got my first proper friend!”

  We watch the lights go out across the water. It’s curfew. The farm first, then the compound, floor by floor. Only a couple of faint lights stay on marking Customs and Immigration.

  NO LANDING IN BLACKWATER BAY.

  Would they say that about a migrant butterfly too?

  “It’s funny,” Nat says, standing on the edge of the platform. “Seeing it all from here. It’s like the blocks the little kids play with in the compound. Toy houses.”

  I watch his face in the glow of light. Is he missing all of it – the compound, solid ground, his friends? Or is he just missing his mum?

  I reach up to pull the switch.

  “Pearl!” Clover groans. “Don’t switch it off now!”

  “Lights out,” I say. “Like they’re doing.” I indicate over the water to the line of land that’s just like a darker strip of sea or sky.

  “You’re the one that says we shouldn’t obey land rules!” Clover says sulkily.

  “They’re not land rules. They’re Dad’s rules.”

  We have to conserve power. And it’s for the insects too. The little clusters of flies that swirl around our lantern lights after the sun goes down. Without switch-off, they’d fly themselves dizzy spinning round all night.

  Clover’s face is set in a pout. “You’re so boring sometimes.”

  I stare back at her unblinking, refusing to let the tears come that are pricking at my eyes.

  Clover shrugs. “Anyway, it doesn’t matter. Nat and I are going to sleep in the greenhouse. We’ll get a free light show from the stars.”

  “You’re sleeping in the greenhouse?” I ask, unable to disguise my surprise.

  “So we can keep an eye on the chrysalises. We can see wings inside. They’re about to turn. We don’t want to miss it.”

  Clover stares at me as she says it. Her eyes don’t say anything, but I know she remembers. She must do. When the four of us – Mum, Dad, Clover and me – used to sleep under the stars out on the platform in the height of summer, when the air was warm and dry. Or inside the greenhouse on a cooler night – in the misty damp greenness of Mum’s plant house.

  It was an adventure. Make-believe. Mum would come up with some elaborate story. We’d be explorers on a trek across a rainforest, or stowaways crossing a faraway sea to Paradise Island. We’d keep wild goats and drink coconut milk when we got there.

  I’d already learned to be wary of land but Paradise Island didn’t count. We’d be happy there forever.

  I remember the pile of cushions and blankets and how it felt, against the warmth of Mum’s body on one side and Clover on the other.

  “That sounds fun,” I say.

  I wait for Clover to ask me to sleep there too. I know the stars best. I could point them all out to Nat, give the constellations their correct names.

  Clover doesn’t say anything. She wanders off into the kitchen and calls back to Nat. “I’m going to get us some snacks! We’ll have a midnight feast.”

  Nat lingers, staring at the light. It’s quiet now. The flies have gone wherever flies go at night. “I swear I saw a moth,” he says. “Just before you turned it off.”

  “A moth?” I ask, surprised.

  “Like a butterfly.”

  “I know what a moth is,” I reply angrily. Even though until I’d read that book earlier I didn’t. Not really. There were more moths than butterflies, the book said. People knew butterflies best because they had cheerful colours and flew in the day. Moths preferred the night. They were less glamorous, more secretive than their relations, but they were pollinators too. Just as important.

  “Have you seen them?” Nat asks. “Moths?” He’s staring at my face.

  I shake my head honestly. “No. Just flies.”

  He nods. “You could come too. To the greenhouse, I mean.” He stammers a little. He’s embarrassed. “We thought it would be nice, to watch the chrysalises transform. They’re really swollen, and you can see colours underneath. I don’t want to miss them emerging. I wonder when was the last time someone watched something like that?” His voice trembles slightly as he says it. He’s totally besotted with those creatures.

  I shrug. “Probably just today,” I say, trying not to let Nat see how hurt I am to be an afterthought. “If there are butterflies in Blackwater Bay, there must be butterflies in other places too. Otherwise where did they come from? Someone probably watched one transform just today.”

  Nat nods. I don’t mention the butterfly book to him. I don’t say that that’s how I know about moths, and that his chrysalises are Painted Ladies and their wings when they emerge will be orange and brown and they’ll need flowers to drink nectar from to stay alive.

  “When they hatch, you have to let them go,” I say. “You have to let them go straight away. We don’t want butterflies here, bringing trouble. I have to think about Clover.”

  “I know that,” he says quietly.

  “You shouldn’t keep living things imprisoned anyway. It’s cruel,” I say.

  “What about your shellfish?”

  “People have got to eat. Your farm can’t produce enough for everyone. Do you think we should let the prisoners starve?”

  “Of course not!” Nat says, shocked. “I know people on that ship. Good people.”

  I don’t like the way his eyes burn into me. He doesn’t know if he should like me. If I’m the kind of person you can like. He wanders after Clover and doesn’t ask me again about sleeping in the greenhouse with them.

  At night I’m jolted awake by the sound of screaming. I sit up, in case Clover needs me. She gets bad dreams sometimes. But it’s not Clover’s voice. It’s coming from the ship, because there are bars rattling too. Someone having an ‘episode’, as Sem calls it. Shouting out their fury into the night.

  The windows for the high-level prisoners are blacked out. They won’t ever see the water or the sky. They probably forget they’re even at sea. They’ll know they’re rocking, but maybe without any kind of view into the world, the rocking might just seem like a madness. I’d scream too if I was kept like that.

  I stretch out my fingers to Clover’s. It’s a habit, when the screaming’s bad. We hold hands to go to sleep and sometimes when we wake in the morning our fingers are still intertwined.

  Tonight I just touch the loose fabric of her hammock.

  Pearl’s at the table with a bound book and a small stub of pencil. Clover is with the chrysalises, still waiting impatiently for them to change. She barely slept at all last night.

  I lean over the table and catch a glimpse of looping, elegant handwriting. Today’s date and the chrysalises, blown-up and detailed.

  Pearl slams the book shut and glares up at me.

  “I didn’t mean to be nosy,” I say apologetically. “Is it a diary?”

  Pearl pulls a face. “I don’t keep a diary. This isn’t about me. It’s more important than that.”

  “What is it then?” I ask, curious.

  “It’s the ledger.”

  “Oh, yeah,” I say. “I wasn’t sure what a ledger was.”

  Pearl raises her eyebrows. “It’s a kind of logbook, like old ships and lighthouses used to keep.”

  I nod. Pearl and Clover talk about all kinds of things I don’t understand.

  “I thought your mum would have called again by now. To update us.” Pearl indicates the radio. She’s moved it to the table, next to her.

  “Me too,” I say. “Is it working?”

  Pearl nods. “I keep checking it. It’s working this end.”

  I grunt. “Technology’s rubbish over there. There are always
blackouts, power cuts.”

  Pearl nods, frowning, but sort of relieved too, that there might be an explanation for the lack of news.

  “What’s in it?” I ask, looking back at her book. “Your ledger?”

  Pearl shrugs. “Things.”

  “Things?” I press. “Ledger of Blackwater Bay,” I read out loud from the front of the book, written in the same elegant handwriting as inside.

  “Weather and things,” Pearl says reluctantly. “Things we see. Animals, birds. Like the porpoises. Or the seals that come sometimes. And the birds.”

  “The gulls,” I say affirmatively.

  “Not just the gulls,” she snaps, frustrated. “Don’t you ever pay attention? There are other birds too. Look.” She flicks through her book to a double page of birds. It’s all grey pencil sketches, but she’s right. They’re different. Different sizes and shapes, with different-length beaks and legs. I see the big black bird Clover said was a cormorant, Magwitch she called her, but lots of them I haven’t seen at all.

  “You get all these in Blackwater Bay?” I ask incredulously.

  “Some of them are only here in winter,” she adds. “They migrate.”

  “Migrate?”

  Pearl stares at me strangely, but her voice when she speaks is patient. “Migrate. It means move from one place to another. Somewhere warmer to breed, maybe. And some of the geese we get in winter come from northern Russia, from proper snow and ice. They wouldn’t survive the winter if they stayed there.”

  I gaze at the pictures. Every mark she’s made on the page matters and she’s not allowed herself to add in anything extra. There are none of the flourishes her handwriting has.

  “I record everything,” she says. “Someone should. So we know what’s coming back.”

  “Coming back? From where?”

  “Somewhere out there. Who knows? It doesn’t matter, does it?” she says.

  I stare at her. Does she really think that? That it doesn’t matter about elsewhere?

  “Do you think some places have recovered?” I press. “In the compound it’s like other places don’t even exist any more. There’s never news from outside.” I look past Pearl, past the prison ship too, into the endless blue and grey. All you see is sea becoming sky. Flat, horizontal. But there’s land out there if you could get far enough. Somewhere, between the sea and the sky, there are other places. “Don’t you ever think beyond the mudflats?” I ask.

  “No,” Pearl says curtly.

  I laugh. Even if she does, she wouldn’t admit to it, I reckon.

  “I think about it all the time,” I say. “All those other places there are, and when travel bans will be lifted, and when boats will start coming into the bay again. When I get out of Blackwater Bay I won’t be coming back anytime soon.”

  Pearl blinks slowly. “You sound just like Clover.”

  She turns her head back to her book and flicks forward to where she was working, where she’s drawn the chrysalises in every bit of detail. I hadn’t even realized she’d looked at them long enough for that. “You’re good. At drawing, I mean.”

  Pearl puts her arm out to shield the page from my gaze. Her face goes blank, like a cloud blew across the sun. I know our conversation is over.

  “See you later then,” I say. “I guess I should leave you to it.”

  I slam the ledger shut. It’s dangerous to include the butterflies. To write out evidence of them being here.

  And now Nat knows I’ve been looking at them. Creeping into the greenhouse during their swimming lessons, to get a better look. I tear out the page.

  I make my way into our cabin and pick out treasures from the box under my hammock. There’s a pressing against the back of my eyes. One of my headaches starting. That’s all I need, especially with Dad still away.

  I reckon I’ve given the hospital and its medicine enough time to get him well. I’m going to the flats for another wishing.

  I almost bump into Clover as I edge round the side of Dad’s cabin. “Have you seen Nat?” she asks.

  I shake my head vacantly.

  “Where are you going with those?” Clover looks suspiciously at my clasped hand.

  I don’t say anything. I’m not in the mood for her taunts.

  “I didn’t think he’d be gone so long,” she says quietly. “Dad.” There’s a fleck of worry in her blue eyes. Like waves coming in.

  “He’ll be OK,” I say. “He’ll be back any day now.”

  “Really?” she says.

  I nod.

  “It’s just…” Clover’s face crumples a bit. “I miss him more than I thought I would.”

  I stare at her, surprised. “Don’t worry,” I say. “I know it’ll be all right. I’m taking care of it, I promise!”

  Clover glances again at my hand. She opens her mouth to speak but then must decide better of it.

  “See you later then,” I press, impatient to get on with the wishing. “I bet Nat’s back in the greenhouse.”

  I lay the treasures out in the shadow of the whale.

  One of my favourite pieces of porcelain. A blue bird with fancy wings and tail feathers that Dad said was a type of pheasant. I lay it down for air.

  I put sea glass for water. Blue. Just one piece. Even though it’s common, it’s powerful. Smoothed for years by the waves and rocks.

  For fire, I use the bowl of a clay pipe. An ornate one, in the shape of a woman’s head. There would have been fire in it once.

  For spirit, a silver ring, engraved on the inside. FREE SPIRIT.

  For earth, I lay down a piece of terracotta.

  I stand over the things silently. I know what I’ve got to say – I’ve been planning it in my head – but it’s harder than I thought to say the words out loud. The butterflies haven’t even emerged yet and I’m already sacrificing them to the sea.

  Back at the farm, Nat’s next swimming lesson is in progress. He’s flailing about in the water, like the more energy he puts into it, the more buoyant he’ll be. Kicking like his life depended on it.

  “That’s good,” Clover’s saying. “You just need to relax a bit. Let the water take your weight.”

  The splashing increases.

  “Almost,” Clover says. “You’re almost there.”

  Clover catches my eye as I look over. I can tell she wants to giggle, but she holds it in and turns back to her pupil. She’s not going to mess this up by laughing at him.

  “Oi, Grey!” she shouts. “Leave Nat alone!” Grey’s appeared at the edge of the platform, oblivious to the tuition in progress.

  Nat grabs on to one of the yellow floats, his face panicked.

  I shrink round the back of the cabin so he doesn’t see me and sit just out of sight, my toes in the water.

  “What if he drags me under?” Nat’s panting nervously, backing away from the porpoise.

  Clover giggles. “He’s not a sea monster!”

  “Do you think I’m too old to learn?” he asks, once she’s persuaded him Grey’s not about to drag him to a watery grave. “Maybe I spent too much time on land already?”

  Clover gasps. “No giving up in my class!” she shrieks, clapping her hands frantically. “Get those legs kicking! Now!”

  I peer round the side of the cabin for a better look. Nat reluctantly tries another frantic paddle to the floats that Clover’s put out at three-metre intervals. He’s getting better.

  Grey swims by my feet.

  “My grey goblin,” I whisper, hanging out over the edge so I can look him in the eye. “I missed you. I’ve not had time for swimming lately. Dad’s not here, you see.”

  I reach my fingers for his smooth skin. I get such a thrill when I touch him. Like he’s the spirit of the sea, come to say hello.

  Grey blows out his choo choo breaths and disappears under the platform.

  I gaze out at the water. It’s shiny, like glass. The sky’s lit with a strange yellow tinge and the air’s still and quiet, only broken up with Nat’s splashing and Clover’s giggle
s. She sounds happy. Really truly happy, even if she is missing Dad.

  Clover got old too quickly lately. She’s only ten. I forget she’s younger than me sometimes. It’s nice to hear her being young and sunny again, even if it has taken someone else to make her act like that.

  I go back to our cabin and curl up in my hammock. The blackness is still forming at the back of my eyes. I’ve been out in the sun too long, and I can’t stop thinking about Dad. Why hasn’t Sora been in touch again? Or come back?

  I imagine Dad, pacing the corridors of the hospital, shouting for bottles of beer. I imagine him held down with chains, locked on a metal bed.

  The row of mermaids above my hammock stare back at me. I gave them all sea names. Names I thought were fitting for a mermaid. Ariel, Emily, Cordelia, Daryah and new blank-faced Miranda. They look sad. I’ve kept them all too long. I’m like Benjamin Price with the prisoners and the books. And Nat and Clover too, taking such pains to seal up the greenhouse. You can’t keep things locked up that want to be free.

  I lie back in my hammock and fall asleep, clouds of butterflies dancing through my head.

  I wake with a start and run out of our cabin to the edges of the platform. I scan the horizon for something beyond the blueness that I see. I’m hot and sweating. I dreamed a storm had come.

  Clover is beside me immediately, her cheeks pink. “Pearl!”

  I reach out to her. “Are you OK? Has something happened?”

  She looks at me strangely. “No. Why? You were shouting my name.”

  “Did I? I don’t know. I was…” I pause, “dreaming.” I put my fingers on my temples where I can feel my blood pulsing underneath, fast and hot.

  “Everything’s fine, Pearl. Look. It’s calm,” Clover says, softer now, closer. I feel her breath on my face. She takes hold of my hand, her fingers gentle and warm. I feel her heartbeat in her fingertips.