Between Sea and Sky

by Nicola Penfold

  “Are you OK?” I ask. “You look sad.”

  “I miss Grey,” she says, sighing listlessly. “And the others. Pearl said I’ve been ignoring them since you came. Do you think they got jealous?” She looks at me vaguely accusatory.

  “I wouldn’t know,” I say.

  I’m about to try and persuade Clover to help with Pearl’s storm preparations, when I see something on the water.

  “A boat,” I say jumpily. “What if it’s coming here? For the butterflies?”

  Clover stands and puts her hand above her eyes, to shield them from the sun. “It’s George’s boat,” she says. “A prisoner.”

  “Is it coming here?” I ask nervously.

  Clover shakes her head. “Doesn’t look like it. It’s heading to the ship. Binoculars, Pearl!” she says, shouting now. “We want to see the prisoner!”

  “They’re not here,” Pearl says from directly above us. It makes me start. I hadn’t known she was up there, in the crow’s nest.

  “The binoculars are always there,” Clover says, annoyed.

  “Well, they’re not now. Whoever had them last didn’t put them back,” Pearl ripostes deliberately.

  I wait for Clover to remember. We were looking for ships a couple of days ago. The rare ships you occasionally see on the horizon, big ones that never turn into the bay. We were pretending one did come, just once, to collect us, and imagining all the places it might take us to. We had the binoculars. We didn’t think to put them back. They could have fallen into the sea for all I know.

  “Why’s George keeping so far from our farm?” Clover asks.

  “What do you mean?” I ask.

  “Usually he’d come closer. He’d wave at us.”

  Pearl’s silent above us, watching.

  “I wonder who’s with him,” I say. “I wonder if it’s a compounder.”

  I think about the point board back home. Mischa’s surname, two off the top.

  I stare over the water. It’s dark grey today, and as still as metal. The figure at the back of the boat turns their head, as though looking straight at us. I shiver.

  The boat cuts a white line through the water until it’s swallowed up by the ship’s shadow.

  “Poor soul,” Clover says sadly.

  I jump down from the crow’s nest and go straight into the cabin to check the radio. That boat’s made me nervous. On the table, the radio is flashing a green light for a recorded message and I stab at the buttons to get the message to play.

  “Why didn’t you hear it?” I yell at Clover. “How long has it been there?”

  Clover shrugs. “I don’t know. I didn’t notice.”

  “If you didn’t spend so long with those blasted butterflies!” I say.

  “You could have been checking the radio,” Clover says defensively.

  “I’ve been doing the storm preparations, haven’t I? On my own!”

  Clover shrugs again but comes up to listen with me. The recorded message is crackly, stilted, but there’s no disguising the worry in Sora’s voice.

  “Mum,” Nat says, entering the cabin, putting his fingers on the speaker like he’s reaching through it to get to her.

  But the message isn’t for him. It’s for Clover and me. Dad’s condition has declined overnight, Sora says. He’s getting worse, not better.

  The crackles pass into my head. I rewind the message to play it again.

  “There isn’t a date,” I say, panic rising up my throat, like a mouthful of seawater. “She doesn’t say when it was.”

  Clover clutches at my arm.

  We listen again. “I’m staying with Atticus in hospital until he’s out of danger. I’ll call soon with more news.”

  “What danger? Why would she say that?” Clover screeches.

  “There isn’t a date,” I say again helplessly. My eyes fix on Clover. “When did the machine start flashing?”

  “I don’t know,” Clover says gulping.

  “Today? Yesterday? When?” I shout.

  “I don’t know!” Clover says again. “Why’s it up to me?”

  I can’t think clearly. There are butterflies cluttering up my brain and I forgot what’s important. Dad in hospital. Sick. He’s got worse. Why did I ignore the radio when it’s our only link with land, and with our dad?

  “Pearl! Your hand!” It’s Nat’s voice, sharp.

  I look down and Clover’s hand is in mine, white, because I’ve squeezed the blood right out of it.

  “We should go and see Dad, Pearl!” she sobs.

  “Go and see him?” I repeat slowly, releasing my grip on her fingers. “Sora says to stay here.”

  “But what if the message wasn’t today? I haven’t been looking at the radio. None of us have,” Clover says miserably.

  “Then she’d have called again,” I say flatly. “Sora would have called again.”

  “But what if he’s even worse? What if he’s dying?” Clover collapses to the floor in a sobbing heap.

  Nat stoops down to comfort her.

  “You’ve done enough!” I bite.

  “Pearl!” Nat says warily. “Clover’s frightened!”

  Clover. I crouch next to her and place my palms on her wet cheeks. “It’s OK, Clover. It’ll be OK.”

  “I didn’t say goodbye,” she whispers, the whites of her eyes wide. “To Dad!”

  I stare back, confused. “Of course you did. I was the one that didn’t say goodbye! You were with him when he went.”

  Clover shakes her head furiously. “No. I pretended I was, to get back at you for being unfriendly to Nat and Sora. I was worried you’d scare them away. But I wasn’t with Dad either when he left. I was too angry with him. For letting himself get sick when he’s the only parent we’ve got left.” Clover’s voice rises hysterically. “I didn’t say goodbye, Pearl!”

  Tears spill down her cheeks like rain. “We have to go and see him. We have to go to land and see him!” she sobs.

  I hold her and stroke her hair, but I don’t say anything.

  “Please, Pearl,” Clover says, quieter now but looking up at me with new resolve. Her eyes the colour of the sea at its absolute bluest. The most perfect summer’s day. “We have to go to Dad.”

  I shake my head. “The storm’s coming, Clover. I can feel it now. I’m certain. We’ll go once it’s passed.” I peer out of the window anxiously. The sky’s fallen and the line where it meets the sea is thick and dark.

  Clover breaks out of my arms and runs on to the platform. The wind’s picked up. It grabs at her hair and swirls it round. She puts her head to one side, listening. “There’s no siren yet. We can go before it gets worse. There’s still time.” She wipes tears away with her sleeve and looks at me expectantly. “We need to go. Now!”

  I gulp. “We have to wait for the storm to pass.”

  “We need to see Dad!” Clover yells.

  “Dad’ll be all right,” I tell her. “I know it. I wished for him.”

  Clover bristles furiously. “I’m going to him!”

  “Dad wouldn’t want us leaving the farm, Clover! Not when a storm’s coming”

  I close my eyes. I can see the storm, or feel it – coming in from the sea, in white-tipped waves. It’s big.

  “The wishings don’t work,” Clover’s saying, crying out the words. “When will you see that? The wishings don’t work, Pearl. I want to see Dad!”

  “I want to see him too,” I say. “But he’s OK. I know he is.”

  Dad’s like an extra beat of my heart, across the foreshore, on land, where I swore I’d never set foot again. It’s slow, like the butterfly wings, but I know Dad wouldn’t want me taking Clover across the bay in a storm.

  For days I’ve known the storm was coming, days, but it was crafty, secretive, clever. Now it’s out in the open and it feels it could rip our farm apart.

  Clover’s saying something but I can’t make out the words, and then she’s running, off round the edge of the cabin, to get to where the motorboat is moored.

&
nbsp; I grab at her but Clover’s always been good at slipping away. She puts her arm out to topple over a stack of oyster cages as she runs, blocking my way. I clamber over them but she’s jumped in the boat before I can stop her. She’s taken the rope off the mooring pole and is starting the engine. The throbbing joins in with the rising wind. She kicks off with her feet to get away from the edge of the little harbour, and kicks out at me too as I try to fall into the boat after her.

  Her gold fairy-tale hair whips round her face. She takes her hand away from the tiller to claw at me. She scratches my arm.

  “Clover, Clover!” another voice is calling. Nat. He’s next to me, reaching out as she slips further away.

  The water’s surging now. White where it was grey, and split apart, like someone took a mirror and cracked it all the way through.

  Clover’s face is smaller, whiter, frightened.

  “Don’t go! Clover! Please!” I yell. The land looks further away than ever and sometimes the waves surge up so you can’t even see it any more. And there’s more. I can feel it coming – riding in from the north, galloping to get us. A herd of white horses. It’s going to be the biggest storm in ages. “Clover, the boat’s not big enough for those waves. Come back. Please!”

  She’s still struggling with the engine – it’s unreliable, this is what will save her, I think – but suddenly it bursts into life and Clover’s about to burst away from me too, when Nat does a running leap on to the boat beside her and pulls out the connection. The engine cuts out and Clover screams with frustration. Then a wave crashes over them and for a moment they’re both in a wall of water and I’m the other side, waiting to see if the wave takes them.

  But when the water clears they’re still there. Nat’s holding on to Clover’s arm, and I meet his eyes gratefully. He hoists her back on to the platform towards me.

  The deep alarm of the storm siren starts from across the water. “Storm drill,” I say. Clover nods, barely looking at me, and runs past to get on with it.

  The greenhouse is coming away. The ropes have slipped and it’s loose.

  The sea’s tilting. A giant has got his hands round the whole world and is shaking it from side to side, water frothing up like it’s on the boil. Sometimes the greenhouse lurches away from the rest of the farm. Sometimes it crashes back into it.

  “The greenhouse!” I scream at the top of my voice. “The butterflies!” The words are ripped away from me the instant I say them. I can’t even hear my own voice.

  I can see the butterflies – silhouettes on the sides of the panels that Clover and I cleaned and mended so diligently. They’re flying around, panicked. The panels are cracking and smashing.

  “Pearl! Clover!” I yell again. A colossal wave crashes over me, drenching me and carrying the greenhouse further away. We’re going to lose it. We’re going to lose the greenhouse and we’re going to lose the butterflies too. Their frantic beating wings appear close up in my vision, even though my eyes can barely see them behind the lashing sea and groaning panels.

  “Pearl! Clover!” I summon up all the air in my lungs to call them.

  The girls are round the other side of the farm, battling to tether their cabin down tighter. It’s their home. That’s what’s important for them.

  My face stings and I’m not sure if it’s tears, the sea spraying up at me, or the biting wind. More than ever, I wish I was back in the compound behind its thick concrete wall. In storms we’d go to our bunker. You can barely hear storms inside there, not with all the compounders packed in tight and films playing to calm us. Safe as houses, the older compounders say. Tally always laughed at them. Isn’t it crazy, she said, that even after all their houses had been washed away, that’s the expression they go back to? Safe as houses.

  I wait for the next wave, to bring the greenhouse back in against the farm. If I reach far enough, I can grab at one of the ropes trailing off it. I can loop it back round the poles, knot them off like I’ve watched Clover do when she’s tethering the rowing boat. But the waves have changed and are working against me. Working to rip the sea farm apart and send the greenhouse off into the ocean.

  I know what I’ve got to do and I don’t think it through, because if I think about it, I won’t do it. If I run round to get the girls, by the time we’re back, the greenhouse will have gone too far.

  It’s only a few strokes, and what was the point in learning to swim if I can’t do it when I need to? I think of Billy Crier, climbing up the windmill in the storm. He must have been scared, but he did it anyway, to save his dad.

  I plunge into the water.

  All points of reference go – farm, greenhouse, land, ship. Even the sky disappears. Everything is replaced with water – dark walls of water, lunging from side to side, taking me with it, and into them. I desperately try and tread water, like Clover taught me. More than ever, I need to stay afloat. The waves are too strong to fight.

  Every few seconds I get a glimpse of the greenhouse and try to reach out for it, not to save it now, but to save myself. Then the water comes between us, and over me. I snatch at air, a desperate gulp of oxygen, before the water comes again. My legs frantically keep on moving.

  If I stop, I’ll drown.

  Someone’s screaming my name and I can see arms waving over the towering water as I push down against it. My mouth clamps shut to stop me from drowning, and my nose and eyes do the same, closed up against the water. It’s out to claim me. What’s one more landlubber to the sea?

  “Nat! Nat!” Pearl’s beside me in the water, arms reaching out to me. Another wave hurls itself at us. Pearl fixes her eyes on me and shakes her head. All I can hear is water.

  Pearl turns back to the wave and pulls me down to swim under the worst of it with her. Showing me with her body what she wants me to do. We swim into the wave together, Pearl propelling me alongside her.

  On the other side, there’s the greenhouse. I grab at it with both hands. I’ve lost the energy to pull myself out of the water, but I cling on to the edge.

  Pearl’s already trying to heave herself out of the water. Normally she’s in and out effortlessly, but today the sea doesn’t want to let her go.

  Then a rope is hurled over our heads, and Pearl does a final hoist and is standing on the edge of the greenhouse. She gets the rope in one catch and starts pulling it tight round one of the poles, to lever the greenhouse back towards the rest of the farm. Her face is grimly determined.

  She’s shouting and jumping up and down, waving her arms. Another rope comes. Clover doesn’t need to hear to understand. She’s already throwing another rope, and dragging extra buoys to the side of the farm where the greenhouse is tethered.

  “Get up, Nat!” Pearl roars at me, and bends down to help drag me out. “I need you to pull with me!”

  Pearl puts a rope in my hand and we tug it together, hauling ourselves and the greenhouse back in place.

  “Stand back, stand back,” Pearl’s yelling at her sister. “We’ll crash into you. We need another rope. Throw one to Nat!”

  And in the lashing, howling storm, we work, the three of us, to pull the farm back together.

  Exhausted, we pile inside the main cabin. The sea turned on us. It came for a fight. I don’t think we won, but the greenhouse is tethered to the rest of the platform again.

  Miraculously the cabin floor is still pretty dry, though it rocks from side to side, lurching precariously on the top of the ocean.

  The drowning sensation comes back at me. The lack of air. My wet fingers cling at one of the vertical poles holding up the ceiling.

  “We’re safe here,” Pearl says quietly, flicking her eyes across me. She turns on one of the lamps. Just a soft glow.

  “Towel, Nat,” Clover says, opening up a trunk and throwing me a large brown towel. It’s threadbare but dry.

  “Thank you,” I splutter, still fighting for a proper breath of air.

  Clover pats my arm and smiles at me kindly. “Sit down. Catch your breath. We’ll be fine. We�
��ve survived much worse, we promise.”

  “Worse than that? Out there?” I ask, still shaking. “Now I know why the compounders face away from the sea. I thought that was it. I thought I was going to…”

  “Drown,” Clover finishes my sentence dramatically.

  Pearl glowers at her. “You saved the greenhouse,” she says, looking at me in a way she hasn’t before.

  “You were so brave, Nat,” Clover says proudly. “Jumping into the sea to save our butterflies.”

  I blush. “It was stupid. Pearl saved them. It was her that was brave.”

  Pearl shrugs. “I couldn’t have saved the greenhouse on my own. I wouldn’t have had the strength. Not with the waves like they are tonight. I needed you on the ropes too. That storm…” She lets her voice fade away, and she sinks down on to the sofa.

  Clover rushes over with a blanket and covers her tenderly. “I’m sorry, Pearl. For not listening to you.” She’s got tears in her eyes.

  Pearl nods, exhausted. “It doesn’t matter now, does it? The usual signs weren’t there. And you were brilliant with those rope throws. Brilliant, Clover.”

  “Do you think Dad is all right? Do you think he knows there’s a storm?” Clover asks.

  “Of course he does,” Pearl says assuredly. “Couldn’t miss a storm like this, could you? Even on land. We’ll go as soon as the storm’s over. I promise.” She smiles at Clover. “Dad will be OK,” she says. “I know it.”

  Then Pearl closes her eyes and turns into the sofa, burrowing under her blanket.

  “Will she be OK?” I whisper to Clover.

  “Yeah,” Clover whispers back, her face lit up in the lamplight. “Pearl’s always hated storms. She can’t understand why the sea boils up like that. Not against us. She thinks the sea should be on our side.”

  Clover looks up at the skylight where water’s battering down, rain and sea spray combined. There is a leak, but just slow drops. She pulls a bucket out from the corner and kicks it into place, though it rolls over immediately.

  “It’s not normally so bad. Dad used to say we were hurricane proof. He’s just not kept up with it lately. He’s been ill for ages I think, it’s not just his foot.” She looks sad and deflated. “We’ve had to do everything, Pearl and me.”