Between Sea and Sky

by Nicola Penfold

  A shape emerges from the sea, blurred through my tears. My stomach lurches momentarily, but then a triangular fin arcs out of the water beside me. “Grey?!” I cry happily. “You came back!”

  The porpoise swims away, disappointed, or scared.

  Was it Grey? I don’t even know.

  “Clover! Pearl!” I call, stepping on to the platform and wrapping the rope around the tether pole.

  My heart sinks as I realize the motorboat isn’t back yet. What if they’ve been detained by Customs and Immigration? Or that peacekeeper got them, if she’s still lurking around the bay.

  I walk the length of the platform. The ropes criss-crossing the different boats are slippery with seaweed and slack. It all needs pulling back together.

  The door’s hanging off mine and Mum’s narrowboat. The guest quarters that Clover prepared so lovingly. It feels like the storm came for me and Mum most of all. The ceiling’s come in a bit and the mattresses are sodden. There are shells floating on the floor.

  I won’t be able to sleep in there for a while. Not that it matters, the girls won’t want me here after what’s happened. I wish I could stay. I’ve no idea what will happen to me now. You can’t live at the compound without a working grown-up to do shifts for your rations and be assigned your disobedience points. Will I be sent inland, to the Communal Families? Or to the ship? I declared my crime to that peacekeeper after all. Will she come for me next?

  I push past more damaged sections of the farm, to the greenhouse at the end. The remaining butterflies are at the top, settled on the panes, soaking up the sunshine. I breathe a sigh of relief. They’re safe at least. If I took away one of the panels now and let them go, like Pearl said we should, the proof would fly away.

  They might fly a thousand miles across the sea, to wherever they first came from.

  “Nat!” a voice calls out through the farm, loud and excited. “Nat! Where are you? We came back! Nat!”

  Clover flies into the room and throws her arms round me, like we’ve known each other for years and years, not less than the lifecycle of a butterfly.

  “Clover!” I say, squeezing her tight with relief. “How’s your dad?”

  “He’s OK! He’s OK!” she says breathlessly.

  “And Pearl?”

  “She’s right behind me. She did it, Nat! She walked on land!” Clover’s voice vibrates with pride.

  Pearl walks into the greenhouse, her shell necklace clacking. She’s lit up in the sunlight but not like a ghost or a witch. Solid. Alive.

  “You survived the land?” I say.

  Pearl tosses her hair back and her eyes seek mine furtively, like she wants to communicate something. “We brought someone…” she starts to say. “There’s something—”

  “We have a surprise for you,” Clover interrupts, clinging on to my arm excitedly. “Our own long-lost secret! Wait ’til you hear!”

  “Hear what? What do you mean?” I ask, puzzled, laughing slightly at the way Clover says secret. Like it’s fizzing up inside her.

  A man steps into the greenhouse and the laughter dies on my lips. I run up to him and beat my fists against his chest. I pound my fury into him. All of it. Mum. Tally. Barnaby. Olive.

  “No! Nat!” I can hear Clover saying faintly. “It’s not what you think! Stop it!” She’s yelling at me. “Stop! You’ve got to stop!”

  I don’t listen. I can’t listen to anything except the rage inside me that’s finally found its way out.

  The man, Ezra, doesn’t even try and defend himself. He stands and lets me pound him. Heavy punches across his chest, until finally Pearl comes up behind me and pulls me back.

  “Enough, Nat,” she says calmly. “Enough. He’s come to see your butterflies.”

  Pearl’s lying on her back in the greenhouse, eyes up at the sky. The butterflies are swooping around above us. Zinging with solar energy.

  Clover’s hanging out of the crow’s nest, our appointed lookout. Ezra’s bringing Mum back from the ship. To hell with protocol, he says, he’s District Controller. He said he’d fight his way in if he needed to. He took backup too. George’s boat, loaded with a couple of compounders. Tally’s dad volunteered to go with them, and I would have gone too, if they hadn’t insisted they drop me off here on the way.

  I’ve been back on land for a couple of days, hanging out with Lucas and Tally, cycling in the day and sleeping on Lucas’s sofa at night. It was great to be with them again, but I was surprised how much I missed being at sea, and the butterflies.

  I should be watching with Clover in the crow’s nest, but we won’t have the butterflies for much longer. Once Mum’s seen them, we’re letting them go. The peacekeeper’s report is filed, but Ezra’s is too. The butterflies are captured on film and paperwork is already on its way to Central District, asking for a repeal of siege state laws in Blackwater Bay.

  “What do you think Central will do?” I ask Pearl. “About the butterflies?”

  “They should stick to the rules. They wrote them.”

  “But if they don’t…” I start.

  Pearl shrugs. “I don’t know. Things can’t go back to how they were, can they? Not now.”

  I shake my head firmly. “Everyone in the compound is talking about the butterflies. Even the grown-ups are tramping across the solar fields to look for more caterpillars. They’re calling it a miracle.”

  I catch a smile shimmering on Pearl’s cheeks.

  “I know it wasn’t a miracle really,” I say.

  Pearl laughs softly. “The butterflies are their own miracle.” She pauses. “You always knew you had to let them go, didn’t you?” Her eyes are still on the clouds, following them as they shape and reshape themselves.

  “Where do you think they’ll go?” I ask thoughtfully.

  “Who knows? Probably just back to your windmill. Somewhere inside them, they’ll remember where they’re from. It’s the place their mum picked out for them to be safe. That means something.”

  I glance across at her. She’s different since she came back from land. Taller, straighter. Her black hair is shining so hard it’s almost blue, like the mussels.

  She and Clover have dug out the old photos of their mum from the storm trunk and fixed them around the cabin, next to the jars of sea glass and Pearl’s mermaids. There’s a framed photo of Ezra too. A boy, playing on the seashore with his sister, in the shadow of the sea defences.

  “Did you speak to your dad this morning?” I ask.

  Pearl nods. “There was a radio call first thing.” She laughs. “He never got up that early here! He wants to come home. The nurses say a couple more days. I suppose… I suppose they know what they’re doing. He stayed alive.”

  “Your wishings worked,” I say.

  Pearl rolls over on to her side to face me. “It wasn’t the wishings, I know that.”

  “I think they did something,” I say. “I think everything we’ve done this whole time did something.” I pause, thinking back to the days since I stepped off George’s boat and how much has changed. It feels like I stepped from the dark into the light, almost. Or like the horizons expanded. The world opened up. Would Pearl understand any of this? I smile sideways at her. “It’s like I was a different person when I came here.”

  “Landlubber,” Pearl says quietly, smiling at me. “Your face, when you first saw me! Like you’d seen a ghost!”

  “I thought I had for a moment!” I laugh, remembering that day. Most of all I remember showing Pearl and Clover the chrysalises. How I thought they were dead and I’d killed them, but then they trembled when Clover touched them.

  “Your uncle says it took a child to see it. That this will be a whole new age. After the Decline and the Hunger Years, this will be new. The Recovery. Now they’ve got the butterflies as proof, and your ledger too. Central can’t ignore all that, surely?”

  Pearl grunts dismissively. “Central can ignore anything if they choose to.”

  I shake my head, sitting up now. “Ezra says Blackwater
Bay will refuse to comply. They’ll go rogue. One of the northern districts have done that.”

  “Ezra said that to you?” Pearl says to me, surprised. She frowns. “I think he’s shy of me. I think he feels guilty.”

  “He should,” I say fervidly. “Ignoring you all those years. Ignoring everything except those stupid rules. He’d given up, after he lost your mum. But he’s changing now, isn’t he? The butterflies are just part of it. Now he’s got you and Clover back, and he’s seen the things you’re doing out here. With Mum to help him—”

  Pearl shuts her eyes and puts her fingers up to her hair, holding them against her temples like she’s holding her head still.

  “I’m sorry,” I say quickly, annoyed with myself for getting carried away. “I didn’t mean to upset you…”

  “I just get scared,” Pearl says. “I wanted things to stay the same forever – me, Dad, Clover, the porpoises. Now everything’s going to change.”

  I stare out at the porpoises, diving in and out of the shining water. Grey, Salt, Snort, Smile. I don’t know how the girls tell them apart.

  “I bet you wish we’d never come,” I say gloomily. “Mum and I.”

  “No, I don’t,” Pearl says earnestly. “I did, in the beginning. I was furious at you both then. At you most of all, with your jars of creatures. But not now.”

  “You’re not just saying that to be nice?”

  “I don’t care about being nice, do I?” Pearl laughs. “I was so scared of things changing, I didn’t see that some things needed to change. Because Clover was lonely and Dad wasn’t happy.” She pauses. “Dad might have died out here, without your mum making him go to hospital. I thought the sea would save him, but maybe it wouldn’t have. It didn’t save my mum.”

  I nod quietly.

  Pearl traces her fingers on the cracks of the panels. She and Clover repaired it while I was back on land, Ezra helped them. It can be a proper greenhouse again. Clover insists she’ll be able to get her hardware man to order new seeds in, like Vita did all those years ago. I bet she will too. Clover can charm anyone.

  “It would have been different if Mum had lived,” Pearl says. “Maybe we’d have gone to your school, tides allowing.”

  I smile, thinking of Pearl and Clover at our school on the mainland. I wonder who they’d have flagged with? Clover could have her pick, I bet. She’d have a flock of admirers. She could be top flagger in her year, if she wanted.

  I don’t know about Pearl. She’d fit in with me, Lucas and Tal. I reckon Tally would like another girl to hang out with. Someone who wouldn’t pity her.

  “Will you go in September?” I ask her. “To school?”

  Pearl shakes her head and looks away from me. “Nah. Too much to do here.” She hesitates. “But I won’t mind Clover going. She’s wanted it long enough.”

  “And I can still come here, for larking and to help with the oysters?” I ask.

  Pearl pushes me gently on the arm. “Course! You’ve still got to learn to dive, remember? Clover won’t forget that.”

  There’s an excited shout from the crow’s nest. “Nat! I can see them! Your mum! Come quickly!”

  I jump to my feet and leap out of the greenhouse, flying across the ropes towards the main platform.

  “I feel nervous,” Clover says. “What if they don’t like me?” She’s hopping from side to side in the moonlight, her feet barely touching the sand. An apparition in her white dress.

  I roll my eyes. “Everyone likes you, Clover. Everyone. You don’t need to worry.”

  “You promise?” Clover smiles and turns three cartwheels in a row.

  “They’d better be here soon,” I say fretfully. “The tide will be coming in.”

  I glance down at our burning stash of driftwood. Each piece brought in from somewhere else. Old sea defences, lost forests, collapsed houses or sunken ships. It’s all lived countless lives already. I hope Nat’s friends appreciate it.

  Ezra says the cogs of the Communal Families system are already turning. Barnaby’s been located. It’s optimistic, he says. A wishing probably isn’t necessary, but we decided to do one anyway, Nat, Clover and me. Clover says she believes in the wishings again. I reckon she just wants to do it with an audience since it gives her a chance to perform.

  Three figures emerge from behind the storm defences. Nat in the middle, slightly ahead, with Tally on one side, taller than him, purposeful, and Lucas trailing behind, looking either side of him warily. They’ve all removed their shoes. Three pairs of trainers left out in a row under coils of razor wire.

  “You came!” Clover cries. “You all came!”

  “Course we did,” Nat says, blushing slightly.

  “Are you going to do the introductions then?” Tally says eagerly, poking him. “Have you gone shy?”

  Clover giggles.

  “I know who you are,” Tally says, smiling at her. “I’ve seen you on your supply runs. Clover, right?”

  Clover nods happily and pushes me forward proudly. “This is Pearl, my sister.”

  Tally smiles easily. “I’m Tally. Well, Tallulah, but you can call me Tally, or just Tal. This is Lucas,” she says, pointing to the boy beside her.

  “Nice to meet you both,” Lucas says politely, smiling. “We’ve been looking forward to meeting you.”

  Clover does a sudden, delighted leap. Tally’s stepped right up to the fire and is putting her hands out to feel its heat. “When does the magic begin?” Tally asks, turning back to us. “You’ve kept us up late!” Her toes curl into the sand as she speaks, her face flushing red in the firelight.

  “It’s better at night,” Clover insists. “The magic is stronger.”

  Tally nods. “We need it strong. ’Cause I need him back.”

  Nat looks across at me nervously, as if he’s worried our ceremony won’t live up to how he’s imagined it. Or how Tally wants it to be. Needs it to be.

  I point my arms out around me. Surely Nat knows not to worry. The flats exude magic. I mean they always do, every single day, but on a night like tonight it hovers over them. You can touch it. Starlight brought right back down to earth.

  Nat grins at me.

  “We have to draw out a star,” I say. “A pentangle.”

  “A five-pointed star,” Lucas says knowingly.

  I nod back at him as Clover starts marking it out with her foot. “It’s got to be one continuous line,” she says importantly. “So the magic isn’t broken.”

  Clover’s eyes keep flicking to Tally. She wants to impress her as much as Nat does.

  “Did you bring the offerings?” I ask. It felt like we should use land things since the wishing is for them. Clover made sure Nat was well versed in the separate elements.

  “I’ve got them.” Tally steps forward and starts to take things out of a green bag she carries over her shoulder.

  “Did you get garlands of wild flowers,” Clover asks feverishly. “Bluebells and foxgloves and mallow?”

  Nat rolls his eyes. “Clover! Those things don’t exist any more. Not in the bay.”

  Clover sniffs defensively. “That’s what they used in the book I’m reading!”

  Tally laughs. “Nat says thistle flowers would do, and dandelions. And we found gull feathers out at Billy Crier’s.”

  She’s tied them up with orange ribbon. Two little bouquets of grey and white, and yellow and purple. She lays them down on the sand.

  “Thank you,” I say.

  “This was from the fields,” Lucas says shyly, handing a stone to me.

  It’s cold in my hands. Weighty. I can feel the earth on it. “It’s perfect,” I say.

  “And this was Barn’s.” Tally thrusts out a spoon-shaped piece of wood. “My dad carved it for him. I thought you could burn it, for fire.”

  I take the wooden object from her carefully. It’s got leaves engraved on the side and must have things inside. Tiny things, as it jangles softly as you shake it.

  Clover sucks in a loud breath. “We can’t burn yo
ur brother’s rattle!”

  “We don’t need to burn it,” I say assuredly, giving it back to Tally. “Having the fire’s good enough. Keep that with you. It’ll help focus your energy. You have to have your brother in your thoughts.”

  I don’t give Tally time to react. I start sorting the different objects, to get the right placing before the sea comes in. “The stone and the flowers, they’re earth,” I say, moving them to the right spot. “The feathers are easy, that’s air. And they can be spirit too.” I pluck a single white feather out of the little bouquet.

  “For Billy Crier,” Nat says.

  I gaze at him, surprised. “For Billy,” I say.

  “For Billy Crier,” the others repeat together, and I think how I’ll tell Olive about this tomorrow, when I go the ship. I’m going to get Nat to take me to that windmill and show me Olive’s name carved out above her brother’s. Maybe Olive can come too, one day.

  “Do you have the sea glass?” I ask Clover, checking again over my shoulder for the tide.

  Clover nods solemnly and pours the pieces on to the sand. Seven of them. They glint like gemstones. “Water,” she pronounces.

  “And we have fire already,” I say, dragging one of the burning pieces of driftwood to the final point of the pentangle.

  When the objects are in place, I scatter a handful of salt crystals. They burn yellow when they hit the fire and we stand in a circle round the pentangle, listening to the crackle.

  “Ready, yes?” Clover says, looking at me for direction.

  I nod at her, and she starts walking around the fire and the pentangle, arms in the air, turning looping, flowing motions that travel through her entire body. I see Nat and Lucas gawp at each other but Tally joins in straight away, mimicking Clover’s every turn. I join in too, so the boys don’t have any excuse not to follow.

  We could be pagans. Back way before everything. Before the Decline and the Greedy Years and everything that led up to it. There could be trees right up to the shoreline, and so many creatures swimming in the sea – whales, sharks, octopuses, squid. If I shut my eyes, I can picture it. I can almost be there.