Black Snow

by Lena North

  “I’m so sorry, but I have to go. Nicky is waiting for me,” I said.

  “Is it okay to call him Nick again?” she asked.

  “I don’t know. You’ll have to ask him that,” I said.

  “I will,” she smiled. “It is fantastic to see him here again, and you could have knocked us all over with a feather when he rode into town with Joao. I bet Nicholas and Pauline are ecstatic to see him again after so many years.”

  She turned to put the box on a shelf in a small alcove behind her, and I didn’t reply. Nick had told me, but I hadn’t understood. He hadn’t been back since Tommy died. When we walked into his parents’ house to have breakfast, it had been the first time in more than four years that they’d seen him. No wonder they had acted so strangely, I thought.

  The girl seemed to want to gossip some more, but to my relief, a group of tourists came in, and I just waved at her and left.

  Then I started walking the long uphill road to Nicholas and Pauline’s house where a scowling Joao opened the door before I had time to knock.

  “Jamie left you in town?”

  “I told him to,” I replied calmly.

  “And he listened?”

  What had crawled up his usually so happy butt?

  “Obviously,” I said breezily and swept past him. “Is Nicky here?”

  “Snow,” Joao said, quietly and suddenly seriously.

  He waited until I had turned fully and was watching him.

  “We owe you.”

  I supposed that he meant for what I had done for Nick, but he was wrong, so I stepped up to him and whispered, “You don’t know me, not really, Joao. If you did, you’d know that there’s no need to thank me.”

  “I’m not thanking you, Snow. I’m simply telling you that we owe you and when you need us, we’ll pay you back.”

  He looked oddly intense, and as our gazes held, something flickered in his eyes. It was like a small turquoise flash, but it was gone as quickly as it had appeared.

  “You're very weird,” I told him.

  “It’ll get weirder,” he replied and grinned his usual cocky grin as he turned me and moved us into the kitchen where Nick, and a funky-smelling dinner, was waiting.

  “I’m not hungry,” I said.

  “Hello to you too, babe,” Nick snorted. “The geek fed you?”

  “Late lunch just before he had to rush off to the airport.”

  “We’ll eat later then,” Nick said. “Let’s sit down for a while, Joao has some things to share.”

  Then he grabbed a few bags of chips, did the twitch with his head to indicate that I again was supposed to bring pitchers of water outside, so I did.

  “Did you find the guys who shot at Jamie and me?” I asked.

  “Yup,” Joao said.

  “And?” I prompted when he didn’t elaborate.

  “They had dropped their cargo, we had no proof, had to let them go. They’ve left the Islands.”

  “I saw them, Joao. Stared straight into the eyes of the captain on that boat. I could –”

  “Not gonna risk that.”

  “What?”

  “I told them I knew what they’d done. Told them I’d pressed you hard, but you hadn’t seen anything. Said that if they ever came back, I’d arrest them, but since I had no witness, I had no proof. Then I let them go.”

  “But –”

  “Not going to risk the whole Ophidian cartel coming after you, Snow. Wouldn’t change anything, except you’d be dead. We’ll get them another day.”

  Oh. I wasn’t sure I liked that the men had gotten away with what they did, but I appreciated not having a drug cartel attempting to kill me, so I nodded.

  “They’d dropped their cargo?” I asked instead.

  “Drugs.”

  Well, duh.

  “I’m not stupid.”

  “Right,” he said with a small smile. “They pack the shit up in plastic and put it in big wooden crates. There are other bags filled with wet sand at the bottom of the crates, and they dump them outside the Islands at agreed locations. It sinks to the bottom quickly. No evidence. Then someone else can pick them up several days later, unless we get there first.”

  “But how do you find them?”

  There was a long silence, and they exchanged a look.

  “You talk to a bird,” Joao said slowly.

  I turned to look at Nick, hurt that he’d shared my connection but unable to scold him because I hadn’t actually told him it was a secret. I’d thought he’d understood.

  He ignored the look I was pretty sure was on my face, and asked gently, “Didn’t you think it was strange that I figured it out at all? And that I wasn’t shocked or surprised? That I didn’t ask any questions about it?”

  When he said it like that then, of course, it was strange. I hadn’t thought about it that way, though, mainly because it wasn’t weird to me. I didn’t know why some of the people from Norton could communicate with birds of prey, but we did, and it was so incredibly ordinary. Hawker and the others in his crew sometimes used their birds as scouts or messengers, but I wasn’t a part of that and just considered the osprey my friend.

  I didn’t reply and leaned back to see where they were heading with their comments.

  “Hawker Johns also talks to a bird,” Joao said.

  I made sure my face was completely blank because this was something I wasn’t willing to discuss at all.

  “Is that so?” I asked.

  “It is,” Joao stated. Then he took a deep breath and murmured, “There are people on the Islands who talk to animals too, Snow.”

  I blinked, not sure if I’d heard what I just heard. Then it hit me like a flash, and I knew.

  “The dolphins.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  We’ve got it covered.

  “Can you do it?” I asked Nick before they could confirm my guess that they were indeed able to communicate with dolphins.

  “Sort of,” he said.

  Huh?

  “This is where it gets complicated, so listen up,” Joao murmured.

  I nodded, wondering how complicated it could be.

  “Three families have abilities on the Islands. The d’Izias have the sight, you know that.” He looked at me for confirmation, so I nodded again. “The Jamieson and Torres families have various degrees of interaction with the dolphins and the ocean.”

  Then he was silent, and I waited for the complexity to come into the explanation.

  “And?” I asked when they didn’t continue.

  “And, what?”

  “I’m not a genius, but that wasn’t exactly difficult to understand.” Then my brows went up. “You’re a d’Izia,” I told Nick.

  “I know,” he replied.

  “So, how can you talk to the dolphins?”

  “Mama is a Torres. I got part of it from her, and I can’t exactly talk to them. I can push images to them, and they do the same back to me.”

  Okay. That was ineffective, but still kind of cool.

  “Did you tell them to save me?”

  “First time yes, second time no.”

  I pressed my lips together as I remembered floating far out in the sea, late at night. I’d thought about not going back. The dolphins and my bird had gently but determinedly pushed me to start swimming again.

  This was not a topic I wanted to discuss, so I turned to Joao and asked, “Was it you the second time?”

  “Yup,” he said calmly.

  They exchanged a look that I couldn’t interpret, and it hit me that Joao had been drying his hair when they came for me in the boat.

  “Were you in the water with them?”

  “Yup,” he repeated.

  “They found the boxes with drugs?”

  “In a way, yes.”

  It seemed as if he’d say something else, but Pauline and Nicholas broke the moment by walking out in the courtyard.

  “Joao, excellent.
I would like to have a few words with you,” Nicholas said immediately, and without any greeting, neither to me nor his son.

  He looked stern.

  “I know, Uncle Nico,” Joao said, suddenly sounding less like the cocky chief of police and more like a boy receiving a lecture. “It won’t happen again.”

  “You need to make sure it won’t,” Nicholas stated.

  “It won’t,” Joao repeated.

  “I’ll kill you if it does,” Nicholas added, and I blinked.

  He’d seemed like a friendly, jovial man but his words were harsh, and the tone of his voice indicated clearly that he wasn’t joking.

  “I know,” Joao said.

  “Papi,” Nick butted in. “Don’t worry about it. We’ve got it covered.”

  Nicholas turned slowly to his son, and then he exploded in a shit-fit the likes I wouldn’t have thought he was capable of.

  “Don’t worry? Don’t worry!? Are you seriously telling me that, Domenico?”

  “Pap –”

  “You do not get to tell me that, son. You get to sit there and smile. You get to fight ridiculous fights with your girl, and you get to play with the dogs. That’s just about what you get to do, and that is a stretch.”

  “Nico,” Pauline murmured, clearly trying to calm him down, but equally clearly failing.

  “I should have pulled him out of that program, Paulie, and I didn’t. Now he’s back, and I will bloody well protect him the rest of his whole goddamned life, until he’s an old geezer who sits in a nursing home, farting and forgetting to cut the hair in his ears.”

  Um, gross. Sweet, but gross.

  “And that means I’ll protect Snow because she’s what brought him back to us and we all know it. She almost died yesterday, so it also means that if Joao falls down on the job again, I will take a blunt paring knife and I will slice off his tail in small pieces,” he roared. “And there’s absolutely nothing anyone can say that will stop me.”

  Yikes. He’d cut off Joao’s what? His genitals?

  “There’s no need to –”

  I should have shut up.

  “Oh no, you don’t,” Nicholas barked and rounded on me.

  Nick was out of his chair in a flash, and suddenly I was watching the back of his tee. There was a text on it announcing the concert dates of some rock band.

  “Nuh-uh,” he murmured. “Can’t let you, Papa.”

  “Son.”

  “Yell at me. You’re pissed, I get that, and you can take it out on me. But I can’t let you go after Snow.”

  “Son.”

  “I’m bigger than you,” Nick murmured. “And you need to remember that when I’m farting in a nursing home, you’ll be doing the same in your grave.”

  There was a short silence, and then Nicholas grumbled, “Are you calling me old?”

  “Er.”

  “What?”

  “Old-er,” Nick enunciated, and added sweetly, “I wouldn’t call you old, Papi. You’re more middle-aged than really old.”

  The look on Nicholas' face was hilarious, and I just couldn’t hold a small giggle back. Nick’s tee moved a little, so I figured he was laughing too, albeit silently, but his father didn’t see the humor in being called middle-aged.

  “Huh,” he grunted, and walked away.

  “Slick,” Joao murmured. “Very slick, Nicky.”

  “What on earth must you think of us, Snow,” Pauline whispered, and we turned toward her. “I’m crying all the time, and now Nicholas was yelling like that. No one can call Nicky even remotely normal, and Joao –” She cut herself off and swallowed. “You must wonder what kind of family we are.”

  I spoke without thinking, or perhaps only thinking about comforting her because she looked so forlorn.

  “My parents were way louder and a lot more emotional than either of you, Pauline, and you don’t have to worry because I know what kind of family you are,” I said, and put a hand on her shoulder, squeezing gently. “One that cares.”

  Her eyes watered up again but she smiled too as she put her hand on top of mine.

  Then my bird swept down from above. She circled the crowd in the courtyard and sat down next to me, perched on the back of a chair.

  “They’re funny,” she stated. “I like.”

  “I like too,” I replied. “Wish they’d stop thanking me, but I do like them.”

  “They talk to big gray.”

  “You knew?”

  “Guessed. Not sure. Big guy swims with them.”

  “Yeah,” I murmured, assuming that the big guy was Joao.

  When Nick walked over to her and let his hand slide gently over her head, she made a soft chirping sound.

  “Lovey-dovey,” I teased gently.

  “Totally.”

  “Let’s go back to my place and have dinner?”

  I jolted and moved my gaze from Nick’s gentle hand that was still caressing my bird to his eyes that were soft and warm.

  “Sure,” I said. “We should perhaps say goodbye to your father first, though, he was…”

  I wasn’t sure how to describe his rants politely, so I didn’t even try.

  “Nico will be okay. You go on now, and I’ll have him stop by tomorrow and apologize,” Pauline said with a wink. “Do you want some leftovers, or will you stop by the restaurant?”

  “I cooked,” Nick said.

  “I’ll pack up some leftovers,” Pauline said and walked off without waiting for a reply.

  Joao snorted something, and then he muttered, “I’ll go and deal with shit.”

  “Sorry about Papa,” Nick said.

  “He was right, so no need to apologize. And for the record, I won’t fall down.”

  “I know.”

  They shared a long look, but then Joao suddenly flicked me one of his salutes and sauntered off.

  It was nice to sit on Nick’s back porch, eating leftovers and sipping on a cold, pale beer. After the drama earlier, the stillness of the night soothed me.

  “How did things go with the geek?”

  “Why do you call him that?”

  “He is one.”

  “Yeah, but it doesn’t sound nice.”

  Nick frowned, and then he said, “Tommy and I used to call him that, but we never meant it in a bad way. He was so clever. So serious, and ambitious. We mostly goofed around like two big dolts, but he… He was such a geek, Snow.”

  “Tommy didn’t have the same kind of brain as Jamie?”

  “Not at all. He had an even worse math-grade than me.”

  “Did he have the sight then?”

  “Nope. With Tommy, it was more about emotions. It was as if he knew every nuance of how you felt from a single word, sometimes just in a sigh or a shift of a muscle. He was musical like you wouldn’t believe it too, and creatively gifted, though not like me. I see images, but I’m a crap painter, so it was a relief when I found photography. Tommy was good with his hands. Painted some, and sculptured. Did things with clay that could break your heart. It was as if he pushed his emotions out through his fingertips and into whatever material he worked with.”

  “He made the one in your parents’ garden, where they mourn your sister,” I guessed.

  “Yes.”

  “How did he die, Nicky?” I whispered, afraid that he wouldn’t want to tell me, or perhaps that he’d expect me to share my own experience.

  “He went out with the boat. We found it turned over. Joao found him later that day.”

  “But –”

  “Tommy sang with the dolphins, Snow. He talked to them constantly, and they loved him endlessly. If it had been an accident, he could have called for them, and there would have been pods from all over rushing to his side. They said he didn’t. Said they all heard him whisper goodbye, but they didn’t make it to him in time.”

  His eyes suddenly filled with tears, and slowly, silently, one of them slid down his cheek. I put my plate down and crawled into
his lap.

  “I was too far gone when Tommy died. They told me, and I was there for the funeral. When they spread the ashes over the waves, I heard the echo of hundreds of dolphins screaming out their grief for him. And I felt nothing. I remember frowning, and wondering why they were all crying when he had done it to himself. He had gotten what he wanted, I thought.” He leaned his head on my shoulder and murmured, “About a month after I met you, I understood grief. It was hard.”

  “Nicky…”

  “Took me a long while to get past that, sweetie. Grief, anger, denial, sadness. I went through it all, and it hurt. But, Snow… It also felt good. I could finally forgive him for what he’d done, and say goodbye to him. I could finally heal.”

  I turned my face into his chest and cried, for him and his cousin, but maybe also for me.

  “I’m not ready to say goodbye,” I mumbled after a while, knowing that he’d understand what I meant.

  “One day you will be.”

  We sat there long into the night but we didn’t say much, and then we went to bed. There had been too much drama, and I felt that familiar feeling of darkness starting in my belly as I slid between the sheets. The night would be restless, and I dreaded it, but then Nick walked in, and lay down next to me.

  “Can I stay?” he asked quietly.

  I turned and put my arms around him, my cheek on his shoulder.

  “I don’t think I’ll sleep well tonight,” I confessed. “If I wake you up, I’ll move out to the couch.”

  “Nuh-uh, Snow. If you can’t sleep, then wake me up. We’ll go for a walk, watch the sunrise.”

  I squeezed him a little.

  “You need to sleep.”

  “Wake me,” he muttered sleepily.

  “’Kay,” I said, thinking that I wouldn’t.

  I didn’t wake up during the night, but I dreamt about my father, and he was laughing that booming laughter full of endless joy like he'd done through my childhood. My mother was with him, but she didn’t look at me. She was looking at him.

  The alarm woke me up and I stumbled out to take the stupid water samples. I promptly got back to bed and fell asleep again, and this time, I didn’t dream. When I woke up, the sun was high in the sky, and Nick was gone, but a note on the breakfast bar informed me that he’d be back around lunchtime. I checked my messages and replied to my buddies in Prosper that I was still on the Islands but I’d be in touch when I got back. They were climbing that day, and I wished I could have been there with them. There were questions from both Dante and Wilder, asking me if I’d found something useful, and I sent off replies to them that I still hadn’t figured anything out, but that I would keep looking. Then I started pacing. I was frustrated and restless, antsy in a way that was familiar, and I needed to do something. If I waited for Nick, we could go sailing, or go for a drive around the island, but that seemed wrong suddenly. I needed to do something on my own, without him.