Surrendering (Swans Landing)

by Norris, Shana

  “If she were awake,” Mr. Moody said at last, “she’d tell me I was an old fool.” He laughed a little. “Just like she always does.”

  I smiled. I knew Miss Gale enough to know that she always said what was on her mind, no matter what it was. She’d tell you honestly how she felt about you.

  “Maybe I am an old fool,” he continued. “Maybe that’s why I’ve never stopped loving her, even when she told me I shouldn’t.” He stroked her long white hair, a small smile on his face. “Did you know, boy, that I asked her to marry me?”

  “No,” I said softly. “I didn’t know that.”

  “I’ve asked her that question probably a hundred times over the last forty years.”

  Ouch. Poor guy. “She always says no?” I asked.

  Mr. Moody shook his head. “She’s never said yes or no. She just always tells me that she can’t let me tie myself to her with the life she lives. She doesn’t want me to watch her going into a world I can’t follow.” He leaned forward, lowering his voice. “But I’m still here, Gale, and I’m still waiting for an answer.”

  If this were a movie, one of those cheesy happily ever after things, Miss Gale would have woken up right then and told Mr. Moody that she would marry him.

  But it wasn’t a movie, and Miss Gale’s eyes stayed closed, her breathing even and soft.

  “I am an old fool,” Mr. Moody said. “For her. Always for her.”

  I swallowed as I watched him gaze at her. His eyes had this look like he had never seen anyone else as beautiful as her. Even after forty years of pushing him away, his love had never faded.

  It gave me hope to know that sometimes even our own actions couldn’t destroy a love like that.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  “Callum Murchadh?” the nurse called, butchering the pronunciation of his last name. She looked up from the file folder, raising her eyebrows at the three of us.

  Sailor and I helped Callum to his feet and across the waiting room toward the door into the exam area. Other people slumped in the chairs around the waiting room, their gazes following as we moved. An old man coughed, wheezing loudly in the otherwise silent room. A little girl lay across three seats, her face pale and her breathing heavy.

  Callum eased himself onto the examination table, his wooden leg tapping against the metal as he moved.

  “Doctor Hansen will be with you soon,” the nurse told us as she backed out of the door, as if she couldn’t move fast enough.

  Sailor sat down in the only available chair, while I leaned against the wall, my arms crossed.

  “I’ll be glad to get rid of this bloody thing,” Callum said, glaring down at his wooden leg. “Hopefully this doctor of yours can give me a real prosthetic.”

  “Doctor Hansen is the best doctor on the island,” I told him.

  “The only doctor on the island,” Sailor said with a smirk.

  I nodded. “That too.”

  “Is she…” Callum frowned, his forehead creasing. “How does she feel about finfolk?”

  Sailor and I exchanged a glance. Honestly, I didn’t know. I had always been to her pretending to be human. I had no experience with Dr. Hansen’s opinions on finfolk.

  “I guess we’ll see,” I said as the door opened.

  Dr. Hansen was in her mid-forties, with sandy blonde hair pulled back into a ponytail. She smiled awkwardly at us as she closed the door behind her.

  “Hello,” she said, extending a hand toward Callum. “I’m Dr. Hansen.”

  Her smile was strained, her expression tight. It was easy to see that she wasn’t entirely comfortable around us.

  “Hello,” Callum said with a nod. “Thank you for seeing me, even though I don’t have medical insurance.”

  Dr. Hansen opened the file folder and scanned the page. “Everyone has the right to medical care in my office.”

  “Even finfolk?” Sailor asked.

  Dr. Hansen fumbled and a paper fell from her hand, fluttering to the floor. She bent to scoop it up, avoiding our gazes. “Yes, well, you’re human enough in anatomy, aren’t you? I don’t proclaim to be an expert in finfolk, but I’ll do what I can.” She cleared her throat and then turned to Callum. “Now, let’s look at that leg.”

  Dr. Hansen examined Callum’s leg. She removed the crudely made prosthetic and then studied the scarred skin where his leg had been cut off by Domnall four years ago.

  “What happened here?” Dr. Hansen asked in a soft tone. Her fingers poked timidly at the stump of Callum’s leg, as if she were afraid of hurting him now.

  “I was punished,” Callum said. “For doing something that resulted in the death of my sister.”

  Dr. Hansen’s eyes snapped up to meet his gaze. “Cutting off your leg is a proper punishment among your people?”

  “Not commonly, but the person who did it felt that it was justified.”

  Dr. Hansen pressed her lips together as she examined Callum’s leg again. “The person who did this,” she began, “is he the one people say is coming here?”

  “Yes,” I said. “His name is Domnall, and he’s the king of the finfolk on an island called Hether Blether. He is leading some of his people here. And he will not let anyone stand in his way. Everyone here is in danger. Look at what he did to Callum. Don’t think that he won’t do the same to you.”

  Dr. Hansen’s hands trembled and she pulled away from Callum. She turned back to the file folder on the table, scribbling down some notes. “I can get you a real prosthetic,” she said, her voice cracking a little as she spoke. “You really need a custom made one for the best fit, but this one will do for now, until you can get to the mainland one day to a specialist.”

  “Thank you,” Callum said.

  Dr. Hansen rubbed her forehead, letting out a long breath. “Just doing my job.” She looked tired and I thought of the people in the waiting room.

  “Have you been really busy lately?” I asked.

  “More so than usual,” Dr. Hansen said. “Especially considering there are no tourists on the island right now. I don’t usually see this much business from the locals during the summer, when everyone is supposed to be busy working.”

  “What’s wrong with them?” Sailor asked.

  Dr. Hansen shook her head. “I wish I knew. It’s not a virus. Not an infection of any kind. I can find no logical cause for this illness. At first, it was only the older people falling ill, but recently, I’ve seen young children come in with the same symptoms. Coughing, wheezing, confusion, exhaustion. I can’t explain it.”

  Sailor and I exchanged a look. Symptoms just like Miss Gale’s.

  “Is this affecting both humans and finfolk?” I asked.

  “From what I can tell, it is,” Dr. Hansen said. “Although most finfolk aren’t coming in for treatment. They’re a bit more stubborn than the humans sometimes.” She cracked a half-smile. “No offense intended.”

  I returned her smile. “None taken.”

  Dr. Hansen called for the nurse and instructed her to get a prosthetic from the supply closet. The nurse returned with the metal leg, casting anxious glances at the three of us as she backed out of the room again.

  Once Callum was fitted with the new prosthetic and had taken a few test steps around the room, he thanked Dr. Hansen. Dr. Hansen led us back to the front, to the checkout desk.

  “Let me know if you have any problems or discomfort,” Dr. Hansen told Callum.

  Callum nodded. “Aye, thank you again.”

  Dr. Hansen smiled and nodded good-bye before turning to head back to the door marked OFFICE.

  “Dr. Hansen,” I called. She stopped and looked back at me. I felt the eyes of everyone in the waiting room on me, as well as the eyes of the receptionist behind the desk.

  “Please think about what we told you,” I said, loud enough for everyone to hear. “These people that are coming are very dangerous. We all need to work together in order to stop them.”

  Dr. Hansen glanced at the patients seated around the room, then her eyes me
t mine again. She nodded. “I will, Josh. Thank you for talking to me.”

  I only hoped that she, along with everyone else watching us, would take the warnings seriously.

  * * *

  I dug into my bag and pulled out the finfolk key that we had taken from Hether Blether. It didn’t even look like a key at all. It was just a piece of twisted iron. But it had come from Finfolkaheem, the ancient finfolk city under the sea. It was the key that had let us find Hether Blether months ago. It was the one thing Coral had insisted on getting before we left the island. The thing we had risked our lives for.

  And for what exactly? Coral said my dad had told her it was important, but I couldn’t figure out why. We were far away from Hether Blether now, and I had no intention of ever going back. In this part of the world, the key was probably nothing more than a piece of metal.

  “If you have any secrets that can help us,” I said to the metal in my hand, “now is the time to reveal them.”

  “Oliver.”

  I jumped, nearly dropping the key in my lap. A face peeked around the corner from the hall, wide green eyes blinking at me.

  “Ms. Mooring?” I asked. “I thought you were asleep.”

  “I kept them for you, Oliver,” Coral said. She glanced around the room and then tiptoed toward me, her skin ghostly white in the glow of the single lamp that lit the room. “I kept them safe, just like you told me.”

  I pinched the bridge of my nose. “I’m sorry, Ms. Mooring, but you have me confused with someone else. I’m not Oliver. I’m Josh, his son.”

  She reached for my hand, tugging my arm. “I’ll show you where I hid them.”

  She was surprisingly strong for a woman who was still so thin. I dropped the key back into my bag and stood, letting her pull me down the hall. We passed the closed doors of Sailor’s room and Miss Gale’s, and then headed into Coral’s darkened room at the end.

  “Over here,” she whispered, hurrying toward the corner behind her bed. She knelt on the floor, pulling at the carpet.

  I knelt next to her and helped her pull the carpet away from the tacks that held it in place. Coral dug her fingers into the edge of the floor, just under the little gap where it met the wall.

  A square chunk of the floor came up easily and she tossed it aside. A dark hole gaped up at us from the corner of her floor. I looked at Coral and she smiled wide at me, nodding.

  “I kept them for you,” she said again. “Just like you told me to.”

  I hesitated, wondering what exactly it was she had kept hidden like this. Then I leaned forward and reached into the hole. I tried not to think about spiders or snakes or other things that liked to bite that may be hidden inside. My fingers found a cold metal box, and I pulled it out, sitting it in my lap.

  The box was old and dirty, the edges starting to rust, but the latch clicked open when I pressed it. I opened the lid and reached to turn on the lamp on Coral’s nightstand.

  Yellowed paper and worn notebooks filled the inside of the box. I took the paper off the top of the stack and unfolded it carefully, staring down at the writing. It wasn’t the words on the page that made a chill creep down my spine. I couldn’t even focus enough to read anything the paper said.

  But the handwriting—I knew the handwriting. I had seen it once before, in a notebook my mom had caught me reading when I was thirteen. I had found it in an old box at our house, tucked away in the back of a closet. The handwriting of a ghost that had haunted my life, the last remnants of a man I’d never known.

  My mom had burned the notebook after she caught me reading it. She had burned everything in the box, and I thought anything that was left of my father aside from a couple of photographs had disappeared in that blaze.

  My eyes met Coral’s and she nodded, her smile stretching from one ear to the other. “Just like you told me, Oliver,” she said. “I hid them. I kept them safe.”

  Tears stung my eyes and she became blurry in my vision. I reached over and squeezed her hand. “Thank you, Coral,” I said. “You did great.”

  My heart drummed against my ribs as I looked down at my dad’s writing once again.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  “You sure you want me to read these?” Mara flipped through a notebook and gave me a hesitant look.

  We sat on the torn couch at her house, about three hours before I was supposed to start my shift on beach watch. The box of papers and notebooks sat between us.

  “There’s a lot to read and not much time to read it,” I said. “My dad must have known something about what was going on around here. He visited the Orkney Islands himself at one point, and I believe he was searching for Hether Blether. I thought that he wanted to go there just because of his obsession with finfolk, but maybe it was more than that. He told Coral that she needed to find the key. We have it, now we just need to know why it was important.”

  I yawned and rubbed at one eye. I had stayed up half the night, reading the papers. My dad’s handwriting wasn’t easy to read. He scrawled a lot, as though he couldn’t write fast enough to get his thoughts out. In some places, it had taken me long minutes of staring to figure out a word.

  I opened a notebook to where I had left off the night before. It was written only a few months before I was born.

  April 9 - The fishing season has come back, but as noted last year, there is a distinct decline in the population. The fishermen I’ve traveled with noted lower catches of sea mullets and red drum. No bluefish have appeared at all so far this season.

  It is still early, but if my previous observations hold true, the population will not increase as expected the further we head into the season. My temperature readings on the water in various locations today were as follows:

  Lighthouse: 48° F

  Pirate’s Cove: 49° F

  Water temperatures are remaining below expected average.

  Most of the entries in the notebook were like this. Notes on weather, the water temperatures, and fish populations.

  “My dad noticed that the fish populations were decreasing eighteen years ago,” I commented. “But no one else seems to have really taken it seriously except in the last few years.”

  Mara shrugged. “Maybe everyone thought it was just a temporary thing. Like, a few bad years, followed by good years. Isn’t that how it usually works?”

  If it was, it didn’t seem that it worked that way anymore. Not in Swans Landing, anyway. We’d had eighteen straight years of declining fish populations and lower water temperatures. It had caused people to leave the island in search of better jobs and for tourists to stop coming. But what exactly was causing it?

  I flipped through the notebook, my eyes scanning over the words until one caught my eye: Coral.

  July 13 - Coral Mooring has become somewhat of an assistant to me in my studies. She is helpful to have around, since she can swim farther and deeper than I can. She gives me first hand reports on the topography of the ocean floor around the island and the numbers of schools she sees down there. The reports are not any better than what I’ve been able to observe on my own.

  I read back over the short entry, trying to pick up any hidden thoughts my dad didn’t write down. But it seemed so innocent, a partnership in studying the water around the island. My dad had been a marine biologist, so he spent his life studying the ocean. I hadn’t read anything so far that would tell me why he fell in love with someone else. Because they spent so much time together? Was that all it took to forget your vow to someone else?

  I looked up and studied Mara’s profile as she read over the papers in her hand, her forehead scrunched in concentration. Maybe I should have asked Sailor to read these with me. It was her father too. But a part of me wanted to keep this part of our dad to myself for now, at least until I had some answers I could give her.

  “He mentioned you here,” Mara said quietly, casting a quick glance at me.

  I sat up, my body tense. “He did?”

  Mara cleared her throat and read from the page. “August se
cond. I’m a father. Silvia delivered our son, Joshua Oliver Canavan, at three twenty-one this morning. He is the most perfect thing I have ever seen. I left Silvia and Joshua at the hospital on the mainland and came back to the island once I saw that they were settled in comfortably and healthy.

  “Why am I back here, sitting on this boat alone when I should be with my wife and son? Joshua’s birth made me even more determined to find out what is causing the decline of our island. There is something at work here that none of us can explain and I fear for the future. For my son’s future. I have to find a way to fix this, for him.”

  I gritted my teeth together so hard that my jaw ached. My eyes burned with hot tears that wouldn’t fall.

  “Josh?” Mara asked, reaching out to touch my knee.

  “It’s funny, isn’t it?” I asked, my gaze locked on the notebook in my lap. “He wanted to make things better for me, but he didn’t spend what little time he had left with me. I was only a few hours old and already he was back out there on the water. And all of it was for what? Just so he could end up getting himself killed over a woman he could never really be with? Over people that he would never be a part of despite the blood that ran in his veins?”

  We fell silent for a moment. The house creaked and popped as it settled around us.

  “Maybe he couldn’t help feeling the way he did,” Mara spoke up. “Maybe he tried to fight it, but it was instinct.”

  I blinked quickly, but my vision became blurred through the tears. “He had more finfolk blood in him than I did, but he couldn’t change, no matter how much time he spent in the ocean. And the one thing that killed him is the one thing that I can’t do. I can’t drown, ever. That’s the only thing my dad ever gave me, besides these notebooks that aren’t telling me a damn thing I need to know!” I flung the notebook across the room. It hit the wall and then fell to the floor, the pages fanned out and the cover bent.

  Mara moved across the couch, wrapping her arms around me. I bit my lip until I tasted blood and buried my nose in her neck. She smelled so good and the feel of her body next to mine made me buzz with energy from head to toe.