Surrendering (Swans Landing)

by Norris, Shana

“What are you doing here?” I asked. “Aren’t you done spying on finfolk yet?”

  Mr. Connors’s cheeks turned red just above his beard. “I ain’t spying on nobody!”

  “Could have fooled me,” I said, crossing my arms. “You keep hanging around out here, watching the house but never knocking on the door. I’d call that suspicious behavior.”

  Mr. Connors sneered. “I guess you don’t know everything after all, do you, boy?” Then he turned and stalked away, his head bent toward the ground. I pressed my lips together as I watched him walk away, until he turned a corner and was gone.

  The house was warm and full of sound. Sailor and Callum sat on the couch, watching TV. Callum’s arm was around Sailor’s shoulders and she leaned into him. They looked over at me when I entered the front door.

  “Grandma woke up earlier,” Sailor told me. “I asked her about you staying here and she’s fine with it.”

  I nodded. “Thanks.” I set my bag down by the couch. “How is she doing?”

  Sailor frowned. “Still sick, but getting better I think. I just don’t know what’s wrong with her.”

  “I have an idea,” I said. “Domnall said that Hether Blether had experienced sickness and disease, which he believed was from the humans that had once been there.”

  Callum gave me a wary look. “You’re not listening to things Domnall said, are you?”

  I held up my hand. “Not just him. My dad wrote about what he thought was happening to Swans Landing and what he thought had happened before with Hildaland. If Swans Landing is changing, maybe Domnall was right in one way. The people are affected by the change too. Hether Blether’s protection is fading, causing changes to the island and the people there. Our protection over Swans Landing is growing, causing those same changes here.”

  “So you think my grandma is sick because of the island?” Sailor asked.

  “Maybe,” I said. “She’s not the only one. Look what happened to my mom. And your mom, maybe the change from Swans Landing to Hether Blether is what made her the way she is. Maybe other sicknesses here have been related to the changes the island is going through, but we just didn’t know it.”

  Sailor sat up, giving me a skeptical look. “Okay, but what about us? We went from Swans Landing to Hether Blether and back, and we’re not sick.”

  “We’re younger,” I pointed out. “That was also one of Domnall’s theories, remember?”

  Sailor made a face and settled back into the couch, next to Callum. “I don’t want to think about Domnall. Not for the rest of my life.”

  Callum frowned. “I don’t think I’ll ever stop thinking about him.”

  “Did you know he was human?” I asked.

  Callum shook his head. “No. He hid it very well.”

  “Are you sorry you’re not going back to Hether Blether?” I asked.

  Callum tilted his head to the side, then said, “No. I gave up my home four years ago. I have no claim there anymore.” He looked at Sailor and smiled. “I think I can be happier here.”

  I resisted the urge to make a face at the two of them cuddling so close.

  “I’m going to the bathroom,” I said, heading toward the hall.

  But I didn’t go into the little bathroom. Instead, I walked past it to the room at the end of the hall. The door was open a little, but I knocked as I peeked in.

  Coral sat at her desk, her hand moving across a paper as she shaded in lines. I stepped quietly across the room and gazed down at the picture. It was Pirate’s Cove. I could recognize that little slip of beach anywhere. She drew three figures standing near the water: a girl with long blonde hair, a guy with shoulder length dark hair and wearing cut off khakis, and a guy dressed in jeans and a plaid shirt, a scruffy beard already beginning to show on his cheeks.

  “Coral,” I said as I sat on the edge of her bed. “Did you have an affair with my dad?”

  She looked at me, blinking. She didn’t answer.

  I sighed and tried again. “Coral, did you—do you love Harry Connors?”

  Her face dissolved into a frown. “He’s getting married, but he doesn’t love her. He loves me, he told me he does. He still loves me.”

  I felt cold and numb as a tingling sensation spread over my scalp and then down my back. All the pieces moved around in my head like a puzzle, falling into just the right spots, clicking into place so I could see the big picture.

  “Who is Sailor’s father?” I asked in a low voice.

  Coral looked down at her lap, touching a hand gently to her stomach. “He’ll love our baby, once he knows. He won’t marry her. He can’t marry her, he loves me.” She looked up at me, her eyes wide. “Harry has always loved me.”

  I blinked quickly to keep back the tears that stung my eyes.

  “You didn’t have an affair with my dad, did you?” I asked. “It was Mr. Connors. He’s Sailor’s father.”

  But how had the truth gotten so mixed up?

  “You never told anyone who Sailor’s father was,” I guessed. “You were spending so much time helping my dad that everyone just assumed.”

  Mr. Connors probably thought it was true too. Or maybe it was his easy way out rather than admitting to cheating on his fiancé.

  “I wish Lake and Harry could be friends again,” Coral said, turning back to her drawing. “The way it used to be.” She picked up her pencil and began shading in the lines of the water as it lapped at the toes of the three figures on the beach. “I wish things didn’t have to change.”

  “So do I,” I told her.

  Sailor and Callum were engaged in a playful fight over the remote control when I walked back down the hall. I stood in the shadows for a moment, studying Sailor as if I had never really looked at her. I didn’t know why it hadn’t dawned on me before now. She had never looked much like me, or even like my dad in the few pictures I had. She looked a lot like her mother, but there was something else there. The dark hair, the green eyes, the rounded nose.

  She wasn’t my sister. She was Elizabeth’s.

  But I knew I couldn’t tell her that. Not right now, not after everything she’d already been through in her life. Elizabeth, even if she had changed her mind about finfolk, could never be the sibling Sailor needed.

  I would be her brother for as long as she needed me to.

  “Hey, you,” Sailor said, spotting me loitering in the hall. “Tell Callum that it’s my house, so I get to decide what we watch.”

  Callum groaned. “Please no. She’s trying to make me watch one of those ridiculous American teen movies.” He shot me a pleading look. “End the misery, please.”

  I walked into the room and threw myself onto the love seat. “Sorry,” I told him. “Swansers stick together.”

  The truth was, I needed her just as much as she needed me.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  “You do realize the consequences of what you are asking?” Sorcha looked at me with wide, unblinking eyes.

  I nodded. “We’re not part of your world. We want to remain in the human world. We can’t let Swans Landing vanish.”

  The four members of the finfolk council looked at each other, their faces solemn. I floated nearby with Mara, Dylan, Sailor, Callum, and Lake. We had come to ask the council how to break the mists that were covering Swans Landing and return the island permanently to the human world. I tried to block out the music in the water around me, but already I felt the tension inside me disappearing. The temptation to stay in Finfolkaheem nudged at my mind, but I fought to push it away. This wasn’t my home, even if the human part of me was gone. I belonged in the world above the ocean’s surface.

  “We have not lost an island since Hildaland,” Finlay said. “It is difficult for us to break the connection between Finfolkaheem and the vanishing isles. We are possessive and we do not like giving our property up so easily.”

  “With all due respect,” Mara said, “Swans Landing does not belong just to the finfolk. The humans that live there have a right to it too.”

 
“And these humans are your friends?” Mairead asked.

  “Yes, they are,” Dylan said.

  “They’re our family,” I added.

  Again, the council exchanged a look, like they were communicating without speaking. I didn’t know if it was another thing the finfolk of the city under the sea were actually capable of or if they knew each other so well that it only seemed they could communicate through thought. There was so much about the finfolk that I didn’t know. It made me think of my dad, and how he might have loved coming here to learn all of the finfolk history.

  “The mists appeared because you sing the song of rebirth, the one tied to the water,” Sorcha said at last. “It draws on the water in the air, turning it into the mists that hide the island. You can stop singing, which will cause the mists to weaken over time. It may take years before the effects are fully gone.”

  “There is a faster way, however,” Mairead said. “You need to change the song and pull from the essence of the land. Tie the island back to the earth.”

  “Can you teach us the song?” Lake asked.

  “You must wait until the new moon to try it,” Iomhar said. “The start of the cycle of lunar rebirth will help you recreate your island. Sing during low tide, when you will be closer to the earth.”

  I nodded as I repeated the instructions to myself silently. New moon was still a few weeks away, so we’d have to wait before we could try it. Hopefully the island wouldn’t fade anymore in the meantime.

  The council taught us how to change the song we usually sang to pull from the earth’s essence instead of the water. The earth songs were much more difficult to find and took more energy to use. That was probably the reason why we finfolk in Swans Landing had stopped using them long ago and forgotten them in favor of the easier water songs.

  I didn’t want all of this knowledge to be lost again once the door to Finfolkaheem closed off our shores. I would continue my dad’s journals, I decided. Once I got back above the surface, I would write down everything I had learned in Finfolkaheem and everything I knew about Hether Blether.

  “There’s one more thing,” Sailor said after we had all gotten the hang of the new song. “My grandmother. She’s been sick for months. We think that the mists may be the cause. Is this true?”

  “What are her symptoms?” Finlay asked.

  “She’s tired all the time,” Sailor said. “She gets confused sometimes. A little fever, chills. It almost seems like a cold or flu, but it’s lasted so long. And she’s never been sick like this before.” She glanced at me. “Others have been sick too. People who seem confused, my mother especially.”

  Sorcha inclined her head. “Do your grandmother and mother have human blood as well?”

  “Yes,” Sailor answered. “My grandmother’s grandfather on her mother’s side was human.”

  “The human blood is a weakness,” Finlay said. When Sailor scowled and opened her mouth, he held up one hand. “I do not mean to offend you, but from the finfolk standpoint, it is a weakness. It allows illnesses, as you can see. The changes in the island affect the weakened human genes. Not only in mixed finfolk, but in humans themselves. They will all eventually succumb to the change.”

  Mara’s eyes widened. “What do you mean succumb?”

  Finlay’s expression was grim. “If the changes on the island continue, they will not survive.”

  Miss Gale, Coral, Lake, Dylan, Elizabeth—everyone who still had mixed genes and all of the humans would die.

  “What can we do?” I asked.

  “Make sure they are with you when you sing to break the mists around the island,” Sorcha said. “The song will affect everyone who hears it, and will renew and reconnect them to the human world as well.”

  Sailor nodded, smiling graciously at the council. “Thank you.”

  Iomhar gave us a sad smile. “When you sing the song, you will break the island’s connection to Finfolkaheem. You will not be able to return. If any of you wish to stay, you may do so. But you must decide before the song is performed.”

  Callum nodded. “We can ask everyone above the surface who might want to come here, but…” He looked at the rest of us. “I think we’ve all made our decision.”

  “Yes, we have,” I agreed. I was ready to get back home, even though this was probably the last time I’d see the city under the sea.

  * * *

  Cold rain battered the tent over the gravesite, dripping off the sides into the sandy grass below. I watched the rain fall, one drop after another.

  The burial service had ended half an hour ago and everyone had drifted away, back to their dry homes. Almost everyone in Swans Landing had come. I had never before seen so many people at one funeral, human and finfolk both. Mom probably would have hated it, which made me laugh.

  The silver casket I had ordered from the funeral home catalog still sat above ground. The men who did the job of lowering the casket and filling in the sand sat in their trucks on the other side of the graveyard, waiting for me to leave so they could do their job.

  But I wasn’t ready to go just yet. Once I walked away, that would be it. Both of my parents would lay in the ground and I’d be on my own, for the rest of my life.

  Someone sat down next to me and slipped an arm through mine, leaning her head on my shoulder. Mara didn’t say anything, she just sat there with me. I had seen the tears in her own eyes earlier and I knew this was hard for her, probably bringing up the memories of her own mother’s funeral earlier that year.

  Then Sailor arrived, sitting down on my other side. Callum joined her. The crunch of broken shells and sand behind me told me someone else was coming, and I looked over my shoulder to see Dylan and Elizabeth walking hand-in-hand toward us. Elizabeth wrapped her arms around my neck, hugging me tight, while Dylan put a hand on my shoulder.

  We stayed there, just the six of us, for a long time. No one spoke, but I knew what they all meant.

  None of us were alone.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  Three weeks later, I bounded down the steps from Mara’s house. This was the first time I’d felt something close to normal since my mom’s funeral. Mara and I had just gone out for lunch at one of the few places currently open in Swans Landing and I was on my way to go talk to Mr. Jasper at the Sand Dollar to see if maybe I could grovel and apologize enough to get my job back.

  We were all trying to get back to normal around the island. It was hard, since the mists were still hanging around, thick and unrelenting. But soon it would be Song Night, and hopefully we could break the tie to Finfolkaheem and put the island back where it belonged in the human world. Then the ferry would come again and maybe even tourists with it.

  “Josh.”

  I jumped at the voice behind me. I hadn’t seen Dylan when I passed his house, so he must have come out and followed me.

  “Hey,” I said. “I’m going over to the Sand Dollar to see if I can get my old job back. Want to come?”

  Dylan shifted from side to side. “No, um, thanks. I, uh, need to ask you for a favor.”

  He looked solemn, and I had a feeling this was a serious favor he was asking. Dylan and I had spent more time together over the last few weeks and were becoming somewhat friends, but it was still a bit strange for him to come to me for favors.

  “Okay,” I said. “Sure. What do you need?”

  Dylan took a deep breath. “I need to go to Finfolkaheem. And I need you to go with me.”

  I blinked at him. “You want to go back? You’re not…planning to stay there?”

  We had met with the finfolk in Swans Landing and told them about the door to the city under the sea. We gave them the chance to go there permanently, to anyone interested in leaving the island. But no one had taken the offer so far.

  “No,” Dylan said. “There’s something I want to do, and I have to go there in order to do it. But I need help.” He shrugged. “I can’t ask Sailor or Mara to do this. They would try to talk me out of it.”

  My skin prickled at
the look on his face. “How do you know I won’t try to talk you out of it?”

  “I figured I could turn you down easier than I could either of them.” He sighed again. “Will you take me there?”

  “What is it you want to do?” I asked.

  Dylan closed his eyes and said, “I want to be remade. To be human.”

  My mouth dropped open. I had never imagined a finfolk willingly giving up the ability to be finfolk. The ability to change was taken away from Callum without his choice and it must have been agony to not be a part of the water like he had once been.

  “Do you know what that would mean?” I asked him. “You’d never be able to swim like we do. You’d be completely vulnerable to the effects of the song. You would never change form again.”

  “I know,” Dylan said.

  “You’ve spent your life being finfolk and connected to the water. You wouldn’t have that anymore. A part of you would be gone.”

  Dylan stared back at me evenly. “You gave up part of yourself to help the island. I want to give up part of myself in order to live the life I want. It’s my choice, Josh.”

  I glanced back at the house where Dylan lived with his family. “Do your parents know?”

  “I talked with them about it last night,” Dylan said. “They’re not exactly thrilled, but they’ve given me the freedom to decide for myself what kind of life I want.”

  I thought about Mara and Sailor and how they’d react when they found out about this. They would probably kill me for taking Dylan to Finfolkaheem.

  But he was right. It was his choice.

  “Are you doing this for Elizabeth?” I asked. “You don’t have to be human just to be with her.”

  Dylan shot me an annoyed scowl. “I’m not doing it for her. It’s for me. Do you know what I see when I hear the song? I see myself, walking. Just walking as far as I want to go. Never swimming, never changing form. I’ve tried to be happy here. When Mara first arrived, I thought that maybe if I could love her, I could convince myself to be fine with my life as it is. But even if she had chosen me instead of you, I don’t think it would have changed anything. I’ve thought about this for the last few months. It’s not a spur of the moment thing. I know what I’m giving up, and I know what I’ll gain. I’m ready.”