Nine Years of Silver

by Parker Foye

  Mara directed Dupont toward Adrienne and Briar, Noah wary at her heel. She took Briar's hope safe with her. If Quinn no longer had to be a ghost for the sake of his own freedom, then—then—

  "That's not what I heard. I heard they mine secrets out this way," Dupont said, twisting in Mara's grip like a corkscrew. Between the broken arm and the shattered shoulder, her pain had to be devastating, but spite buoyed her. "That's how they found your friend, wasn't it, Ranger Augustin? When they were mining?"

  "Mines have been empty for years," Mara started to say, still calm.

  Then: "Augustin! Lower your weapon immediately."

  Briar hadn't known he'd raised his gun until Adrienne told him to lower it. Faltering with the motions, he snicked the safety back on and there stopped, glancing at the weapon in his hand. It had been a part of him, once. As Lastings had been a part of him. He felt like one of the straw dolls waiting for hair to be shoved inside. Hollow and aching and without the understanding to know what for.

  Noah slid the gun from Briar's unresisting hold, double-checked the safety, and handed it off to Adrienne. Dupont tried to say something else, but Mara shut her up right quick with a low word, and resumed hauling her away. The rain grew heavier.

  "What do you plan to do?" Noah had a soft voice. Well-spoken. From the north of the city, or pretending to be.

  Briar swallowed. His throat was dry. "There's somewhere I need to go."

  Gum snapped close by. "Damned right you do. Home," Adrienne said, pointedly.

  Light opened in Briar's gut as he recognised the truth of Adrienne's words. Home. He had to go home. He looked up, and Noah must've seen something in his eyes as he stepped back, near tripping over his own feet in an uncharacteristic fumble.

  "Briar—" Noah started to say, but stopped.

  Briar began to move. A fast walk. A stride. An uncertain jog. He'd won medals at school in the city, running in circle after circle around the well-groomed tracks to the cheers of a crowd. How fast could he run over open country? With no one to let him know when to stop? He picked up speed and certainty.

  "Augustin! Where do you think you're going?" Adrienne yelled after him.

  Briar didn't reply. He needed to save his breath.

  FIFTEEN

  Glimpses of old rail tracks peeked through the scrub like bones through a wound. Briar thought of Dupont as he followed them, of her shocked cry. He'd been a shadow of himself when he broke her arm, however many miles back. Who was he now? The shadow or the man? He didn't know the difference.

  So many memories of Lastings seemed like a story someone had told Briar once. Had the Stephenson girl really charmed birds from the trees? Did the preacher once run for the Chester crew? Had Briar really been loved by the boy with salt in his heart? Lastings was a waking dream, telling itself new with every dawn. Creating new shadows to run from and hide behind.

  Briar picked up his pace until, finally, the mouth of the mines gaped open in the hillside, angling steeply downward. Sweat mixed with rain on Briar's face as he considered the dark maw. His clothes clung to his clammy skin. Though he'd near ran most of the way from Dupont's arrest, his breathing remained steady. Only his feet hurt, his boots not made for running. Only Quinn mattered, alone in the mines with dead men's secrets.

  As he always would, Briar followed Quinn into the dark.

  Daylight dogged Briar's steps for a short while, highlighting the uneven texture of the mine walls and ceiling, shored in places by timber. Rusted lanterns hung at regular intervals, waiting to be lit, though the oil had long since evaporated. Seams marred the surface of the walls like some creature had tried to claw its way free. The occasional token of life made an appearance; a rusted pick, the end of an ancient cigarette, a small pile of fishbones left by someone more optimistic than Briar had ever been.

  Then light faded completely and Briar kept company with his blood beating in his ears. He inched forward into the gullet of the mine, listening hard for Quinn. He didn't call out. Any answer might not have come from Quinn's mouth. There were old things in the dark; old magic, old ghosts. Witches had long since been chased from the mines, but they'd called them home, once, and Briar had entered uninvited.

  Blackness stretched at all sides. Briar kept walking, seeking each footstep tentatively before laying down his weight. He kept his arms raised in front of his face, hoping desperately not to touch anything warm. His heartbeat drummed in his skull.

  Though he couldn't be certain at first whether his eyes were playing tricks, Briar started to see the dim glow of light up ahead. Or perhaps to the side—direction came from the mines in ungentle bruises, such as when a tunnel split in two. Briar hadn't kept track of his turns. Without Quinn, he'd never find his way out of the dark.

  Without Quinn, he didn't want to leave.

  Light suddenly flared to the right, low to the ground, and Briar immediately dropped to his knees and crawled after it. Grit gathered beneath his nails in dirty moons and he crunched it in the back of his teeth. Aches made themselves known from the fight with Dupont, but they didn't slow him, and Briar entered an alcove that bloomed with light.

  Briar hissed and raised his hand to shield his eyes. He squinted into the glare. In that instant, he learned what death looked like: scrawny and pale, with too-big eyes and too-sharp cheekbones, a dream caught someplace between madness and its wake. A place where violence seemed the most rational option; violence as a choice, rather than the last ugly thing to be clutched by a desperate and grasping hand.

  Then Quinn darted forward and gathered Briar in an embrace as soft as Sunday morning. They knelt together, casting one shadow. Briar pressed his face against Quinn's throat and breathed him in. Blood and brine and beloved.

  "I didn't think you'd come." Quinn's voice sounded small. He bit Briar's shirt collar and tugged at it. "I thought you'd go on back to the city again and forget about me."

  Briar dug his fingers into Quinn's back, through the thick folds of his soft jumper. He wanted to leave his mark on Quinn like others had, and at the same time wanted to smooth Quinn clean of every influence, including Briar's. They baptised people, in the city. He'd seen them in white robes, singing in high voices that compared unfavourably with the shanties of the fisher folk at Lastings' shore. But maybe Quinn would like them, if their religion ever travelled on Lastings' daily train.

  "I won't forget again," Briar vowed. The light flickered. The ghosts had heard.

  "I believe you."

  Briar drew back, resettling more comfortably on his knees. He wiped away the tears from beneath Quinn's eyes and rubbed finger and thumb together until they were dry. Quinn slumped back against the wall and wrapped his arms around his drawn-up knees. He'd brought a lamp from the lighthouse, or else found one along the way, and it flickered a warm yellow glow around the alcove. Briar couldn't think of the purpose for such a space in the mine, half the height of a man and barely wide enough to hold two, but he was glad for Quinn to have found it rather than having to wander deeper into the barren mines.

  "Should we find it, then?" Briar asked. It occurred to him he didn't actually knew what they'd come to the mines for, and that perhaps that ought to bother him some. But he'd broken a woman's arm earlier and that hadn't bothered him none, so it seemed churlish to start up with reason now.

  Quinn sniffled and leaned his head back against the rock. He closed his eyes. "I ain't never seen it. My daddy's skin, I mean. Mama buried it before she left. You do know what we are, my daddy and me, don't you?"

  "Selkies," Briar said. He'd heard the word whispered often enough, though never thought he'd speak it.

  "And you saw what the sea did to my daddy, didn't you? Them being apart as they was?"

  Briar had seen what Quinn's daddy did to Quinn, but he didn't know as to call it the sea's fault. Yet he didn't know the sea the way Quinn did.

  While Quinn's eyes were closed, and Briar didn't know what to say, Briar looked at him. They'd been still often, when they were young, in front of
the fire or on the shore, healing from aches and pains. The night before, Briar had relearned Quinn's body with his hands, checking the location of kisses and promises where he'd left them years before. In the mine, he saw the places Quinn had changed, where he'd shaved away excess in favour of severity. Where he'd needed to become sharp with fangs and claws instead.

  "I saw," was all Briar said, in the end.

  Quinn opened his eyes and stared at the curved ceiling of their foxhole. "I ain't never had a skin of my own, being neither one nor the other. When those townfolk looked to—to mine my daddy, they wanted his skin out of him. Worth something, they said. But he didn't know where it was hid. They done mined him anyway." Though his eyelashes fluttered, Quinn's eyes remained dry. "Salt found a way out in the end."

  "Quinn, I—"

  "What I did— I'm not safe. I should tell you to go on back to the city—"

  "Quinn." Briar reached for Quinn but didn't touch him. He had the sudden, clenching fear that if he touched Quinn, Quinn would crumble like a child's castle when the tide came in. He let his hand remain near Quinn's knee, to feel the heat rising from him. "What happened, it's not your fault. You were defending yourself, trying to save your daddy."

  "Is that what I was doing?"

  "You did what you needed to do," Briar said, speaking fast, needing Quinn to hear him. "And you do it again if need be. You live, Quinn Lawrence, or I won't forgive you."

  Briar dropped his fist next to Quinn's foot, clenched around touch he wasn't sure would be welcome. They breathed together, near panting, like they'd been racing toward something and suddenly found it, a lot closer than they'd imagined. Quinn finally rolled his head to the side to meet Briar's gaze.

  "I stayed away from the water, after I saw what it could do. But I miss it almost as much as I missed you." He shrugged, and his eyes went hooded. "Figured I could give the skin to the sea and call us square, lose the salt in me, but that ain't gonna work no more. I've got something else to consider, now."

  "I don't understand," Briar said, his voice cracking. He ached to understand.

  Quinn snapped his teeth. "Ain't just me I'd be bargaining for, Briar Augustin."

  Briar snatched up Quinn's hands in his and kissed his scarred knuckles like they did with saints, pressing his love to them. He moved closer, stones biting through the fabric covering his knees, until his exhalations made the wild tufts of Quinn's hair shudder. The air had begun to taste stale, in their corner of the world. He breathed deeply.

  "They've arrested Dupont. You don't need to worry about her anymore. You can leave the skin where it's safe. Until you decide what to do," Briar said.

  "I can't. If one lander knows, they all will, and it ain't safe where incomers can get it. That's what happened to my daddy." Quinn's fingers twitched in Briar's grip. "It's still in the mine but it ain't safe while the dark still has a part of—"

  Briar lunged forward to kiss the rest of Quinn's protests from his lips, before the ghosts could have any more of him. Quinn surged into him, twisting his grip to hold Briar's hand, his other hand grabbing Briar's collar to keep him close. As if Briar intended to go anywhere before Quinn wanted him to leave. Briar only wanted to crawl inside of Quinn. To become the skin Quinn had lost. They kissed until the lamp burned itself out.

  Then they walked together deeper into the dark.

  SIXTEEN

  Briar's mama used to say he was born in a storm. She said the storm was Lastings' way of sprucing itself for his arrival; the day after his birth, the skies came out blue and the sea sat placid, and his daddy brought a handful of wildflowers to his mama's bedside. That's where they got Briar's name, she'd say, then tease him about his daddy forgetting to take the thorns off the wild roses he'd found.

  Quinn heard the teasing one morning as the Augustin family smiled at each other around the breakfast table. Briar and Quinn had been in love for a long summer by then, and their knees knocked together every Saturday as they wrestled over the last helping of eggs, Quinn racing to be first to help Briar's mama clear away the plates. But that day he didn't move, and his eyes went distant.

  Briar's mama noticed, of course. Wasn't anything about her boys she didn't notice.

  "Quinn, sweetling, are you well?" she asked, picking up his plate.

  Quinn did something with his head that might've been a nod. "Yes, ma—Mrs Augustin."

  "Then what's got you looking so pale?"

  "Nothing. Sorry. I'm sorry." Quinn chewed his lower lip, gaze darting out the window. A fingernail of sea was visible, if someone knew where to look. Quinn knew.

  Briar looked at his mama, who gestured to wait for Quinn to speak. They were familiar with Quinn's ways, the Augustins, and loved him for it.

  After a moment, Quinn glanced at Briar, as if for strength, then Briar's mama. "I just—My mama used to say something like that. About being born in a storm."

  Where he'd been feigning interest in his newspaper, on Briar's other side, his daddy's shoulders went stiff. Briar knew the feeling. Quinn's mama only spoke to him in bruises.

  Briar pressed his leg against Quinn's. "You know storms pass. Like mama said."

  "Right. Like thorns and roses," Quinn said, nodding. Colour started to return to his cheeks.

  Smiling, Mama dropped a kiss into the wild tufts of Quinn's hair. Daddy finally turned the page on his newspaper. Seagulls cawed outside. Briar held onto Quinn's webbed fingers and thought about the years ahead of them, when together they'd be able to unpick every thorn around Quinn's heart until he bloomed, as he was always supposed to do.

  Briar looked forward to it.

  SEVENTEEN

  The seagulls were as good an alarm as any of the new-fangled clocks from town. Briar jerked awake at their noise and squinted into the morning. He rolled over in bed, reaching for the glass of water ready on the bedside table. It didn't taste brackish, which meant it hadn't been there long. Briar's lips curved around the rim of the glass and he drained the water, setting the glass back down beside the green rock he'd once found on Lastings' beach. The rock weighted down half a handwritten note, the paper softened by time.

  Briar got to his feet. The floorboards were warm where the sun stretched across them. Summer had finally arrived.

  He picked his way across a topography of scattered clothes and navigated the occasional dangerous shoe island. All the mess and shoes were his, so Briar found a matching pair and tugged them on after he dressed. The birds kept him company, one being so bold as to perch on the sill of the open window and croak directly at him.

  "Late, am I?" Briar asked. It beat its wings and flicked saltwater at his face. "Thank you kindly for that. Do you know where I've put my— No, I suppose not," Briar said, as the seagull took to wing. He didn't blame it. There were more interesting things outside, after all.

  He heard a laugh from outside the window, the sound almost lost to the crashing of waves against the wrecking rocks. Briar scratched his stubble until he managed to quell the urge to smile, and stuck his head out the lighthouse window to look below.

  Dawn skimmed across the waves with a loving hand, making the world seem softer than Briar knew it to be. A boat was upturned against the rocks nearest the lighthouse, slats splintered in her hull; they'd found it there one morning, pocked where barnacles had once been, a single doubloon resting on the prow. A hint for Briar to get out on the sea, according to his interpreter; merfolk weren't curious about landers, but they liked new conversation same as any other. Briar had been repairing the boat when he wasn't learning the job.

  Another laugh, and Briar let his eyes rest on the sight they ached for. Quinn stood on a rock jutting high above the drop to the water, trousers rolled around his calves, taunting a crowd of seagulls. His chest was bare, his overshirt neatly folded on a nearby rock. His hair had grown out of tufts, but the constant influx of seawater made it twist into knots, so the difference was barely noticeable. Below his tangled crown, Quinn had relaxed into himself in a way Briar could never have dared
imagine, his edges smoothing into careless grace. His newest scars were found in the deep creases at the corners of his eyes.

  "Are you going to give that bird our breakfast again?" Briar yelled out of the window.

  Quinn laughed, twisting to look over his shoulder. "You'll be late!"

  "Mara won't mind."

  Mara would likely dock Briar's pay, as she had every other morning he'd been late for work. She'd threatened to have him hunting Hester Chester if he didn't make a better show of being Lastings' Deputy, with an unofficial duty to act as a breaker between her and what she'd started calling "less straightforward individuals". Briar wasn't concerned. He'd almost forgot worry entirely, and wouldn't muster it up for a lander like Chester.

  Still laughing, as he knew exactly how Mara would react, Quinn reached over to his impromptu rock wardrobe and picked up the thick grey bundle. He wrapped it around his shoulders and the seagulls started up in a clatter of disapproving caws as Quinn twisted around and flipped his tail, jumping from the rocks. As with every time, Briar's heart clenched until he heard the splash. He relaxed his grip around the sill.

  A fat fish soon leapt up to beach itself on the rock where Quinn had been standing. Another quickly joined it. The seagulls began to forget they'd been scared of the other half of Quinn, and circled lazily back toward the writhing fish. Briar shoved away from the window. If he wanted breakfast, he best get downstairs.

  Though he supposed they'd have another chance, tomorrow.

  EIGHTEEN

  They say there's two ghosts in Lastings. They haunt the lighthouse, where the eye never opens and the sea pushes too rough against the rocks. Where the fishing is always good, if you can keep your helm, and on rare occasion a body can catch something more valuable than dinner. Someone done caught themselves three hearts once, or chance it might have been four. It depends on who tells the story.