The emerald was still sitting on the bedside locker, its green glow filtering into the darkness. He picked it up and clamped it in his fist until the heat walked up his arm. Was it doing this to him? He glanced at Tara, who was snoring happily, then surveyed the stone again with suspicion before shoving it into his pocket.
He couldn’t stand to be lying down any more. He was buzzing from the tip of the hairs on his head to the undersides of his feet and he was afraid his hiccoughing energy might fling him against the ceiling and splat him like a fly.
He hopped out of bed and made his way to the sitting room, where he paced up and down and waited for his bones to stop singing. Relief didn’t come, but his grandfather arrived shortly after him, padding into the room in the same clothes he had been wearing earlier.
His eyes were clearer now, but there were still clouds around the edges, creeping into the blue. ‘Can’t sleep, Fionn?’
A grin broke across Fionn’s face and a strange, giddy laughter tumbled out of him – joy and sadness and relief and exhilaration all rolled together. ‘I can’t even lie down!’
His grandfather crooked his finger at him. ‘Come with me.’
Fionn bounced along behind him, down the dark hallway and out into the back garden, where a full moon peered over them.
His grandfather busied himself at the workbench, unearthing the candle-making box and unfurling the burner flame. He eased himself on to his stool and extended his hand to Fionn. ‘Congratulations,’ he said quietly.
Fionn stared at the old weathered hand, calloused by years of being at sea and adventuring in places buried long ago in the past. He took it eagerly, his own fingers thin and delicate in comparison. ‘I’m the Storm Keeper?’
‘You are the Storm Keeper.’ His grandfather squeezed his hand. ‘And I am unbearably proud of you.’
I am the Storm Keeper.
Fionn sunk on to the stool opposite him. ‘Poor Bartley,’ he said delightedly.
His grandfather set the pot down and poured the wax pebbles into it. ‘Poor Betty.’
Fionn plucked a seashell mould from the box and stuck the silver disc to the bottom, rolling the wick between his fingers. There were other things to discuss now, things that were far more important than Elizabeth Beasley’s burning eyes when she woke tomorrow to find her grandson had lied about his wish.
‘I saw my dad today,’ said Fionn. The words sounded strange out loud, as though he was still half asleep in the most impossible of dreams. ‘He saved my life in the Sea Cave. He went through his storm and into mine and he knew who I was, Grandad. He told me so!’
His grandfather set the burner to light and peered at Fionn over the lip of the pan. ‘I’ve always wondered what the Whispering Tree told Cormac. He was so quiet when he came back …’ He trailed off, his lips twisting. ‘I suppose, at last, we know.’
Fionn tried to swallow the hard lump in his throat. His father had known the price of his son’s survival and he had paid it willingly. Fionn couldn’t imagine anything more selfless, anything braver. How could he ever have doubted his father’s courage?
His grandfather looked past him, into the night sky. ‘You know, I tried to burn that storm candle at least a hundred times since Cormac was swept up in it.’ He shook his head, his eyes misting. ‘And not once did the wick light for me. It was not meant to.’
You’ll be brave now, won’t you, Fionn? I need you to be brave for what’s to come.
They stared into the melting wax, both of them wondering exactly what the Whispering Tree had shown Fionn’s dad and why the island had decided Fionn must be saved over him.
She will wake when the boy returns.
The reflection of a thousand dancing stars winked up at them, united in their silence.
When Fionn looked at his grandfather again, his face was pale as the moonlight, the blue of his eyes still blurring around the edges. He took a new pin from the leather pouch and burned it over the flame. He passed it to Fionn. ‘Are you ready?’
Are you ready, son?
Somewhere far away, an owl hooted. The moon sank lower in the sky and Fionn tasted the sea on the wind.
Fionn took the pin from his grandfather.
He pricked his finger and everything he had been feeling bubbled to the surface at once, until it felt like he might explode into a million pieces. He held his finger over the pan and watched as a single drop of seawater tumbled out of him and landed with a satisfying splat!
An owl soared over them, its wing sprinkling starlight across the bench. A breeze rustled Fionn’s hair as his grandfather clapped his hands together and smiled.
For one euphoric moment, Fionn felt a hundred times taller and a thousand times older. He swore if he looked hard enough at the wind he would see all the Boyles that had gone before him, smiling just the same.
‘Very good, lad!’ his grandfather whooped.
Very good, lad! the island whispered, and Fionn imagined his father’s voice threaded somewhere deep inside its tapestry.
Fionn slumped in his chair. His bones had stopped vibrating and the heat had drained from his cheeks. He was suddenly exhausted. He exhaled as the sea crept into the wax and turned it every shade of blue he could imagine. It glowed purple around the edges, a dark tornado scattering rivulets of colour along the surface, until it was the exact shade and design of the last candle Fionn had held in his fingertips.
‘There’s a touch of relief in it,’ his grandfather muttered. ‘In pricking your finger and bleeding the magic from you … but it will return again tomorrow. And the next day …’ He cast his gaze along his fingers, waggling them back and forth. ‘I think I will miss it, you know. When you get very used to a thing, it’s not so easy to say goodbye to it.’
A line of silver threaded its way through the wax. Fionn wasn’t giddy any more, but he wasn’t unhappy either. He felt … oddly settled. There was a sense of rightness to this moment, to the glow of the moon on their backs, the breeze rustling his hair.
You’ll be brave now, won’t you, Fionn? I need you to be brave for what’s to come.
Fionn lifted the pan and carefully poured the rivers of wax into the seashell mould. ‘What will I call it?’
‘I believe that is a decision for the Storm Keeper.’ His grandfather tapped the side of the mould, and all the colours jumped over each other, threading themselves into the wax until it looked like a shell made of a hundred choppy waves all tumbling after each other.
Fionn held the candle in his fist, the wax warm against his palm, and suddenly the answer was obvious to him. ‘Fionn.’
It was a twin to Cormac.
The scent of adventure rolled over them as the wick changed colour, from white to a column of emerald green.
‘And from the drop of water comes a drop of magic,’ his grandfather murmured. ‘I don’t know if this has ever happened before, Fionn. Islanders bursting through the layers and threading them all together like that – future and past and present interacting under the same sky, two heirs meeting somewhere in the middle, one hoisting the other up. The island has broken so many of its rules. Do you know what that means?’
He didn’t wait for Fionn to respond.
‘It means it has been looking out for you since before you were even born.’ He cocked his head, his gaze suddenly searing. ‘It means there is a task for you here. Something that is much bigger than you. Bigger than all of us.’
And the darkness will rule again.
The snake in the pit of Fionn’s stomach writhed its way to the surface. He pulled the emerald from his pocket and set it on the workbench. ‘This followed me home earlier. I think it belonged to Dagda.’
His grandfather stared at the emerald with wide, unblinking eyes.
‘Morrigan was in that cave with me.’ Fionn was surprised by how simply the words slipped out, how little fear there was in speaking the absolute truth, in knowing it could not be undone now – whatever was to come, whatever had already happened.
I know
you, Fionn Boyle.
I remember you.
Do you remember me?
‘Did you hear her?’ asked his grandfather.
‘I felt her. She’s awake, Grandad.’
And I was the one who woke her, he wanted to scream.
His grandfather went very still. ‘So, we are sure, at last, of where she’s buried. We’ve always suspected it but could never be certain.’
Fionn blew out a breath. There was a dull throbbing in the base of his spine, terror tripping over his vertebrae and pooling at the bottom. How close had he and Tara been to death, or worse, to death everlasting? How close had Fionn come to floating right into her clutches, to surrendering to fear and pain and sadness until every shard of light inside him winked out, every thread of his soul unspooled and devoured in the shadows?
‘Ivan is a Soulstalker.’
His grandfather swallowed a swear word.
Fionn waited a beat, then he mustered the last dregs of his courage to give voice to the thing he feared most. ‘He’s here to resurrect her. And I don’t know how to stop him.’
His grandfather rose abruptly, beckoning for Fionn to follow as he marched back into the cottage. Fionn plucked the emerald from the workbench and trailed after him. Already, he felt better with it in his fist.
In the sitting room, they stood apart from each other in the duskiness, a thousand and more candles peering over him.
‘When I was fifteen years old, I looked into the future and saw great darkness on these shores,’ said his grandfather. ‘I saw you too, Fionn. Exactly as you are.’ His face crumpled. ‘And like the Storm Keepers who visited the Whispering Tree before me, I learned that my destiny was part of a greater one, that my power was not my own. I have bled my magic out of me, drop by drop, storm by storm, since the day it was poured into me. But the time for recording has come to an end.’ His face darkened, and somewhere behind his eyes a shadow fell. ‘I’m afraid your task will be different from mine, Fionn.’
There was an awful, loud silence.
A drumbeat pounded in Fionn’s heart.
‘You will not bottle any more of Dagda’s magic.’ He took Fionn’s hand and turned it over, the blue of his veins stark against the skin on his wrist. ‘You will keep it all inside you, where it can gather and build. You will learn how to endure it, how to stoke it, and then you will learn to master it. So you can defend this island from Morrigan should she free herself from that rock.’
She will rise when the Storm Keeper bleeds for her.
Fionn had bled inside that cave, in nicks and gashes and scrapes. Had it been enough? Or would Ivan come back for him, now that he had finished grooming Bartley like a pig for slaughter.
Fionn took his hand back, his fingers circling his wrist as he stared at all the shelves. ‘What about the candles?’
His grandfather plucked a crayon-sized candle from the shelf and rolled it along his palm. ‘You don’t need this magic, Fionn. You already have it in your veins.’
‘Then who is it for?’
‘Even Morrigan has her followers. You will have to see about yours when the time comes, but I have made you an arsenal. There will be a role for everyone, for Tara and Shelby and Bartley and Betty and anyone else who will stand up for Arranmore.’ He dangled the candle, like a fish by its tail. ‘Of all the things I cannot promise and all the moments I cannot change, I can say this at least: you will not have to face this darkness alone and the island will not have to face it unprotected.’
Fionn swallowed the dryness in his throat. The world was tilting, and it was too late to turn back now – he had to go with it. To a place he was being dragged to by the blood in his lineage and the sea in his veins. Without even realising it, he had stepped on to the most dangerous lifeboat of all, and now he was sailing into the greatest storm of his life.
‘Did I ever have a choice?’
I remember you, Fionn Boyle. Do you remember me?
His grandfather only said, ‘I’m sorry, Fionn. I wish it wasn’t you.’
Fionn peered at the shelves, at all that precious, gleaming wax. His grandfather’s blood. His grandfather’s life.
Red-wired eyes and wax-stained fingers.
Memories slipping away, face by face, name by name.
All for this: the Storm Keeper’s arsenal.
There are many different kinds of bravery, Fionn.
‘How do we get the magic out?’ said Fionn.
His grandfather raised the candle between them, its brassy coat glinting in the half-light. In one quick movement, he dug his fingers into the underside of the wax and ripped the small silver disc out of it. ‘You remove the anchor.’ The wick unfurled from the bottom. ‘You reverse the flow of magic.’
He lit the wick from the opposite end, and held it upside down as it burned. The flame disappeared, burrowing up inside the wax, against gravity and reason. His grandfather lurched, as though something in his chest was trying to punch its way out. ‘Instead of the magic drawing you into the memory,’ he heaved, ‘you draw it out, into yourself.’
The flame consumed the wax from the inside out, Fionn’s grandfather’s eyes growing wild with power as he clamped it tightly in his fist. He turned his attention to the candle blazing above the fireplace, his breath whistling through his nose. With his free hand, he caressed the flame until it swelled in size and danced its way towards the ceiling. He crooked his finger and it changed direction, pouring over the mantelpiece in a burning waterfall. It leapt into the empty grate and rushed up the chimney in a neat blaze.
‘Smoke,’ said Fionn quietly. ‘From an empty fireplace.’
‘The Storm Keeper’s magic,’ said his grandfather, raising the disintegrating crayon candle. ‘Brewed and bottled.’
Fionn traced the veins in his palm as a new weight shifted on his shoulders. They were darker now, bluer. Already, he could sense a flicker of that same power gathering inside him. The tide was coming in. ‘What do I do now?’
His grandfather crushed the remains of the candle in his fist, his eyes glittering in the duskiness. ‘Let your magic build up. Let’s see what it can really do.’
Chapter Twenty-Six
A VERY SPECIAL HOMECOMING
Fionn Boyle stood at the end of Arranmore pier and watched the morning ferry wade into port. He was doing his best to ignore his sister, who had been chattering non-stop since they left their grandfather’s cottage.
‘When Mam comes off the ferry, I’m going to hug her first because I’m the oldest and I think she’ll be happiest to see me, just because she’s known me for longer.’
‘Fine.’
‘And don’t start telling her the story until we get back to Grandad’s, because he’ll want to hear it too and then you’ll have to tell it all over again and Mam will probably get bored of it.’
Fionn rolled his eyes. ‘OK.’
‘And let me tell most of it because I have a really good narrative flair and sometimes you include unnecessary details and it makes the story kind of boring and then people lose interest.’
‘I thought saving your life meant you would be nicer to me.’
Tara glared at him. ‘This is me being nice!’
A flock of seagulls swooped over their heads and flew out to sea. They circled the ferry as it trundled its way into port.
The horn sounded.
Fionn winced. ‘I don’t think I’ll ever get used to that sound.’
‘It sounds a bit like a dying cow, doesn’t it?’ said Tara.
They studied the passengers as they stepped off the ferry, dragging suitcases behind them as they drifted this way and that, into outspread arms and waiting cars along the pier.
Fionn didn’t exhale properly until his mother appeared on the lip of the ferry. She hovered uncertainly, caught between the boat and the island, with her arms pulled tight around her. She seemed much smaller than Fionn remembered, dwarfed by the boat looming at her back, the island sprawled before her. She was wearing her favourite green cardigan.
Her hair had been swept up in a ponytail, wisps curling around her face as the wind tried to coax her from the ferry.
‘She looks scared,’ said Tara.
‘She is scared,’ said Fionn.
‘Maybe we should hug her at the same time.’
‘I think that’s a good idea.’
They made their way through the arriving crowds. When they reached the bottom of the port, their mother’s eyes lit up. ‘My beautiful children!’
Fionn coiled his fingers in the back of Tara’s T-shirt to keep her from bounding on to the ferry. ‘Just wait,’ he murmured.
Their mother flung her arms wide, her smile flickering at the edges. She hesitated for the briefest moment – Fionn might not have noticed it at all if he hadn’t been looking out for it.
Then she stepped off the ferry and the island sighed with relief.
‘I’ve missed you both so much!’ she told them as they slammed into her.
Fionn pressed his face into her cardigan and held her tight enough to stop her trembling. ‘We missed you too, Mam!’
‘Wait till you hear what happened to us!’ said Tara from the other side. ‘We’ve had the biggest adventure already!’
Fionn couldn’t tell whether his mother was laughing or crying. They stood like that for a long time, between the sea and the shore, their shoulders shaking as they hugged each other. Fionn’s fingertips were crackling, the magic thrumming giddily inside him. He curled them in on themselves and pushed the swirl of power down, down, down. The wind whipped up and enveloped them, and Fionn heard that voice again in his ears – this time, it was as familiar to him as his own. ‘Come here,’ it was saying. ‘Come home.’
This time, it wasn’t talking to him.
There were still clouds in the sky, and a strange darkness gathering somewhere on the horizon.
But they were all here now.
They were home.
EPILOGUE
In a tiny cottage on the headland of a storm-ravaged island, Fionn Boyle was smiling in his sleep. He was dreaming of a flying horse, his fingers curled inside his snow-white mane as they dipped and tumbled through purple clouds that glittered around the edges.
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