Storm-Wake

by Lucy Christopher

  “At the side of my eyes … ,” she whispered, “… only for a moment …”

  “Yes. Turn and it goes.”

  Cal pressed close. Whatever it was, it seemed big, just like he’d said. It could have been land-shaped. Maybe. But now it was gone again. Land did not disappear like this. Did it?

  “We must tell Pa,” she said, thinking about the stories, thinking how his Experiment maybe now had proof of working.

  But Cal was frowning, and she could guess what he was thinking. These days, Pa near-never looked to the horizon, or spoke of what might be beyond it. He’d stopped the Experiment so long ago, why would land come back now?

  She plucked a petal from the flower at her fingertips and placed it in her mouth. Perhaps she’d see land better with that inside her. She gestured to Cal to see if he wanted the same, but he shook his head.

  Moss chewed on it, thinking. “If there is land, did Pa make it come?”

  “If there is land,” Cal said, “we raft to it.”

  She flinched. Last time they’d done that, they’d near-drowned. There’d been that angry man in the sea.

  “This time we leave proper,” Cal said.

  Moss watched his gold-flecked eyes shimmer as he laughed. This was not the husk of a laugh she so often heard from him, this was loud and high, had mad joy wrapped up in it. It made her laugh too.

  “Maybe there are other people,” he said. “Out there. Already other places to be.”

  When Cal laughed again, it made him look so full like a Small Thing once more that it took her breath. She had forgotten, ’til then, how much they used to laugh—after games on the sand, during stories Pa told …

  She reached out and touched Cal’s laugh with her fingertips. Only, his laugh stopped when her fingers met his lips. He looked at her steady and she did not move her fingers. She had a memory of doing this when a Small Thing too; of trying to catch his laughings and smilings, of trying to hold them live in her palm like how Pa held flowers. She had a memory of him catching petals on her tongue. She moved her fingers to his cheeks; to where his laugh had gone.

  “Tried to catch it,” she said. And there, for a moment, it appeared again: his smile pushing at her fingertips. His smile was like the land out there. Going, then coming. Flickering.

  “Catch it proper, then,” he said. Her fingers fell from his cheek and touched his teeth as he spoke.

  His eyes had challenges glinting.

  So.

  She leaned toward Cal and pressed her lips to where his laugh was. It was like they’d played at as Small Things, all those stormflowers taken from tongues, all those “happy ever afters” from stories.

  “Caught,” she whispered.

  And proper this time.

  Moss pulled away from Cal. Felt his quick-light breath. Tasted salt. Now every part of her was touching stormflowers—was that tingle-quick.

  They’d done this before, but it felt different now. Perhaps it was the dazzle-bright moon on his skin, but Cal looked smoother, less fishy; Moss did not see his scale pattern. She grinned, squeezed his fingers. Then she dragged her eyes from Cal to see the land again.

  “How can a land disappear?” she said.

  “How can a horse come from sea? How can flowers make a storm?” He glanced at her sideways.

  “We tell Pa,” she said.

  He moved his head in that tilt of his that could mean yes or no or nothing at all.

  They clambered, careful, from the rock to the pinching sea. Adder plopped into the water, all blubber-limbed, swimming round them with teeth glinting.

  “You’re more seal than dog,” Moss told her. “More shark.”

  Now it was as if Adder’s father had been a bull shark instead of one of the wild dogs.

  “Dog shark?” She turned to Cal. “That’s a something, isn’t it?”

  “Dogfish,” he hissed.

  Moss flicked water toward Adder, watched her bite at it. Cal took a bigger stride until he was wading beside Moss.

  “This all right?” she asked. “The water?”

  “All right.”

  She squeezed his hand, thinking about how far he’d come since being so tremble-feared. “We’ll get you swimming proper in the warmer tides, you’ll see.”

  But she didn’t hear what he said back to her, because Pa was on the shore. She saw him plain-clear, walking around without outer coverings, staring at them.

  Her hand tightened around Cal’s. “What’s he doing?”

  Adder swam ahead. When Moss and Cal reached shore, Pa was wide-eyed. A sharp wind had come down with him too, swirling his night-coverings. Farther up behind him stood Aster.

  “You’re awake, then?” Moss went to him and took his arms—thinner these days, and stringy. “Not sleepwalking?”

  She hesitated, sudden unsure whether to tell him of the land they’d just glimpsed.

  Pa shook away her concern, but she kept hold of him tight: Though he was awake, he was not full-clear. These fevers were happening more often. If she didn’t get him calm again soon …

  “What were you doing out on that rock?” Pa’s voice was dog-growl quiet. He stared at where the sea had soaked her coverings, then at Cal behind.

  “We saw something, Pa.”

  Pa’s eyes widened.

  She leaned forward to rub his arm; it was colder than fish bellies. “Let’s get you warmed first, then we’ll tell you.”

  “We?” Pa looked out to sea, then switched eyes back to Cal, narrowing them. “He was taking you away again? That it?”

  Moss saw his dark look. “Cal never tried to take me anywhere.”

  Moss felt Cal’s little finger wind itself to hers. When she looked over, she saw his lips had sand grains on them. She would’ve reached across to brush them off, but Pa’s strange-dark manner stopped her. If Pa was fading to Blackness, perhaps it was better to wait before telling of Cal’s land. But then … why hadn’t he seen the land yet for himself? He’d been looking full out to the ocean.

  Pa pitched forward, grasped Cal’s shoulders. “Remember, the sea punished you once … Why take Moss out there again? Why be so stupid?”

  Moss shook her head at him; she did not want to start this argument up again, right-sure! But instead, Pa grasped tighter on Cal’s shoulders. It was the Blackness, only that, building up inside Pa and changing him. Soon Pa would be out of this cycle and soft-sweet again. Always the same—a few days of bad, and then longer of good.

  “Return to bed,” she said. “You’re half sleeping anyway.”

  Everything else, including the dark shape in the ocean, could wait. But as she pushed Pa to go, Cal reached to grip Pa’s arm, keeping him.

  “There is land,” Cal said. “I seen it. Moss seen it. It come up and it go down.” His voice rasped as if he had swallowed salt water.

  “Land?” Pa frowned as if he was trying to remember what the word meant.

  Moss widened her eyes at Cal in a way that said We’ll never get him to bed now! Sure enough, Pa rushed for the shoreline, his feet quick-fast in the water. He reached back for Cal’s shoulder and brought him close, ’til he was a clamshell’s width away.

  “Where is it?”

  Moss came to stand beside them; even Aster stood a little closer to the sea, nostrils wide.

  Cal did not move Pa’s head to see it like he had with Moss; instead, he pointed. “There,” he said, quiet. “Almost do not look, then you see. Coming, then gone.”

  “Flickering?” Pa said. “Are you sure?”

  Moss followed where Cal was pointing, and tried looking in that sideways way she had last time. But now there was nothing. No flickering. No land. Like Pa, she could not see it either.

  Where had it gone?

  Pa waded in, trying to pull Cal with him. “Nothing!” he said.

  Cal writhed away when Pa went deeper. Before Moss could stop him, Pa dug into the folds of his night-coverings, pulling out stormflowers. He tipped back his head and ate a fistful: If Moss ever had that many,
she’d be quick-fast flying over the volcano, soaring with the bats. But Pa grew still. Stood like a heron about to strike. Moss reached out her hand to grasp his, to keep him tethered in case the buzz came quick, but he would not take it. Instead, he waded deeper, his fingers twitching with new energy, his head snapping side to side. Perhaps, like this, he would see. The flowers would heighten his senses, sharpen his focus.

  But Pa turned and came back toward them, his expression certain-firm. “There is no land. You lie, Callan! Didn’t I say he would lie one day, Moss?”

  “There is.” Cal had quiet sureness. Moss felt it in how he stood, in how he was not even flinching from the cold water pulling around their calves.

  Pa frowned at Moss’s and Cal’s hands, clasped together.

  Callan will take you from me … He’ll try to … He’ll promise you lies.

  Moss knew he was thinking it.

  If she could make Pa see he was in fever, maybe he’d treat Cal as he used to, would be kinder. Maybe if Pa were calmer, he’d see the land. But why hadn’t he seen it already?

  Pa came closer. “Can you see it, Moss?”

  Moss nodded slow. “I thought I did.” She looked out and, again, there was nothing but ocean and the far-off horizon, the moon’s reflection on the waves.

  Pa watched her. “You believe Cal?”

  She hesitated. “Why shouldn’t I?”

  Cal stood straighter. With his shoulders rolled back, he was now taller than Pa. But there was fire in Pa’s eyes. Moss saw it dancing there, orange-gold, like the flowers he’d eaten.

  “But Cal changes,” Pa said. “He grows taller and further away.”

  A tingling feeling was building in Moss’s skin, in the crevices of her fingers. It was like she was holding her hand in front of the fire pit instead of in Cal’s. She pulled at Cal, urging him back to the shore and away from this Pa, but he was like a limpet on a rock and wouldn’t go.

  “This is not the first time Cal lies,” Pa added.

  Moss gritted her teeth. Pa was talking like Cal was not even there!

  Even so, Moss was thinking of—remembering—some of the times Cal had not been full-true.

  Hiding food for himself.

  Taking Adder to hunt lizards when he said they were catching fish.

  Saying things about Pa that didn’t seem right.

  And now, this land.

  Maybe.

  But everyone said untruths sometimes.

  Pa was blinking hard, like he did when he had skull storms coming. When he looked at Cal, it was like he was seeing right through.

  “He will take you from me,” Pa said, his voice distant. “He wants me gone and everything here for himself, wants you …”

  Moss knew she shouldn’t trust Pa when he was like this; he didn’t know what he said. Cal turned from him quick-fast, striding up the beach.

  “He the one who lies,” Cal hissed. “Who keep secrets. You wait-see!”

  Moss ran after, Adder barking at her heels.

  “It’s not a game,” she told her dog. “Be still!” But Aster was stirring up the dog further, cantering beside them and tossing her head.

  Cal stopped where the sand turned to pebbles, bold-staring at Pa. “Land,” he said, pointing firm at the ocean. “It’s there. Maybe you’re just too sick to see.”

  For a moment all Moss could hear was the wind around them and a light stormflower song upon it. Then, lightning-quick, Pa scaled the space between them.

  “I’m not sick,” Pa snapped. “Don’t say it again!”

  Cal’s stare was steady. “But is true. Sick and forgetting. You know it well as me.”

  Pa raised his arm and hit Cal in the face. It happened so fast Moss did not see it coming.

  Cal fell.

  His hand was up near his cheek, over his right eye. Moss bent to him. Her own cheeks stung-strange now too, as if she were the one who’d been hit. Her own ears throbbed! Like Pa had hurt her! Her eyes pricked tears. She blinked them down. For a second, she was back in the sea with that angry man—this fear felt so wide! She shook the strange pain free, swam to the surface, looked for …

  “Cal?”

  But Cal was backing away from them both, hurt in his face, and not just from his eye. She wanted to grab him by his coverings and keep him from running. Wanted to tell him that Pa did not mean this and that soon he’d be calm again—that this was just the storm season coming, changing him. But she could only stare at the new mark on Cal’s skin.

  Cal backed farther. And why shouldn’t he? Pa had never been like this before, had never hurt them with hands. Cal uncovered his eyes, and Moss saw the swelling, how his skin was like a storm cloud building.

  “Look how he does not see,” Cal hissed. “Not land, not nothing. How he change and let no one else. He does not want to see.”

  Already, Cal was turning. Loping away. Moss clutched her throbbing ears as she watched him go, disappearing fast to the pines.

  When Moss turned back, Pa was curled like a seedpod, crouched on the sand. He held his shaking hand in front of him, staring at it as if it were not a part of him, as if it were a traitor. When Pa looked up, there were sudden tears on his cheeks.

  “What did I do to him?” he said. “To my boy?”

  Moss could not remember the last time he had called Cal his boy; back when Pa still played games with them both, maybe. He shook his head, staring after Cal into the dark.

  “You hit him, Pa.” She kept a harsh tone to her words.

  His shoulders slumped forward and he breathed deep, like how he did when he was trying to think, trying to come back to the other part of himself.

  “I forget,” Pa said. “Sometimes I cannot even remember … not one thing.”

  He had flipped back—sure and quick-fast; still, she did not want to hear his excuses. Moss looked toward the trees, but Cal was nowhere now.

  Sick, Cal had called Pa.

  He had talked about secrets.

  Pa had made Cal’s skin swollen like a bumble-sting.

  “Why, Pa?”

  He shook his head. Now in Pa’s eyes she saw something deeper: fear hiding behind the fever. Did he even know what he’d done? He breathed out slow. This was the real Pa, coming back. Moss saw it in the crease of his eyes and the gentle curl-out of his spine. It had taken this shock of hitting Cal to do it, though.

  “But there is no land,” he said, firm. “There cannot be. You know that, don’t you, Moss?”

  And when Moss looked to see it again, she saw only black water, the swish and pull of the tide.

  “Cal was lying,” Pa said.

  She clicked soft for Aster, who stood a little distance away, and placed a palm on the horse’s shoulder. “Help Pa now, Aster-spirit.”

  Pa stood and rested his right arm across Aster’s withers. He laid his forehead to her neck and breathed her in. The horse blew warm flower-air to his face.

  “I do not want to help you after what you did,” Moss said.

  Still, she took his other arm and, together with Aster, led him across the cove. He felt so light, like a coco husk when the juice had spilled. Tears glinted bright across his cheeks. She would not be moved by them. She looked out to the darkness. She should be with Cal, touching fingers and flowers to his swelling eye. But Pa’s head was heavy-bent with pain. If she left him here like this, would he even go back to the hut?

  Adder was quieter now too, trotting slowly beside. Even the sea was drawing back, leaving only sighs against the sand.

  Jess was waiting for them at their hut, her milky old-dog eyes seeing little but her tail thudding all the same.

  “Everything is fine, girl,” Moss murmured. “Not worrying time.”

  Though, looking at how Pa squinted and touched his temples—thinking about the puff of Cal’s eye—she could not believe it. Not anymore.

  Pa had hit Cal.

  The dog backed aside to let them through. When Pa leaned down to fondle the dog’s ears, he stumbled and grabbed the doorframe.<
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  “Should say sorry,” he murmured.

  Moss pushed him inside. “Sleep now. Apologize in the morning.”

  Cal would not want Pa near him now, anyway. And it was how it usually went: Pa got angry at Cal, Pa apologized.

  But Pa did not ever hit him.

  Moss lit a candle with an ember from the fire pit and went inside. After drying herself and changing, she found a book and opened pages for Pa: shoved it into his hand. He called this book “a classic,” and he’d read it to her and Cal many times. She remembered its tale of drowned cities and last hopes; Pa’s stories of their own drowned hopes sounded a little like it. He wouldn’t read it tonight, though; he would stare at the text awhile as if seeing pictures there, then would fall asleep. No more bedtime stories for any of them these days.

  “Did you really see something out there, Moss?” Pa’s voice was drowsy-soft from their bed. “It’s just, there can’t be … I would feel it coming. I would know.”

  “Shhhh. We’ll look again in the morning.”

  But what Moss meant was that she would get up first. She would not excite Pa with this discovery before she was sure this time. He’d be sleeping a good while tomorrow, anyway. Sometimes, when he got deep in Blackness, he didn’t get up for days.

  Moss sang the sleep-song Pa had sung to her as a Small Thing.

  “Lu-lay, lu-lay … Sleep, little child …”

  Perhaps, if she could get him fast in sleep, she could go out to find Cal. As she sang, Moss tidied the books around the bed, putting them in a pile. So many thousands of stories Pa had told her and Cal—sometimes from books, other times making them up from his mind. Those making-up times were when his eyes had lit most. If he’d had more paper, Pa might’ve written down one long story for someone else, one day, to find—a story of them. He’d call it The Island We Found, or Stormflowers, or Tempests. With it, he’d make them famous and important, like he’d always wanted. Or like he used to want. She thought of his scrapbook, the one he used to write in each day. If he hadn’t used up all its paper, would he still be doing it now?

  Pa was snoring soft already, Adder curled tight against his back, the book forgotten beside him. Moss added it to the pile. She surveyed the thinning rugs, the wooden trunk filled with clothes falling apart, and, then, the sagging bed they still shared, still big enough for all three of them plus two dogs. She missed the shape of Cal there.