Storm-Wake

by Lucy Christopher

“He’s not a spirit,” she said again.

  “He came from the sea, didn’t he?”

  “In coverings and shoes! In a boat!”

  “And where is that now?” Pa shrugged. But Moss saw it—there, for a moment, flashing across his face: doubt. It confirmed her own thinking.

  “He’s a human boy,” Moss said. “He told you and me yesterday. He had a shipwreck, like we did. The flowers didn’t form him from ocean.” She came toward him, stomp-angry. Why was Pa not listening to anything she’d said? He never listened! “The rest of the world is fine,” she repeated. “Not gone!”

  Now her words came bitter and throat-pinching. And—yes!—there was true-sad now on Pa’s face as she spoke them. Perhaps it had finally landed—the knowing that they’d been waiting on this island for nothing!

  “And Cal’s land is there again,” she added. “I saw it.”

  She spoke softer, not meeting Pa’s eyes. She couldn’t. She felt strange-guilty, like she was the one in the wrong. Ruining Pa’s stories.

  Nothing as it seems … Secrets, secrets …

  Pa sighed deep. “Show me, then, Moss. If Cal’s true, I’ll believe him. You know it.”

  She turned back to the sea, urging him to stand. She pointed. “You have to squint and look from the sides of your eyes.”

  But she couldn’t see it now either—nothing at all. She moved a little from the fire—but still, nothing. Where had it gone? She turned side-on and tried to see like that. No! She could kick-kick the fire over in frustration! How had it gone again?

  She pressed at Finn’s shoulder. “Can you see land there?”

  Finn frowned as if remembering something. “There’s not meant to be land …”

  She gripped him. “True? You neither?”

  But she knew it already: Finn was drowsing-dreamy, smiling like he might be half sleeping already. Stupid flowers!

  “Maybe if we go closer,” she said. “Before, I didn’t see it until I was almost at tide’s edge.”

  But when she led them down to the sand, there was still no land. Just water. Just as before.

  “Nothing there, Moss,” Pa said. “But I understand how you’d want to believe Cal, ’course you would!” Pa put his arm around her to lead her back.

  She gritted her teeth. She had seen it; this time she’d been sure!

  “Maybe sometimes what we want to believe seems more true than what’s there,” Pa suggested.

  She looked away. He hugged her, tried to. She smelled the smoke and sweetness in his beard, was not settled by it.

  What was going on? How could something keep going in and out of sight? And what did that mean about there not being any floods?

  Back at camp, Pa led her to the fire and sat her next to Finn. When he took her hand and placed it inside Finn’s, she let him: Finn’s hands were warmer than hers, anyway. She felt strange-warmer still when Finn smiled.

  “This place is crazy,” he whispered, plucking a petal from her hair. “You, him—crazy!” Though he was laughing-sweet as he said it.

  Perhaps he was right. He didn’t seem too worried about finding his friend anymore, either. Had he even remembered? Like Pa, he’d been flower-struck. It made the unease in Moss’s stomach grow.

  From beneath his coverings, Pa pulled out one of the few plastic bottles they had. Inside was gold-green and sparkling: flower-water. Pa’s eyes were storm-drunk, too.

  “Moss, all those flowers I ate were not for nothing,” he said. “Can’t you see? Another spirit has arrived—one just for you this time!” She frowned as Pa sat close to her other side. “Just listen, Moss,” he continued. “I’ve a theory—I’ve been thinking it makes sense why your bleeding came now, too …”

  “Pa—”

  “Just listen! This spirit—this Finn—maybe he’s meant to be your mate: the companion you’ll stay with when I am gone! Maybe you called him in, just like I called in Aster … It’s your time, Moss, your dreams …”

  She looked at how Finn was grinning-goofy at Pa. Though his expression changed a little as Pa’s words sank in. Not so keen about being her dream, then.

  “You said once it was Cal I called in, Pa.” She hardened her words. “Which is it?”

  Pa shook his head, impatient. “Cal was just an accident. He was never meant to come like Aster. But Finn …”

  Pa cupped her cheeks, his fingers hot as volcano stones. “Moss—we’ll bring spirits to us. Instead of leaving, we’ll create a new world here, like we thought would happen after Aster came.” He looked at Finn. “Only we’ll create it together this time. With all the different kinds of spirits you would like!”

  She heard hope in his words, heard the flowers sing louder. She saw petals open up like sunshine-stars around them. But these were old words, from a time that was finishing.

  Pa pressed the bottle of flower liquid toward Finn. “This’ll help you, spirit-boy; it helps us all.”

  Moss watched Finn turn the bottle, the colors inside changing with the movement.

  “Drugs?” he asked.

  Pa shook his head. “Flowers. Completely natural. They healed me. My mind was hurting before I got here; they changed it. Made me sing!”

  Finn took one sip, then another. He gasped as he looked down. Moss saw it too. The remaining gash on his leg was sinking back into his skin, first becoming a silvery scar and then, after a few eye-blinks, nothing at all. Soon it was as if Finn had never even had a mark there.

  “Not even a scar,” Finn whispered.

  He held up the glinting bottle, frowning.

  It was the kind of healing Pa used to do, the kind of magic Moss once adored. When she saw it, could she doubt the strength of those flowers to bring in a spirit from the sea? Doubt them to do anything?

  She shook her head from the flower fug. Still, something wasn’t right. She felt it deep.

  “We need to go,” she said to Finn. “Before the sun is too hot. We need to find our friends.”

  She needed more answers. Different ones.

  “Just share one drink,” Pa said. “One with your old Pa before adventuring. See, Finn likes it.”

  And, even if full-desperate for Finn to leave right then, she could not shift him. He was mesmerized by the bottle of flower-water, even took another sip.

  Maybe, if she drank what was in that bottle too, she’d see the land proper. Pa always said the flowers showed you what you most wanted. What if what she most wanted was that land?

  The green-gold liquid was buzzing-mad when Finn drank again. His head jerked back, eyes wide.

  “Not too much too soon,” Pa said, taking the bottle back. “Moderation, that’s the key!”

  But Pa wasn’t moderate, not cautious at all!

  Pa tipped the bottle toward Finn in a kind of greeting before having his own swig. He held it out for Moss. She took it from him, slow-careful. Once, she wouldn’t have hesitated to drink. Now she looked inside to see pieces of petal, swirling pollen. Cal didn’t like how the pollen felt inside him, said it buzzed his thinking to a different shape. Moss thought about how Pa’s moods had gotten worse, how he slipped to dreaming, and darkness, more often.

  The bottle warmed to her touch. She saw flowers buzz and sway. She remembered how, once, the whole island seemed more full with color than it ever was now—more alive and happy. What had happened to change it?

  Then she true wondered it—what exactly did the flowers do? Draw down floods and heal people? Show islands? Or did they just make Pa more black?

  She stepped toward the fire, the bottle grasped tight.

  “There wasn’t a flood.” As she said the words again, they felt more true.

  The flower-water buzzed harder, making the bottle near-burn her skin. What did they want? To soar with the smoke, fly on the air toward the volcano? Or did they want her to drink by the fire and dream more of Pa’s stories? She watched how petals crawled up the bottle’s sides as she held it out to the flames.

  “Something’s not true, Pa. Something you’re
saying’s not right …”

  Pa’s mouth opened. Maybe this was the core of it, what Cal had been thinking too, what he’d warned her about. Pa’s stories and secrets. Not as they seem.

  She turned on him, throat tight. The air was syrup-sweet, but it wasn’t that not letting her breathe—it was this not knowing.

  Secrets … secrets …

  There on the wind.

  Pa shook his head, mouth gaping. There was more behind his eyes—she saw hesitation … again, doubt.

  “There were floods,” he said. “Heavy rains! That dark! Everyone said there would be more … And I was so sick, Moss, I had nothing. We had nothing. We had to leave.”

  Moss heard the stormflowers, crying now. She wanted to cry with them. Because she did not remember the floods, had never remembered them. But she did remember wanting to get away … remembered pain in her ear … fear.

  She reached for more, but there was nothing. Always nothing! The memories stopped! It was this flower-water, making her forget, making it worse.

  She opened the bottle and tipped the mixture to the fire.

  There! No more flowers for any of them!

  Pa stumbled back. And then her vision was swirling, swirling, swirling, like the flowers above the flames. The world was tipping, she was tipping. Finn stood, stepped closer, placed a hand against her back.

  Truth, she felt like screaming at the flowers. Show me truth!

  She saw petals dance on the smoke. Would images come from the flames, like they had once in Pa’s stories? But the petals moved away, swirling toward the trees and then forging a rainbow path toward the volcano.

  Again, she could breathe.

  When she turned, Pa was staring at her. The doubt she’d glimpsed before was in his eyes, with new darkness underneath.

  “You think it’s for nothing?” he said. “Coming here, all this time on the island? You believe this boy over me? He doesn’t even believe it himself! Look!”

  Moss’s breath caught. Had Pa just said boy, not spirit? Pa looked away. His fingers were like leaves in a storm, shiver-trembling as he pointed at the ocean. “There’s nothing out there,” he said again.

  She risked what she’d been thinking. “So let’s go beyond the line and see.”

  “I saw,” he whispered. “Floods and darkness. A bad world. You don’t want to be there. Trust me, Moss.”

  But right now, she didn’t trust him at all.

  Pa bent over, shaking his head. The way he crouched reminded her of Cal’s arrival on the beach so long ago. An accident, Pa’d called Cal. Never meant to be here.

  But right now, Cal seemed the most true-constant. And she wanted to see him.

  Down deep, he’d said. Hidden.

  And, quick-fast, she realized where Cal had gone! Of course Cal would go to the most dark-dangerous place, to where there could be treasure … where Pa wouldn’t go looking.

  Now when Pa left, stumbling up the path toward his cave, she didn’t follow him. Now she had another place to go.

  Aster snorted, but lowered her head all the same. Moss motioned for Finn to come closer.

  “I can’t ride a horse, if that’s what you’re thinking,” he said.

  Moss frowned. “But you just sit there. She does the rest.” She vaulted onto Aster’s back, quick as a grasshopper. Grabbing a chunk of silver mane, she leaned down toward Finn. “Take my hand. Jump!”

  After a moment, he did, though he almost pulled her back off Aster into the dirt below. Moss gripped hard to steady herself as Aster danced and skittered.

  “No saddle or bridle?” Finn asked, his hands clasping tight around Moss’s stomach.

  “What do you need anything like that for?”

  “This place is so weird,” he said, a smile playing about his lips.

  Was he still feeling the flower-water inside him? Maybe, as he rode, he might feel like he was flying.

  “Awesome,” he murmured, staring at the petals in the pine trees.

  Again, Moss wondered it—just how different this island was from the rest of the world, how different she might be from all the other people Finn had met there. She wiggled; Finn’s fingers felt too tight around her waist. If Cal had been behind her instead, he’d have gripped hard to the horse with his own legs rather than relying on her.

  “Anyway, you’re the strange one,” she said. “Not knowing how to sit on a horse. There are plenty of horses in your world—I’ve read about them.”

  “It’s your world too. I didn’t cross through some magical wardrobe or train platform to get here.”

  A whole real, dry world beyond the reef? Maybe she’d have to learn to read it, like she’d learned to read the books in the cave. But why wouldn’t Pa believe in it?

  “Where are we searching for Tommy first?” Finn said.

  “Western Beach. If something’s not washed up in our cove, then it’s always there.”

  It’d be where Cal was, too.

  Moss whistled, and her dog bounded up the side of the horse into Moss’s arms. She perched between Moss and Aster’s neck, clinging with claws, making Aster’s ears flick in annoyance. Moss urged Aster to move. They picked their way across the cove toward the pine forest. Beyond the trees were the dunes; it’d be late morning by the time they got there. She tried to push down the worry she felt about leaving Pa alone. What would he do in his cave for so long, brooding?

  When Finn’s fingers lost their grip around her waist, she leaned back to let Aster know to go slower. Finn lurched sideways anyway; seemed he was right about not being able to sit on a horse. She reached behind to grab him.

  “How does she know what you want?” he said.

  “She’s not just a horse.”

  Moss explained that Aster was a spirit, come from the ocean and forged from flower-magic. “Pa wished for a companion and sent flowers to the winds,” she said. “Aster came.”

  Cal did also.

  “That’s what he thinks happened with you … ,” she added. “… That he called you in. Or I did.”

  “I’m a spirit?” Finn laughed. “Made from flowers? That makes absolutely no sense!”

  She felt his breath, hot on her neck. Cal hadn’t thought he was a spirit, either. She slowed Aster farther.

  “Aster just knows,” Moss said when Finn asked again. “You think what you want her to do and she feels your energy.”

  “Like what Pa said about the flowers? That they respond to … what was it … desire? That’s how they got rid of the floods?”

  Moss swallowed. “You said there were no floods, remember?”

  “Oh, yeah. ’Course not.” In the silence, she almost heard him thinking. “It’s a nice idea, though—magical flowers responding to people’s energy. Someone could write about that—some novel, some play!”

  She shrugged. Not everything on this island had only been a “nice idea.” The flowers did heal; Finn’s own wound, clean and closed now, was proof of that.

  But why Cal’s island, coming and going? Why hadn’t Pa seen it? There were as many mysteries as answers—more!

  After they’d been in the pine forest long enough for her eyes to see, Moss noticed the rough bark on trunks, tiny crushed pieces of shell in the sandy soil, the lazy out-of-season bumble zigzagging ahead. She listened for cracks from branches. Maybe Cal, or Tommy, was here instead?

  She spoke to keep Finn awake and fight the heavy air. So she didn’t have to think about Pa feasting alone on stormflowers.

  “It takes almost two days to walk round the island,” she said. “Less if you ride. But if you go through the middle, it’s quicker. Even with the volcano.”

  “Volcano?” Finn looked up. “Is it active?”

  “It smokes and rumbles sometimes. Especially when it’s storming.” She remembered the other night when she’d felt the island tremble: the last time she’d seen Cal, the night that Finn came.

  Finn rested his cheek against her back. “Well, I hope it doesn’t rumble while I’m here.”

 
; “Already has.”

  She swallowed. Again, she remembered the dreams and stories Pa had written in his book: the one safe piece of land left in the world … an island with flowers that could heal anything, an island made of fire.

  “Flower Island,” she murmured. “What Pa calls it.”

  Finn moved to prop his chin on her shoulder, where it bobbed with Aster’s every step. “Somewhere called Flower Island was definitely not on my map.”

  “Pa said this place isn’t on maps though,” she said. “… Instead we had to feel it out, trust it was here.”

  Moss peered at a tangle of currant bushes, saw stormflowers growing even there. Finn shook his head, and his hair tickled her skin.

  “So, who is this Pa anyway?” he said.

  Moss wound her fingers tighter in Aster’s mane. “What do you mean, who is he?”

  “Well, is he just another dude who was shipwrecked?”

  “He was shipwrecked … with me.”

  “So, he wasn’t here when you came, then … kind of like, hiding out?”

  “No,” she said. “He came with me. Or I came with him.”

  “Hmm.” Finn looked up again. “It’s just, I kind of had this idea that maybe he was a fugitive?”

  “Fugitive?”

  “You know, escaping something, on the run … a criminal!”

  Moss looked at the currant bushes, the trees. “He’s Pa,” she said. “My pa.”

  Again, she could almost hear Finn thinking.

  “Your pa?” he said eventually. “As in, your dad? You serious?”

  “Of course.”

  “But … he looks nothing like you.”

  “So?”

  Finn sat up straight now; she felt his fingers shift from around her waist and settle on her shoulders. “But you guys don’t have the same skin color. Not the same eyes, or nose … You don’t even act the same. Are you adopted? And how old is he, anyway?”

  She could answer that one. “Thirty-seven years on his last birthday.”

  “Seriously? Island life’s not been kind to him, then. He looks way older.”

  “He’s sick.”

  Moss watched a forest owl flap ahead of them. She thought of how dark Cal was, and how light Pa was, and how she was something in between. It wasn’t the first time she had realized this, but here—in Finn’s words—it was the first time it had seemed full-strange.