by Janis Mackay
‘So you want to take me back there so you’ll feel better. So they’ll stop blaming you?’
‘That isn’t the only reason, Niilo. You can’t stay here. You know that. And your family are really anxious. Believe it or not, they really do care about you. And they want you to be happy.’
I couldn’t believe that. What about what I wanted? I wanted to be that mime artist on the Helsinki esplanade, with a hatful of coins to spend. Or the dark-eyed accordion player, spilling out sad and wild tunes. Suddenly it was like I could hear those tunes.
‘Like I said, Niilo, real freedom is in here.’ Hannu tapped his chest. The accordion music stopped.
I wanted to live my way. I didn’t want people telling me what to do. I wanted to go where I wanted. I felt all that pounding away inside me like a drum, but I stared at him and nodded. ‘Of course I know that.’ I could hear the cold edge creeping back into my voice. ‘Do you think I don’t know that?’
So we left the hut, and I wasn’t sorry to leave that gloomy place. The sun was already rising, the rain had stopped, but there was a chill in the air and clouds around. I didn’t say much, didn’t know what to say. I was leaving my island. I had been the king of this place. But I was hungry. I had been hungry for days. And I had a sore stomach. Maybe it was that tomato soup?
I looked over my shoulder for the seal but I couldn’t see it as Hannu and I tramped over the springy heather and the ferns. We skirted the circle of birch and pine trees and came down to the beach and to the sea. Darts of red light bled over the sea’s horizon and I saw Hannu’s small boat, bobbing a few metres out. He had secured it with a rope looped around a stone. It wasn’t much of a boat. It had a tiny outboard motor, but it didn’t have a sail.
‘Is that it?’ I said, and couldn’t hide the disappointment from my voice. ‘You mean, that’s my rescue mission?’
‘No,’ Hannu said. He sounded tired now. I heard him take a deep breath. ‘No, Niilo. Your rescue mission is vast. Planes. Coastguard boats. Divers. Police. It’s quite elaborate, to be honest. But I was the one who found you. Me and my small boat.’ Then he gestured towards it. ‘Let’s go.’ He waded out into the sea and pulled at the rope. His boat jerked and floated towards us. ‘Hop in, Niilo,’ he said. He tried to smile at me, but could hardly manage it and I didn’t smile back.
I knew I couldn’t stay on this island, eating fish and berries and sleeping in a horror hut, and I knew I was thirteen, and when you’re thirteen you don’t have much choice about what you do and where you go, but I had plans inside me. Big plans. For now, though, I stepped forward, waded through the shallow water and clambered into Hannu’s boat. It rocked wildly.
‘Sit down,’ he said, pointing to a bench. He fished out a thick blanket from under a tarpaulin and handed it to me. I sat down and wrapped myself in the blanket. Then Hannu uncoiled the rope and the boat glided away from the island. ‘This doesn’t exactly fill me with joy,’ he said as the boat pushed out to the open sea. ‘I mean, taking you back to the place you escaped from.’ I looked at him but didn’t speak. I could feel the cold hard mask sitting over my face again. ‘But I don’t know what else to do,’ he said. ‘Trust me, Niilo, this feels like the right thing. It’ll all work out for the best.’
‘Oh yeah?’ I was enjoying his discomfort. It must be a real pain to be an adult, and have to do the right thing all the time. I ignored Hannu, turned my head and looked back at the shrinking shape of my island. For a while we didn’t speak. He rowed and I watched my island get smaller and smaller. ‘Niilo’s Island.’ Then I changed my mind. ‘Seal Island.’ I thought I had said it inside, but I must have muttered.
‘What’s that?’ Hannu said, leaning towards me. He lifted the oars and looked at me and everything paused. Water dripped off the wooden oars, back into the sea. Hannu tilted his head to the side. ‘What did you say, Niilo?’
So I said it, louder, almost defiant. ‘Seal Island. That’s what I’m calling it.’ I would come back one day. I could still see the silhouette of the island and felt a pang inside me. I’d only been there three or four days, but it felt like weeks. So much had happened there that I felt like I was leaving a part of myself behind. Or, maybe, I had found a part of myself. Then I swung round to face Hannu and said it again. Except I didn’t say it, I shouted it. ‘Seal Island!’
And that’s when something hit the boat. We both screamed as the boat pitched, lurched forward, and capsized.
Chapter Twenty-three
I plunged into the water. Sea was over my head. I shot up, gasping, and I saw the bow of the boat lift into the sky. Then the sea fell over us again.
Hannu was in the water, his hand reaching towards me as I sank. The weight of the blanket around me was pulling me under and I was thrashing through the water, screaming. My mother screaming. Father screaming. The other boy screaming, then gone. The dream rushed into me. The other boy had been beside me. He had always been beside me. Then he was gone. The sea took him away. Sea water crashed over me and I wanted to give up …
I sank and let the water swirl over me. Hannu yelled. He thrashed madly in the water and grabbed me, but I pushed him away. The other boy was gone. What was the point? What was the point of anything? I kicked.
So many people.
Drowning.
The seal.
The black seal was here, in the water. It looked at me – we were both under the water – and memory slammed through me. The seal’s face was so close, and everything was suddenly clear.
I could swim. I knew how to swim. I pushed back the sea and swam. I had to find the boy, the other boy. I dived down into the swirling ocean, but Hannu caught me and pulled me up.
‘I have to save him,’ I gasped, breaking the surface and spluttering, my voice a heave of water and agony.
‘I’ve got you,’ Hannu cried, panting. ‘It’s okay, Niilo. I’ve got you.’
‘But I have to save him,’ I cried.
Hannu was strong. He steadied the rocking boat and lifted me half out of the sea. ‘Save … who?’
‘My brother.’
Hannu cried out suddenly as the black seal loomed out of the water. It was so close I could have touched it. ‘It’s crazy,’ Hannu yelled. ‘That seal, my God, he’s trying to attack us.’ Hannu had a hold of my arm. With his other arm he reached for the rocking boat and pulled the lip of it down hard. ‘Get in!’ he shouted, hoisting me up from the water and pushing me into the boat.
I fell forward into the boat, rolled over and stared up at the pink sky as the boat rocked wildly. The seal dived under the water again. My heart raced. What had I just said? I felt stunned as the image of my brother flashed into my head.
Not Tuomas. This was another brother. This brother looked exactly like me. This brother was part of me. And the sea took him. I stretched my arms out, as though I could catch him and hold him tight, but the image vanished. He had gone, like he had before.
‘What … what happened?’ Hannu gasped. He heaved himself from the water and clambered into the boat. He fell down beside me. ‘Jesus, I don’t know what happened.’
I lay on the deck, still in a dream, still thinking about my brother. I was only vaguely aware of Hannu beside me, panicking and panting, and freaking out as he tried to stop the boat from rocking. He held the sides of the boat and peered over the side. ‘God. What … did we hit a rock? Jesus, where’s that mad seal? Did you see him, Niilo? I thought you said he was your friend? My God, he almost killed us. He’s mad.’
But the seal wasn’t mad. It wasn’t mad at all.
Hannu swung round and looked at me. I was still lying on the bottom of the boat, like I’d been struck by lightning. ‘Jesus, are you okay? Are you, Niilo?’ The boat was still rocking like a demented cradle and Hannu patted the boards of the hull. ‘No leak? Amazing. God, Niilo’ – he looked round at me, his face bewildered – ‘that seal capsized the boat. I think. Or maybe it was a rock? Or something else? I mean, seals don’t do that. Jesus …’
But
I felt calm. Underneath the racing pulse and near-death experience, I felt strangely peaceful. It was like a film suddenly came on in my head. Or scenes from a film. And it had a title, that film: Niilo’s life!
‘A family in a boat,’ I mumbled, dazed. ‘A small boat. A storm at sea. There was somebody like me in that boat. The wave snatched him. And there was a man. He had black hair. He tried to save the one like me. My brother. My brother drowned. They both drowned. And I was left in the boat with a woman screaming.’ I was muttering this. I couldn’t help it.
‘Oh God,’ Hannu cried. ‘Look!’ The oars were floating away from us, like twigs. ‘We need the oars,’ he shouted, staring at the floating-away oars. ‘There’s no petrol left in the engine.’ I could see his mind race. What if the seal was crazy? Or what if it had been a shark? Should he dive overboard and fetch the oars?
‘It’s okay,’ I said. ‘It was my seal. It won’t hurt you.’
‘He tried to drown us, Niilo. What do you mean, he won’t hurt me?’
Then I slipped overboard before Hannu could stop me. The water felt cool as I swam after the oars. I glanced back and gave Hannu the thumbs up. But he wasn’t looking at me. I followed his gaze and there it was again: the seal. It glided through the water and swam next to me. I’ve heard of people swimming with dolphins, well, I swam with a seal. I saw how it tucked its flippers into its body then, to slow down, how it spread them out and made slow circles. We reached the oars and the seal opened its jaw and carried one in its mouth. I tried to swim back using one hand, and dragging the second oar with the other. That was hard. The seal swam ahead and reached the boat in seconds. I saw Hannu bend over and scoop up the oar. He didn’t seem so terrified now, just stunned. Then the seal swam back to me and bit into the other oar to carry it in its mouth over to the boat.
When I clambered back in, Hannu looked like he had been struck dumb. With shaking hands I saw him secure the oars into the oar-locks, but he didn’t start rowing. The seal circled the boat three times. I knew it was getting ready to leave and I felt something like a stone crack in my heart. It looked straight at me, that seal did, then turned around and swam away.
‘It knows.’ My voice had fallen into a hushed whisper. ‘It’s like the seals in your story. It knows me, Hannu, better than I know myself. It’s given me the story I lost …’
Hannu dipped the oars into the water and nodded his head. He rowed slowly as the sun came up in the east. ‘The seal that watched over you – I’m sure it was the same seal that guided me here. But why? Why did it tip us over? Why, Niilo?’ The sea flashed pink and red.
I took one of the oars. ‘Remember how you said your dad gave you your past? Remember he sat by your bed and told you who you were?’ Hannu nodded. ‘Well, I think it’s like that.’ I smiled at him. I felt like a wise man suddenly, all peaceful. ‘The seal knew we wouldn’t really drown. It pushed a forgotten memory open, like a door that was locked – I don’t totally understand it. You’re the one always going on about magic, and mystery. Well, it’s a kind of magic.’ My voice came out calm and strong. It was like after four days on my island I had a glimmer of how animal magic worked. I felt magical myself.
Hannu seemed to relax then. We were both still wet and I had lost his blanket in the sea. But the sun was getting warmer and drying us and I felt warm, and strong. Hannu dipped his one oar deep, then pulled back. I copied him. I would row with Hannu. The two of us sat side by side on the wooden bench in the middle of the small boat and we rowed. I didn’t even think about where we were going. We were just rowing over the sea in the early morning. We were quiet, concentrating on rowing. Sometimes we lifted the oars and took rests. As we journeyed over the sea the story that the seal had given me came clearer. It felt like a jigsaw, fitting piece by piece. It was the story of my life and it wasn’t a pretty story.
Maybe Hannu saw the way I was feeling, the way I’d fallen silent. Pulling the oar through the water and looking ahead he said, ‘Want to tell me the story?’
I tried to get words to come out, but my throat wouldn’t work. By tipping our boat the seal had broken open my lost story, but it wasn’t a happy story. Why did I need to know a story that was so terrible? ‘It was a long time ago,’ I started, my voice like a dry whisper. Hannu leant closer and we stopped rowing. ‘I nearly drowned,’ I whispered. ‘I didn’t, but two people did.’
‘Who were they, Niilo?’
I answered without thinking. How did I know? Where does buried memory come from? ‘My dad and my twin brother.’ That’s what I said. My head reeled, as if I was in a trance. I imagined the yellow eyes of the seal, like two suns rising over the sea. ‘At least, that’s what I think. I don’t know.’
My hands slumped down and the oar dropped from my hand. Hannu reached over to take it.
Chapter Twenty-four
Hannu rowed over the sparkling sea. I could see the Wild School island now. It started as a dent on the horizon, then grew bigger, like a stone, then a boulder, a huge rock. I could see the chimneys of the building. I swallowed hard. What would they do to me? What would they say?
‘I thought it might be something like that,’ Hannu said eventually. Then, looking out to sea, he murmured, ‘Some people have scars on the outside and some have them on the inside.’ He lifted the oars then and let the boat drift. He looked round at me and nodded and I saw how tired he was – he had dark patches under his eyes. ‘When I first met you, Niilo, I knew you had lost your story.’ Then he took up the oars and dipped them into the water. ‘I didn’t know what your story was, but I guessed it was a hard story to carry. Those are usually the ones we forget. Or bury deep.’
I let him row. I felt in a daze, but weirdly light. Weirdly okay. The island came closer and I could see the trees and the pier and the track that wound up from the pier to the school building.
‘Oi! Niilo!’
I swung round and peered towards the island. I could see the red-brick chimneys of the Wild School building. There was someone on the pier, waving.
‘It’s Riku,’ Hannu said, then nodded. ‘You have a welcome party.’ And the smashed glass inside my chest melted into butter, and I felt happy. I waved back.
‘Hey! Yo! You’re alive!’ Riku yelled. ‘It’s Niilo. He’s back! He’s alive!’ By this time more boys and staff had gathered on the pier. They started clapping. I felt like a celebrity, except tears were running down my face.
‘He’s alive! He’s alive!’ they were all chanting.
‘They missed you, Niilo. Didn’t I tell you?’ We were almost there. It was coming too fast. We’d reach the stone pier in no time. Okay, there might be a welcome party. There might not. But pretty soon Hannu would leave. I knew he would. And I would be left on the island. But suddenly that didn’t feel like the worst thing in the world.
‘Where did you get to?’ Riku was shouting. Then he ran through the water, kicking up a huge spray. He reached the boat and cheered, then under his breath said, ‘The grease saved you. You’re alive.’
I laughed. I couldn’t wait to tell him all about it.
‘Riku is a good guy,’ Hannu said, as the boat bumped against the bottom. ‘Bit of a wild child, but that’s no bad thing. You and him should be great friends.’ Hannu was manoeuvring the boat in towards the beach.
I remember what one of the staff members who had come to collect me – Sam – had said the day I came to the Wild School. He had called me ‘wild child’. I used to think that was a bad thing, but now it felt like something mysterious and exciting. I jumped over the side of the boat and waded ashore with Riku. He slapped my hand high-five, booted up more water and whooped. ‘Good to see you alive,’ he yelled. ‘What a hero! You did it. Wow!’ Then at the shore other people crowded round.
‘Thank God you’re not drowned, Niilo. Welcome back,’ said Marko, the woodwork teacher. ‘Welcome back to the Wild School.’
Staff and boys jostled round me. They patted me on the back. So many admiring wide-eyed faces were staring at me. Gap
ing at my torn shorts, ragged brown shirt and cut feet. ‘He didn’t drown!’ ‘Niilo’s back!’ ‘He’s alive!’ ‘Hannu saved him!’ ‘What happened?’ ‘Where has Niilo been?’ ‘Did the rescue plane find him?’ Their questions clamoured in my head. Elbows pushing to get a better look. Then I saw the boss man stepping forward and the boys clearing a path for him.
‘We are so glad to see you alive and well. And you, Hannu, thank you. You said you would find him, and you did. Welcome back to the Wild School, Niilo,’ the head teacher said, reaching out to shake my hand.
I took his hand and shook it. I knew what was coming next.
‘Make the most of it, Niilo.’
Chapter Twenty-five
I got a kick out of the awe that the staff and the other boys felt, knowing I had swum sixteen kilometres. (So I was told.) No great punishment was doled out, though lots of counselling sessions. Hannu only hung around for an hour or so, just enough time for a quick meal. It wasn’t exactly a welcome feast, but I was so ravenous I would have eaten salty porridge.
Of course Hannu was hailed as the real hero, but I heard how the boss said it would be much better for me if he quickly took his leave, how I’d become over-attached and stuff like that. ‘I’ll see you soon, Niilo,’ Hannu had said before the ferry took him away that very same evening. ‘And if you and your family want to come to the wedding, you’d be very welcome.’
I waved and waved, watching his ferry grow smaller and smaller, and a feeling of emptiness fell back into me. At that moment a low honk sounded on the breeze.
Aarne, my new key worker, came up and stood next to me. ‘I love the wild song of the seals, don’t you?’ he said softly.
The seal honked again and the lonely feeling went. The black seal had come to the Wild School island - I knew it was him. Something lit up inside me and I felt a whole lot better. I would see Hannu again. Maybe I would go to his wedding? And the seal hadn’t disappeared like I’d thought it had – it had come all the way to the Wild School. It was still watching over me.
