Journey's End

by Rachel Hawkins

  “Whoa,” Nolie said under her breath, and Al stood transfixed, frowning at the giant television.

  Glancing around, Maggie seemed to notice her surroundings for the first time. “What?” she asked them. “You think I’m too old for technology?”

  “It’s not that,” Bel hurried to say, but Nolie just snorted.

  “It’s exactly that,” she countered, and then added, “This room is really weird. No offense.”

  Bel elbowed Nolie, but Maggie smiled. “I’ll give you that. Can I make you some tea?”

  “Yes, please,” Bel answered, only to have Nolie nudge her this time.

  “Maybe that’s not a good idea,” she whispered, her gaze darting to Maggie’s back as the older lady headed into the adjoining kitchen. “You know, eating or drinking things in the house of a . . . a . . .”

  She trailed off, and Bel wasn’t sure if it was because Nolie just didn’t want to say what she thought Maggie was, or because she didn’t know.

  Maggie turned again, smiling at all three of them. “A witch? Is that what you wanted to say, lass?”

  Nolie stared at Maggie for a moment. “If I say yes, are you going to eat me?” she asked, and Maggie laughed.

  “No, yer a mite too bony for me.” With that, she winked and disappeared into the kitchen, leaving the three of them to stand around her living room, unsure of what to do next.

  Luckily, it didn’t take Maggie long to make the tea, and she came back with a full tray only a few minutes later, nodding for the three of them to sit.

  Bel lowered herself onto the leather sofa and Nolie and Al squeezed in on either side.

  Maggie bowed her head, fussing with the tea, but Bel thought she was smiling again. “Here,” she said, handing them their cups. Steam rose from the mugs, smelling sweet and lemony. The mug warmed Bel’s hands, and she wrapped her fingers around it as she blew on its surface.

  Al took a sip of his while Nolie was still staring at the cup like she didn’t quite trust it. Maggie, sitting in the wingback chair across from the sofa, just leaned back and looked at them.

  “Go ahead,” she said after a moment. “Ask what it is you came here to ask.”

  “How did you know about the fog?” Nolie blurted, and Bel cut her a look. It might have been nice to ease into things a bit.

  But Maggie didn’t seem offended. She shrugged, sipping her own tea. “Because I was here when it was first conjured up,” she said, and for a moment, there was silence in the room.

  Bel found her voice first. “‘Conjured’?” she echoed, and Maggie nodded. She set her mug back on the low table in front of her.

  “Aye. There was no fog a’tall in Journey’s End until Cait McInnish was sent out onto the Caillte Sea in 1553.”

  Another moment of silence in the room as all three of them took that in.

  “1553,” Nolie said slowly. “And you were . . . there.”

  Maggie nodded, and Bel studied her face. She was old, there was no doubt of that. Her hair was completely silver, and when she picked up her tea again, Bel could see how bony her fingers were. So old, definitely, but nearly five hundred years old?

  “Surely you can’t be surprised,” Maggie said, leaning back in her chair. Outside, the wind had picked up again, pushing clouds across the sky and sending shafts of sunlight through the big window that overlooked the loch. “Not with this one here.” She nodded at Al, who was still sitting stiffly next to Bel.

  “In the year of our Lord, 1553, my brother Rabbie fell from a window,” Maggie continued, “and in his grief, my father, the laird, blamed Rabbie’s nanny, Cait. Her punishment was to be put in a boat and set adrift in the Caillte Sea.”

  Next to Bel, Nolie sucked in a breath. “That was the story!” she said, bumping Bel with her elbow. And then the excitement faded from her face. “That’s intense,” she said, and Bel remembered how shaky Nolie had been on the Bonny Bel that one afternoon. Being left at sea would be a nightmare for anyone, but it was no surprise that Nolie would find it especially horrific.

  “That’s a word for it,” Maggie agreed. “And then, after Cait, the fog came. Right out from the wee island where her own da had helped build a lighthouse. The light went out, and the fog moved in, just as it has this time. Just as it did before, as young Albert here has told you, I’m sure.”

  A cloud passed in front of the sun again, shrouding the room in shadows, and Bel, who was used to the fog, to the sea, to the changing skies, fought the urge to scoot even closer to Nolie.

  “It was much as it is now,” Maggie continued. “At first, no one paid it too much mind. There had been fog on the sea before. And then it moved closer. Then it took. Boats, villagers, eventually a fishing hut on the shore. When whispers of witchcraft began to spread, my father sent his men to light the lighthouse; they never came back. Then the braver lads of the village went.”

  At Bel’s left, Al sat up a little straighter, and Bel remembered that in Al’s own time, his brother had been a brave lad who tried to light the lamp.

  “And then one day, I was walking along the shore, looking out at the fog, and I came across a wee boat. Called the Selkie.”

  Maggie took another sip of her tea, and Nolie and Bel exchanged a look just as Al leaned closer, resting his elbows on his knees. “That was the boat they’d sent Cait off in,” Maggie continued. “And I . . . I knew that the Selkie had come back for me. That I was the only one who could put this all to rights.” Maggie’s knobby fingers tightened around her mug, her gaze seeming far away all of a sudden. “Cait had been my friend. If she had been a witch, if she had cursed us all, I thought perhaps she’d talk to me. That she’d sent for me. And so I went. I made my way to the island, climbed the stone steps of the lighthouse, and lit the lamp.”

  “Did you see Cait?” Nolie asked, leaning forward.

  Maggie shook her head. “I can’t remember. I know that sounds mad, but—”

  “The fog does something to you,” Al added. He wasn’t looking at any of them, his eyes still focused somewhere around his feet.

  “Indeed,” Maggie said. “Makes things harder to remember. Anyway, no, I can’t recall seeing Cait, but I know I lit that lamp. And when I tried to row out . . .”

  She trailed off, swallowing hard before taking a sip of tea. Her voice sounded rougher when she continued, “As your friend Albert said, the fog does things to your mind. Time stops having meaning. You row and never go anywhere. Until one day, the fog simply . . . let me go. As it did you, Albert.”

  Bel glanced over at Al, who was staring at Maggie, mouth gone slack.

  “It was you,” he said, and Bel saw his hands clench on his knees. “When the fog came to Journey’s End in . . . in my time, there was a meeting, kept all secret-like. And there was a girl there I didn’t know. You.”

  Maggie rested her free hand on the arm of her chair. “Aye, ’twas me. The people of Journey’s End didn’t know what to do with me, of course, so they kept it all as secret as they could. Gave me this house, as it was on what had been by father’s land. Set me up with a small trust so that I might live the rest of my days in some comfort. The priest came every day to help with schooling, to teach me English. I only spoke Gaelic when I returned, of course. And eventually, Journey’s End forgot who I was or how long I’d been here. They only knew I’d always been here.”

  “And all this sweet stuff?” Nolie asked, gesturing around to the TV, the laptop, the tablet. “Is there, like, a special fund for you to get to buy all the electronics?”

  Maggie shook her head, laughing. “Ah, no, this is my own doing. That trust grew into a quite a tidy sum over time, and I like all these things. Even after all these years, they still feel a bit like magic, I suppose.”

  Bel could see where that made sense, and suddenly she had a thousand questions she wanted to ask. How far away did Maggie’s sixteenth-century childhood seem, and
what had Journey’s End been like then? Did she walk past the ruins of her father’s castle every day and remember walking the halls?

  But there would have to be time for that later. Maggie was already settling back into her chair. “’Twas I who had the plaque made in the city center for Cait once I’d been back a decade or so. I knew it couldn’t make up for what had happened to her, but . . . I had to try.”

  “In Hope of Forgiveness,” Bel murmured. “That was you. For Cait.”

  Maggie was turning her mug this way and that in her hands, and she didn’t look over at Bel. “Aye, it was. It seemed like such a small thing, given all that happened to her, but it were the best I could do at the time.”

  She sat there for a moment, lost in her own thoughts, before shaking her head. “Anyway, that seems to be the way of it. The light is lit, the fog pulls back, and the person who lit the lamp remains trapped in the fog. Until the light goes out again, of course. And now here we are, Albert MacLeish. The people who saved our village, watching it happen all over again.”

  “Okay.” Nolie leaned forward, setting her tea on the table with a thump. “So you went to light the lamp in 1553 when you were how old?”

  “Ten and three,” Maggie answered, and Nolie tugged on one ear.

  “That’s a weird way to say thirteen, but fine. And then you got kicked out or freed or whatever in 1918. Even if being in the fog keeps you young while you’re in it, you would’ve been thirteen in 1918. Which means you should be, like, super old. No offense.”

  Maggie chuckled at that, inclining her head at Nolie. “None taken. And you’re right. I only began to age again once I’d come out of the fog, but I aged . . . slowly, I suppose you’d say. I can only suppose it has something to do with the fog itself.”

  She said it lightly, like it was no big deal that the fog had altered the way her entire body worked, but Al clearly wasn’t taking that casually.

  “So it’ll be the same for me?” he asked. “I’ll not grow up like normal?”

  Maggie narrowed her blue eyes, studying him. “Can’t rightly say,” she finally answered. “I was in the fog for near on five hundred years. You were in less than a hundred. Perhaps you’ll only end up a few months behind.”

  Nolie leaned over Bel. “Albert, I promise we’ll still be your friends even if you’re permanently in seventh grade. Or at least until we’re grown-ups.”

  Maggie gave another one of those rusty laughs even as Albert scowled at Nolie, folding his arms over his chest.

  Bel patted their knees, saying, “Okay, now is not the time for this.” She looked back at Maggie. “So the Selkie came to you, and that’s what let you light the light. All those other people. They just headed out in other boats, and never lit the lamp or came back.”

  “Like my brother,” Al said quietly. He was looking down at the carpet again, his hair falling over his brow. Then he lifted his gaze, looking at Nolie and Bel, then at Maggie. “But then I found the Selkie, too. And I . . . I felt like I had to go.”

  Maggie got up from her chair, her bones creaking slightly as she busied herself cleaning up their tea things. “So that’s it, then,” she said. “The trick of it. I always wondered.”

  “They sent Cait off in the Selkie,” Nolie said slowly. “But it came back, and got you. You lit the lamp, but then when it went out again, you came back, and Albert found the Selkie.”

  “And now the light is out a third time, and Albert has returned,” Maggie supplied, straightening up and taking in the three of them on the sofa.

  “So the question now is simple,” Maggie said. “Who has the Selkie come for?”

  CHAPTER 26

  BEL LED THE WAY BACK DOWN TO THE BEACH, SHOVING her hands in her pockets to keep them warm, hoping that if she kept moving fast enough, she wouldn’t have time to get scared. What she was about to do was definitely something worth being scared about, after all, but Nolie and Al were following her, neither saying anything, and she hoped that meant they had the same idea about what had to happen next.

  Bel didn’t even pause until they got to the beach, right near the little cave where Al had been hiding and where the Selkie was still beached.

  Turning, Bel faced her friends and put her hands on her hips.

  “So it’s us,” she said. “Who have to light the light. The Selkie came to both of us.” Bel said it as fast as she could, but also tried to make it sound as firm as the rocks around them. That was a trick she’d learned from what her mum always said: Say things like you don’t expect an argument, and you won’t get one. Bel reckoned a woman with four kids, three of them boys, had learned that lesson well.

  “The Selkie is such a little boat,” Nolie said, and Bel almost wanted to laugh. Of course it was the boat that scared Nolie, not the fog.

  “You heard Maggie,” Bel said, tugging the sleeves of her jumper over her fingers. “It’s the only thing to do, and the only way we can save Dad and Jaime. And your dad, too.”

  “Except we might not come back.”

  “There is that part,” she said, “but think about it. No one has ever gone as a group before. Maybe that makes it different.”

  She saw Nolie and Al exchange a look, and quickly added, “Not a group, a pair.” The Selkie had already come for Al once. Who knew what might happen if he went again? It seemed like too much to risk. “Al, you’ll have to stay here.”

  “Not too likely,” Al fired back, drawing himself up to his full height. Over the past few weeks, his hair had gotten longer, shaggier, and now it hung over his brow until he pushed it back with an impatient hand. “If we do this, we should all go,” he said.

  This time, it was Nolie who objected. “Except that the fog ate you before.”

  “But I was able to light the light,” he said. Their words were loud and echoing in the cave, but Bel could still hear the pound of the surf outside. “Neither of you have ever done that before. When I went out, I already knew how.”

  Nolie reached out with one toe, nudging some loose pebbles. “Right, but it’s not like it’s some brand-new lighthouse with technology. It’s just . . . lighting something the old-fashioned way, right?”

  Al snorted, thrusting his hands into his pockets. “If ye think that’s all there is to it, all the more reason for me to come as well.”

  He had a point, but Bel couldn’t let them descend into an argument. “Nolie, you don’t have to go. Maybe Al is right, and—”

  “No.” Nolie shook her head fiercely, and Bel could see that once again her braid was coming unraveled. “I was there when we found the Selkie, too. It came to me just as much as it did to you. We’re a team.”

  And when she said that, something in Bel’s chest seemed to bloom open like a flower. She’s never been on someone’s team before. There were so few kids in Journey’s End, and hardly any girls. From the moment Nolie had walked into the store, Bel had known they’d be friends, and sitting in that cave with her and Al, she suddenly felt like it was right that she and Nolie finish this together. Hadn’t it all started when Nolie showed up? That couldn’t just be a coincidence.

  “What are you going to do?” Al asked, sitting down on one of the nearby rocks. “Do ye even have something to light it with?”

  Bel’s fingers curled around the box of matches Maggie had given her before they’d left her house. She had waited until Nolie and Al were already out the door, and she hadn’t said a word, simply pressing the box into Bel’s hands. It was the closest thing to a seal of approval Bel was going to get.

  “Okay,” she said. “All three of us. It makes sense. Al lit the lamp before, this is my village, and . . . well, we must need you, too, Nol.”

  Nolie crossed her arms, the vinyl of her slicker squeaking. “Could be I’m just the friend who tragically bites it in the course of saving the day. I know y’all don’t get a lot of movies and TV out here, but there’s always one person on
these kinds of quests that gets totally killed. And it would be me, because I’m the funny one. It’s always the funny one.”

  “I don’t think I want to watch your movies and TV if funny people are getting killed,” Al commented, giving Nolie a smile. “I like the funny ones.”

  Her cheeks turning pink, Nolie shrugged and looked away, and Bel hid her own smile as she looked down at the journal spread open in front of her. “No one is going to get killed on this trip, funny or not,” she said very firmly. “All of this happened for a reason. Al coming back, Nolie coming to Journey’s End, me . . . well, me always being here, I s’pose. We’re here to finally put this right.”

  “Even though putting it right means putting our parents out of jobs,” Nolie said, and Bel frowned. She didn’t like to think of that part of it, but it couldn’t be helped now.

  Then Nolie heaved a sigh, rubbing her hands together. “Okay, so just so y’all know, if I get killed on this, I’m going to haunt you both. Even Albert, who is technically part ghost himself anyway.”

  Al frowned. “Am not.”

  “Albert, please come to terms with your ghostiness,” Nolie said, making an exaggerated sad face as she patted him on the arm, and Bel rolled her eyes at both of them.

  “All three of us are going to be ghosts if we don’t get going,” Bel reminded them. “You heard Maggie, once the fog starts moving in closer, there’s not much time left.”

  The three of them turned then, looking back out at the water and at the Boundary. Somewhere inside all that roiling gray was her father’s boat, and a rocky island with an old lighthouse. A light she had to light.

  And she had no idea how she was going to do it.

  CHAPTER 27

  BEL RECKONED THE SELKIE MIGHT HAVE BEEN A NICE boat in 1553, and it certainly held up well considering how old it was, but that didn’t mean she felt any better about getting in it and shoving off into the actual ocean.