Journey's End

by Rachel Hawkins

  The wind was still blowing as Nolie turned to see Bel fall off the ledge and down toward the stone floor below.

  CHAPTER 30

  BEL CLUTCHED AT THE ROCK, HER NAILS DIGGING IN. She’d just managed to catch hold of one of the stairs a few steps below the platform. Her palms stung, and her shoulder muscles ached, but that was nothing compared to the panic spiraling in her stomach as her feet kicked over empty air.

  “I’ve got you!” she heard Nolie say, and she could feel her friend’s fingers curling around her wrists, holding her in place. Nolie’s hands were nearly as cold as the rock beneath Bel’s fingers, and she squeezed her eyes shut, trying to breathe more slowly, to not let panic make her claw at the rock and swing her legs harder.

  Another hand closed over her elbow, and Bel opened her eyes to see Al on his knees next to Nolie, his face pale.

  Both Al and Nolie held on to Bel, but without anywhere to put her feet, she couldn’t seem to get enough leverage to shove herself back up on the stair.

  “We’ll pull you up,” Nolie said, but when she tugged at Bel, Bel’s palm slid against the damp rock, making her nearly lose her grip.

  “Stop!” she cried, and so much for not panicking, because her voice sounded thin and high.

  But Nolie was still holding her, and Al’s grip tightened on Bel’s elbow, so even as her legs dangled over the space, she could feel them working together to pull her back up.

  Then Nolie gasped, her grip on Bel suddenly slipping.

  “Nolie!”

  “Sorry, sorry,” Nolie replied, her hands tightening again on Bel’s wrists. “I got distracted.”

  Even though she was pretty sure she was seconds away from throwing up, Bel managed to say, “What’s more distracting than me almost falling to my death?”

  “There’s a ghost behind you,” Nolie answered, and Bel gritted her teeth, holding on.

  “I know,” she said. “That’s why I fell.”

  “It pushed you?” Al asked, breathing hard as he kept pulling at Bel, but Bel shook her head.

  “No. No, I saw it, and I just . . .”

  She had stepped back without thinking as the form rushed through the window, her brain refusing to process what it was seeing, and that’s why she had fallen. But that sounded silly out loud, so Bel just hung on.

  By the time they’d pulled Bel back onto the ledge, she was breathing hard, her heart was still racing, and there was blood on her palms.

  Still, all of that was nothing compared to how she felt when she could finally turn around, still on her hands and knees, and really see the figure currently floating just beyond the stairs.

  It was a girl, and one not much older than Bel or Nolie. Her hair was long and red, floating around her face, and her brown dress looked old and worn. The fog hovered all around her, curling beneath her feet, draping over her shoulders.

  “I’ve waited my whole life to see a ghost,” Nolie breathed, and Bel looked over at her. Nolie was sitting, her back against the wall, her eyes wide; beside her, Al had risen to his feet, also staring at the girl.

  “Did you see her before?” Bel asked him, wondering if it was rude to talk about the ghost like she wasn’t there. But she hardly seemed to hear them, simply staring at the three of them, her hands out to her sides, her expression blank.

  “Not that I recall,” Al answered, and Nolie rose to her feet, too.

  “I bet you’d recall a ghost,” she said. “And if you didn’t, we can’t be friends anymore.”

  “Go,” Bel said, standing up. “Light the light. Hurry. Now.”

  The ghost—Cait, Bel remembered—didn’t say anything, but her head swung toward Bel, eyes watching.

  “Hurry!” Bel cried again, and Al started scrambling up the steps again. Bel went to follow him, but Nolie grabbed her arm.

  “Wait,” she said, and when Bel stood there, staring at her, she added, “Aren’t you going to talk to her?”

  Bel looked again at the figure still hovering above the ground, real and unreal all at once, and all the bravery she’d summoned up to get out here seemed to desert her. “We’re here to light the light,” she reminded Nolie. “We have to do that.”

  “We’re also here to help our dads,” Nolie said. “And hopefully not get stuck here. We can’t do that if we don’t talk to her.”

  And then Nolie flashed her crooked grin, shaking her head. “Oh man, now I get it. I know exactly why y’all need me.”

  With that, she twisted to get her backpack and pulled it off her shoulders. “Go on,” she called up to Al. “Light it. I have an idea.”

  “Ghosts hang around because they have unfinished business,” she told Bel. “And Cait here probably has tons of it, what with being unjustly murdered. That’s, like, the number one reason people haunt places. We just have to show her . . .”

  Nolie trailed off, and Bel looked back up at Al, who was fumbling with the matches.

  “Go help him,” Nolie told her, then looked back to Cait. For all that Nolie had looked pale and terrified on the boat, she now seemed as brave as Bel had ever seen anyone be, her shoulders back, her gaze steady. Only her hands, shaking slightly as they clutched Legends of the North, gave her away.

  Bel gave Nolie one last squeeze on her shoulder, then hurried up the stairs to Al.

  • • •

  Taking a deep breath, Nolie faced her first ghost.

  “Hi,” she said weakly, then cleared her throat, making her voice stronger. “Hello, I mean. I’m Nolie Stanhope, and I’m . . . not from around here. But my dad lives in Journey’s End, and now he’s somewhere on this island. Or at least I think he is, and I’m really hoping you can help us out with that.”

  There was no reaction from Cait, and Nolie got the impression that most of her focus was on Bel and Albert, still struggling to light the lamp. Two matches had already gone out, far as Nolie could tell, and Albert was saying more bad words in Gaelic as he fished another one out of the box.

  “We know what happened to you,” Nolie went on, and now she had Cait’s attention, even if she wasn’t sure Cait could understand what she was saying. “How they put you out in a boat to die for something you didn’t do. And you totally got a raw deal. Not . . . that you know what that means. But look. Other people know it now, too.”

  Leaning forward, she offered a look at the book to Cait. The ghost didn’t move, but Nolie didn’t let that discourage her. “It’s here,” she said, pointing to the page titled “The Sad Tale of Cait McInnish.” “You see?” Nolie asked, tapping the pages. “The real story is out there. People know. And the people in the village . . . they’re sorry. Look.” She flipped the page to the black-and-white illustration of the little plaque near the harbor. “This says, In Hope of Forgiveness. Maggie McLeod put it there. Maggie was your friend, right?”

  Cait’s ghost continued staring at her, and Nolie’s nerve nearly deserted her. Squaring her shoulders, she made herself go on. “I know it’s not the whole town, and I know it doesn’t have your name on it or anything, but we could fix that. And I’m not saying you have to stop with the fog—it would be better if you didn’t, really,” she added, thinking of her dad and Bel’s. “But just this one time, if you could let us light the light and find our families and let us go, I’d . . . we’d all really appreciate it.”

  As far as stirring speeches went, it wasn’t much, and Nolie didn’t think the guys on Spirit Chasers would be very proud of her, but it was all she had. Bel and Al may have been braver about coming out here in the boat, but if there was one thing Nolie knew, it was ghosts.

  “Please,” she added.

  For a long moment, Cait hovered there, and then Nolie heard a shout from above her.

  She turned, and as she watched, Al lowered a lit match to the bundle of sticks and rags there at the top of the tower. Bel held the glass cylinder in her hands, and at last, a little
fire kindled to life.

  The lamp was lit.

  Relief flooded through Nolie, making her limbs weak, her hands shaking so much she almost dropped the book. “Oh, y’all are awesome,” she called up to them both, and Albert rewarded her with a grin. Bel put the glass back over the flame, and then they both walked back to where Nolie stood, still facing Cait.

  “One thing down,” Bel said.

  “Hardest bit to go,” Albert added, his gaze wary as he watched the ghost.

  Cait was still floating there, staring at the book. Nolie had no idea if she could read it, or if she even understood what Nolie had said to her.

  But then she lifted her eyes, taking in all three of them, and something passed over her face. In that moment, she didn’t look scary or even ghostly. She looked like a girl, and a sad one at that.

  And then she pointed a long arm out to the right.

  Nolie blinked, closing the book. “What is that? Is that where they are? That . . . general direction?”

  She looked back up the stairs at Bel and Albert, both of whom were looking the direction Cait was pointing.

  “Is that it?” Nolie asked again.

  But Cait had already vanished, leaving the tower quiet and cold.

  CHAPTER 31

  PEBBLES RATTLED UNDERFOOT AS NOLIE RAN FROM THE lighthouse, Bel and Albert close behind. Already there were patches appearing in the fog overhead, bits of blue sky revealing themselves. Her heart was still racing, and her eyes darted around, looking for any sign of the boats. Cait had told them where to find their families, she was sure of it, but she wasn’t as sure that meant they were being freed. So she wanted to get her dad and get out of here as quickly as she could.

  Nolie was moving so quickly that she didn’t notice the object sticking out of the sand until she was running straight at it, then tripping, her arms pinwheeling as she fell.

  “Oof!” she breathed, hitting the beach. Bel and Albert ran over to help her.

  “I’m fine,” Nolie said immediately, going to stand up, but then she looked down to see what she’d tripped over. “Is that—”

  Bel pulled the object up out of the rocks and sand. It was rusty and the gold on the hilt was barely shining, but there was no doubt that it was a sword, probably a really nice one at one point.

  “The heck?” Nolie asked, and Albert straightened up, looking around.

  “From the men Maggie’s father sent,” he said. “There must be all sorts of things left about.”

  There wasn’t much time to see if that was true, as far as Nolie was concerned. They needed to find the boats and get out of there, but Albert was moving over the beach, his eyes searching.

  “Al!” Bel called. “We have to go!”

  “I know!” he replied, but he was still walking in the opposite direction from them, hands in his pockets, head down, scanning the rocks and sand.

  “What is he—” Nolie started, rising to her feet, but Bel stopped her with a hand on her arm.

  “His brother,” she reminded Nolie. “He’s seeing if there’s anything of his.”

  Everything in Nolie was itching to get to the other side of the island, but Albert had come with them, back to this place that had taken so much from him.

  They owed him a few minutes.

  And sure enough, after just a little bit of waiting, Al squatted down and plucked something dark from the pebbles. It was a navy-blue cap, and Nolie and Bel stood there, watching him brush it off before he sat it on his head. When he came back to them, his eyes were bright, and Nolie felt her own throat constrict. She might’ve hugged him in that moment, but he sniffed hard and nodded in the direction of the other side of the island. “Come on,” he said. “We have some rescuing to do.”

  The island was tiny, so walking around to the side where Cait had pointed didn’t take them long, but it still felt like a lifetime to Nolie. What if the boats weren’t there? What if what Cait had meant was Oh, yeah, I sunk those boats like the rest, just over that way?

  But then they rounded a tall, rocky outcrop and there, resting on the beach, waves lapping over the hull, were the two boats: the Bonny Bel, and the smaller, slighter Caillte Cruise.

  Nolie ran, feet skidding on the rocks, and from the corner of her eye, she saw Bel sprinting for her family’s boat.

  There was a metal ladder affixed to the side of the Caillte Cruise, and Nolie splashed out into the shallow water to get to it, her legs feeling numb from the cold almost immediately. But she barely noticed the cold as she heaved her way up the ladder and onto the boat.

  She saw Dave first, the bright red of his cap easy to spot where he lay on the deck. Then her eyes landed on her dad, curled on his side just past Dave, almost like he was taking a nap.

  A sob burst out of Nolie’s throat as she ran forward and fell onto her knees there on the deck, her hand going to her dad’s shoulder.

  “Dad!” she cried, shaking him hard. For too long—five heartbeats, a bunch of harsh breaths—her dad was still and silent. And then, finally, she felt him stir.

  “Nolie?” her dad asked, his voice raspy. He was blinking at her, looking like he was coming out of a dream.

  Nolie felt tears run down her cheeks, and she nodded quickly, needing to hold it together.

  “It’s okay, Dad,” she said. “It’s okay, we found you. And now we need to wake up Dave and get the heck out of here.”

  Her dad sat up slowly, a hand to the back of his head, and then he looked around, confused. “Where are we?” he asked, but Nolie had already moved over to Dave, who was groaning as she shook him awake.

  “The little island,” she said, “with the lighthouse. But Dad, it’s going to be dark soon, so—”

  “The island?” her dad repeated, and now he definitely looked awake, blue eyes bright behind his glasses. “Wait, Nol, we can’t leave yet. I’d like to see that lighthouse for myself.”

  Dave was finally awake, blinking and confused like her dad had been, so Nolie turned her attention back to her dad, who was already on his feet.

  “We need to go,” she said, standing up, too. “I know, I know, science and observation, all very awesome, but, Dad, can we just . . . please, I want to go home now.”

  Her dad stopped at that, looking at her, and Nolie held her breath.

  Then he gave a quick nod, coming over to help Dave to his feet. “Of course, honey,” he told Nolie. “Of course we can go home.”

  Breathing a sigh of relief, Nolie left her dad and Dave for a second, rushing to the rail of the boat. Several feet away, Bel, her dad, and her brother were all on their feet on the deck of the Bonny Bel, and Nolie waved to them. Bel waved back, then cupped her hands around her mouth and shouted, “Ready?”

  Glancing back over her shoulder, Nolie saw Dave making his way to the front of the boat, and she gave Bel a thumbs-up before shouting out, “Where’s Albert?”

  But even as she asked it, she saw him, still standing on the beach, his brother’s hat in his hands.

  Boys, Nolie thought, then she turned to her dad, saying, “I’ll be right back.”

  “Nolie!” her dad called, but she was already scrambling back down the ladder and through the freezing water, moving as fast as she could.

  “Climb aboard, matey, or aye-aye, or whatever we’re supposed to say at times like this,” Nolie said as she reached him, and Albert smiled at her, but he was still twisting his brother’s cap around in his hands.

  “You’re not . . . you’re not thinking you’re going to stay here, are you?” Nolie asked, every bit of her suddenly cold, and not from the water.

  Albert’s shoulders rolled underneath his shirt. “I’m scared, Nolie,” he said. The words were plain, his tone flat, but as Nolie looked into his dark eyes, she could see just how much he meant them.

  “The last time I left this island, I came back to a world where everythin
g I knew was different. Where everyone I loved was . . .”

  Albert’s throat moved, and when he started talking about it, his voice sounded huskier. “I like the new world I ended up in, I truly do, and I want to go back. But what if we can’t? What if I lose that, too?”

  Without thinking, Nolie reached out and grabbed his free hand, the one not holding his brother’s cap. “You’re not alone this time,” she said, squeezing his fingers. “You’re coming with us. And when we get back to Journey’s End, we’re going to teach you more about the internet and video games and TV and books, and anything else you want to learn. But we have to go now, Al. Please.”

  His hand was cold in hers, but when he gave her fingers an answering squeeze, Nolie felt a little warmer. And maybe he did, too, because after a moment, he smiled. “There are more video games than Dance Your Pants Off?” he asked, and smiling, Nolie pulled him toward the boat.

  When they got back on board, her dad was looking at Albert really closely, and Nolie tried to give him a look of Please do not be weird or a dad or a Weird Dad.

  And in the end, Dad just shrugged, going to stand next to Dave. Across the water, the Bonny Bel’s engines fired up, and slowly, the two boats chugged away from the island.

  The fog was still thick around them, and Nolie clutched the rail, feeling like she didn’t even want to breathe until the way was clear. Next to her, Albert was motionless, too, his brother’s hat clutched in one hand.

  The boats moved noisily over the water, engines rumbling, the smell of gasoline mixing with the salt of the sea, and Nolie thought she would probably always associate that smell with this moment, heading for the thick wall of gray all around them.

  Or she would, if they ever got out of this fog.

  And then, as both the Caillte Cruise and the Bonny Bel picked up some speed, the fog seemed to part like a curtain, revealing the deep slate sea and the soft purple sky.

  Nolie let out a long breath, and next to her, Albert made a surprised noise in his throat.