by E M Graham
‘Yeah, sure,’ she replied, absently wiping her hands on her jeans. ‘I really don’t know what they’re thinking of, sending you to Scarp this unprepared. I think they’re just setting you up for failure.’
I stiffened at those words, remembering my conversation with Cate. What Fergie feared was a distinct possibility, but it was too late for me to back out now.
‘That coin, what’s the story behind it? And how the hell did it end up with the likes of you?’ She turned back along the sandy path. ‘Never mind, don’t tell me, it’s been in places I don’t even want to know about. Hide it back in your case now.’
After securing it deep amongst my clean underwear, I straightened up and pulled the handle out of my carry-on. ‘Where do we go from here?’
‘That’s our road.’ She hoisted her pack on her back and set off along the road cut into the dune. ‘Ye’d better hurry, it’s getting dark again and the beathach creige will be waking up,’ she called back to me.
I followed her as fast as I could in the gathering gloom, but it was a hard struggle walking on the sand with my large knapsack on my back and carrying the other case. I was, however, feeling happier now the medallion was safely hidden by Fergie’s spell. Although she’d done it reluctantly, I now felt I wasn’t alone, even if it was a reluctant partnership we shared.
After a long struggle through the path, the sand disappeared from under our feet and we walked down a rutted gravel path to meet a concrete boat slip rising from the sea. Familiar as I was with the action of salt water, I could tell the old pier had been there a long time, with its crumbled edges and the sea moss growing in the cracks.
We were in a sheltered cove, just an inlet to the sea between two cliffs of rock, and this was the end of the road. There was nothing around us but the hush of the waves, stone and mist.
‘Hmph, the boat’s not even here yet,’ she grumbled. ‘Bastards, leaving us to wait like this.’
All around us was stone in varying stages of decomposition – large boulders rubbed smooth by the actions of winter waves, small round pebbles lying in the crack between them, and sand underlying it all. The rocks appeared dry enough except for the insidious dampness of the air. Fergie walked close to where the sea lapped the broken concrete and stared hard into the mist as if willing a ferry to appear.
‘Mind your feet there,’ I called out to her. ‘The tide’s coming in, you don’t want a rogue wave to grab you.’ I could see by the calmness of the small waves there was little chance of that happening, but I wanted to show Fergie I was not a total ignoramus. I might know little about magic, but I knew all about the treachery of the ocean.
I jumped off the slipway, heading for the largest boulder. We had not walked more than half a kilometer, but it had been a heavy trudge through the sand and I needed to take the weight off my feet.
She turned to look at me. ‘Ye might want to watch yourself,’ she said nastily. ‘I warned you about the rock beasts, didn’t I?’
‘Is that what the beathe... beathe whatevers are? You mentioned them,’ I said as I threw off my backpack and sat heavily on a particularly beautiful white and red granite boulder, one with soft black lines running through it. ‘I don’t see any monsters around here though.’
I lifted my eyes up to the top of the cliffs surrounding us. Nothing moved, no threatening creatures sidled over to peer at us, ready to make us their next meal. Speaking of which, I was pretty sure I had a bar of chocolate inside my knapsack, so I rummaged through it. Yes, as I thought, in the side pocket. Bliss.
‘Gerroff it!’ she screeched. ‘You’re feckin’ sittin’ on one! You’re on a beathach!’
I could only gape at her as she had a mini-meltdown on the slip.
I was about to shout something rude back to her when the boulder shifted beneath my butt in a movement like a roiling wave, and I was off that rock in a second. But I didn’t have the sense to run right then, I was too mesmerized by the sight of this solid stone moving in a way that wasn’t natural for its kind. Ancient crepey eyelids flashed up to reveal liquid pools of oily black turning in their sockets until they found me; I could now see the face in the lines and wrinkles and colors of the rock. Two nubs I had thought to be natural outcroppings of erosion from eons of waves and wind perked up and swivelled toward me. The thing had ears, and now I could pick out the snout of it, lifting in my direction.
The beast focused on me and under that awful stare I felt my limbs growing heavy, thick and sluggish, as if the neurons of my brain were no longer sending out signals to the rest of me, and one part of my mind realized its gaze was petrifying me. I was becoming slowly, inexorably, like a rock myself.
‘Don’t look at it in the eye!’
But I couldn’t tear my gaze away. It opened its mouth, and that was a terrible thing to behold, the rows of sharp flintlike teeth draped with green seaweed and the remains of a rotted fish tail still in the corner of its jaw.
As the boulder rose on its haunches, I knew I had to force myself into action or my bones would end up crunched and shredded and part of the white sand beneath the pebbles, yet I couldn’t move.
The craighe moved fast for a rock, one great stone paw was reaching for me even as this realization screamed in my head; one swipe with that weight and I would be flat on the beach and it could munch at its leisure.
Fergie was not coming to my rescue; instead, she screamed shrill instructions at me from the safety of the concrete pier. Yeah, I agreed I should run away, but that’s hard to do when your legs are solidifying into granite.
From the corner of my eye, I saw that her screaming had awoken other red white and black rock lumps and they were moving to join in on the feast of me, and now I was surrounded by a whole clan of the strange beasts, their black eyes gluing me into place and their jaws gearing up in anticipation. The whole beach was suddenly a seething mass of living granite.
The pier was too far away for me to escape to, even if I could command my increasingly numb legs to move. I had nowhere to go but up.
To this day, I have no idea how I did it, perhaps it was the surge of adrenaline in all my channels, for that was the only thing moving in my body by then. Perhaps it helped that I let loose a stream of invectives while I did so, naturally falling back into my Newfoundland roots and the colorful language I’d grown up hearing on the old streets by the harbor.
‘Goddamn-hangashore-bastard-sleveens!’ This was my mouth talking, while my heart and mind and soul thought ‘Up!’ and then I was there, hovering over the beasts out of their jaw reach by mere inches. As I teetered, trying to find my balance when there was none to be had in this new weightlessness, I watched as my last chocolate bar slipped out of my hand like it was all in slow motion, and it fell amongst the hungry stone clan below my feet.
‘No!’ But it was gone, a casualty in the clash of the rock beasts, and the largest of them shouldered out the littler ones to get at the shiny piece of foil that smelled so sweet.
With their eyes no longer holding me in petrification thrall, I was free to run away. Still with my knapsack in my hand, I hopped on the backs of the beasts, quickly placing my feet from one beast to another in a crazy zigzag pattern till I reached the safety of the concrete.
Fergie didn’t offer me a hand up, leaving me to scrabble up the slippery cement face any way I could and when I reached the top she merely stared at me, her mouth wide open.
‘You’ll be letting in flies if you don’t shut it,’ I said, totally pissed at her lack of support during my danger, and at losing the last of my chocolate.
‘How the feck did ye do that? You told me you had no spells.’
I’d done nothing but run away, yet if I’d learned one thing growing up with the bully kids of the Witch Kin, it was to never admit your weaknesses. When in doubt, waffle.
‘What did you see?’
She turned back to the rock beasts who were now all turning back to their slumbering stone state with the excitement
over. Only one beast, the original, the largest moved slightly, and that was just to spit out the foil wrapper like an afterthought. The silver paper lay crumpled on the pebbles, all glistening and soggy with slime.
The creature bellowed, a lonely mournful sound like a foghorn, then it too settled back to its rock stance.
‘I saw you rise in the air, you magicked yourself up with a spell I’d never heard before, and then you quieted the beasts enough to walk back over them. It was if they had no power over you.’
She was staring at me, her gray eyes wide.
I thought for a second, then nodded. Maybe that was what happened, maybe not. At the time, I thought it was the force of the stream of consciousness cursing which propelled me upwards. It had all happened in slow motion to my mind, just like when Wily E Coyote finds himself at the edge of a cliff with nowhere to go but down, but hasn’t yet realized it.
I had, for those moments in time, floated myself above the danger. Gingerly, I did a mental check through my limbs, searching for any feeling of leftover magic, and I found it, faint traces still coursing like tingles at my fingertips.
I had flown, and for real this time, not like when I’d projected my mind last September with Hugh by my side.
Fergie had missed the whole chocolate part, and thought I had calmed the beasts through some magical means. I wasn’t going to disabuse her of the notion. With my reputation preceding me, I knew I was in sore need of street cred in this new place and I would grab it anywhere I found it. Besides, I was still blown away by this newfound talent.
So I shrugged and nodded, modestly saying, ‘you do what you have to do, right?’ I casually moved away from her as if to watch the mists over the sea.
‘Get back here!’ Her voice was deepened with anger, and I looked over my shoulder in surprise.
‘Everyone says you have no training,’ she shouted, her fists now on her hips. I could see the wheels turning in her mind, every thought reflecting on her freckled face, and steeled myself for the next lambasting. ‘You tricked me into putting a hiding spell on that dirty coin!’
‘Wait now,’ I said, but with no force behind it. I could see where she was coming from, and it might be better for me if I confessed right now. ‘It really wasn’t like that...’
‘That spell has my fingerprints all over it!’ There was no stopping her. ‘You’re going to use it against me, and get me kicked off. You sneaky bitch! What an... an abominable thing to do!’
‘No, no, I...’
‘It’s... absolutely fecking brilliant.’ She still looked angry, despite her words.
I stared at her.
‘I wish I’d thought of it,’ she added, her shoulders slumped in her puffy coat. ‘Damn. I haven’t got a chance here on Scarp.’
‘Hey,’ I said, after a pause. I was feeling my way through this unknown territory. Everyone had talked about the Competition and hinted about the danger, but I’d had no idea what it really meant and I still didn’t. Fergie obviously did, and thought me far more devious than I really was. ‘Seriously, Fergie, that wasn’t a spell, I was just cursing out loud and... and I’m not so sure I flew, I just jumped higher than I’ve ever jumped before.’
‘What, you think I’d believe that, when I saw with my own eyes what happened?’
‘I didn’t trick you, and I’m really really grateful for that hiding spell.’ I was practically begging her now. I wanted, no I needed, this woman back on my side. I’d been abandoned in a strange and confusing land with no map, no anchor, and my only directions were nebulous warnings of the dangers which lay ahead. I wanted to cling to this witch who’d given me her odd sort of kindness, for with that action she’d shown a heart big enough to shield me, and I would do almost anything to regain this comfort. I thought quickly.
‘Fergie – we both know I don’t have much of a chance in this Competition thing. So, why don’t I work on helping you? That way I can learn from you, but help you at the same time? If I can help, and that’s probably a big If.’
She stared at me in disbelief, than sank down to sit on her luggage, her lilac coat pulled tight across her hips.
‘I’m serious,’ I said as I sat next to her on my own suitcase. ‘I’m going to need your help to get through this. All this competition stuff – Gawd, I don’t know anything about magic working, let alone that, and I don’t care, either. All I want is to learn to use my magic, and then go find a life for myself. If I can help you with the competition, I will.’
‘That would sort of be cheating, maybe,’ she said slowly, then thought some more before she shrugged. That was all the answer I was getting for the moment.
Neither of us had noticed a new sound introduced above the washing of the gentle waves in the little cove. It was barely recognizable, like an old memory, the creaking of ropes on wood. I looked up to see the prow of a small low-keeled boat parting the mists. With a single red sail, it drew silently along the slip where the water was deeper, a solitary black hooded figure at its helm.
‘Get on then, if you’re coming,’ Fergie said without looking at me as she heaved her bag over the side and climbed aboard. ‘He’ll no’ be waiting.’
I dragged my own bags over and dumped them in, then hesitated before I carefully grasped the railing and let myself over the side.
Once I was settled in, the small vessel turned back toward the open water. It had no motor, and there was no wind in its sail, yet it pushed silently forward through the water, leaving no wake behind it in the calm sea. Then all of a sudden we’d broken out of the mist; on one side of us a full moon rose, all bright and hard and silver in the deepening gloam of the sky, while on the other the last of the sun was fast heading toward the horizon. Above our heads, a path of stars came alive and directly in front of us rose a large black mass.
This, then, must be the island of Scarp, our destination.
I could see little in the dusk, just an outline of a castle rising from the flat land to the right with high hills looming behind it, and its windows lit and glowing from within. It was a welcome sight for my eyes.
Although the journey was smooth and the waves merely lapping in the calmness, my stomach was growing queasy as if my body were telling me not to trust the deep water, to get away to dry land as soon as I could. It didn’t help that the magic all about us was thicker than the fog had been, building like a low pressure system before a storm as we slowly made our way across the strait to the castle; but unlike the tropical system that heralded the coming of hurricane-force winds back home, this was a cold pressure, the freeze burning on the lungs with every inhale.
None of us in the boat said a word as we passed to the other shore.
Chapter 4
THE LAST OF THE LIGHT still lingered on the south-western horizon when we pulled up to the small island onto another jetty much like the one across the water. Torches burned to give us light as we disembarked.
The magic in the air lifted the minute I stepped on dry land as if I’d passed through an unseen portal, and the air was suddenly crystal clean again, of moderate temperature, laced only with the familiar smells of salt and seaweed. I breathed deeply and with relish, only then realizing how heavy and oppressive the magic-laden air over the water had been.
A single person appeared on the pier to greet us before the ferryman slipped back into the night. I could make out a tall and lanky form in the dim light, and when he turned I saw his dreadlocks streaming effortlessly down his back. Fergie laughed and greeted him, the two of them hugging and cawing at each other like crows on the wharf, but something about the very intensity of her joviality made me think she felt uneasy, perhaps it was the way her voice tightened when she laughed too hard at his small joke.
Their greeting finished abruptly, and they both turned to me at the same time.
‘Timothy, this is Dara,’ Fergie said. A nervous tension remained in her voice, as if she wasn’t totally sure of the welcome I would receive.
The
torchlight showed his chiseled, perfect eyebrows rising just a tinge as he put on a noncommittal smile and looked me up and down. ‘Well, here you are then.’
So word of my arrival to Scarp had preceded me, but Timothy sounded amused rather than offended at this half-blood’s presence on the holy island of the Kin.
‘Hey,’ I said. I was not much for small talk at the best of times, and despite the lack of meanness in his tone, there was a supercilious note to his voice that set my hackles rising. And right now I was starving, too.
‘You made it this far,’ he noted, placing stress on the second last word. His accent was like cut glass, showing that he’d been educated at the most prestigious and expensive of schools in England. ‘It will be entertaining to see how long you last.’
With that, he turned away and gallantly offered Fergie his arm. She flashed a look at me as he did so, a sort of apologetic grimace, as if to say ‘sorry, but you’re on your own now, kid’.
I trailed behind the pair as I lugged my carry-on over the cobblestone path, the uneven thumps and rolling sounding too loud in this quiet place and drowning out their hushed conversation.
We made our way up to the castle I’d seen coming across the water. From this aspect, it was unexpectedly graceful like something from a fairy tale, the bevelled glass panes of the grand entrance lit from within and shooting arcs of rainbows into the deepening twilight. The double doors stood open to allow us entrance, but before we reached it, I felt a disturbing rustle in my mind, faint like the echo of an evil chuckle. It was as chilling as the draft from an ill-fitted window in a wintery north wind, the icy fingers seeking out my most vulnerable spots and lingering, playing notes of discord and dread along my spine.
The hairs on the back of my neck rose and sweat prickled down my back, for I recognized the laugh of the Dutch sorcerer Willem, last seen on a steam ship heading out of Alt after wreaking his havoc with me and my home town. I had to pause my steps, it took all my effort to push this horror out of my mind.
