“There’s another can full up there. These are the most recent.”
“She’s the real deal, Otto. You see somebody like this once a century. Maybe. I’ve only seen one other.” Flanagan’s voice barely reached Otto’s ears but the words hit him like a stone.
“What are you saying?”
Flanagan looked him in the eye. He looked sad. “Damn the company. That girl belongs here. On St. Cloud. She’s got more gift than almost anybody I’ve ever seen. You’re good. Damn good. You’ve got power to burn. She’s better. She’s got power and subtlety.” He flicked a fox over. “Look at that inlay. That’s a fox, sure as I’m standin’ here. She’s never seen a fox except maybe in pictures. Have you?”
Otto shook his head. “Pictures is all.”
Flanagan pointed to one of Otto’s whelkies, a fox sitting with his tail around his front paws. “You can carve it, though.”
“So what do we do?”
“About Sarah?” Flanagan shook his head. “I don’t know. You filed the exemption, right?”
“She’s good for a couple of years.”
“You need to get her off that boat, too, but it might be the best place for her right now.”
Otto shook his head to try to clear it. “What?”
“You’ve had decades to listen to the world. You’re just barely able to hear it now because of that damned boat. Too much engine. Too much commerce. You’d make a hell of a fisherman, Otto, but you’re a better shaman. The boat takes too much of your focus.”
“And Sarah?”
Flanagan’s eyebrows danced on his forehead again. “She’s strong enough she can probably hear over the noise, but she doesn’t know what she’s listening for.”
“I’m not sure I know,” Otto said.
“You know it when you hear it. She’s still learnin’. So she needs to get off the boat. Problem is that she’d be worse off in one of the company offices. She lacks the trade skills for anythin’ better.” Flanagan poked at the whelkies, stirring them around with his fingertip. “She needs to be walkin’ the beach, but if she does, the company would have to toss her off the planet.”
“So what’s that leave?”
Flanagan pursed his lips, still gazing at the whelkies. “Married would do it. She needs a husband who’d give her room to be her.”
“She barely has anything to say outside the cottage.”
Flanagan grinned at Otto. “You’re not listenin’ to her either, I bet.”
Otto started to correct the old man’s presumption when Flanagan held up a calming hand.
“Easy. You’ve done real good with her. Just what I see on this bench tells me that.” His expression changed from one of assured confidence to the look of a man who’s heard something that he can’t quite believe and isn’t sure he heard at all. He looked back at her whelkies. “Maybe her beach is somewhere else.”
“Where else would it be?” Otto asked, his frustration mounting by the moment.
Flanagan looked up at the ceiling. “Seems to me there’s a lot of choices.”
Otto felt an icy chill down his spine and his stomach nearly revolted. “What would anybody out there know?” He tried to rein in his anger, but Flanagan’s expression told him he’d failed.
“Might be surprised,” he said. “There’s beaches and beaches. Not all of them are made of sand.”
“I can’t lose her,” Otto said. “I lost her mother. I can’t lose her, too.”
Flanagan offered a sad smile and a pat on the shoulder. “Truth is? You can’t keep her. Best you keep that in mind.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
Callum’s Cove: November 12, 2346
SARAH STARED OUT THE window, watching her grandfather stride off into the morning. “He drives me crazy.”
“Who?” her grandmother asked. “Your grandfather?”
Sarah offered a short laugh and turned, leaning back against the counter. “Well, him, too, I suppose but I was talking about Papa.”
Rachel’s eyebrows rose a bit but her lips curved into a wry smile. “That doesn’t surprise me. Richard won’t be back until tomorrow. You can walk the beach if you want. Walk off the angst.” She gave Sarah a one-armed hug and poured mugs of fresh tea. “Or we can have tea and I can tell you embarrassing stories about your father.”
Sarah returned the hug and took up the mug before taking a seat at the table. “Logically, I know he grew up here. In this cottage.” She looked around the room. “Every time I visit, it feels surreal. Has it changed any?”
“Well, the appliances got an upgrade a decade ago,” Rachel said, joining her at the table. “But you’re sleeping in his old bed. The bedding is new but the frame’s the same.” She sipped her tea. “Wanna talk about it?”
Sarah closed her eyes and let the quiet settle around her. She closed her fingers around the mug, feeling the heat of the hot ceramic. “I don’t know,” she said. “Maybe.”
“He worries about you,” Rachel said.
Sarah let the refrigerator’s quiet hum pull her eyes open. “I worry about him, too. He’s so alone.”
Rachel’s eyes widened slightly. “That’s quite an observation. Is that what drives you crazy?”
Sarah laughed and hid her embarrassment by taking a sip of the hot tea. “No. He’s always harping about having to find a job or get married or I’m going to be deported.”
Rachel nodded and took a sip from her own mug. “Parents always worry about what their kids will become. How they’ll make their way in the world.”
“If I had a Y-chromosome, it wouldn’t be an issue.” She could taste the bitterness on her own tongue.
Rachel leaned over the table, resting her forearms on the varnished wood. “Yeah. There would still be an issue. Just not the same one.”
Sarah felt the muscles in her shoulders tense up and her lips press together against the angry rebuttal. The quiet sound of the world turning took her attention and she let the moment pass. “If I were a boy, I couldn’t be deported for being a shaman.”
Rachel’s soft smile helped ease Sarah even more. “I worry about him still. He’s how old? Fifty-five?”
The idea took Sarah sideways. “What is there to worry about? He’s a grown man.”
“He’s still my boy. I’m proud of him, of what he’s become. But parents all worry. Will their kids grow up to be happy, fulfilled? Safe? St. Cloud isn’t a dangerous place by itself but the ocean is unforgiving. Emotions even less so.” She sipped her tea again, not taking her gaze from Sarah. “And, as you say, he’s so alone. He’s still grieving over the loss of your mother.”
Sarah let that idea take a couple of laps around her brain. “It’s been seventeen stanyers.”
Rachel nodded.
“Is that normal?”
Rachel shrugged. “Normal doesn’t really apply to people. The statistical distribution of characteristics are sometimes useful for looking at big pictures but are totally useless when dealing with the individual.”
Sarah wrestled that idea into submission. “So you know how many restrooms to put in the meeting hall but not who’s going to use them.”
Rachel laughed. “Yeah. That.” She took another sip. “What do you think would be different?”
“If I was a boy?”
Rachel nodded.
“Well, he wouldn’t be pestering me about getting married or getting a job, for one.”
“How do you figure?”
“For starters, I wouldn’t be facing deportation.”
“How would you eat?” Rachel asked. “Where would you live?”
Sarah shook her head. “Right where I am.”
“For how long?” Rachael asked. “Village doesn’t need two shamans.”
Sarah hunched over her tea and pondered the dark liquid swirling in the mug. “Maybe it should. Not everybody would want to talk with him.”
“How many would talk with you?” Rachel asked.
“Young people haven’t got anybody to go to,” Sarah said,
testing the idea and feeling the dare in her words but tossing them onto the table anyway.
“Young people like you?” Rachel asked.
The calm-voiced lack of judgment made Sarah look up from her tea. “Yeah.”
“It’s the weakness in the system,” Rachel said. “Otto ran into it with his father.”
“Really?”
Rachel nodded. “When he was younger than you, he just wanted to be a fisherman.”
“I remember,” Sarah said.
“Well, his father wouldn’t abide it. Forbade him to work on the draggers. Made his wishes known along the waterfront. Scuttled whatever small chance he had there.”
Sarah felt her jaw sag. “Why?”
Rachel shook her head. “I thought it was a mistake. Told him so. He just told me to wait and see.”
“I don’t understand how a father could do that to his son.”
“I didn’t either.” Rachel bit her lips for a moment. “We had a lot of adult discussions about it.”
“But he became a shaman,” Sarah said.
Rachel’s shrug barely lifted her shoulders. “He was always a shaman. His father is, so he was always going to be.”
“Son of a shaman,” Sarah said.
Rachel nodded. “Not all the men with the title actually have the talent. It skips generations sometimes and shows up under different circumstances. Your great-grandfather—Richard’s father—came into his talent later in life. He’s quite a character but practices mostly up north among the ranchers.”
“He wasn’t born the son of a shaman?”
“No. His father was a sheep rancher out on the eastern rocks.”
Sarah shook her head. “I can’t imagine what that must have been like. Shearing sheep one day and then, what? Listening to the world? Does he carve whelkies?”
Rachel shrugged. “I know he used to. He’d come collect some driftwood and shells every so often. Sometimes he’d stop in.” A brief smile tweaked Rachel’s lips so fast that Sarah wasn’t sure she’d seen it.
“What was that?” she asked. “That little smile.”
Rachel bit her lips together and shrugged. “My husband, dear man that he is and always has been, didn’t really seem to have much of a gift until he almost died when Otto was younger.”
“How can you tell?”
“It’s odd. One of those before-and-after things that you didn’t realize was missing until you see the change.” Rachel sipped her tea. “He always looked out for the village. It was his reason for being. He saw the call to service as the be-all and end-all. Carving the whelkies was about the art.”
“His carving is amazing,” Sarah said.
“Compare that to your father’s,” Rachel said.
Sarah rolled that idea around. “How could you? They’re so different.”
“What about yours?” Rachel asked, not quite hiding her smile behind her cup.
“What about mine? I learned from Papa.”
“Your whelkies look nothing like his.”
“Well, why would they? We’re different people.”
“Richard thought that your father’s whelkies lacked.”
“Lacked what?”
“I’m not sure. Artistic merit? Adequate technique?” Rachel shrugged again. “Your father wanted to be a fisherman but he was born with a talent, a gift. It didn’t really blossom until he was well into puberty but once it did, it eclipsed everything else. He started carrying a staff even then.”
“He still does. Only time I’ve never seen him without it is indoors.”
“People used to snicker behind his back about it when he first started carrying it. I don’t know if he even noticed.”
Sarah sighed and looked into her cup. “People laugh at me, too. I notice.”
Rachel set her cup on the table and reached a hand across. “People don’t do well with somebody who’s different.”
“I don’t want to be different.”
Rachel stretched to touch Sarah’s hand. “We’re all different, hon. It’s just some are more obviously different. What do they laugh about?”
Sarah looked down at Rachel’s hand. “They think I’m weird.”
“That’s not a bad thing,” Rachel said. “You’re a shaman. You were born with it. It’s been part of you since you first took breath. You see differently. You hear differently.”
“How do you know?” Sarah asked, hating the plaintive whine in her voice but incapable of correcting it.
Rachel smiled and Sarah felt the warmth of her gaze. “Because I see you. I hear you. I’ve been through it twice. Once with Richard and once with your father. It’s something people recognize, even if they don’t know what it is. It’s part of who you are. I don’t have it, whatever it is. This ‘listening to the world’ thing. I don’t know what you hear. I can’t see what you see. But I know—without a hint of doubt—that you hear and see something wonderful.”
Sarah blinked back the sting in her eyes and tried to swallow the lump in her throat. “I have no idea what I’m doing.”
Rachel laughed. “That’s not being a shaman.”
“What?”
“Not knowing what you’re doing? That’s not the shaman part.” She grinned. “That’s the human part. Most people don’t know what they’re doing at least half the time. They just pretend they do.”
The words surprised a laugh out of Sarah. “That’s not really helpful.”
“Just laying it out there.” Rachel picked up her mug and took another sip. “What do you hear?”
“What? When I listen to the world?”
Rachel nodded.
Sarah lifted her own cup, mirroring Rachel’s action and taking a sip. “I don’t know. It’s not something I can put a finger on. Or describe. Sometimes it’s a feeling.” She paused and set her mind free to wander for a moment. “Sometimes it feels like I just know something that I shouldn’t be able to know.”
“Like what?” Rachel asked.
“Like I’m going to find a good piece of shell in the next pile of weed or that Papa is looking for me.”
“Does it always happen?”
Sarah shook her head. “Sometimes, I think it’s just wishful thinking. I need a piece of shell and wish I’d find it soon.”
Rachel chuckled. “Everybody does that, too.”
Sarah smiled back. “I figured that much.”
“What do you hear now?” Rachel asked.
“Here?”
Rachel nodded. “I know you’re indoors but do you hear anything now?”
Sarah let the little wave of embarrassment pass before she tried to listen. The quietest of gusts of wind wafted through the eaves of the cottage, momentarily audible above the hum of the fridge and the quiet drone of the network terminal in the corner. The tea kettle ticked as the metal cooled. In the distance she heard a gull call and the quiet that said a storm lay just beyond the horizon. “There’s a storm coming.”
Rachel’s eyebrows rose, slow as the tide. “A storm?”
Sarah nodded.
“You know when?”
Sarah shook her head. “It’s beyond the horizon right now. Just starting to form. Can’t tell.”
“But you feel it?”
“I can hear it in the wind. It’s faint.” She took a slurp of tea and shook her head. “Dumb. There’s always a storm forming somewhere. I don’t know why I said that.”
Rachel settled back in her chair, her gaze seeming to measure Sarah’s face. “Right, then. How about we make some biscuits to go with dinner? Your grandfather’s not coming back until tomorrow, but we can have our own little feast.”
Sarah grinned. “Will you show me how to make biscuits? Papa always talks about yours.”
“Stick with me, kiddo. I’ll make you the biscuit queen of Cape Grace.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
Cape Grace: November 18, 2346
SARAH LOOKED AT OTTO with a scowl as dark as a gust front. “One season and you’re quitting?”
O
tto shrugged. “It’s not helping the village to have me fishing.”
“You mean being on the company payroll?” she asked, her eyes narrowing. “What did you hear?”
“You heard Mr. Comstock. It’s creating a problem in the village.”
“And you decided to give in while I was away?”
Otto smiled and shook his head. “We just need to find somebody else to run the boat. You’ll still be crew.”
“I don’t want to work with somebody else. I thought we made a good team.”
“We do. It’s not something I can do any more without jeopardizing my position here. People need to trust me. Accept me. This is the kind of rift that can get us—me—booted out of town. I can’t risk it.”
She flounced back in her chair and folded her arms over her chest. “Something else is going on.”
Otto sat and drank his tea.
“You’re not going to say anything?” she asked.
“There’s nothing to say. I need to meet with Ed Comstock and arrange another skipper to take over the boat.”
“What if there isn’t anybody?”
“You’ll be eighteen in May. You could run it.”
“By myself?”
“Hire a crew.”
“I’m not a fisherman,” she said, her brows lowering in a scowl. “I don’t know anything about handling a boat.”
“You were fine with me.”
“Papa, I can’t believe I’m having to be the voice of reason here. This is insane.”
Otto shook his head. “Actually, it’s pretty common for a youngster to start out with something like crabbing—or long-lining—before they move up to draggers.”
“What’s common is learning to handle boats before you can walk and working alongside your parents and sibs for a few stanyers before taking a boat out on your own.”
“You may have a point.”
“I’ve been working alongside you on the beach and learning to carve. One summer of crewing on a crabber doesn’t qualify me to be a fisherman.”
“I’d rather you didn’t work on a dragger.”
“I don’t want to work on a dragger.” Her words echoed from the appliances, making the house ring.
“No need to yell.”
She hung her head forward, bouncing it on her neck.
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