Nolie blinked, her hands moving a little deeper into her pockets. “That seems weird. I mean, it’s been here forever, right?”
With a nod, Bel hopped off the rock she was standing on, her boots sliding in the pebbles. “Yeah, but the two things have always been separate. Institute up there”—she raised a hand toward the cliffs above them—“village down here.” Lowering her palm, Bel held it out at her waist.
Nolie worried a stray pebble with the toe of her boot. “My dad said that people in the village aren’t happy with the Institute right now,” she offered, and Bel nodded.
“Oh, aye. Last week, they wanted to fly these wee robot things into the Boundary?”
“Drones?” Nolie suddenly thought her dad’s work might be cooler than she’d thought.
“That’s it,” Bel said, looking back out at the Boundary. “Drones. Anyway, no one in Journey’s End really wanted them to do it, though. Not sure why, just that it was ‘tampering with things,’ or something like that. There was a petition and everything.”
Suddenly those dirty looks her dad had gotten in town made more sense. “But the Institute did it anyway?” she asked, already knowing the answer.
Bel confirmed it with another nod. “Aye. Few days back now.” She shrugged, tucking her hair behind her ears. “Not sure what all the fuss was, though. Anyway, I’d like to see the Institute. I’ll have to ask my mum.”
“She didn’t sign the petition?” Nolie joked, but Bel looked back at her, a deep V between her brows.
“She wrote it.”
CHAPTER 6
“SO WHERE WERE YOU THIS AFTERNOON?”
Bel looked up from her book to see her mum leaning in the doorway. Like Bel, she had blond hair, although hers had gone darker as she’d gotten older. She also had Bel’s small nose, which made Bel feel better every time she looked in the mirror and thought she looked a bit puggish. Not puggish, she’d remind herself. Like Mum.
Her mum was looking down that nose at her now. Bel dog-eared her page, laying the book next to her on the bed. “I went down to the beach. I knew you’d be coming right back, so—”
Mum cut her off with a shake of her head. “Not worried about the shop being closed. Town was deserted anyway. It’s just that it’s not like you to leave in the middle of the afternoon.”
Bel didn’t answer right away, and her mum sat on the edge of her bed, the mattress sinking slightly.
“I saw Leslie and her friends when I was headed back from lunch,” Mum said, her voice soft. “Did they come in the store?”
Bel rolled her shoulders, uncomfortable. “Just for a second.”
Sighing, Mum reached out and ruffled Bel’s hair. “I know it’s rough fighting with friends, love.”
Bel didn’t bother telling Mum that she and Leslie hadn’t actually had a fight. Sometimes she wished something big and dramatic had happened, like they did on the soaps her nan watched.
Then, at least, there would’ve been a thing to point to. Proof of why Leslie didn’t seem to like her anymore.
Instead of saying any of that, Bel said, “I met this girl. Her dad works for the Institute and she’s in town for the summer.” Bel scooted back against her headboard, circling her knees with her arms. “She seemed nice.”
She didn’t add that she’d taken Nolie down to the beach and the caves in search of a ghost. Not that she believed in ghosts, of course. Like she’d said to Nolie, it was probably Donal. He was dark-haired, and definitely the type to be messing about in those caves. But she’d liked Nolie’s bright smile and purple wellies so much, and if ghost hunting would help make them friends, Bel had been willing to give it a shot.
Mum reached out to tuck a strand of Bel’s hair behind her ear. “That’s brilliant, Bonny Bel,” she said, but her face didn’t seem to think it was brilliant. There was a crease between her brows, and her eyes were slightly narrowed.
“I know you don’t like me spending time with the tourists—” Bel began, but Mum shook her head.
“It’s not that I don’t like it. I just want you to understand that friendships with outsiders can be . . . difficult.”
Bel nodded. It was the same talk Mum always gave, the one most kids in Journey’s End received from their parents at some point. The village was so small that visitors were always exciting, even though they came every summer. But that’s all they were: visitors. And kids born in Journey’s End tended to stay in Journey’s End, while the visitors almost always left. Nearly every family had a story about someone whose heart had been broken after the tourist they’d fallen in love with had left and forgotten all about them.
Friendships were just as dangerous, according to Bel’s mum, who began listing the reasons as she folded her long legs to sit on Bel’s bed. “It’s just that it’s so hard to stay in touch when people leave here, Bel.”
“I know,” Bel said on a sigh, glancing over at the laptop on her desk. She’d inherited it from Simon, who’d gotten a new one when he’d gone off to uni, but it wasn’t good for much besides typing. Journey’s End technically got the internet, but just like the TV and mobile phones, it never worked exactly right. Bel didn’t even have an email address, much less a Facebook, or her own YouTube channel, or a blog. There had never been a point. She saw the same kids every day at school, and those were the same kids she’d seen at school the year before. The same kids she’d been seeing since nursery school, really. So what was the point of seeing them online, too? If anything interesting happened, she’d hear about it at school.
But that’s what made it hard to find friends who lived outside the village. Other kids did have Facebooks and email addresses and mobile phones that worked. And when they couldn’t get in touch with people in Journey’s End by using those methods, they tended to stop trying to contact the friends they’d made on vacation.
It was what every kid in Journey’s End grew up learning; eventually, the outlanders would only hurt you.
“She’s not here on holiday, really,” Bel said to her mum. “If her dad lives here, maybe she’ll come every summer.”
“Maybe,” Mum agreed, but again, Bel could see that she didn’t really believe it.
For a moment, Bel thought about pointing out to her mum that it wasn’t only the visitors to Journey’s End who could hurt you. She’d known Leslie her whole life, and look how that had gone.
Of course, that all might have been because of Alice, which would just prove Mum’s point.
Bel sighed. Why did every kind of friendship have to be so hard?
Folding her arms, Mum looked around Bel’s room. It was little, not much more than a closet, really, with the low ceilings and shadowy corners that came from being tucked under the eaves of the house.
Bel loved it. As the only girl in a house full of brothers, she’d been given her own room, and even though it was tiny and dim and so close to the washer that every time Mum did laundry, Bel’s bed vibrated, it was hers. But then she thought about how a girl like Nolie might see this room—Nolie, who lived in one of the big houses and wore new wellies with daisies on them.
“She invited me to go with her to the Institute tomorrow,” Bel said, and Mum’s head jerked toward her.
“The Institute?”
“Her dad wanted to show her around, and she asked if I’d come with her.” Bel sat up a little straighter. “Can I go?”
Mum’s shoulders rose and fell beneath her plaid shirt, and Bel thought she might be about to say she couldn’t go. Bel didn’t get told no very often, but then, she hardly ever asked for anything. With three boys in the house, the McKissicks usually had their hands full. And that usually suited Bel just fine—she didn’t mind life in the background.
Mum finally patted Bel’s knee and said, “Just don’t stay gone too long. Are they picking you up at the shop?”
“Yeah.”
Mum nodded. “All right. B
ut I want to meet them before you go.”
“Done,” Bel said with a grin, and her mum smiled, too, reaching out to tap the end of Bel’s nose.
“Have to admit,” Mum said as she got off the bed, “I’m a bit jealous. I’ve always wanted to see the inside of that place.”
Bel thought of the Institute, a big, old house converted to a lab years and years ago. She’d always stayed away from it—everyone in Journey’s End did—but she’d always been curious, too. And now she would finally get to see it. Get a tour, even.
She wasn’t sure whether she was excited or nervous. A bit of both, really.
Mum walked to the one small, round window high up on the far wall. It was another part of the room Bel loved. Made her feel like she was on a ship, looking out a porthole.
“Your brother said something about the Boundary feeling funny today,” Mum told her, crossing her arms as she looked out. You could barely make out the Caillte Sea from their house—it was just a smudge of gray in the distance—and you could never see the Boundary, since their house didn’t face it, but Bel liked the view anyway.
“It’s a magical fog bank, Mum,” Bel teased. “It’s meant to feel funny.”
Her mum turned back, tugging at the hem of her shirt. “Hardly magic, silly. It’s just . . .” she trailed off, sighing. “I just wish the Institute hadn’t gone mucking about with those little remote control robots.”
“Drones,” Bel supplied, and her mum nodded.
“Aye, those. Flying drones into it, taking pictures, when the whole point of the tourist boats is ‘the closest look you’ll ever get at the Boundary.’” She snorted softly, folding her arms. “Probably didn’t even read the petition. And I doubt a one of those drones came back.” She shook her head. “Waste of time all around.”
Bel shifted on her bed, tugging her Midlothian Hearts blanket up over her knees. “Not a total waste, though, right? Doing science? Figuring it all out?”
Bel’s mum made a noise in her throat that sounded like she wasn’t so sure about that. “Just doesn’t seem like a thing people should be messing about with,” she said at last, and Bel picked her book back up.
“Tell you what, Mum. Tomorrow, when I go to the Institute, if I see any machines that say ‘Fog Mucker-Upper,’ I will sabotage them.”
That made Mum laugh, and as she walked past the bed, she ruffled Bel’s hair again. “You do that, my wee mad scientist,” she teased, but before she left, Bel caught another glimpse of her face.
Mum usually looked worried—having three sons, and a husband whose job it was to take a boat out toward a thing that eats boats, will do that—but there was something different in her expression now.
She almost looked . . . scared.
FROM “THE SAD TALE OF CAIT MCINNISH,”
CHAPTER 13,
Legends of the North
AN ACCIDENT. A HORRIBLE ONE, OF COURSE, BUT AN accident all the same. Cait had loved little Rabbie as though he were her own, had been his nanny since he was barely out of the cradle, and if she could’ve taken his place on his funeral bower, she would have.
Cait could not trade her life for Rabbie’s, but that did not mean the laird of the castle would let her live.
The girl who did not believe in magic was condemned as a witch, the laird claiming she had purposely thrown his son, his heir, from the tall tower to imbue herself with power.
Cait was a girl from the village, and she waited for the village to rise to her defense. They knew she was no witch. They knew Rabbie’s death was a tragedy, but not a murder.
The village stayed quiet, though. And when Cait sat in a bottle dungeon in the laird’s castle, her knees drawn to her chest, her breathing even louder than the waves that crashed outside, the village remained quiet. And when the laird announced his punishment—that Cait would be put in a rowboat and left to die in the middle of the Caillte Sea—the village went quieter still.
Perhaps they were not staying silent, but merely holding their breath, hoping for the laird’s grief and rage to pass, hoping it could all be vented onto this one girl and not at them. This girl who had been one of them until her fourteenth birthday, when she’d gone to work in the castle on the hill.
CHAPTER 7
“WHY IS THERE FISH ON THE TABLE?” NOLIE ASKED, staring at what was apparently breakfast.
Her dad turned away from the coffeepot to grin at her.
“Kippers,” he said. “Thought you might want a traditional Scottish breakfast for your first morning here.”
Pulling out a chair, Nolie kept her eyes on that row of skinny fish, their heads still on. The kitchen was small, without room for much more than the table and a refrigerator a lot smaller than the one Nolie had back home in Georgia. Outside, it was gray again, a soft rain pattering against the windows.
“Come on, Nol,” her dad said, picking up his coffee cup and taking the seat opposite her. “If you can do grits, you can do kippers.”
Nolie wanted to point out that there was a big difference between a nice bowl of grits—preferably with lots of shredded cheese—and a fried fish that was still looking at her, but hey, she was here to try new things, right?
So Nolie put a kipper on her plate, along with a grilled tomato, cooked mushrooms, two pieces of toast, and a slab of something her dad said was bacon, but looked more like regular ham to her.
“Did you make all this?” she asked, putting butter on her toast.
Dad leaned back in his chair. “Yup,” he said. “I’ve gotten pretty good at the full Scottish, although I did leave out the beans.”
Beans? Nolie shuddered, pushing her mushrooms around the plate. But even if the breakfast wasn’t what she was used to, she was weirdly relieved her dad had made it. Looking at that spread, it occurred to her that he might have a girlfriend, some Scottish lady who cooked for him and stood over his shoulder while he worked at his computer. Someone he walked through the village with, hand in hand.
Nolie told herself she would’ve been fine if that was the case—her mom had been out on two dates since the divorce, and that hadn’t been so bad—but still, it was nicer to think of her dad in here by himself, making this breakfast for her because he wanted to share something Scottish he liked.
And that’s why Nolie ate not one, not two, but three bites of the kipper.
Once breakfast was done, she and her dad got into his car, heading out to pick up Bel so they could bring her to the Institute.
Dad stopped at the mailbox on their way down the drive, and as soon as Nolie saw the bright purple envelope in his hand, she grinned, making grabby hands at him. “Gimme, gimme,” she said, making him laugh as he got back in the car and handed her the letter from her mom.
“I take it you were expecting this?”
“Mom said she was sending one before I even left,” Nolie explained. “I think she was hoping it would get here before I did.”
She went to open the letter, but then looked over at her dad. He was driving again, eyes on the road, and even though she knew it wouldn’t have hurt his feelings or anything if she read the letter from her mom—and she really, really wanted to read it—she decided to save it for later, when she was alone.
The drive to the village was short, and Nolie twisted in her seat, looking back up the hill they’d come down. “I bet I could walk that pretty easy,” she said, and her dad nodded.
“Just about everything in the village is within walking distance,” he told her. “It’s just that the weather is usually so bad, people prefer to drive.”
Nolie settled back into her seat. That was good to know. She didn’t like the idea of being dependent on Dad every time she wanted to do anything.
Bel and her mum were standing outside the store as they pulled up, and Nolie didn’t miss the way Bel’s mum’s eyebrows drew together as she looked at Dad.
“Dr. Stanhope,” she said w
hen Dad got out of the car, and he gave her a smile in return.
“Mrs. McKissick,” he replied. “Thank you for letting Bel spend the day with Nolie. I think they really hit it off yesterday.”
“Dad,” Nolie said in a low voice, but she smiled at Bel and gave her a little wave.
Bel returned it, but Nolie thought she might be picking up on the tension between their parents, too.
“Just . . . have her back by four?” Bel’s mum said, giving Bel’s shoulders a little squeeze, and Nolie’s dad touched the brim of his hat in a salute.
“Will do,” he said, and then Bel got into the backseat. Nolie did, too, wanting to sit beside her rather than up front.
“I’m glad this morning is starting off super awkward,” she said, and to her relief, Bel started laughing.
• • •
“So, scale of one to Loch Ness monster, what’s creepier, that cave or this place?”
Nolie asked the question about an hour later as she attempted to slide down a banister, but the tights she’d had to wear underneath her shorts—seriously, this place was way too cold for June—snagged on the wood, and she nearly tipped off and onto the stairs.
From the landing above her, Bel laughed and gave her own slide down the banister. “Oh, cave, definitely. This place isn’t creepy; it’s just old.”
“Old and creepy,” Nolie argued, jumping down. As if agreeing with her, the floorboards beneath her feet creaked loudly, and when Bel finished her slide, there was a thick layer of dust across her backside. She swiped at it as Nolie sighed and leaned back against a nearby bookcase.
So far, their trip to her dad’s work had been less than thrilling. He said he’d give them a tour, but as soon as they came in, one of his assistants told him there were some readings he needed to look at. Dad sighed at that, but when he turned back to Nolie and Bel, he seemed fairly cheerful, telling them they could explore the Institute. “All the equipment we use now is on the ground floor,” he told them, “but there’s still some neat stuff to see upstairs.”