“You don’t smell like fish,” she said. “Not much of the sea about you. Not like Cal.”
He blinked. Her dog’s slobber smelled like fish, that was for sure. Again, he tried to speak. Again, he made a murrr-murrr sound.
“Shhhhhh,” she said again. “Words will come. And I’m good at teaching stray creatures …” She sat back on her heels, still observing. “… if that is what you are. When did you come out from the sea?”
Come out? Surely there were more important questions right now … such as, where was he? Why? Where was Tommy and his boat? Again, he tried to ask.
She leaned forward and touched his cheek, her fingers so light and gentle. “Shhhhhh, shhhhhh,” she went, and she sounded like calm waves on sand. “Don’t try.”
His eyelids were so heavy, and that hot, sweet air was everywhere, filling his nostrils, making him dizzy.
When he shut his eyes, he saw Tommy again. Grasping the mast. Spinning the rudder.
We’ve hit a reef!
But there’s nothing on the charts! Nothing’s meant to be here!
I’m telling you, we’ve hit a reef! There’s land!
Finn’s breath caught and he coughed. Hard. He winced, curling toward the sand. Kept coughing. Couldn’t get any air! His chest tightened until darkness swam before his eyes. Clawing at him. Wanting him. He fought its hold.
Why hadn’t Tommy washed up too?
He coughed and coughed. No air! Gasping loud, he gripped at the sand.
He heard the girl somewhere, talking to him, soothing. Then he heard her voice go farther away. He coughed. Now he was falling, sinking back into those waves … into that deep, dark cold.
Then her fingers returned, sticking something under his nose, telling him to sniff. An intense sweetness shot into his brain, like the sweetness from before but with added strength. He could breathe!
“Only sniff once,” she said. “That’s enough.”
Then her hand was gone. He was breathing fine. But his nose was tickling like he’d inhaled a whole pine forest and he was buzzing like she’d given him drugs.
“Strange,” Moss murmured.
The flowers had worked that time, exactly as they always used to … full-strong. She’d seen it right enough, the way this boy had been fading and losing breath, and how he’d snapped back with a sniff.
She gave him the shellful of water she’d fetched, too. He drank greedy like the dogs did, not even pausing for breath. She snatched it away before he could have too much.
“You need to get out of the sun,” she told him. “I’ll help.”
He shook his head, still struggling, still looking for the water. But she tipped the rest to the sand. When he widened his bluebird eyes at how the sand drank it up, she added, “You’ll be salt-starved if you have too much of that … you don’t want that as well as storm-woke!”
Grabbing his elbow, she supported him. He wasn’t so heavy as Cal, but had more substance than Pa. His fingers grasping around her shoulder were starfish-cold and thin, red from the sun. There were flies swarming around the gash in his leg. She waited ’til his breath went regular and he was proper secure before she stepped away and left him wobble-tall. He gurgled more sounds, and she shushed him.
So, what was he … spirit or human? If he were spirit, made by stormflowers, she’d be the first person he’d seen, just like she’d been for her fishboy, Cal.
Could she even dare to believe he was … human?
“You will burn berry-red if you stay here,” she told him, prodding him to walk.
He kept looking around at the cove, squinting and stumbling. He wasn’t webbed or scale-shone like Cal, and he was so much paler. He looked like the men in Pa’s storybooks, like the Prince Charmings from the fairy tales. Again, he coughed hard, and Moss smacked him on the back. His eyes widened once more. They were strange, bright-colored eyes—bluer than Pa’s, bluer than the reef water in sunshine.
“I’m Moss,” she said slowly, pointing to herself. As Pa had once taught her to do, she drew her own four letters into the sand. “M-O-S-S. Moss. Can you walk?”
He didn’t answer. She remembered how long it had taken her to teach Cal his words—how many seasons it had been before he had spoken like them.
He took a step, wincing when his gashed-up leg took some of his weight. She balanced him when he wobbled like a fresh-hatched chick. She remembered Cal on this beach that first day, how he had been shivering too.
What would Cal think of this new creature?
“Here,” she whispered on the winds to him. “Come see. Come see this treasure.”
Only the sea whispered back.
“Go slow like this and you’ll be parched-out before we get anywhere,” she told the spirit-boy. “You’ll be salted sandfish by midday.”
She heard him dry-swallow. Before he took another step, his eyes roamed over her, as if he were reading her in the same way Pa read the storybooks. Full-curious. There was intelligence in him, right enough. Could she dare to think what that meant? She pointed to the rocks at the edge of the cove, where the path went up toward their hut.
“Rest there.”
Slow-careful, they moved across the sand. After he’d rested, she’d take him to the hut. There, if Pa were well enough, he’d heal his bleeding leg. Maybe this spirit-boy’s arrival could be enough to snap Pa from Blackness. Maybe then Pa would make sense of him.
When Moss heard the spirit-boy’s breathing go gasping again, she explained. “The island air is thick from flowers … makes it hard to breathe deep.”
She remembered explaining this to Cal. She thought she could even remember Pa explaining it to her, once. Back then, in those early times, parts of the island had remained fuzzy for a good long while, colors blurring into each other before they’d crystallized. Her hearing had been stranger then, too: Noises had swum in and out of her head, startling her.
She looked again at the spirit-boy. Could he hear the buzz from the opened flowers? Could he see clear the island colors? He was frowning hard as if to try, and his head was turning, searching, turning …
“Breathing gets easier,” she said. She watched his blue-bright eyes as they flickered and focused.
Limping the final few steps, he stumbled against a rock. While he rested, she touched the gash on his leg; perhaps she should stem it now with raw stormflowers. But he needed deep sleep. And besides, Pa was always better at healing.
She felt a light tapping on her shoulder, the spirit-man’s fingers brushing against her. When she looked up, his eyes were more alert, watching her. Soft-slow, he raised his fingers to his chest and pushed his thumb into it.
“Finn,” he said, quiet and concentrating. “My name is Finn.”
Moss stumbled back so fast that she tripped over Adder. She stared at him. His voice was soft and round, thick with salt and fatigue. But it had made words, clear enough. Though it was nothing at all like Cal’s voice. More like Pa’s. Hers.
“How can you do that?” she said.
“Do … what?”
“Do talking. Who taught you?”
He frowned, swallowing.
“Everyone knows talking,” he said, soft. The crusted corner of one side of his mouth curled up. “You can do it too.”
Was he trying to make a joke, teasing her?
“But you’re a spirit … aren’t you?” She didn’t look at him as she spoke, didn’t dare to hope.
“And you’re a loon.”
A loon? Now she frowned. There was no reason to call her a bawdy seabird.
His mouth twitched. It seemed like he might want to smile but was too tired to make it stick. He wiped a hand over his face, pushing his yellow hair away. Moss saw bruises on his neck and salt in the cracks around his eyes. There was a dried bloody scratch under his left ear. He stared at a patch of orange stormflowers.
“I’m still on Earth, right?” he asked.
“Where else would you be?”
He shrugged. “A dream? This place, it’s
…” He glanced back out to the sea and the reef.
“It’s real enough.” She put her hand out so he could feel it. “I’m real.”
But looking at his expression, she wasn’t sure he believed it. Everything inside Moss screamed a million questions—she wanted to make him speak and speak until he had no breath left.
Are you human?
Have you come from the rest of the world?
How bad are the floods?
How did you get here?
But she was struck shy, too. She wanted all his answers, sure, but she also just wanted to tend the gash in his leg and let him speak in his own time. She wanted Pa, or Cal, to see him so she would know that he was really there. Real. Not another vision.
He looked back at her like he was wondering the same thing.
There was that flicker of a smile again, before the spirit-man lurched forward to fondle Adder’s ears, and Moss stiffened because he did not ask first. But Adder thudded her tail, happy enough. The spirit-man found the dip between Adder’s forehead and snout and, just as Moss liked to, stroked her there. Adder wagged harder, her mouth wide and tongue lolling.
“Not as fierce as he looks,” he said.
“She,” Moss corrected him. “She is called Adder. And she is fierce.”
She thought of the hundred times that her dog had bitten heads and tails from lizards, had fought brutal with the wild dogs … had eaten her littermates. Her dog was the fiercest thing she knew. When she looked back, the spirit-man’s mouth was curling sideways.
“’Course she is.” He coughed again—hard—then went gasping.
“We should get you to camp.”
But when she went to take his shoulder to pull him up again, he stopped her, shaking his head.
“Not leaving until I’ve found him.”
“Found who?”
“Tommy.” He sucked at air ’til he could speak again. “He’s washed up too, I hope he is. He was with me …”
She stared at him. “There are more of you?”
Finn nodded. “Tommy.”
Moss squinted, shielding her eyes to look across the cove. “Where?”
Finn tried to stand, tried to move back the way they’d come. “I think our boat wrecked. It’s … hard to remember.” He went zigzagging and stumbling, like Pa in stormfever. The gash on his leg was turning black with flies.
“Your name is really Finn?” she said, chasing after him. “Like the side of a fish?”
But if he really were a spirit, she should be the one asking—no, giving him—his name. Like they had for Aster and Cal.
“Short for Finnegan,” he said, looking toward the pine trees. “Nothing to do with fish. Might sound weird coming from a sailor, but I actually hate fish.”
Sailor?
She watched him sure-careful. “’Tis more like a song—Fin-ne-gan.” She gave the word three notes, as if she were singing it to open the stormflowers. She turned to watch them, too, to see if any opened wider, to see if any closed tight.
“Not a song, not a fish, just a name.” He shrugged. “My mother is old-fashioned and nerdy.”
Mother?
Finn squinted as he looked out to sea. “How did we get here?”
She stepped closer to him. “Last night,” she said, hesitant. “In the storm. I thought I …” She moved her head, indicating out beyond the reef. “Was that you?” She swallowed, steadied her breath. “Do you have a … boat?”
Finn closed the distance between them fast, gripping her shoulder with sudden strength. “What happened to it? And Tommy, did you see him, too?”
Panic was in the wideness of his eyes, in his sharp-furtive movements. She remembered the pieces of lobster-red wood. Of course!
She led him to where she’d piled them.
“Found these before I found you,” she said, showing him.
Finn sank into the sand, cradling the wood in his lap. “Swift,” he murmured. “My boat.”
“What I saw last night?”
He nodded, hands shaking. He looked across the sand to the sea.
She watched him careful, trying to work him out. Was it possible he was what they’d been waiting for? A sign from the rest of the world? One Pa couldn’t argue with? Was it possible he had a boat too, and there were more just like him?
Soon, she couldn’t help a smile. She watched the apple in Finn’s throat bob down, so fragile. So human. Sort of beautiful.
“Not a spirit,” she whispered. “Really real … Come to us from across the horizon line?”
Finn blinked at her, did not answer. But Moss didn’t mind. The answer he might give was almost too wondrous for words, too strange … too impossible. After all these years … all those flowers Pa had sent out on the winds! Even just the thought of Finn being something other than spirit made her buzz inside, made her crawl up close to inspect him more careful. Made her smell him again and press firm his skin. Made her pluck his yellow hair and twirl it ’tween her fingers.
“A real, live human boy,” she whispered. “And I found you. Perhaps you will be the one who brings Pa back from sickness. Who brings us all back.”
Cal went careful down from the rocks where he’d slept, listening for the hiss-hiss-scrape of them lizards and sniffing for their stenchings. They were close—there was stench enough. Would do no good to meet one. Them lizards were tricksy with only hands and feet to fight them; Cal had claw scratchings as proof. Them lizards would not forget the catching he’d done of their brothers and sisters, the eating of them, too. If Moss’s birthday surprise were not so down-deep in these rocks, he would not put himself so close.
His feet grasped the rocks quiet-quiet. On toe-tips, he passed burrows where those reptiles curled. He smelled them stronger then. Their stench tanged his nose like air round the volcano did: sharp-thick. He licked his lips and brought the smell into his mouth. This close up and it was all rotten meat and salt. He hissed to get rid of it. Careful-careful, he picked hands and feet down.
Almost.
There.
Almost …
He moved ’cross gray rocks, thinking of the surprise deep in their belly—Moss should be seeing that. But Moss did not right-trust him. Had not followed. He pressed his toes hard against rock, growled quiet-quiet. Without Moss, he was deep-hollow too.
Cal spider-climbed down and down. Here, on this side of the island, he saw the land again. There—flickering—at the sides of his eyes. Maybe here Moss could see it too.
Western Beach was full of storm treasure; Cal would be treasure-rich before sundown. Pa and Moss were stupid never to search here. And all ’cause of a few reptiles in rock?
No!
Was not reptiles that kept the Pa away.
Cal stretched full-tall. Felt freedom in his spine. He held his hands out, made fists. He would’ve hurt the Pa last night—wanted to. He shook his head from the memory and loped to the middle of the beach. There, he sifted quick-fast through strange new things that glinted when sun came through clouds. There was rope, and he tied strands of it around his waist. There was so much wood. He dragged some of it to the dunes, piled it there.
The sun hurt his brain, sent painings from the sides of his eyes and down his spine, bone by bone. He heard them bones creaking and hissing, whining. Them bones would still like to be sleeping. All of himself would like to be that. But, the treasure! Think of that. Think of the surprise in the gray rock and what he might need for it.
He dropped on all fours to the still-damp sand, smelling. Treasure had all sorts of stench. The smell he got first was the damp reek of wood, then something slippery-stale and clogged with salt water. That was … what? He sniffed hard, made sure. Yes! Something still living. A fish. Big one. Maybe a whale. He’d hurry for it before lizards got its wind. Cal could save a whale if it were not too gone—he and Moss saved dolphins before—he’d send it back out swimming. P’raps if he whispered soft enough, it’d carry him out to the land.
Though, if it were a shark instead …
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He might eat shark. Might give some to Moss. She’d cook it up spicy-good, crisp its skin like drying leaves. If she were here and trusting … if she had chose Cal’s thinking ’stead of Pa’s. But Cal would not even give blubber meat to Pa. Not even a grubworm! Was not fair, what he said. Not fair he said Cal hurt Moss. He’d never!
It was Pa doing the hurting! And not just ’gainst Moss, neither.
He got closer to the stench—to the thing that was living but not by much. He sniffed his way ahead, seeing how it was not the right shape for a whale or shark, not even big enough for a dolphin. It did not smell of any fishy he knew, and it were tangled in coverings.
He had a bad picture in his brain then—right-bad. He saw Moss there, underneath—her face bloated and dried firm with salt. P’raps she had followed him last night. P’raps he’d not waited to see. P’raps that storm—or even the Pa—had sent her to the waves. He hissed quiet. Again, he shook his head. He would not think it. Moss was safe. He would feel it in his bones if she were not.
His fingers now with trembles, he took the edge of the coverings and lifted. Slow, slow, until …
“Eeeeeeeeeeeeee!”
The noise came through his mouth before he could stop it. He dropped the coverings again quick-fast.
This were no fish.
“You can touch me, you know,” Finn said, watching the girl. “I’m not going to disappear.”
From the other side of the fire, Moss stared back like she didn’t believe him. When she didn’t say anything, Finn crawled a little closer, first dislodging the dog. He winced at the pain in his leg.
“I’m really not, I promise. I’m not a ghost. Or a … spirit? Isn’t that what you called me before?” He smiled, waited for her to return it, but she just kept looking at him really intensely.
It was so strange, the way this girl was being with him. It reminded Finn of a documentary they’d been made to watch at school, something about first contact with tribes in Papua New Guinea. A handheld camera had documented tribe members running in fear from the filmmakers, some covering their eyes. He remembered, too, how others had only stood and stared in amazement.