His smile was bigger than Finn’s, and there was mischief in his eyes. “I can see you properly now, out of that cave! Odd-looking, sure, but … !” He winked, full-cheeky. “Cal said you were star-bright!”
There were still dark circles around his eyes, and ghost-paleness to his skin, but he no longer looked so sick as if he were about to die. Maybe the island had let him go, too: released him.
She looked past him for Cal again, still not quite believing what she’d just seen happen in his skin. He was beside Finn, watching her right back. She wanted to touch him, go close, but she could only gasp air and wait.
Behind Cal and Finn, the island was a blur of smoke. Groaning and rumbling. It was a living thing, a monster thing … a bright burning thing in the dark. Above it all, its flowers were singing.
Stay. Play. Swirl with us. Dream.
“Let’s get this boat going again,” Finn called across to his friend. “Get it gone before the smoke swallows us. It’ll be easier now, with you back in the land of the living.”
Tommy half smiled at her again before he squeezed her shoulder and went. “Still bossy, then,” he said. “One little shipwreck’s not changed that.”
Moss smelled smoke, and felt it—still crawling into her lungs, still so sweet. She leaned back into the boat with Adder clutched-tight, not wanting to see the island, or feel this tearing pain from looking. Because that’s what this leaving was. Like a volcano inside, ripping her. Exploding. She could only imagine what Pa felt.
She looked across the deck again. They were there, all of them; everyone but Aster and Jess. On a real boat. Going away after so long. Maybe they were about to forget everything. Who would she be then? A brave new person? Maybe.
Cal crawled over, and she reached to take his hand. There was no silver sheen to his skin. The faint tattoo of scales—all gone. The webbings between his fingers gone too. Now she held a normal hand, a boy’s hand … was it really so normal as that? She pressed his fingers to her lips, kissed them warm.
Behind her, Finn and Tommy discussed how to get the boat from the reef. She heard groaning and scraping, then something like a loud roar. Slow-slow, the boat came free. The island was letting them all go. Maybe it was. Something inside her still felt tethered though.
“Did you see the horse again?” Finn called across to Tommy. “There in the water? I saw what you meant in the cave, Tom! She was swimming, diving! The exact same horse as before!”
Aster? She sat up to ask Finn what had happened to her. Where had he seen her go? Was she alive? Was she … anything … anymore?
Tommy coughed. “A horse out here? In the sea? Finn, mate, you’ve been drinking too much of the funny juice.”
Finn stayed quiet then. She watched him go to the boat’s side and lean over, maybe still looking for Aster. Why hadn’t Tommy seen her? Or had he, and he’d just forgotten her already? Perhaps Tommy had passed the forgetting line Pa talked of. Perhaps that line wasn’t make-believe like she’d hoped.
Close to Moss, Cal smiled. He’d been listening too.
“Aster-spirit,” he murmured. “That one is flower-made.”
Moss nodded. Cal hadn’t forgotten anything. “Dreamt from the deep.” She paused as she realized it. “From Pa.”
Pa still looked across the ocean, watching for Aster too. Moss felt an ache to see.
The boat moved, lurched sudden. Were they leaving? Moss swallowed, gripped Cal as the boat moved again. She could feel herself swaying, tipping to dream. But she did not want to be sleeping now. What if, some far-off day in the future, she woke and remembered nothing? The panic struck her sharp as pike teeth. She could not forget! Not anything. The island was part of her: her growing-up. She felt its buzz inside. She needed to write it all down—everything—so she could always remember. Now, before the forgetting line.
Quick-fast she was up, stumbling across the slick surface of the deck and down into the cabin below. She took out Pa’s other scrapbook from under the bed where she’d left it, and turned to its final page. The hand-drawn map fell out. She turned it over.
And she began to write.
* * *
Eventually, there was a shout. Up on deck. Sails were going up. She crawled out from the cabin and to where Pa was standing. Still here then, still with them.
She saw all of Western Beach now, nearly the whole of the island, all the way from the finger-point of the Lizard Rocks to their little cove. The volcano still spewed smoke. Pa watched it, silent. She slipped her hand in his. The island was exploding with fire and color, strange-beautiful. Wondrous-strange. Still, the flowers sang.
“You found it, Pa,” she said. “The island that was not meant to exist, the one that came to you in dreamings. You made it live.”
“For a time,” he said. “We both did.”
She saw it all so clear—how the island was visible now because she’d made it so. And she saw, too, that Pa could not let go of it. Would he always be staring out from whatever new place she put him in? Always wanting to be back? Would he get true-sick?
Flames leapt from the volcano into the sky. And Pa was looking and longing, so hard, so heart-strong. She shivered when a sudden wind took them faster gone.
“Do you think we forget it all, Moss?” he murmured. “Do you want to?”
She couldn’t answer, not right away. Because if she did forget this island, who would she be? A beaten-up daughter of an angry man? Just that? Would she remember Pa properly from her time here? Would she remember the flowers? Pressing her lips to Cal’s on a beach under moonlight, and then, later, in a cave? The beauty of the cove at dawn-break?
“No,” she said true. “I do not want to forget.”
“I wonder if the island will live … ,” Pa whispered, “… without us. I wonder if we’ll be able to come back.”
Moss knew what he wanted. Flower Island was his exile. Away from the bad people in the rest of the world. Away from the mind-illness he’d had proper back there. But she could not let him stay. He might die like that. And besides, she would miss him too much … wouldn’t she?
Though, back in the rest of the world …
“Will we be together?” she asked. “Where we’re going? They won’t take me away?”
She had no idea, after all, how it worked. Reading about something like countries and governments was not quite the same as knowing it, seeing it true, she’d learned that enough times. He looked at her sad-long.
“They won’t believe me, you know,” he said. “They’ve never believed me about a thing, where we’re going.” He sighed at the sea. “My world has never … quite … been the same as theirs. No one’s ever … quite … understood.”
His smile was fleeting-thin.
She didn’t know who the they were, but she understood something of what he said. Pa had always been in a slight different place. Maybe his real was like another person’s dream.
“They might think you stole me?” she asked, remembering what he’d said before.
“They will know it.” His hands gripped-tight the boat rail. “I’ll be locked up away. You’ll be back with the angry man.”
Her ear throbbed again with just the thought.
When she looked back at the ocean, she frowned. There was a white-wave horse again, racing close to the boat. Even following. Was it Aster, sea-made? Was Pa’s longing keeping her close, even now?
She wondered about being in this new world with Pa, and yet without him too, about him being locked away. No one could be free like that.
“Maybe you should stay … ,” she said, releasing his hand, “… like you want. Keep the island hidden like that. Stay with Aster. Keep it for us.”
It hurt knife-sharp to say. It felt right too.
“But you’d never forgive …”
She nodded. “I would.” She’d be grateful instead. For the island. For Cal. For the buzz she still felt inside.
Besides, without Pa, she was brand new. No one would know her history. It would hurt, but it w
as clean-hurt. Knife-sharp-clean.
A smile breezed on him. But his eyes went clouding after.
“’Tis OK, Pa,” she said.
He stared for a long time to the sea. He was watching Aster beneath, she knew it. He was wanting to be there. Wanting to be with Moss, too. But, this time, he could not have both.
“Go,” she whispered. She half grinned. “Maybe I could come back to visit sometime?”
He squeezed her hand. “Yes!” Quick-fast, he leaned forward and kissed her forehead. He took a stormflower petal from her hair and pressed it to her tongue.
“I’ll keep it alive,” he whispered. “Ready for when you return. Please return.”
Maybe, one day, she would. If she did not forget. If the flower-buzz stayed inside her. If she kept hold of Cal and her dog. She tried to ignore the pit inside her, opening wider each time she imagined not seeing Pa again. It was possible, wasn’t it that she wouldn’t? Perhaps sometimes it was better not to think thoughts like that, to live like Pa in dream.
Pa touched the end of her nose. “Greatest experiment.” His tears slipped down his cheeks. “Thank you.”
Behind them, the island burned bright, a million flower petals glowing orange as a lizard’s eye. Pa looked over to Cal. He raised his hand, though Cal did not look or wave back.
“Look after him,” Pa said.
And if Cal heard, he did not say anything. He only spat at the deck.
Pa climbed onto the boat’s edge. “Good-bye, my magic Moss. I’ll send flowers on the wind so you won’t forget.”
“Good-bye.” She was tear-choked too now.
Pa dived into the ocean.
Gone.
Moss clung to the side of the boat and peered over. She saw him swimming, spinning onto his back to look up at her, then across to Cal, too, even when Cal, still, would not see. Then he was waving good-bye.
Perhaps he would not survive, stranded with only the flowers and Aster to tether him. Perhaps he would become as real as a spirit himself—made only from dreams—churning his stories back into the island. But he would be happy like that, at least; away from the darkness he saw in the rest of the world. Exiled free. Where he’d been trying to get to all along, before Moss had hid with him and made his stories grow bigger.
When Moss looked over at them, Tommy and Finn did not even seem to notice he’d gone. Cal still stared determined-strong in the other direction.
As Pa bobbed from the boat and toward his land, the stingers came. They billowed out around him as water-clouds. Pa swam backward, and the water got rougher, waves slap-slapping against him. Around him, it began to glow luminous-bright, sparkle-bright … wondrous-bright.
Even so, Moss saw her—swimming underneath, down in the deep dark of the sea, sparkle-shone. Aster, come back for him. Moss breathed out slow. Pa’s waterhorse would swim to shore with him, keep him safe; she’d help him dream some more. Adder whined as he went, howling to the rising moon. Moss felt like doing it too.
The last image Moss had of Pa, he was smiling at her, glinting, the fire from the island reflected in his skin. He was sinking back into the water, to where Aster was, to where coral and flowers bloomed.
And the island went calm.
Simple. As. That.
It went back to dream.
Moss shook her head. Even now, she did not understand its magic. If it was even magic. If that island was even there at all. No! She felt it. Felt Pa there too.
She could not forget.
But Moss hadn’t forgotten anything yet. She still tasted the flower-buzz on her tongue. Maybe the island would stay inside her. Anything was possible, wasn’t it?
Though, each time she looked back at their island, it was farther away. They hadn’t gone much farther when it began to flicker. Until it was like how Bird Island had first looked when Moss had seen it from their cove: flickering, then solid, then flickering again. Soon, she was looking at it from the sides of her eyes. Squinting to see.
She went across to Cal and took his hand.
“Coming up, going down,” she murmured, pointing it out for him.
Was it disappearing? Fading from reality? Any moment now, would Moss be forgetting? Might they all?
“I risk it with you,” Cal said, soft. “Wherever you want to go.”
He leaned his head onto her shoulder and his lips brushed against her neck. She shiver-smiled.
“See it all?” she asked. “The whole world?”
Cal nodded. “We find your home and mine.”
She turned to him. His skin was sunbeam-glinting. He was storm-woke bright, and hers.
She leaned forward and caught his smile. She kissed proper—all the real of him and all the magic parts too. Kissed him hard! She did not care if he was boy or spirit or something in between, just cared that he was Cal. She felt his arms come round her, holding her limpet-fast. Like this they were yin-yanged. Birds on a branch. Storm-woke both. She kissed until she no longer felt so tipsy-spun. Tethered.
The island was still there when they turned.
Just.
Finn and Tommy billowed the sails out full. And they left. Sailing toward the real world and its answers. Toward Miranda, and toward who Callan was, too. And she would see it true.
Finn woke from a dream. A glorious dream. A kick-ass one. He tossed and rolled in the belly of his boat. If he kept his eyes closed, he could remember her face … just. Those green eyes, so cool he could drink them up. He’d been lying on the sand, holding her close. Gorgeous. He went up on deck to tell Tommy.
“Another dream!” he shouted to his mate. “A hot girl this time! Wild and stormy!”
“Yeah?” Tommy barked a laugh. “Sounds like a cocktail!” He made a sobbing noise as he thought further. “But we don’t even have any rum!”
“Maybe that’s why we’ve been dreaming.” Finn laughed with his friend. “We’ve had no booze for days … weeks! They should send people who need to sober up out on these things.”
Tommy flipped Finn the bird. “You might be in luck; think there’s land coming.”
“Finally!”
Tommy had the rudder under control, so Finn went to sit up at the bow. He looked out with his feet dangling. They were tacking left and the sails were far out. The full sun was in his face, obscuring any land that might be there. He shut his eyes again. He could go back to sleep right there on deck. He could dream of that girl again; she was still in his mind. She’d had petals threaded through her dark, braided hair. Perhaps she was an angel.
How many days since they’d seen land now? How much longer until they could get a drink? See a real girl? Act … normal?
The sun was turning his eyelids fire-red. He turned away from the sun, and his eyes fell upon the dog, still here, still black and white and goofy-looking. He reached out to scratch her silky ears and copped a lick to the face. She must have wandered onto their deck in the last port, maybe when they’d been drunk one night … the last time they’d been drunk. Probably the same night they’d repainted their boat with a different name and somehow lost half their stuff. Either way, Finn was pretty sure that the dog was a stray, but still … He really hoped he hadn’t stolen anyone’s pet by accident.
“Amy?” he tried again. “Sally?”
The dog stared blankly back. None of the names had stuck.
“Woofmaker? Bones? Snapper? Big Tongue?”
On cue, she lolled her tongue out. Then licked him again with it.
Finn shut his eyes once more. There’d been flowers in his dream, too. Beautiful flowers. Ones that smelled like the sweetest honey, or the strongest ganja. He hadn’t told Tommy that. So weird! It must be something about sailing—it made him dream so vividly. Either that or he was going nuts with the boredom of the endless ocean. Cabin fever! Salt madness! Here, there was nothing else to do but remember dreams.
He went back down into the cabin, the dog trailing behind.
“Not come to take over steering, then?” Tommy said as he passed.
“Nah. Back to bed.”
“Shithead.”
But when he lay on the hard bunk, he couldn’t sleep. Not even when the dog curled up close to him and gave him her warmth. Those flowers from the dream! They were all he could think of. Them and that dream girl’s eyes. The petals in her hair.
He started rifling through drawers and cupboards, looking for paper. Under the bed was an old sketchbook, with a few blank pages at the end. Where’d he nabbed that from? Who? He flicked to one page, found a pencil, and started to sketch.
As he drew, he could remember more about the flowers from his dream. They had been singing to him, promising him things. He’d wanted to eat them.
He smiled. He was definitely going nuts.
But he still couldn’t stop looking at the picture he had drawn. He wasn’t much of an artist usually, but this sketch was good. It looked just like one of the pretty little flowers he’d dreamt of, one he could almost … touch.
He snapped the book shut just to stop his endless staring. And a different piece of paper fell out. There was an old, hand-drawn map on it. On the back were words, in handwriting that was not his or Tommy’s.
* * *
You won’t remember. It will all just be something unreal, wild and strange. But dreams can be real too. And reality can also be just a dream.
Take my dog as proof of it. Her name is Adder. Remember it! And don’t let her soft touch fool you. She is fierce. Fiercest thing I’ve ever known. She comes from a wild, free place. Yes, sometimes, untamed places do exist. Sometimes mysteries do too.
Let them.
Let your dreams be dreams.
Remember them. Try to remember the very edges of the things that aren’t there.
Because that’s where the island lies. Flower Island. Maybe you’ll go there again someday. If you remember. If you can find it.
But, you know … I think Adder might remember that place anyway. Can you see it there, in her glint-wise eyes? She is half islander, after all. One day she might be able to get back. I’ll follow her. Back to Pa. Back to half of myself … Back to dreaming … Back to that spiral cycle of appearing and disappearing too … Maybe one day I will …