Nighttimes, Cal slept deep, tucked tight between Pa and her and Jess in the new-made bigger bed in the hut. It was more than once when Moss had to prod him to check he was still alive. More than once, too, when he’d woke confused.
“You’re on the island,” she reminded him. “You came out of the sea.”
He looked at her with glazed eyes.
“The flowers made you. Remember?”
He shook his head. “You did.”
She liked it best when she slept with him curled tight around her.
“Like yin and yang,” Pa said after she’d roused-sleepy one morning and Cal unfolded from her. “Curved together like that.”
Moss laughed and flicked Pa’s arm. “Like nonsense talk, you mean. Yin-yang, ding-dong.”
As Pa taught Aster, Moss taught Cal. At first, she treated him like Jess, clicking her tongue for him to follow when she went out treasuring, tapping him on the nose when he didn’t catch a fish quick-fast. When that happened, Cal’s eyes glinted.
After treasuring, they sat tight-close, like birds on a branch. And when the winds whipped fast and Pa was up in the cave bringing them in, they’d sit full-closer. At night, Pa still read and told stories—told his dreaming to the island—but each day he spent longer away.
“But you’re so much more patient with Callan than I am,” Pa said when Moss questioned it. “And it is good for you to have a task.”
“Like you have with the flowers?”
“Like so.”
Pa was always up in the cave now, perfecting the Experiment, making notes about it in his book. But no more spirit-creatures came magicked from the sea. No land appeared. No boats sailed in. The often storms were just full of rain.
“You have to wait for change,” Pa said when she asked. “Maybe it’s not the season.”
His eyes darted always to the sky, then back to the wide ocean. Moss wondered about the signs he waited for. As long as the rain fell, the flowers stayed open, and Pa sent his potion out on the winds. But now there only ever seemed to be more water, not less.
When Pa wasn’t in the cave, or finding stormflowers, or checking the weather, he worked on taming Aster. Gentle-slow, he’d come closer to her, ’til he was walking beside, then sitting on top, and then moving with her across the sand. Some days she did not leave his side; other days she disappeared and there was no sight of her glinting-bright coat ’til the sky was fast-dark again.
There were days when Moss did not see Pa much, either.
“Stay by the fire a little longer,” she would urge. “Don’t go to the cave. Come treasuring with us instead.”
“But you have Cal now,” Pa would say.
* * *
One morning after Moss had watched Pa walk up to the cave, she turned to Cal with a new plan.
“We should sit on Aster. Go on her to the top of the volcano.”
Moss had seen how Aster danced and swayed under Pa like a wild wind, and how Pa whispered in her ear to calm her steady. She’d seen how fast and far the horse could go. Wonder-fast, fast as the flying fish. Faster.
“We can do it, same as him,” she said.
But Moss knew that when the horse was calm it was only because she chose to listen. Would Aster listen to them too? Cal’s face was a frown.
“Come on,” Moss pressed. “We’ve already collected all the decent treasure from last storm.”
“Not many decent.” His eyes flashed in the sun.
“Anyway, don’t you want to see the whole island?”
“Yesss.” He said it like a wind gust. Sometimes his words still shivered and hissed.
She grinned. “Knew you wanted a proper look-see. We’ll climb the volcano proper. On Aster it’ll be easier.”
Whenever they had tried before, plain-walking, they’d gone puff-red with the thin air and only reached halfway.
Careful as she could, Moss scrambled messy onto Aster’s back and held her hand down for Cal. While the horse skittered like a crab, he took her wrist and leapt up behind her. Beneath, Moss felt Aster’s muscles wound up as a nautilus shell, spiraled tight. Perhaps sitting there was mad-thinking. Still, Moss whispered into Aster’s ears the way she’d seen Pa do; then she pressed with her legs like Pa did too. She told the horse where they wanted to be. She imagined the top of the volcano and let her longing of being there be heart-strong.
“Think about going there,” she said to Cal. “She’ll listen.”
Aster did—it was full-magic how the horse moved at her thinking! Moss giggled, sunlight-happy; she felt Cal’s laugh against her back too. Maybe Pa would be angry if he knew they were Aster-sat. But Pa was on his own adventure. And this were theirs.
Cal gripped tight around Moss as Aster stepped across the sand and into the pine trees. When the horse went faster still, they clung with muscled thighs taut from swimming and hunting. When Moss unbalanced, the horse moved to steady her.
Cal howled like the wild dog did at the moon. “So quick-fast!”
Moss, too, gave her best wild shout to the wind. The horse went quick as their thinking—quicker!
They climbed, until the route became so steep that grass turned to rock; Aster arched, shrimplike, digging her hooves in. Up to the volcano gases and the thin-tightest air was where the stormflowers grew thickest.
The most magic place, Pa always said. Alchemical. The center.
Up here flowers were everywhere, covering the rock like a different kind of colorful ocean. The air was sweeter than the heart-core of honeycomb.
Cal leapt down to get at them, and Aster skittered from his sudden movement. Moss placed a hand on the horse’s shoulder, tried to soothe her like she’d seen Pa do: thought calm thoughts. If the horse went speeding back down the route they’d come with her still on top, she’d be tumbled to sharp rock.
“Gentle,” she whispered. She thought an image of a midday sea in sun, and wondered if the horse saw it too. Was this how the connection between her and Pa worked?
When Aster stilled, Moss slipped off after Cal. She had fast-little breath from being so high—almost top-highest they could get. Moss did not try to stop Aster when she left—the horse always wanted to be closest to Pa most of all, and besides, it would be easier to get down the volcano than up. Not so puff-hard.
Cal had fingers gentle under a stormflower’s opened petals, curious as a dog pup. She came to him and crouched beside. She never understood why the flowers did not zing hard in Cal’s mouth like they did for her or Pa. Cal ate them, sure, as flavor in tea and stew, but he never sought them out like she or, more often, Pa did.
“These ones grown here are the best,” she said. “Look-see.”
She pushed Cal down to sit on the sun-warmed rock, then pulled one of the larger flowers straight up from a crack, its thin, dirty roots twisting in the light wind.
Cal flinched as she held it to him. “Pa does singing to it first, Moss.”
“Not always. Not so much now.”
Even so, she did a quick bird-trill of the notes, just as Pa had taught her. Then she tore off the five perfect petals and placed them in the palm of her hand. The gold pollen smudged onto her skin. She remembered watching Pa do this not so long ago.
“She loves me, she loves me not,” Pa had said, in time with each petal he tore. Each time, she loves me always finished his chant. Five petals gone always equaled love.
“Old rhyme,” she said to Cal now to explain it. “When people were uncertain of who to love back, they pulled petals like this.”
Cal frowned. “Sounds risky.”
Moss, too, thought the rest of the world must’ve been very strange if it took tearing off flower petals to know something like love.
She gave the fifth, most special petal to Cal. “The sweetest one,” she lied, for they were all equal-sweet. “Try.”
“I watch you first. Maybe I do it wrong.”
She laughed and took another petal. “Fine.”
She held out her tongue and placed it on top. She waite
d for that sweetness to settle down into her, for the zing that followed, waited for the ease in her chest. Cal watched her close.
“You think they make true healing?” he said. “Think they work as the Pa say?”
Moss swallowed and felt the petal tingle down her throat. “It makes breathing easier, I know that. And Pa does not get Blackness when he has them.”
Cal stared back steady. Perhaps he did not remember Pa’s Blackness. Pa’s moods were thicker before Cal came, before the flowers opened full.
She reached forward to touch Cal on the nose and spread a little pollen there, like how she’d do with Jess, but Cal caught her fingers fast. He held them inside his own, and she felt his webbings against her skin. There was glinting in his eyes, and she knew what he was thinking: that he was not Jess, and do not treat him so.
But what was he? He looked like the boys in pictures from Pa’s books, but some things were different. There was his scale pattern. And his eyes, so big and dark and glinting-bright. There was glint-magic inside him too.
“Eat a petal,” she urged.
She looked at his smooth-skinned face, at his high cheekbones. If Cal had once been a fish, then he had been one with a wide, clear face. With a knowing eye. With a fast spin in his tail. She wondered about the most beautiful fish in the world, and whether he had been it.
Cal put the petal in his mouth and chewed. His eyes moistened and squinted. He shook his head. “Too strong-sweet.”
“But tingles nice?”
He shrugged.
“Makes breathing better?”
“I breathe fine.”
“You hiss.”
His eyes flashed.
“What?” She raised her eyebrows. “Sometimes you do!”
“And sometimes you growl at night like the wild dogs!”
Moss placed the next petal in her mouth. She pushed out her tongue for Cal to see.
“Can you not see it zing?” she said. Or tried to. The words came out muffled and slippy.
Cal smiled, teeth bright as pollen, square and straight as hers.
She swallowed that petal, too. Now she could feel the buzz Pa talked of, the one he used to bring in storms, to bring in Cal and Aster. How many flowers must he eat to feel so full-strong for that? If Moss ate more than one whole flower, she always felt a little sleepy.
In time, Pa had said.
In time, Moss would bring the storms, then send the flowers out on their winds. She’d make the land rise and the boats come. She’d do it proper. Better than Pa. She’d do it till the floods were full-gone.
“Try again!” she said to Cal.
When he shook his head, she made a grumble-noise. “Look-see, take it right from my tongue where it tingles proper. I’ll hold it out, then you take it and see.”
He raised a dark eyebrow. She put another petal on her tongue. She wanted to suck it clean of its sweetness straightaway, but she made her mouth stay still. Even when saliva formed in her cheeks.
“Take it,” she said again, her voice thick and clumsy, a little like how his sounded still, sometimes.
He leaned forward. He was watching her, checking, and that frustrated her too. She needed him to take the petal fast-quick before she ate it too!
He touched his tongue to hers. She saw his eyes widen huge and he flinched back. But he had not taken the petal! Quick-fast, she pressed her tongue back against his until he had it. She closed her mouth, watched.
“Feel it?”
He rolled the petal about behind his teeth and up around his gums, his eyes still wide.
“Tastes different when it come from you.”
She smiled. “It zings?”
“It zings.”
* * *
Later, they climbed to the toppest they could get on the volcano and looked out. There was sea and sea and sea. No land. No boats. No nothing but water. Moss slumped down—perhaps Pa’s Experiment hadn’t worked at all and dark waters still covered all the rest of the world. Cal stared long at the sea beyond their cove like he was looking for messages written on it.
“Thought you wanted to see the whole island?” Moss took Cal and spun him to the rest. No storm mist today, so all was clear-viewing.
“Western Beach,” she pointed out, turning him to the left. “Then, Lizard Rocks—where the hiss-slitherys are—and the Point. But you know them places.” She turned him left again. “There’s another pine forest there, like the one at the back of our cove but a bit bigger. And over there on the north-toppest side is where the wild dogs are …”
“Where Jess goes for her babies?” Cal grinned sideways.
Moss caught it with her own grin. “Well, she don’t go to the Lizard Rocks, does she?”
Cal shrugged, and she pushed his shoulder.
“OK, or maybe she does! If any of her babies ever stuck around camp long enough for us to examine them, we’d know if they were half reptile!”
Cal kept turning left, now looking to the side Pa called the east.
“And there … ,” Moss indicated with a sweep of her hand. “… is where the sharpest, deepest rocks are, where our boat wrecked, in the storm after we landed.”
“Wrecked?”
“Broke into pieces. Pa told us about it, remember? Where he saved our books and useful things from.”
Cal nodded. “Special storm treasure.”
She turned him left again to complete the circle. “And back to our cove!” She swept her hand over the view as if she herself were making it appear. “Our hut, the beach, the reef, Rocky Point, pine forest …”
Cal spun and looked at the whole island a second time, then a third time, too. Then he stopped, staring out at the sea beyond their cove again. “But no more land.”
Moss nodded. “No more.”
He was frowning like he was thinking hard. “Was once?”
“Was once. Another island out there at least. And where me and Pa came from too, of course.”
Soon, they clambered down from the volcano, skidding on skitter-rocks and sending flint bouncing, grabbing at clumps of grass to steady themselves. Moss was looking out to the horizon line, and Cal was following her gaze.
“Someone could swim to there,” Cal said.
“To the horizon? You think?”
The waves were not choppy today, so perhaps … maybe. Beyond the reef, it did not look so far.
“What would someone do once they got there?”
“Go past the line.”
“You know the horizon is not actually a proper line, Cal; it just looks like one. Once we got there, we’d just find more water—endless water, like we’ve seen from the top of the volcano just now.”
“Maybe no.”
“Maybe yes!”
They clambered down farther.
“Then … we make a boat,” Cal said. “Like in them stories Pa tells. Like the one you came in. With a boat, we go farther and see. Find land.”
“And how do you think we make a boat?”
“With wrecking treasure! With there being so many storms these days …” He grinned. “… there be so many treasures!”
The wood was wide and yet light: driftwood saved from many tides. Moss dug through it, pulling out the drier pieces. Cal laid them in lines on the sand.
“You know it won’t look like a proper boat,” she said.
“Don’t have to. Just has to float right.”
Moss frowned to remember her own boat from so long ago—it was getting harder to do so. Harder, also, to remember the trip Pa and her had taken from their old world. She thought she could remember being curled up cozy, somewhere warm. Three or four year cycles had passed since then, though, hadn’t they? Or more? So hard to be sure. She pulled at the biggest, heaviest piece of wood, trying to shift it clear.
“Anyway, Cal,” she said. “Remember, our boat smashed out there.” She pointed beyond the reef and Rocky Point, over toward the east. “So even if this thing does sail …”
Cal shrugged, moving the biggest, heav
iest piece easy. “That were long time past. And Pa been sending them flowers since.”
“That doesn’t mean the water will be less rough, or the rocks less sharp.” Moss chewed her lip. Pa was always full-sure they shouldn’t leave the island to check for other land, not ’til they were certain there was some. “And if we forget?” she asked. “If we can’t get back?” She reached over to Cal’s arm, stopping him from shifting more wood.
Cal drew himself up straight and made his mouth go long, exact-same as Pa’s could look. “Remember, Small Things, once we go beyond the reef, beyond the line out there …” Cal paused in his impression of Serious Pa to wink at Moss. “… then we forget the island. When that happens, the island no longer exists.”
He widened his eyes in the way Pa did when he said something important. Moss smiled; Cal always got him so right. Moss never had the nerve to do him quite so good.
“Remember,” Cal continued, booming his voice like Pa’s. “The island and its magic become just dream then.”
Cal reached across to tickle Moss like Pa did. Moss caught his fingers on her ribs, drew them up to her mouth, and nipped them.
“Enough of Pa now.”
Because what if Pa’s warning really happened? What if there really was a forgetting line out there? What if she and Cal were stuck out in the floods forever?
Cal shrugged as he watched her. “We only look-see. Not go far.”
She nodded careful-slow. Just a look-see was all right, just a little way beyond the reef, not so far to forget. And if they did see anything new, Pa would be dancing-grateful, wouldn’t he?
Then they could plan.
She took out the twine she’d made from spinning reed. Cal came to help, eyes glinting like fish tails. There—like that—she saw the sea in him: fast-quick, then gone.
“Fishboy,” she whispered, smiling.
“Lizard Face.” He pulled his lips back and darted his tongue out at her.
Cal and Moss got the twine tight around the planks, made a platform big enough for them both to sit on. They picked two of the lightest pieces of driftwood to use as paddles to push the raft forward.