Changeling's Island - eARC (10 page)

“No. I just wanted…”

“I’ll call you in the morning, dear. I got your report. You have done well, but I can’t talk now. Bye-ee.”

“Well, at least you were quick,” said his grandmother. “Is she calling back?”

“Tomorrow. She’s out somewhere. She says she got my report.”

His grandmother gave him that sideways stare of hers. “And?”

“She says I did well,” said Tim, feeling a little defensive about it.

“An’ so yer should. Yer can do computers and things. I reckon yer teacher should have sent it to me, not her,” said his grandmother. “Now, we’ve got nearly no wind, the tide will be full about an hour after dark. Yer eyes are good enough, and the water will have warmed up. We’ll go spearing flounder. Get yer shorts on.”

She fetched out an old inner tube that had a cut-off twenty-five-liter tin jammed into the middle of it, and a barb-pointed fork on a pole, and a spare car battery from the shed, and a light on a pole. Minutes later Tim drove them, bumping down the track to the beach. The sea was mirror-calm, still and, in the shallows, not too cold.

The light was waterproof and pushed underwater. Shoals of tiny silver fish schooled to it, and then, in sudden alarm, darted away. “I can’t see well enough, Tim,” she said, as they waded in the knee-deep water. “You’ll have to look for the fish. They’re diamond shaped an’ you’ll see their eyes. They hide in the sand. You’ll see squid and flathead sometimes too.”

Tim looked. He saw the tiny silver fish, and a curious slim long-beaked garfish, skipping away…and nothing else, until he stood on a flounder. He screamed and fell over as it swam off.

“What happened?”

“I stood on something that squirmed under my foot and swam off.”

“Quick,” she said eagerly. “Up you get, see if you can follow the dust to where it settles.”

All Tim wanted to do right then was run for the shore, but she was so urgent, he stood up and looked around. And sure enough, there was a trail in the still water of the silt that the fish had stirred up. He walked closer…and nearly stood on it again before he saw it. It camouflaged well, and the edges of the fish were blurred into the sand. “I can see it. What do I do now?” he asked, looking down at it in wonderment, seeing the two small eyes looking up.

“Walk really slowly and quietly until it is less than an arm’s length from yer feet. Take yer time. Then lower the spearpoint into the water, until it is maybe a hand-width above it. Then yer push it down, hard, fast.

Tim did as he’d been told. He couldn’t believe the fish wouldn’t swim off, but it didn’t. It just lay there as the spear point got closer. He couldn’t breathe and it felt like the weight of the whole universe was pressing on him. Why should he care, a part of him demanded? But he did. He had to. He was sure he was going to miss…

He thrust the spear down into the water as hard as he could, and felt the sudden quiver and thrash as he lifted the fish. “I got it! I got it!
I got it!!!
” he yelled.

It was really weird. It sounded like a thousand people were yelling with him too, drumming their feet on the hard sand. Shouting in triumph, not in English, but he understood them anyway. And just then he felt like he was one of them. Like part of some huge family, generations of them, looking at him, and yelling in delight. The fish was beautiful and he was enormously grateful for it, that it had been there to be speared. To be food. That feeling was strange as an idea in itself, but
right
, somehow. He rocked on his heels in the sand, giddy with the adrenalin rush, as he stood there, holding the speared fish up to the star-patterned night.

“Well done!” said his gran, her voice full of pleasure too. “Hold him over the box, Tim.”

Tim did, and his grandmother worked the fish over the prongs with her knife. “Yer first fish. You done good, young man,” she said.

She’d always called him “boy” before. “That was just like…amazing!” He meant the way it had stayed still, and that really odd feeling he’d had when he’d thrust the spear through it. He was still shaking from it all.

And for once his grandmother seemed to understand without him trying to explain. She put a hand on his shoulder. “It’s in yer blood, Tim. My people have always done this. Always and always. This is our place. This is what we do, this is what we are. Without it, we’re just leaves in the wind. I’m glad yer here to carry it on.” Then she shook herself, and said gruffly. “Well, don’t just stand there. Get on with it. We need another one for our tea.”

Tim was thoroughly wet, and the air was cool, but absolutely nothing could have stopped him from getting on with it. And now that he knew what he was looking for, he saw the next fish, about twenty meters away. And then, a little farther on, two more close together.

“That’s enough for us. We can’t keep ’em,” said his gran.

Tim was still too fired up to want to stop. “But…”

She shook her head. “Yer don’t kill what yer don’t need. Other people will want a fish too.”

She sounded a bit like McKay about the flathead, thought Tim, as they walked towards the shore. And there, lying against a trail of weed, was an enormous flathead in his grandmother’s light. Tim didn’t care if they didn’t need it. He wanted that fish. He stalked forward, spear ready. Only this fish did not stay still, but swam off into the dark deep. He turned to follow.

“What is it?” asked his grandmother.

“Flathead! A really, really big one.”

“Yer won’t get it once they start swimming away. Yer came up in front of it, didn’t yer?”

“Yes. But I was careful. Slow.”

“Come up from behind next time. And don’t try to follow it. They’ll lead you out. I thought I saw that dratted seal-woman out there. She means no good to yer. Drowned a few of your ancestors and left their widows to raise the child on their own.”

“I don’t have any children.”

“Then maybe she won’t drown yer, yet.”

His grandmother was weird. Couldn’t see the fish, but thought she could see imaginary seal-women.

By the time they got to the beac,h Tim realized just how cold and wet he was. But he was still full of the hunt. He felt…right. His ears seemed still full of drumming, and his body was tired, but oddly full of energy.

He had strange dreams that night. Strange, but good. Full of smoke and drumming of heels on hard sand, and people dancing in the firelight, and he was there with them, dancing too, passing through the smoke.

* * *

Áed saw the spirits of the old ones weave and stamp their dance through the smokes of their spirit fires. They were a hunting people, and a young man’s first blooding was a very important matter to them. They had lived far more as part of the land, and the hunt, and the prey, had their love and respect. To hunt was what a man did. He brought food from the land—and the water—for his family with his spear and throwing sticks.

The seal-woman had been out there too, farther off to sea and hidden in the dark of the water. Her guile would have to be greater now. His master belonged to this land and it to him. They were part of each other, rock, sand, water, bush and blood. It would give him strength, if he learned to use it.

* * *

Tim was rather surprised to find, the next day, that he’d actually forgotten that his mother had promised to call. It was just as well, because he would have had to be patient, instead of being busy with the jobs on the farm, and thinking about the flounder-spearing. It was just so…more than cool.

When the phone rang he had a faintly guilty start. Melbourne, yeah. It would be good…Except it was Jon McKay and not his mother. “Yes,” said his grandmother. “He’s here. But I don’t know yet for how long.”

She put her hand over the mouthpiece. “He’s asking if yer want a job. His deckie is away for a couple of weeks.”

“Oh, wow!”

His grandmother gave one of her rare smiles. “We’ll talk to his mother, ’n’ get back to you.”

McKay obviously said something.

His grandmother nodded. “Right, then. Later.”

She put the phone down. “He says it’ll be hard yakka. Yer can go along with them tomorrow and see if yer want to do it, and he can see if yer up to it. Are yer?”

“I’ll try. No. I won’t just try. I will be!”

“Then we better call yer mother. Yer probably won’t be able to.”

Great. I’ve spent months wanting to get out of here, and just when I’ve finally got something here I really want to do, I am going to leave.

Tim called his mother. “Oh, Tim dear,” she said, before he got a word in edgeways. “I am sorry. I’ve sent your father three texts. And an e-mail. He’s supposed to pay for these things. I really can’t afford it.”

“Well, um, would you mind if I…only came a bit later? It’s just I’ve been offered a job I really want to take…if I can.”

He was surprised at the relief in her reply. “Oh, that would be fine. You’d just be sitting around in the flat here. I had been thinking of taking some time off. I really could use a holiday, and Mar…Mary-Lou invited me to go to Queensland.” There was an awkward pause, and then then his mother continued hastily. “Um. She’s found a great package deal, only a thousand five hundred for the week, but it is sharing a room.”

That would have paid his flights a few times, thought Tim crossly, before a thought about going to sea with McKay pushed it away instead. He was thinking about that, as Mum rattled on about manicures and stuff. It might as well be in Latin for how much of it Tim understood, but then she said, “Oh. I met that girl from the island, Hailey, when I was having a pedicure. She said she had to go over there for a week or ten days before they fly to Switzerland for some skiing.”

Tim didn’t actually know quite what to say. Or quite what to feel.

Then his grandmother took the telephone from his hands. “I want ta see his report,” she said curtly. Tim hadn’t realized how much Nan really didn’t like his mum until he heard her speak. “I’m looking after him. If anything needs to be done, I’m going to need to see to it.”

“I’ll post it,” Tim heard his mother say. “But he’s done fine. Better than at St. Dominic’s in fact.”

“Yer do that. Goodbye.”

She put the phone down. “I guess you can work for McKay tomorrow. But yer to promise me yer keep that knife by you. All the time. That seal-woman is scared of it.”

Tim nodded, even if the “seal-woman” stuff was more of Gran’s craziness.

“What’s she up to?” asked his grandmother, in the tone that she reserved for Tim’s mother.

“She says she’s going to Queensland with…with a friend.”

“New boyfriend,” said his grandmother with a scowl.

Tim had to wonder if she wasn’t right. Something about the “Mary-Lou” had seemed a bit odd. For a few minutes he felt abandoned. Pushed out. But then Nan had him go out to the shed to try on some old oilskins that might do for wearing at sea if it rained, and got to talking about sailing herself, as a little girl. It was something she’d not done before, and it was different enough to distract him. She plainly knew a lot about it, he realized, fitting his little experience into what she said.

The weeks leading to Christmas were something of a blur for Tim, looking back. He’d never been so tired in all his life. He just wasn’t quite strong enough for a lot of what he had to do, so he made up for it with extra effort. He had to haul bags of abalone onto the boat, knock all the smaller shellfish and seaweed off the shells and at the same time move the boat after the man diving, making sure the air-hose was never dragging. He wasn’t too sure what he was doing, so made up for it with extra concentration. And Jon McKay kept expecting him to learn new stuff. He started asking Tim tides, currents, and about where a good drift would be, from about the third day. Tim learned to spot the littlest things that could give him clues. He wanted to get it right. And it was really satisfying when he did.

By the time he got back to the farm every night it was all he could do to eat and wash before he fell asleep. Nan’s ABC radio was something he heard for ten seconds before sleep. He’d thought quite a lot about Hailey the day his mum had told him she was coming, but, like his report card, after starting work with Mckay, he forgot about her, and it.

He loved every moment of being out at sea, loved the boat, loved the way it responded to the sea, loved the sounds and smell and feel of it. He didn’t really know why, but…it just felt good. But he was still glad for the two days when the weather was too bad, and work was merely three hours of boat maintenance and cleaning. He was so tired those were like a holiday.

Two days before Christmas, McKay stopped shipping, and Tim got paid. It added a lot to the neck pouch. “I guess you’ll be able to buy a few more presents,” said Jon, with a grin. “Speaking of which, I have one for you. With my talent for wrapping stuff up, it’s still in the box they sent it in. You can pop it under the Christmas tree. Don’t get overexcited. I don’t have much experience of buying presents. I always buy Rob and my dad a bottle of Scotch, and my mother chocolates. And Louise I make a mess of.” Louise was Jon’s on-again-off-again girlfriend. She was an artist who spent most of her time in Hobart. She’d just come over for the Christmas break, and so far Tim had decided he really didn’t like her. She was beautiful, he supposed. But she wore loads of tinkling jewelry and talked about opera, or ballet, or art, and not about fish and the sea.

“I really feel bad now. I haven’t got you anything,” said Tim awkwardly.

Jon just laughed. “Didn’t expect you to. Rob’s back after New Year, but he’s prone to taking Monday off sick, and sometimes Friday too, so I might give you a call. And Mally is coming over again at the end of January. He’ll want to go fishing again.”

“I’d be keen!” said Tim, grinning. “We can teach him a thing or two.”

“Heh. I know you would. You’ll have to fish off the beach in the meanwhile.”

Tim was thinking about this, about what he could possibly get McKay for Christmas, walking down the track to the farmhouse, when he realized there was a vehicle behind him.

It was a police ute.

CHAPTER 10

The holidays were Molly’s parents’ busiest time of the year and Molly had her bit to do too. Of course there was more spare time, and there was quite a lot happening on the island, from cricket matches to concerts, but as she couldn’t drive alone yet, it meant someone had to take her, and she felt guilty asking. Still, with the long daylight of summer, and the water warming up, there was time to run Bunce on the beach and to swim afterward. The endless beaches and coves to yourself were something you took for granted, until there was someone else on the beach. Then it felt like they were intruders.

She ran into a sulky-faced Hailey Burke wandering around in the little supermarket in town when they’d gone in for their weekly shop. “Hello,” said Hailey. “Are you stuck in this dead boring place too? Are there any parties I don’t know about?”

“New Year’s…”

“Oh, I’ll be gone by then. We’re going skiing in Chamonix. I hate this place. I wish I could have stayed in Melbourne. My stepmother thinks I’m nothing but a babysitter.”

Molly had to laugh to herself translating “Chamonix” back into the place Hailey was boastfully referring to. Cham as in “Charles” and nix as in “Nicks”—not “Shamonee,” as Dad’s climbing friend called it. It was going to be funny when Hailey tried that on the first bunch of other skiers.

“I wondered why I hadn’t been asked to sit over there for a while,” Molly said. “Oh, look, my dad’s at the checkout. I have to go. He’s waiting for the lettuce.”

Molly made her escape. There were times when she thought the island boring too. But that girl made her want to defend it. And what on earth had a nice guy like Tim seen in her? Hailey was, Molly admitted to herself, what most guys would think was beautiful. And she was good at makeup, and at choosing clothes to make her breasts look like they were going to pop out the top of them. And she had enough to pop, not like Molly. But Tim could have found someone with boobs, looks and brains, or at least a nice personality surely? Thinking of Tim, Molly wondered what he was up to. She hadn’t seen him since school broke up. Maybe he’d gone back to Melbourne for the holidays. Just as well. She could see a bored Hailey using him for a toy to run after her, until she left again, or found something better.

* * *

Tim wondered for a moment if he should run. Naked panic nearly took him headlong into the bush.

Then there was a loud bang behind him. And he really did dive into the bush, squirming into its thickness, dropping the parcel Jon had given him.

They couldn’t just shoot him! Couldn’t! It wasn’t allowed! He peeped back from the cover of the ti-tree to see which way to worm in its dense thicket. The vehicle had stopped; the driver was out of it. But the driver wasn’t looking at him. Rather at his ute, and scratching his head. There was no gun in sight.

Tim put his head up a little more, just as the cop turned to look at him, his hands empty, and a rueful look on his face. “I really am sorry about that, son,” called the big policeman. “Didn’t mean to give you a fright. My tire just burst.”

Tim stood up, too angry to be frightened anymore. “I thought you were shooting at me! If you broke my present, I’ll…I’ll…”

“Tell the coppers?” said the policeman with a smile. “Look, I really must apologize. If it is broken, well, I’ll replace it. Can’t say fairer than that, can I?” He walked forward, picked the box up, and handed it to Tim. “Tamar Marine, eh? What is it?”

“I don’t know. I just got given it. It’s my Christmas present.”

“Well, if it is broken, really, I’ll replace it. That tire-burst nearly gave me heart failure. It must have been even louder out here. I am sorry. Good thing it happened here, though. If I’d been on the road, driving faster, it could have been serious. I’m looking for the Symons place. I am supposed to inspect a gun safe there.”

Relief washed through Tim, and without meaning to, he started to laugh. And laugh. He laughed so much he couldn’t breathe, and had to sit down. The cop looked a little worried. “Sorry,” he said when he could breathe again. “I don’t know what came over me. I just got such a fright with the bang. Molly, uh, their place is about two kilometers further along the road. There’s a sign.”

“Ah. This’ll be the Ryan place then,” said cop, in a questioning tone.

Tim nodded, unease returning. A sudden angry gust of wind blew in the police ute’s open door and scattered papers out of it, into the bush. “Oh, my word! I need those. Give me a hand to catch them,” said the policeman.

By the time they’d gathered the forms, and Tim had helped to change the tire, he was no longer quite so terrified of the big policeman. He wouldn’t want to be on the wrong side of him, but he seemed more interested in fishing and boats than in Tim’s past.

He put the ruined tire in the back and said: “Well, thank you. I’ll give you a lift for your fright.”

“I can walk,” said Tim.

“Well, I can’t turn around here, and I don’t want to reverse back to the gate. So I am going your way.”

So Tim got his second ride in a police vehicle. It was more pleasant than the first, but he still wouldn’t have minded missing it. The policeman said he was new here and asked questions about the island, casually, but Tim would bet he was doing more than just being curious, by the too-casual questions about the neighboring farms and people. “I don’t really know. I haven’t been here long. I’m just staying with my grandmother,” said Tim, quite relieved to give a true answer. He got the feeling that lying to this cop wouldn’t work well.

“And there I thought you were an islander,” said the copper.

“I’m from Melbourne.”

The cop smiled and said, as if he was giving a compliment, “You look more like the son of a local fisherman than a city boy.”

Tim’s first take was to be a bit offended. But he was in his oldest jeans, and they were quite salt-stained. And he did like fishing. They’d talked about flathead, earlier. “Well, um, I’m not.”

* * *

Áed had not felt such a burst of fear and rage from his young master for many days now. This place had had a calming influence. He could have burned the vehicle, but Áed had worked out that the last fire he’d started had…caused complications. The ways of humans were strange to incomprehensible. So he merely settled for making the wheel lose its trapped air. Air did not like being trapped, and Áed was quite good at exerting his power over it. At the same time…well, this was the master’s place and the land spirits welcomed him. They were powerful even if very, very old. “Help him!”

The answer was not quite in words, not even in the tongue of creatures of the air and darkness. But Áed understood it anyway.

The land would lend him strength. But this child-of-the-land would have to use that strength and be a man and deal with his enemy all by himself. The land would not do it for him. He would never be a man then.

This was alien to the little creature of air and darkness. They existed to do their master’s will, to defend. Perhaps that was why Fae were not men.

He’d raised a little wind to help anyway.

* * *

They arrived at the farmhouse. Tim saw his grandmother come out. And with that odd sideways look…turn white and sit down on the step, clutching the rail. They both bailed out of the ute and ran to her.

“Tim? Is he…” she quavered.

“I’m here, Nan. I’m here,” said Tim, taking her arm.

His grandmother pulled herself upright on his arm, and then to her feet. “He’s a good boy,” she said belligerently, as if she was going to take the big cop’s head off. She held on to his arm, tightly.

“Yes, Ma’am. He’s a very good youngster,” said the policeman. “He helped me out. I was lost and gave him a bit of a fright.”

“Yer gave me one too. Now get out of here. You ain’t welcome.” Her voice would have frozen a volcano.

“I really must apologize,” said the policeman calmly. Tim was surprised he could be so calm-faced with Nan like this. “It was an accidental thing, and I didn’t mean to give anyone a shock, let alone both of you. I’ll be off now. Tim, don’t forget your parcel. If it is damaged, I’ll replace it.”

Tim went to collect it and the policeman drove off.

“Make some tea and tell me what’s going on,” said his grandmother, looking after the departing vehicle with grim satisfaction.

So Tim did, explaining about the burst tire. “He probably thinks we’re criminals, shouting at him. He was just lost.”

“Hmph!” snorted his grandmother. “Him. He ain’t lost. He’s just nosing about. Looking for clues about who is growing cannabis. Looking for signs of money.”

Well, he wouldn’t see it here
, Tim thought to himself.

“And what’s the parcel?” His grandmother asked.

“Jon…Mr. McKay gave it to me. He said it was a Christmas present. I dropped it when I thought I was being shot at.”

“I haven’t got much for yer myself,” said his grandmother. “I ain’t got a tree or anything.” She sounded faintly guilty. “Good thing that copper didn’t look in the fridge though, because I did get us a goose for our Christmas dinner.”

Tim blinked. “A Cape Barren goose?” There were quite a few around the farm, big gray birds with pale green upper beaks. They fouled up the drinking pools on the lower paddock, and his grandmother did a fair job of cursing them for it. They were protected birds in Australia, but very common on the island.

His grandmother nodded. “My little helper caught him.”

“Some people do shoot them. They were talking about it at school.”

“Yes, but yer got to have a permit for that, an’ that costs money, which we ain’t got. I’ll claim it’s Aboriginal hunting if they asked me.”

“But you’re not Aboriginal,” said Tim.

She snorted. “They say I am. So, so are you. Now drink yer tea, we got some cows to shift.”

Tim was left to puzzle this out, as his grandmother was plainly not going to tell him any more about it. Her tone—and he’d gotten quite good at reading that—said he shouldn’t ask. They moved cows, patched a piece of broken, rusty fence, and went back to the house. It was hot, but windy. “Pity about the wind. I’d love to go for flounder again,” said Tim.

“It’ll settle in a few days. Yer could try for flathead off the beach. There’s an old rod of mine in the back of the shed yer could take. Call it an early present.”

Once, not even that long ago, that would have not raised much excitement. Now it was different. “Really?”

“Yer looked after yer grandfather’s flask well enough, and yer seem to have bit of common sense, when you’re not driving,” said his grandmother, dryly.

“I will look after it. I promise. I’ve never done any fishing, except on the boat with a hand-line. I don’t really know what to do.”

“Yer put a bait on and cast…oh, get it out. There’s a canvas bag next to it with sinkers and stuff. I’ll show yer quickly, and you can go and try. I’ve got to do some baking. You keep your knife by you, stay away from seals, and don’t talk to any strange women.”

So she showed him, and soon Tim was walking down through the paddocks and bush to the sea, a long rod on his shoulder, wondering just how many strange women his nutty grandmother thought he’d find down there.

The sea was a far call from the calm of his flounder-spearing night, but not as rough as on some days he’d been working for Jon out on it. He looked at the low-tide-exposed gleaming sand where his grandmother assured him there’d be pipis and nippers for bait. She obviously thought anyone who could breathe would know what those were, and Tim hadn’t wanted to ask any more questions in case she changed her mind. It was good to be down here, with the wind and salt in his face, the beach under his bare feet. His toes would have to dig into the sand like roots to keep him from blowing away if the wind got up any more, thought Tim, burrowing them into the wet sand anyway, and feeling, somehow, like a tall tree, firm against the wind. He stood there for a while leaning into the wind, before walking toward the low rock that jutted into the water, that he’d been told to fish off.

And there was a strange woman…riding a surfboard, so it was kind of logical for her to be here. She was hot, and not just for her wave riding. Tim had fantasies about a girl that looked like Lorde, and this girl looked very like her. The black wetsuit didn’t leave that much to his imagination. She waved. He waved back, more than just a little surprised.

There was obviously a deeper patch of water, there near the rock, because the waves were not breaking there. The surfer girl paddled into that and sat up on her board to talk to him: “Hello. You must be Tim Ryan.”

She had a beautiful smile and long, dark wavy hair that hung down over her breasts. The wetsuit was unzipped enough to let Tim wonder what, if anything, she was wearing under it. He was trying not to stare, and failing. “Uh. Yes.”

“I’m Maeve,” she said, giving him a little wave.

Her smile made Hailey’s best try to be charming look like a candle to a searchlight. Tim swallowed, trying to find something not stupid to say, and to stop staring. She had a rich lilting voice…and his mother’s Irish accent.

* * *

Áed had been afraid that the selkie would be in ambush. He’d been sure she would be waiting and watching, but Áed had hoped that he’d made her wary. Instead it seemed to have made the seal-woman determined to use her powers to the fullest. Because seals looked graceful and their little ones soft, because men and sharks had hunted them…men seemed to forget that seals too were relentless hunters. She was drawing on the human side of Áed’s master, letting Áed master’s own idea of beauty provide the magical glamour. She looked like the woman of his dreams, because she
was
what he dreamed, rather than her own more voluptuous self.

Áed searched desperately for some way to distract his master. But she was easily able to counter his small magics. She could probably kill him, if she chose, or get the master to banish him, he was that enthralled. Yet…Áed’s poor master should have just rushed into the water after her…blinded by the charm and magic, not even aware that he was drowning. And he hadn’t. She was trying to talk him away from the land that gave him strength. The land touched the master’s bare feet, and he was a part of it, and it seemed its spirits, even if they would not help him fight men, protected him, at least from magics and enchantments. That…and maybe the Aos Sí blood that allowed him to look at her glamour, and perhaps see through it.