Changeling's Island - eARC (11 page)

But would it be enough? She was clever, she watched humans and understood them all too well, and there was nothing a little creature of air and darkness could do against her power, drawn from the vastness of the sea.

Her look told him that he would suffer if he even tried.

Áed fled…

To find help.

Fortunately, it was on the beach, and it had very long legs. Four of them, and when taunted by Áed, the huge wolfhound could run faster than a stag.

The human girl who had been with the dog was left far behind, even if she too had long legs and could run well for her kind.

* * *

“I’d love to try it! But I haven’t got any bathers,” said Tim. “Anyway, I’ve never surfed, and really I wouldn’t know what to do.” A cautious part of his mind said he would only make a complete fool of himself if he took her up on her offer of having a go at riding the board.

“Oh, it’s easy enough. I’ll show you,” she said.

There was an enormous splash. Tim turned and saw what he first took for a sea monster, and then realized that it was merely a huge brown coarse-haired whiskery dog’s head above the water—with the rest of the dog submerged, but swimming, and barking.

Looking back along the beach, Tim could see Molly pelting along the beach.

The surfer girl looked at the dog, at Tim, at the runner…and said: “I see you have friends. Another time.” And she paddled the board away, far faster than the swimming Bunce, who did a deep-throated
woof
at her and it, before he turned shoreward.

“Bunce!” gasped Molly. “Come here,”…pant…“bad dog!”

The bad dog in question surged and bounced out of the shallows with a vast doggy grin, hurtled out of the water to Tim, and leaned against his legs, wet and hairy. Bunce looked adoringly up at Tim, tongue lolling, as if he was best thing he’d ever seen. He didn’t have to look that far up, either. He was a huge dog. It was a hard look to resist. Tim patted the big head, a bit warily. He hadn’t had much to do with dogs, let alone ones quite this size. He got a big, sloppy lick of appreciation.

“Don’t think you can hide behind Tim, you…you faithless ratbag,” said Molly, grabbing him by the studded collar. The collar was more imposing than the dog, who was pretending to be very small, and succeeding quite well, for a cart-horse. “Sorry, Tim. He just took off. I don’t know what got”—she panted—“into him.” She stared crossly at the large dog thumping his tail at her and panting back. “He always comes when I call him.”

“He just can’t resist surfboards,” said Tim, mildly irritated that the gorgeous woman had paddled off, but still pleased to see Molly and her daft dog.

Molly wrinkled her brow. “What surfboard?” she asked.

“That woman on a surfboard. She was here when Bunce came to show off his moustache.” Tim pointed out at the sea. And then blinked because neither the woman nor the surfboard was visible. “Hello. Where has she gone?”

Molly looked at the sea. Dug into the magazine pocket of her camo trousers, and came out with a book and a small pair of binoculars. She stared at the water, searching. “There’s a seal. Did you think that was a surfboard? Maybe Bunce thought the seal was another dog. He’s not very fond of other dogs.”

Before Tim could tell her that he wasn’t blind, didn’t need glasses and did know the difference between a woman and a seal, the Irish wolfhound curved his back.

Molly let go of his collar and backed off, but not quite fast enough, as he shook himself, sending what seemed like half the ocean spraying over the two of them. “Oh, Bunce! If you’ve damaged the binocs I’ll kill you, and Dad’ll kill me!” shrieked Molly.

By the time the binoculars had been carefully dried of the few droplets, inspected and the end result greeted with some relief, with an apologetic dog trying to lick them, the surfer had been momentarily forgotten. The two of them were talking with the ease that bus journeys together had brought, about how the holidays had been so far, and that had led into books, and the folly of parents, or in Tim’s case, a grandparent. “She says I am to take this old knife with me everywhere. And not talk to strange women.”

Molly stuck her tongue out at him. “I’m not that strange.”

Tim laughed until he had to sit down on the wet sand. It was neat to have someone like himself to talk to. He hadn’t realized he’d missed it so much.

* * *

He was a lot different from the miserable kid who had been kind to her on the flight over, thought Molly. That kid had been pale and a bit weedy, and had looked out of place. Tim was tanned to quite dark-skinned now, and his shirt looked too tight for him. And he looked more comfortable here even than he had been on the bus or at school. More confident. Telling her about how cool it was to go spearing flounder in the dark. Very full of his adventures on the boat with Jon McKay. Other than the fact that he was an ab diver, Molly didn’t know much about the guy. Tim plainly thought his word was law.

It was strange that Tim been here for so long during the holidays without showing up at the island’s functions and parties. But then, his grandmother never seemed to go out.

Talk went on to fishing. “I’m supposed to find nippers or pipis,” admitted Tim. “Gran seemed to think I’d know what they are, and how to find them. I have used squid and a hand line, but not this stuff.” He pointed at the rod.

“Dad fishes off the beach. But he mostly catches little flathead, too small to keep. I’ve helped him collect bait. If you want pipis, they’re just about wall-to-wall in the next bay. We’ve got a sort of pump for the sand-yabbies. I don’t think you can catch them with your hands.”

Soon they had their trousers rolled up and were collecting the little shellfish, “helped” by Bunce’s earnest digging, and then trying to work out how to put a shell on a hook. It was, Molly admitted to herself, more fun than she’d had so far that holiday. And fishing with Tim was more exciting, too, because it was not like with her dad, standing around waiting for something to happen, getting bored. Things happened, and fast. They had only managed—as a team effort—to cast out the broken shells on a hook on the third try, and that had barely had time to get wet before they had a fish on the hook, pulling the line, and jerking the rod around, bending it like a grass-stalk in the breeze.

“It’s a big one! What do I do now?” asked Tim, clinging onto the rod, as the reel screamed.

“Wind it in! Keep the rod pointed up,” said Molly. That was the extent of her knowledge.

The reel screamed again. “It’s heavy! It’s pulling like mad. I’ll keep the rod up, if you wind the reel. I need two hands.”

Bunce started barking and prancing around them with the excitement. Eventually they had to run backward up the beach—and fall over Bunce—and get up and run again, to pull the fish up onto the shining wet sand.

It was a mammoth-sized flathead, yellow with leopard-pattern brown spots and dots of red, and a huge, wide, flat mouth full of sharp teeth, and eyes with a golden iris that formed an odd crescent. It looked like a fantasy book’s dragon’s eye, staring at them.

“Watch it! The gill-covers have nasty spikes,” yelled Tim as she bent to try and pick it up. “Here, hold the rod. I’ll kill it.”

He did, stabbing it neatly through the head with the knife from his pocket. “Quick and clean, Jon says.”

Molly was glad he was there to do it. Bunce growled at the fish and sniffed it. “Don’t you dare eat it, you menace!” said Molly. “Boy, my dad would be green with envy!”

Tim laughed. “We’d better catch another then, so you can take this one home. Nan told me she was expecting fish for tea.”

“We’ll never catch two.”

But they did, the second not quite the size of the first, or quite so difficult or so mixed up in their efforts, but still a big fish. And then Tim…stopped. Put the reel down carefully on the bag. “I suppose we’d better fillet them and clean the guts out. Only I am not too sure how to do it…I was just doing the skinning with Mally. How can we carry the fillets? I haven’t got a plastic bag or anything.”

“Aren’t you going to try again?” asked Molly.

He shook his head, looking a little regretful. “That’s enough. Jon says you always leave fish in the sea for tomorrow, and we don’t have a freezer, and we’ve got a goose for tomorrow…” He colored. “Gran caught it. She thought the copper was on to her.”

“The copper?” asked Molly.

Tim looked uncomfortable. “He wanted to know where your place was. Something about a gun safe. He was lost.”

“But he came and had a cup of tea back in November. With that nice guy you went fishing with.”

Tim bit his lip and stood silent for a moment. Then he looked at the fish. “Well…I suppose I’d better try to deal with these.”

Molly wondered just what it was about the policeman that had made Tim so uncomfortable. She nearly asked, but then a tangle of blue baling twine and bits of dry seaweed, which had obviously been cast up by the tide, blew along the beach and nearly hit her in the face. It would have, if she hadn’t caught it. She held it out to him: “Boy, the wind is getting up. We could put the fish on some of this string and carry them home. My dad knows how to fillet fish.”

“I wish mine was around to show me,” said Tim, quietly.

What did you say to that? You could hear it hurt him. “We could at least take the guts out. I know how to do that from catching wrasse,” she said, changing the subject.

Tim grinned, obviously making an effort to pull himself away from whatever he’d been thinking of. “Here’s my knife,” he said, holding it out. “Just don’t tell Gran. She said I was never to let go of it.”

“She sounds, like, really weird,” said Molly.

“No!” he said defensively, and then pulled a face. “Yeah, I guess she is a bit. But she’s, well, I guess sort of living in the past or something. Like we don’t have TV, let alone the Internet. I didn’t think I could live without it.”

“I don’t think
I
could,” said Molly, cutting the fish’s belly open. “You can haul out the stuff inside. So, like, what do you do? I mean, no Internet, no TV…”

“Pull out fish guts,” he said, waving them around. “I’ve been working during the holidays, and Gran has always got jobs for me to do when I get home. I read. Play Starcraft. It’s a bit dead, but I’ve been so tired after being at sea. And I might be going to Melbourne later in the holidays. Or Jon said he was going to organize for me to take a motorboat handler’s ticket. That’d be cool. He’s a good guy, Jon.”

“I can lend you some books,” said Molly. It all sounded fairly dreary to her. Well, the motorboat part might be all right.

“That’d be great! I was wondering about the library, but it’s a long way to town.”

“We go in to fetch guests, and on Wednesdays when the ferry comes in, to shop.”

“Ah. I might scrounge a lift sometime. Nan gets Hailey’s dad, uh, Mr. Burke to collect our post and stuff.” He pushed a strand of the blue baling twine through the fish’s mouth. “There you go. Bunce will think you are carrying it for him.” The wolfhound lolled against Tim, panting affectionately.

“He likes you anyway. You can’t give it to me, though.”

“Why not? They’re too big for us to eat more than a fillet each,” said Tim, taking the guts out of the second fish.

It would be nice to shock her father with it. And, well, she felt she’d been part of catching it, and he really didn’t seem to be only being polite. “Um, like, if you’re sure? My dad will be green with envy.”

Tim nodded, waved at the sea. “Yeah. There are more fish out there, anyway.”

A little later Molly walked home with the flathead. The string was heavy and cut at her hand, but it was still going to be worth it, just to show her father. She found herself grinning at the thought of their method of catching fish. It had all been a lot more fun than just a walk down the beach with Bunce. It must be so strange for Tim. She didn’t really know a lot about him, about his family, or his weird grandmother. Why was he afraid of the cops? Why did he get miserable so easily? Maybe his grandmother was up to something. Or…were his parents
really
divorced? Maybe his father was in jail or something?

* * *

Áed was pleased with his work. He had made his peace with the Cu—the noble hound. It would seem the dog had the blood of the ancient hounds of the Irish chieftains in its veins, and was proof against most magics. Too, the steel studs in its collar had protected it from the sea-dog, and it had driven her off. And the dog’s mistress was helping to counter the selkie’s charms as well. Young humans had more in common than an old fae and young human, no matter what magics she used to make herself beautiful and seductive.

He’d flung the sea-wrack blue cord at the Cu’s mistress, set with the little charms that he had been able to add to it. She had taken his actions, as many humans did, for the wind, and “accepted” the gift by catching the tangle of twine before it hit her in the face. Such are the traps and gifts of Faerie. And she had taken a piece of it with her to string the fish onto. In way of such charms…she might try to throw it away, but it would fall into a pocket or end up being used for something in her home. The spells he’d placed on it would work, slowly, on her. He could summon her now. She would come and help to protect the master when Áed called.

CHAPTER 11

“Well, that’s a good-sized rock flathead!” exclaimed his grandmother, touching it. “You were lucky!”

“I caught another one. A bit bigger.”

“But it got away,” said his grandmother, raising an eyebrow.

“No, I got it out. But I gave it to Molly.”

His grandmother turned her head askance, her face setting in lines of anger. “I thought I told you not to talk to strange women!”

“She’s not! She’s a girl from school! She’s on the bus with me every day. She’s not a stranger or anything. I went to the show with her and her parents. You even spoke to her dad,” protested Tim.

His grandmother had opened her mouth to start shouting…and stopped. “Oh. What was she doing on the beach?” It was still suspicious.

“Walking her dog. They live a bit further toward West End. She helped me find the bait, because I didn’t know where to look. And helped gut the fish. I…I thought it was only fair and…and polite to give her one for her family. Good manners. They took me to the show, and I thought I ought to give her something to say thanks.”

The last part was plainly the right thing to say. “Yer right. It was a good thing to do. Well done.”

But Tim’s curiosity, as well as some anger, was up now. “Why are you so worried about this woman? Who is she?”

His grandmother rubbed her forehead, pushing back a stray lock of dark hair. “I don’t know the whole truth of it. But she’s been botherin’ yer grandfather’s side of the family forever. I didn’t believe it all, but yer grandfather reckoned his great-grandfather nearly got drowned by her. He didn’t go near the water alone, and said you always kept iron next to your skin if you did. My family, we used to sail a lot, always been fishermen. But they farmed. Didn’t even go mutton-birding.

She took a deep breath. “I didn’t think much of it, but your father…he took to diving. He could swim like a fish by the time he was eight. He used to go and get us crayfish and abalone. I didn’t think much about it, my brothers all did it; me, I collected muttonfish when I was littler than him. He used to go down most days…I was busy on the farm, I always said it was all right as long as there was two of yer. He would meet yer Uncle Dicky, and the two of them would go down to the beach and fish and dive and fool about. And then one day, when he was about thirteen, he went off to meet your uncle to dive. Dicky didn’t show up, but he went anyway, even though he wasn’t ’lowed to. And he had a run-in with a woman down there. He wouldn’t ever tell me no more about it. Just that she nearly killed him. I tried to get him to talk to the cops, I tried to get his teacher and even that priest to talk to him. He wasn’t talking to no one. But he never went back diving.” She shook herself. “And yer to stay out the water. No diving. No strange women. No going down on yer own again. That seal-woman is around, and she’s bad luck—trouble, too.”

Tim was seething with this. It was crazy and so unfair. Just because of something his father did. He was about to say something and then he remembered that well, actually, he had met a strange woman down there. One that looked a bit like Lorde. Maybe he should just let it blow over a bit. Otherwise maybe next she’d stop him going to sea with Jon, too. He had a bit of money in his pouch, but not enough to see the back of her and this place forever…and he liked being out on the boat. So he just kept quiet.

Maybe his quiet got to his grandmother, because after their fish tea she said: “Yer could open that present. It’s Christmas Eve. Some people open them then. Yer could see if it got broken by that damned copper.”

Tim didn’t need any urging. He was feeling flat and depressed. He opened the box. On the top was a pack of what Tim assumed were fishing lures. Plastic fish with hooks, silver oblongs with hooks.

“What is it?” his grandmother asked.

“Fishing stuff, I think.” He held it out to her.

She took it, and peered at it in her odd sideways fashion. “Wobblers. Good for Aussie salmon and yellowtail. He knows his fishing.”

Tim pulled the plastic packet out from the lower section of the box. It was red. He shook it out, and a lifejacket—the kind with sleeves and an inflation cartridge, which doubled as a windbreaker and waterproof, the kind Jon and his deckie wore, fell out. Tim had to put it on immediately. It was so cool. Jon had even gotten the size about right! It fitted him much better than the boat-spare he’d been using.

He was surprised by a little whimper from his grandmother. She’d sat down on the hard kitchen chair, and was staring at him. Not her usual sideways stare, but straight at him. Her suntanned face was as white as a sheet.

“Are you all right, Gran?” he asked, hastily stepping over to her.

She grabbed his arm with that iron-hard grip of hers. Squeezed. Nodded at him. He noticed a tiny tear leaking from her eye.

She sniffed. Rubbed her eye and said gruffly, “Yer promise me yer will always wear that jacket when yer at sea. Always. Yer hear me?”

“Yes, Gran.” It wasn’t exactly a hard promise to make. It was just…brilliant! All he needed was a chance to go to sea with it now. It was kind of like designer label jeans, only better. You had one of those jackets…you had arrived. You were the real thing. You were an ab diver, or at least a proper deckie. He couldn’t help smiling and standing up a bit straighter. Jon must have thought he did okay.

“Yer look like yer grandfather sometimes,” said his grandmother, shaking her head. “Now off to bed with yer. We’ll go down and try for some salmon tomorrow with them shiny new jigs of yours, after we have our dinner.”

* * *

“How on earth did you get that? That’s the biggest flattie I ever saw,” exclaimed her father, when Molly walked in with it.

“We caught it,” said Molly proudly.

“Of all the luck! I’ve never caught anything near that size.” He paused. “Who’s ‘we’? One of the guests?”

“Tim from school. He was down on the beach. He caught two. Both whoppers, in, like, fifteen minutes, and most of that was bringing them in.”

“Hey! Does he give lessons?”

Molly, thinking of Tim and the fact he didn’t even know what a pipi was, packed up laughing. “This was his first time.”

“Whoa Nellie! Talk about beginner’s luck.”

“Yeah, he, like, has this old rod, and can’t cast, but he can catch. You should show him how to cast, Daddy. He’s a nice kid. He…was saying he wished he had a dad to show him.”

“Divorce can sometimes be really hard on kids,” said her father, nodding. “But it happens, Molly.”

“Yeah, and on top of it all, his grandmother is, like, really weird. I mean, no TV, no Internet. Never goes anywhere. She told him not to talk to strange women.”

“Sounds like good advice to me,” he said with a grin. “But you’re not that strange, are you?”

“That’s what I said to him. I said I’d lend him some books.”

* * *

For Tim, Christmas day might have been a different day from any other day. But to the cow it was still a day on which she needed milking. By ten o’clock, when his mother called, he’d been up for more than four hours, and had done all sorts of tasks, had breakfast, and had just come in for morning tea. As a sign that it was
not
just any other day, there were little gingery star-shaped biscuits. Nan believed in lots of ginger. Tim had read that it was good for keeping off zombies, and it must work because there had been no sign of even one so far on the farm. Until his mother phoned he would have said they hadn’t even got to Melbourne, but obviously they’d eaten the part of her brain that was arranging his trip home. She prattled on about her holidays, like his being here was normal.

Eventually he just had to ask.

There was a brief silence. “Oh, Tim. Your father is being awkward about it. I asked him to organize it. He hasn’t even gotten back to me.”

Tim knew she wasn’t telling the truth. Or not entirely. In the messy bit of his life where he’d realized that Dad just wasn’t coming back, he’d learned to spot his mother’s not quite revealing everything. Well, that was how she might put it. Lying was how
he
put it. “You didn’t tell him, did you?” he said, crossly.

“I did, Tim. I did. You e-mail him. He sometimes listens to you.”

Like “not unless he thought it would make you mad,” thought Tim, glumly. He hadn’t spoken to his father for months, even before he came to the island. But what he said was, “I haven’t got the Internet here. That’s just one of the other things you did to me. It’s not fair.”

“You did it to yourself, Tim Ryan.”

The call didn’t get any better. It didn’t quite get to shouting and screaming, but when it got down to “you’re ungrateful and didn’t even say thank you for your Christmas present” Tim was actually quite able to say “well, I haven’t got one.” He hadn’t got her anything either…actually, hadn’t even thought of it.

That did stop the rise in temperature. “I posted it.”

“We only get the post about every two or three weeks.”

There was another silence. “Then it’s waiting for you.”

“Well, thank you, anyway,” still resentful. At least she hadn’t forgotten.

“Yes, um, I am sorry it didn’t get there. And contact your father. Now, love, I really must go, I’m going out to lunch with…with Mark. Goodbye, be good and take care.”

Tim was left holding the sound of long-distance silence before he could ask just how he was supposed to contact his dad. He couldn’t phone on Nan’s phone. And who was Mark? It looked like Nan was right about the boyfriend. No wonder she didn’t want him home.

His grandmother put a hand on his shoulder. “Just so yer know, I asked Dicky to check the post for us yesterday. He said there was nothing, but yer can’t always rely on him.” She took a deep breath. “I got nothing for yer, really. Just some chocolate. There’s not a lot of spare money. But I’m hoping we’re going to do better with those steers at the next sale. Prices have been bad.”

That was puzzling. “People at school were saying the price was up. They talk about it. And Gran…I got my present early from you. You let me use the fishing stuff, and…and I enjoyed that so much.” He knew he was being a little devious, but he wanted the freedom. “If I got hold of Molly, and she and her dog met me at the beach paddock…could I go fishing again? She’s older than me. I wouldn’t go down alone.” He felt like a baby saying that.

“Hmph. I’ll see.” With his mother, that meant she was giving in. With Nan it seemed to mean “no.” “Now I got to finish our dinner. You check the sheep near the road for me. My little helper is worried about the water.”

Tim was glad to go out to walk through the bush and tussocky paddocks, to be alone with his head for a bit. Just walking along, barefoot, because he was too hot to put boots on, did seem to make things seem well, less unbeatable. If neither his mother or father were going to lift a finger to get him out of here, he’d just have to get out himself. He just needed somewhere to go. He was thinking about that when a big copperhead slithered across his path. By now, he knew better than to jump or run. He stood quietly and watched it slide away.

* * *

The dancing and feasting continued here beneath the hollow hills, with the Aos Sí lords and ladies on a wide and a level place, where the sun never shone but somehow the grass grew green and long nights followed long warm days. There was a tenuous connection with the world above, and the things that moved and changed there, but this place did not change with them. The great lords of the Fae seldom walked or rode the lands of mortal men anymore. The tracery of steel spread across the land with the railways had set bounds on them, and they did not like to be reminded of the loss of their dominions.

Humans came to Faerie—but far fewer now—and were bound to Faerie lands, with the eating or drinking of the produce of Faerie. The Fae knew how food and drink were a part of the land and
place, and that by consuming them, those who ate and drank became part of the place.

Most humans seemed willing to be thus entrapped, and loved the life of Faerie.

But they did not flourish there.

The selkie, Maeve, did not know or care how well they did. But she herself was entrapped and needed to free herself from the ancient obligation, the geas laid on her. The king under the hollow hill at Cnoc Meadha needed to be repaid before she could be free.

The young man had proved stronger than the last one she’d hunted. The bloodline had always been hard to catch, with the magic of the Aos Sí helping them and the spirits of the land binding them. Her last prey, this one’s father, had escaped her by chance and luck, a piece of scrap iron from an old mooring that his desperate hand found as she’d held him down. It had been a bad mischance. She’d planned to frighten him witless and get him to agree, and instead he’d never come near enough to the water to be caught again.

The first changeling and his lesser spirit had fled Ireland long before she had been summoned to the court of King Finvarra. It had taken her some years to track him down, across the wide and wasteful oceans…to find him dead. Killed in a fight over an Aboriginal woman, his half-Aos Sí blood soaked into the sand, leaching down into the water, to the sea, to her.

The key remained, somewhere, hidden on the island where he had died. Not easily found, either, to one who had no claim to it.

There was, however, an heir to the changeling’s birthright. A child carried by the woman. Maeve had planned to search for the key, or at least steal the heir-child…until she slid out onto the beach.

And found that this land had its own hold on the child.

If she was going to catch one of those who had a claim to the key, she needed them in the salt sea.

She’d tried, when the changeling’s heir moved to the bigger island. There, the child had had defenders, besides the land. She still carried the scar.

But she was nothing if not patient. Long generations passed, and still she hunted the changeling-heirs.

This one…she hadn’t gotten him into the water, but her spell-hooks would at least draw him back. She’d felt the lust in him. Humans were like that, and her kind were good at using it against them.