The Island House (3 page)

That had been her mother’s advice, of course. She was a practical and dignified woman, Elizabeth Dane, but both qualities ran to sand with the first of the lawyer’s letters. Corrosive regret, long strapped down beneath the armor of defensive resignation, had found a voice after Freya opened that envelope. “Why would you go to Scotland just because he’s asked you to?”

But if she’d agreed with her mother, Freya would have smothered that faint, unacknowledged hope. The hope she was trying, now, not to recognize.

Coming to this place, to Findnar, might help her understand why her father had walked out of their lives all those years ago.

Freya knew Michael Dane was dead. She had seen that jagged little fact in the black type and careful lawyers’ phrases. A sparse note that her father had drowned. She’d been surprised how much the news upset her—and, more strangely, her mother. They’d not talked about him for years because, stonewalled, Freya had stopped asking questions.

So there was no point, now, planning
the conversation.
No point scripting, in forensic detail, what Freya would say to her father, or what he would say to her, when they finally met again. The apologies (from him), the scorn (from her). Her fury, his penitence. Answers.
Reasons.

Michael Dane did not exist. He was dead. They would never speak. The end.

Freya glanced up at the low gray building, now just an outline against the florid sky. His house.

So, Dad, I’m here. You whistled finally. And I came.
Abrupt tears filmed her sight. Freya shook her head;
too late for that, far too late.

The face of Fuil Bay changed, the surface chopped by a rising wind. Fuil. The word meant “blood”—Walter Boyne had told her that, shouting against the engine and the sea as they tore over the water toward . . . what? This moment she’d never expected.

Skirling air caught the girl where she stood on the beach, lifting her soft, shining hair, streaming it away behind her head. Freya shivered and chafed her arms. So, this was summer in Scotland.

A white blur swooped close. Panicked, she ducked from the yellow eyes, the slashing beak.
An owl?
Freya straightened and her heart lifted as she watched the bird ascend the face of the cliff.
Owls are good luck
. Cheered, Freya began to ferry her things from the boat. All would be well. She could do this. The owl told her so.

Silently, behind her, a bright, small sphere rose in the eastern sky. Lassoed by Earth’s gravity, the erratic orbit of the comet had circled back to the north after more than twelve hundred years.

The people had called it the Wanderer then, and the brighter it became, the more they feared its power. Wandering stars were omens of evil times.

But as owl-light died, Freya Dane turned her back to the stars. She did not see the Wanderer as it climbed the sky.

CHAPTER 2

I
’LL TELL
our mother it’s your fault—you took too long making the sacrifice. We can’t stay here.” The whisper was fierce, but Signy knew what was going on—her older sister was trying to pull rank.

She made an effort to be reasonable—she was always the reasonable one. “Father asked me to, Laenna, you heard him. How was I to know they’d be tilling instead of singing?” Signy nodded toward the stone hut the newcomers used so often. They’d arrived on the island when Signy was still a baby, but every day since, the strangers crammed inside and sang at least seven times from well before dawn to deep in the night. Even the girls’ father could not explain why.

But Laenna was jealous. She was older than Signy. Why hadn’t she been asked to perform the sacrifice to the Sun? “If we’d got here earlier, we could have made the sacrifice to Cruach, taken the eggs, and gone.”

Signy spoke over her sister. “But it’s safe here, Laenna—they can’t see us. If we wait, they’ll finish what they’re doing and go off and sing again. Then we can—”

“Oh yes, and what about the tide?” Laenna glared at her sister. “We’ll miss it, and then we won’t get back before Cruach leaves the world. The Wanderer will find us here, and that’s worse. You know it is.”

Laenna was impetuous, Signy was not. “If we run, they’ll see us; there’s hardly any cover. Besides, their God is powerful, and He’ll help them catch us. We shouldn’t take the risk.”

“Oh, what would you know? You’re just a baby. We’ve got Gods, too, lots more than them.”

“Yes, but—”

“No! I am not going home until we’ve got the eggs. That’ll show these idiots. They can’t stop us taking what’s always been ours. Come
on.
” Said with the unshakable authority of fourteen summers to eleven, Laenna wasn’t whispering anymore.

Signy desperately shook her head. They’d be heard!

“Don’t you shoosh me, Signy.” But Laenna lowered her voice. “You have to do what I say—Mother said. And we have to stick together.”

“Hah!” Signy rolled over on her back. She would not look at Laenna; she was too angry.

“I’m not lying. Father said it too; it’s dangerous if we split up.”

Signy smothered a sigh. That was true at least; it
was
dangerous on the island now, and that was not fair. The newcomers seemed to think they owned Findnar, but that was not right. The clan memory keeper said the interlopers had arrived from the South just as summer began the year after she was born. They came in three boats—big, well-made craft with plank sides and woolen sails. They even brought livestock, cattle and pigs and sheep. The men and women dressed all alike in black and spoke a language—gabble, more like—that no one could understand then and still did not. But there were no children with that first group, and none had been born on Findnar since, which Signy and the memory keeper both thought was strange. Then, before the end of that first summer, the newcomers had begun to build with the stone of the island. A hall—square, not round—then the singing hut, and barns, too, in which they slept—men in one, women in the other.

They’d been friendly at first, but then as their second year on the island began, something changed. The people of the clan found they were no longer welcome when they landed their coracles in the cove. Even Signy and Laenna’s own family, traditional
custodians for generations beyond counting of the holy places—the ring stones and the great tomb of the ancestors—were made to feel like strangers.

The contest between the clan and the newcomers deepened year by year, and as Signy grew in understanding, she became fearful. She was not alone. All the clan women were frightened of what their men might do if provoked too far. No one had died yet, but that day might not be far off. Things were tense.

“Come on, Signy, please.”

Laenna was wheedling, but her younger sister was sick of being bossed around
and
being responsible. She folded her arms. “It won’t work.”

“Sulk if you like. I’m not waiting.” And Laenna was off at a crouching run through the seeding grasses; Signy had no choice, she had to follow. But she was right—as usual—for, as the girls sprinted along the cliff toward the gannet rookery, one of the new men saw them. He bellowed something loud and harsh, and two others dropped their hoes and began to run after the sisters. They hauled up their tunics, white legs flashing, screaming as they came.

Signy gasped. “Told you!”

“Idiot!”

The sisters, being young and thin and with a good start, actually made it to the marshy ground ahead of their pursuers, and they plunged in among man-high rushes; the ooze around the roots was cold and sloppy as duck shit. Just a bit farther, a bit farther, and they could hear the rookery now. All those eggs and chicks just waiting, if they could only—

“Ha!” Unfriendly hands dragged at Signy’s hair, Laenna’s hair. One of the strangers, bigger and faster than the others, had cut around the back of the meadow, and a mighty effort had got him to the marsh just as the girls peered out.

“Deo gratias!” Thanks to his God was premature, for Laenna
bit the man’s wrist. Cursing, he punched her and Laenna fell to the grass. Like a dog will shake a rat to kill it, the man shook Signy’s sister. “Little filth! Slut! Thief!”

A boy arrived. He was not much older than Laenna, and the man shoved Signy at him. “Take her. This one’s mine.” He grabbed Laenna’s hair with his good hand. She was crying and choking as blood splashed from her nose, but he yanked down spitefully. “We know how to deal with heathen thieves.” Laenna howled as she stumbled after him, trying to match his long stride, trying to pull his hands away.

The boy attempted the same trick. “Come on, you.”

Signy was already standing, and she was not much shorter. She hit his hand away. When he grabbed, she growled, lifting her lips from her teeth.

The boy backed off. He picked up a rock. “I’ll use this and I won’t be given penance. Your heathen soul will rush to Hell.” His voice was a squeak.

Signy didn’t understand, but she grabbed her own rock and hurled it, hard. It took him on the side of the head. The boy collapsed to his knees, yelping.

“Hah!” Signy ran, faster than a hare raised from corn. No time for gannets now; this was all about her fool sister—they had to get back to the cove.

The world was a blur as she closed the gap. Her sister was wailing, begging for pity.
As if he understands,
thought Signy,
ignorant beast!

At three paces, she launched herself. She took the man’s knees from behind, and he fell hard, the breath knocked from his chest as he hit the earth.

“Come
on
!” Laenna hauled Signy up. Fear lent the sisters rabbit speed. They ran, lungs burning, until the shouting died behind them and, somehow, they’d found the cliff path.

Laenna panted out a promise. “My amber beads, Cruach, if
you get us safe home. I swear it, into the fire they will go.” The necklace was precious—a gift for her first moontide—but she didn’t care now.

It was hard to run on the narrow path, but they hurled around the first steep curve, past the lone young rowan, then the next bend, and soon they would be—

Laenna stopped as if hit. Signy collided with her sister’s back. Her foot slipped from the path—she was falling!

Laenna yanked her back. Signy yelled, “What did you do that for?” And then she saw why.

Dragon ships were moored in the bay, and men, too many men, dressed in skins and homespun with swords and shields, were jumping into the sea.

Laenna said, softly, “Raiders. Nid told me. They’ve been seen up the coast. I thought he was trying to scare me.” Under the blood and the mud, her face was white.

There was nowhere else to go. Signy grabbed her sister’s hand. “Come
on
!”

They turned and ran back the way they’d come, too terrified to scream; breath and energy were needed for survival. At their backs a thudding crash began. The raiders had seen the girls and that noise, sword hilt against shield boss, frightened the sisters more than facing the newcomers.
That
noise meant death; now, not later.

The children hit the top of the cliff. They screamed as they ran toward the Abbey, past Laenna’s captor, only now getting to his feet.

“They’re here, they’re coming. Run!”

If the man did not understand, he heard the bellow of approaching death. And then he was sprinting after the girls, he was past them, yelling . . .

“Brothers, Brothers, ring the bell. The bell! Raiders!”

That was the first night of the Wanderer in this world.

CHAPTER 3

N
O POWER
? What do you mean, no power?”

Walter was moving Freya’s things from the dinghy to the handcart he’d brought down from the house. “Never had the electricity on Findnar so far as I know. But there’s a gas ring in the house for cooking and a VHF radio for weather reports and contacting the RNLI. Runs on batteries.”

Freya had just been tired before; now she was exasperated. “Why doesn’t the house have power—and what’s the RNLI?” She knew she looked ridiculous, hugging the laptop like a baby.