Tides (20 page)

He felt suddenly as if he’d spent the whole summer out here, between the islands, tossed on the waves. He could barely recall the feeling of standing on solid ground.

“About here,” Lo said. “Slow down.”

Noah craned his head around and saw the pier looming toward them. He swept up an oar and braced it against the wood, pulling them in.

The boat’s hull bumped against a piling. Noah climbed onto the pier and reached for the rope.

Lo pushed his hands away. “I’ll tie her off,” she said. “You get to the Center and start looking.”

Noah nodded. “Thanks.” Between the rocky ground and the darkness, he couldn’t run as fast as usual, even under the full moon. Every step set off a shock of pain from the cut on his foot.

As he rounded a corner and approached the Center’s entrance, Noah remembered he didn’t have a key. He stopped and stared at the door, trying to remember how thick it was.

He backed up a few paces and rushed forward, slamming his shoulder against it. The impact was louder than he expected. It sent a clanging echo into the night—and, he was sure, into every room of the Center. Anyone inside would know he was there.

His shoulder throbbed. He prodded it carefully and winced. He took stock of all the injuries he’d accrued in the last few hours: this new bruise, the slice down his instep, and the marks on his neck where Mara had briefly throttled him.
Why am I helping her, again?

But then he imagined how he’d feel if he thought Mara had tried to hurt Lo. He knew he couldn’t blame Mara for anything she’d done that night. He could only blame himself for not doing more to help her.

At least that part he could try to fix. Noah backed up again, preparing to ram his aching shoulder against the door one more time.

“Stop!” Lo cried as he took his first lunging step.

He skidded forward, grasping for balance as his feet slid over dew-slicked pebbles. He looked back at his sister. “What is it?” he hissed. “And not so loud, Lo, Christ.”

Lo rolled her eyes. She lifted a hand to her hair and pulled out one of the pins that held back her bangs. “You seriously never learned how to do this?” she asked, pushing him away from the door frame. She squinted at the lock and stuck her pin inside.

“You seriously did? I guess I should give you more credit.”

“Well, obviously.” Lo smirked, still squinting at the lock. “And it’s not as though you have bobby pins, I guess.” She sighed with satisfaction as the door swung open. “It’s weird Professor Foster didn’t give you a key, though, since you’re always yammering on about being his protégé
.
”

Noah nodded absently. “Only he has the keys to this place. The older interns say he’s kind of neurotic about it. And he has that giant key chain . . .”

He frowned. He’d seen Professor Foster’s key chain so many times. Besides the keys it held, there hadn’t been much to it: no grocery store discount cards or ID tags or anything decorative—except for one small circle of gray leather. It was a kind of leather he knew well now.

“Lo,” he said carefully, “do you remember what Professor Foster’s key chain looks like?”

“What? I guess so.” She quirked her eyebrows at him, then frowned, trying to remember. “Why does it matter? It’s not as if it’s around, and anyway it was just a big tangle of keys and—” Her breath hitched. “And an old bit of leather. Of—of sealskin. Noah, do you think—”

“Yes.” Noah pushed his hands through his hair, trying to think over his audibly pounding heart. The logical part of his mind pushed in at him, reminding him that just because Professor Foster had sealskin on his key chain didn’t mean he was a kidnapper. But the professor’s secrecy, the strange sounds in his house, that gut feeling of
wrong
Noah had felt all through dinner . . . It had to be him.

The first steps of a plan were forming in his exhausted mind, and he didn’t have time to wait for the rest of it. He would do the only thing he had left: He would help. He would try.

“We have to go to Professor Foster’s house,” he said. “Now.”

“What? We have to look for the skins. They could be here. We have to check the labs, Professor Foster’s office . . . even the filing room. God knows what’s in those boxes.” She laughed a little.

He looked down the island to their tiny rowboat’s mooring. “I don’t want to leave you.”

But he remembered how Professor Foster had treated his dog. If that really was a child, Mara’s sister . . . he had to go, had to stop him, right now. And when he brought the children back, they’d need their skins, or they wouldn’t be free. He knew Lo was right.

He looked at his sister. “Even if you do find something, how will you get back?”

Lo pointed toward the pier. “The Center has, like, four boats. The keys are in Professor Foster’s office, and I can definitely get in there.” She waved the bobby pin at him. “I’ll be fine. Noah, please. You said I could help.”

He shook his head. “I just don’t want you to get hurt.”

“I know.” She stepped forward and hugged him. “You either. But we have to help them. Like you said.”

He looked toward White, where the lighthouse beam flashed and the kitchen window glowed a steady yellow speck. “You have to tell Gemm what’s happened,” he said. “You have to get Maebh and Mara to believe that I—that we didn’t do this. That it’s Professor Foster.”

“I know.” Lo let go of him and turned to go inside.

Noah didn’t want to think about what would happen if he was wrong. He’d lose his internship, of course, and his college scholarship—he’d probably end up in jail.

He took a deep breath and walked to the pier. He jumped into the
Gull,
raising waves around him that crashed a thin layer of seawater into the boat. It soaked through his shoes, freezing his skin and stinging the long cut on his foot.

Noah took in the ropes and shoved off, pulling at the oars with what remained of his strength. All he had to do was get to White, he told his shaking muscles. Once he had the motorboat, everything would be fine.

Over his shoulder, he watched Gemm’s cottage grow larger as he approached. His bruised shoulder was growing stiff, and he groaned to distract himself from the pain.

A dark figure stood on the crest of the island. His heart pounded and he hoped for Mara, but then the lighthouse illuminated gray hair and Gemm’s worried face.

He thought he still might get away without her noticing—he didn’t want to put her through anything else tonight. But she turned toward him, squinting through the darkness.

“Who’s there?” she called, stepping warily toward the shore.

“Gemm, it’s me.” His voice cracked, and his breaths rattled from his dry throat.

She ran toward him, into the waves. She grasped the bow of the
Gull,
and he climbed out so they could bring it ashore together. “Noah! Where have you been?”

“The Center.” They pulled the boat far up from the tide line.

Noah stared at his grandmother, wondering how to make her understand what he had to do.

“I have to take—I mean, I’d like to take the
Minke
out, Gemm, please.” He knew he sounded like a little boy learning his manners—except for the shaky desperation in his voice.

Gemm frowned. “Why?”

Noah exhaled. “I’m trying to help them. Please, I don’t have time to explain. Just let me take the boat. Gemm, please.”

She nodded. “Of course you can take her if you need to. But, goodness, Noah, I wish someone would let me help too. Maebh—” Her hand darted to her mouth, as if to stifle a sob Noah couldn’t hear. “Maebh still hasn’t come to me.”

Noah didn’t know what to say to that. He waded toward the
Minke,
moored at the end of Gemm’s dock. The tide was at its lowest, so he could walk all the way out to the boat and lift himself aboard. His spent limbs protested the effort, but Noah ignored them.

Gemm made a guttural sound in her throat, a groan or a chuckle. “I suppose it was foolish of me to think you’d stay in your bed when I told you to.” She sighed.

“I guess so.” Noah tried to smile at her, to reassure her. “Don’t worry, Gemm. I just have to do this.”

“I know.” Gemm touched her face again, but she no longer looked on the verge of tears. A sad distance swept over her eyes. “I was young and in love once too.”

He turned the key in the ignition. As the engine sputtered to life, he pushed away the thought that Gemm might know more about his feelings for Mara than he did himself. He would sort that out later. All he knew now was that he had to help her.

The
Minke
sped out toward the mainland, water churning a thick white trail in her wake.

thirty-one

M
ARA
refused. There was nothing Maebh could say to make her leave the younglings ever, ever again—let alone to make her go back to White. She didn’t want to set foot or flipper anywhere near Noah.

Maebh sat next to her on Whale Rock, her sealskin half shed, trying to reason with her, but Mara wasn’t interested in any reasoning besides her own. She kept her skin on and glared at the Elder through seal eyes.

“Listen to me, Mara,” Maebh said. Branna and Tavis were piled over each other on her lap, and she stroked them absentmindedly with her human hands. The others were circling the harbor with Ronan. He was teaching them to hunt minnows, trying to distract them from Lir’s absence.

Nothing could distract Mara. She’d been stupid, lethally stupid, and Noah had betrayed her. All she wanted was to sit with that knowledge, to feel the guilt entering her body like a knife. She didn’t want Maebh’s comfort. She didn’t deserve it.

She turned from the Elder, staring into the black, choppy water. She felt a hand touch her flipper, and she jerked it away.

Her sealskin pulled back, sliding off her forearm. Mara stared at the still-raw splits in her webbed fingers. She felt her skin parting, slipping from her shoulders and onto the rock, until she was human down to her thighs.

“Goddess!” she swore, yanking off the rest of her skin. She didn’t know why her own body kept disobeying her like this.

At least now, with human speech in her mouth, she could tell Maebh to leave her alone. But the expression on the Elder’s face, so loving and worried, made her hesitate. She gathered up her sealskin and hugged it, leaning her chest into its warmth. She felt her ribs shake as she cried.

When Maebh touched her back, she could not bring herself to flinch away again.

“You’re wondering why this is happening to you,” Maebh said, “and why you cannot keep your form. I think I know.”

Mara rubbed her face dry and looked up at Maebh. “You do?”

The Elder nodded. “I am linked with Dolores,” she said, her voice low and sad. “I sometimes wish it weren’t so, but I cannot change it. As soon as I loved her, we were linked. Even when we’d been apart for years, when I told myself every day how much I hated her . . . I stayed a seal for forty years, unable to look at my own humanskin without aching for hers. I never aged, never grew, because of her. But the link was there. I couldn’t dissolve it, couldn’t burn it away with anger, much as I wanted to. Much as I wanted not to love her. My body wouldn’t let me change, and yours isn’t letting you stay a seal—but it’s all the same. I know. I know how frightening it is.”

Maebh’s hand drifted up and down Mara’s back to the rhythm of her own slow breath.

Mara inhaled, her chest shuddering. New air rushed into her lungs.

“Once you love someone, part of you is bound forever. Perhaps you never see him again—perhaps your life is better without him, and it’s right to be apart. But once you’ve loved him, the link is formed. You can ignore it if you choose, but you cannot sever it.”

“I can.” Mara shoved her feet into her sealskin and willed her two halves to meld together.

Nothing happened.

“Christ!” She pulled her sealskin off and tossed it toward Maebh. “Why is this happening? Why can’t I just be a seal?”

Maebh’s fingers brushed over Mara’s sealskin. “Why do you think it is, Daughter?”

“I don’t know!” Mara tugged her hands through her hair, working through the stubborn spikes that always appeared after a quick change.

“Mm.” Maebh watched the White Island lighthouse sweep its beam across the harbor. “You swore like a human just then—did you notice?”

“I—” Mara pulled her fingers away from her head. She remembered how Noah ran his hands through his hair, just like that. Had she learned anything else from him, without meaning to? “I guess I did.” She looked at Maebh, waiting for an explanation.

The Elder nodded, looking in her eyes as if she expected Mara to realize something.

Mara returned her stare, waiting.

“I think there is a part of you,” Maebh said, “that wants to be human. That is why you’re rejecting your skin. You don’t truly want it, and I imagine it’s been a while since you have. I think this has happened to you before.” She smiled gently. “Am I wrong?”

Mara crossed her arms over her breasts, suddenly chilled in the night air. “You’re wrong, Maebh. I hate this body. All it’s done is confuse me, ever since my first change, and now . . . and now it’s cost us Lir.”

She let that unfurl across the space between her and Maebh, out into the water and up to the sky. She didn’t think there was enough depth in the ocean to contain her guilt, her hatred for her human body and the way it had betrayed her secrets into Noah’s confidence. Betrayed Lir into his keeping.

“No, Mara.” Maebh stroked her back again. “Lir’s loss is not your fault. You were not at the ceremony. I was there. Ronan was. If anyone is to bear the burden of this guilt, it is we. It is I. I knew it was dangerous, and still I allowed it.”

Mara shifted and leaned her head on Maebh’s shoulder. She thought they might collapse under the combined weight of their grief, but Maebh was like a pillar, holding her up. Shared, the pain was doubled, but only half so crippling. Mara couldn’t bring herself to wish for the strength to stand alone.

“We have to go back to White,” said Maebh.

Mara felt the pillar collapse. She jerked her head off Maebh’s shoulder. “No.” She scrambled away, to the very edge of Whale Rock. “I’m never going back there again.”