SAGE CREEK
THE NEXT morning the squall was gone. The sea still remembered the wild night; the swell ran heavily against Crabspit Point, and boat-bells clanked down at the harbor as ships rocked at anchor. But above the waves, the air hung heavy with fog.
It was a strange, still, expectant mist, Stone thought as he walked up from the boathouse in the darkness just before dawn. The meadow path he knew so well in daylight was gone; the one he walked seemed steeper and rougher, studded with unfamiliar roots and rocks. Tripping, he swore and stumbled through a pocket of fog. Its clammy touch on his face was cold as a ghost’s kiss and unwholesome. He realized he was bracing himself for something dreamlike and dreadful. As if at any moment an omen might step out of the dripping darkness: the spirit of a drowned man, or some cursed traveller, knotted in a story bigger and more terrible than himself.
Dawn had yet to break when the Trader came to Shandy’s house. She almost didn’t hear his knock, it was so uncertain—and that wasn’t like Stone either.
But when she pulled the door open and peered out into the deep blue before dawn, there he stood on her stoop, with one hand pulling at his long beard. “Regrets, Witness. I shouldn’t have come so soon—”
“True,” Shandy said, yawning. “But she’s your fosterling, eh?”
Stone ducked under the lintel and came inside, nodding to Moss, who was already awake and bustling over the oil cooking lamp in the corner of the room. Though Stone was only thirty-seven, his face was seamed by sun and wind, and his forked braid was shot with hanks of white. He breathed the dim, homey smells of Shandy’s house: beeswax and cut planking, old dry cloth and apple vinegar, scorching butter and fresh-steeped peppermint tea from the breakfast Moss was making.
He glanced at the guest bedroom.
“Already gone,” Shandy said. “As for our daughters, Nanny is still asleep and Shale stayed with you, of course.”
“Knife drawn and pacing half the night, it seemed. Otter finally had to yell at her to lie down and be still so the rest of us could pretend to sleep in peace and quiet.”
“How many times have we heard those two whispering in the corner of a room, eh?”
Stone said, “Not enough times yet.”
“No. Not yet.” Shandy got herself a mug of tea and sweetened it with honey. “Sometimes I think it isn’t me that gets frailer as the years go by, but the world. More ripped sails, more warped wood. More friends lost. Everything is taken, sooner or later, by the Mist, or the sea.”
Stone sat at the table. “It was good for Brook to have Shale there.”
Shandy grunted. “And good for me to get Shale out of the house! What net would we be thrashing in if the Witness’s daughter had taken a poke at our haunt? As she looked very keen to do.”
“I had that urge myself.”
Shandy laid a finger across her lips. “She could be anywhere, Trader. A wren in the eaves, a spider hanging from a lamp . . .”
Stone dropped a clatter of filleting knives onto Shandy’s table and took out his polishing stone. Delicate with years of practice, his huge hands set to work on the blade of the longest knife, wearing away its rust in patient, perfect circles. “Even if the girls had been quiet, there was no sleep under my pillow. Otter finally tossed me out of bed, so I went down to the boathouse. Caulked a seam in the steambox and sharpened the flensing scythes.”
Burly Moss tossed mushrooms into a skillet. They hissed and snoozed as he added a fat drip of oil. “Sometimes a man thinks better with his fingers than his head.”
Witness and Trader, the two guardians of Clouds End shared for a moment the heaviness of their choices.
Shandy sipped her peppermint tea. “We can’t let Brook stay.”
The polishing stone stilled in Stone’s hand.
“The haunt twinned her,” Shandy said. “She won’t give the girl up. We can’t risk keeping her here.”
“She deserves better.”
“Do you let all hands founder to save one man? Deserve? Of course she deserves better. Nobody asked for this wave. But we must ride it the best way we can.”
The polishing stone resumed its patient circling. “Daughter, and dear as daughter lost to me within the year.” The knife-blade gleamed, long since clean; in its clear surface Stone saw his daughter Blossom’s pale, drowned face.
“These are hard things.” Reaching across the table, Shandy clasped his big hand with her small one. “You took her into your family and gave her a home. She will always remember that. I don’t say we should give up. Last night the haunt told me there was a battle of Heroes in the Mist: Sere against the Gull Warrior. I believe her. Time and again this last moon I’ve touched visions of Sere’s fire closing around Delta.”
“And we are to save the first island, who can’t save our own girl?”
“Stop it! She’s mine too, Stone. She’s mine too. And yes, curse it, we’re going to send her to Delta. Because that’s all this aging island witch can think to do.”
Stone looked away.
“I want to send Brook to Delta with a warning.” Shandy took another sip of her tea. “There they must have Witnesses greater than I. There perhaps the knot that binds her to the haunt can be ravelled.”
Stone grunted.
“I’m not giving Brook up for dead! She’s not helpless. She has her wits about her. She can handle people when she puts her mind to it. It’s what she does best.”
“Haunts aren’t people,” Stone said.
“They were once. They can be.”
Stone shrugged and chose another knife to polish, a small-toothed one with a handle carved from narwhal’s tusk. Silently he wore away the flakes of rust. “Who would go with her?”
Moss yawned. “Rope and Foam and Shale, of course.” He tossed a handful of scallops in with the mushrooms. “Neither Rope nor Shale will let you send Brook off without going too. You might as well use that crew as any.”
Stone flipped the knife over to polish the other side. “To sail to Delta? Rope is a fine sailor for a young man, but for such a journey you need a skipper with more experience.”
Moss poked at his scallops. “Of course the Trader knows best about the sea. But remember, Rope has the newest boat. Young boats and young bodies are best in dirty weather.”
Shandy nodded. “For once my great shambling husband is right. Those who hear the magic need anchors. Rope and our Shale are Brook’s. To send her away without people to hold her to the world would be as good as giving her to the haunt. I’m willing to risk my daughter to keep that from happening. At least you can risk Rope’s boat.”
Stone frowned. He tested the knife’s edge against his thumbnail, grunted, and took out a sharkskin cloth to buff the blade.
Dawn had come. Pale sunshine slanted through Shandy’s shutters, winking off the steel. Stone saw his face mirrored there, tired and careworn. “The tools stay clean and sharp. But I get older, and my joints rust.”
Shandy smiled. “We are of the sea, not the stone. Say rather that the mountains’ people are dull for a thousand years, while we are sharpened right to the nub.”
Stone laughed and stuck the knives back in their oiled leather sheaths. “Very well. Brook sails to Delta aboard Rope’s ship. Fathom help us all.”
* * *
Shandy’s decision blew a squall of activity through the village. Rope and Foam hurried to check their gear and tackle, looking for rot in lines and shrouds and stays, and checking every stitch of every sail. Foam’s father, Sharp, paddled around the ship in his little dinghy, fussing with the caulking. Stone and the other men of the village stocked her with dried fish and oil and barrels of water, along with a few pearlweirds to use for trade when their supplies ran out later, among the inner islands.
Rope’s mother, Sweetpea, baked for dear life, her thick arms floured up to her elbows; as if potato cakes and salted biscuits could protect her son from shoal and storm and the Mist that had taken his father.
Shandy pressed an eelskin pouch of simples into Shale’s hand, along with a fuseware jar of her best Cut, Bruise and Sting liniment. “I make the best salve in the islands because of you,” she remarked, giving her daughter a quick hug. “No other Witness can have a daughter with so many elbows and knees.” Then Shandy tied a Witness Knot around Brook’s wrist as a message to the Witnesses of Delta, and sent her to pack her things.
Once done packing, Brook had meant to join in outfitting Rope’s ship, but wherever she offered to help, villagers smiled and looked away and told her not to mind, that it would be better for her to rest up for the trip.
She was cursed.
Oh, they didn’t mean it badly, but she had been twinned. Even Otter, her foster-mother, who loved her like one of her own, was tactfully careful to keep herself between Brook and her eldest, Swallow, who was pregnant.
There was nothing for Brook to do but choke down her bitterness and take herself away. After all, they were right: her story was knotted to a haunt’s tale now. She had no business getting the people she loved tangled up in that.
Even her goodbye to Finch was brief. Brook hugged her little sister tightly, rocking her from side to side. Finch stiffened and Brook drew away, hurt.
Finch stared at the floor, ashamed.
“Because I was twinned,” Brook said.
Finch shuddered, and her mouth twisted down as it always did when she cried, making her look even younger than her twelve years. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I’m no sister to you at all.”
Brook kissed her forehead. “I love you, Finchling. I’m not like Shale, you know. I hate leaving Clouds End. But there’s something wrong in the Mist, terribly wrong. I can’t let anything happen to Otter or Pebble or Sweetpea, or most of all you.”
Finch’s tears were wet on her sister’s neck. “You’re all the family I have. Please come back.”
Brook nodded, and held her close, and cried.
Then she sent Finch away to help Otter, and slipped out of the village to say goodbye to Clouds End itself.
Whatever happened after they set sail, Brook would never return to this island the same person she had left. She needed to take leave of the bone-colored rock and the scraggly trees and the brook that was her namesake: the places that held her childhood.
She walked up the meadow behind the village, following the course of Sage Creek. A dragonfly cut hard, colored lines through the air with crystal wings. Was Jo watching her even now, hidden behind a gull’s white breast, or a squirrel’s black eyes?
If she took my place, no one would ever know.
Like cold water, a shiver ran down Brook’s back, half fear and half rebellion. “This is my home!” she shouted.
No one answered.
Up here the stream was a sweep of silver; she could see the pale rock through the water, speckled like a trout’s belly with flakes of pink mica. She had found her name here while cooling her feet in Sage Creek. Admiring its flow from pond to shallows, and the courage of its leap over the bluffs. It was quick and slow, strong and weak, always changing, always faithful. She hoped she could live up to it.
The morning fog had burned away. Now the sun rubbed her back as she scrambled up the bluffs. Shale would have made short work of them, of course. Brook wondered how much of her life she had spent dreaming up adventures for Shale to have. This trip to Delta looked to be her best trick yet.
Brook’s shell bracelet rattled and clacked against the rock and her braid was coming undone by the time she pulled herself, sweaty and triumphant, over the last outcrop, to lie gasping at the head of the falls.
Heaving herself to her feet, she followed the creek back into the woods. Sunlight spattered down like rain between the leaves. She took off her boots and played pirates, quiet-walking on cool green moss that squished between her toes. Leaves murmured and birdsong hung in the drowsy air.
At Teardrop Pond, Brook found a sunny rock and looked down into water green with thoughts of limb and leaf. On impulse she peeled off her clothes and waded in.
“Uuiooo!” Water pressed smooth and cold around her, as if she had been dunked in mint tea. She paddled furiously until she was warm, blowing and gasping like a seal. Her braid floated behind her like a snake. Spring was everywhere.
She let her feet touch the oozy bottom of mud and boulders and waterlogged leaves. She circled the pond, alert to its life. She peered at balls of floating cottonwood fluff, inspected the cunning spider webs with a predator’s respect, and probed a papery wasps’ nest left over from last summer.
So she drifted at the heart of Clouds End, at home.
She loved it. No matter what else happened, she loved the rocks and the water and the vast, mysterious world. She loved being alive.
And she would die before she let the haunt steal her home and life away.
* * *
They launched just after noon. Rope, Foam, Brook, and Shale waved from the deck of Rope’s boat. Villagers waved back from the quay.
“Bring back lots of silk!” Finch cried to her sister.
“New seeds,” Sweetpea suggested, fanning herself with one large hand.
“Wheat flour!” “Tomatoes!” “Cider!” “New sailcloth!” “A goat!” . . .
At last Rope held up his hands. “All we have to trade is a small cargo of pearlweirds and eelskins. Fuseware and sailcloth is all I can promise.”
“To Delta for sailcloth?” Foam’s father called in disgust.
Old Stick shook his head. “Sailcloth and adventure! Us Clouds Enders are made for it! Why, I recollect my grandfather, who was—”
“ ‘the first man as ever set foot on Clouds End proper,’ ” the rest of the villagers chanted.
Like a haughty tortoise, old Stick peered, blinking, at his fellow villagers. “The first and best man to set foot here, that builded half your homes for you, you might remember. He always said that every life was an adventure, when you lived two docks down from the sunrise.”
Standing on deck, Brook shivered. “Being twinned is enough adventure for me,” she said quietly.
Shale shrugged. “Even a haunt is just another wave. You have to ride it out, same as anything else.”
“Every year you sound more like your mother.”
“I do not!”
“Who’s handling the sheets?” Rope called, untying his painter and shoving off. Shale uncleated the foresail sheet.
As they set sail the others had eyes only for the open sea, but Brook stood at the mainmast, looking back at Clouds End: liver-spotted rocks and moss, smelly fish-barrels and dock-posts armored with barnacles, the long meadow sloping up to the bluff, Sage Creek a silver thread spinning endlessly out from Teardrop Pond. Old Stick and little Pebble, Sweetpea, and Swallow (seven moons now—she’ d have her baby before Brook got back) . . . Finch.
Stick might die. Others would be born. The fire Shandy had felt burning through the Mist might sweep over Clouds End, taking it away like The Island That Went Back.
Fierce love welled up in Brook. This was the place she was going to save. She wouldn’t fail it.
The crowd clapped and cheered as Rope’s boat sidled away from the dock. “Be good!” Shandy called. “And be careful!”
“And be lucky!” old Stick added. “I recollect my grandfather once said that a lucky man . . .”
The rest of his story was lost in luffing canvas. Rope’s mainsail pushed out north and east, a grey wing straining into the Mist. Lordly white clouds towered overhead, looking down on Rope’s boat, a brown and grey water skater crawling over the deep.
And far above the tiny ship, white breast lost against the clouds, a single gull circled and watched.
Watched and circled.