Then

The first time she saw him alone was by the sea. Early spring, the sky gray as feathers, daylight waning slow into evening. Alastair stood at the shoreline, his trousers rolled up, waves lapping his bare feet. He was in profile, half-turned toward the water, and he watched the ocean with an expression that seemed almost … hungry.

The whole scene was like one of Lark’s favorite paintings, a landscape by Ottavio Caedmon, all resonant hues and textured brushstrokes. Alastair with his loosened collar and his tangled hair was a selkie kept too long ashore, cursed to languish when out of sight of the sea.

He turned to her, and she hesitated, overcome by a shyness she didn’t understand. “You’re back,” she said, then bit the inside of her cheek. She started to laugh, because it was such a foolishly obvious thing to say. Alastair had been away for two years, since just after the spring of Lark’s eleventh birthday.

Alastair started laughing as well. “Observant as ever, I see.”

The sound of his laugh was the same as she remembered, and that encouraged her a little. Still, Lark stood frozen in place as Alastair came toward her. The sea was at his back. A streak of sunlight cut through the clouds, lining the edge of the water in gold. His eyes were the same storm gray as the evening sky.

They’d never been together like this before, despite the fact their houses were close enough that Lark could see the Felimath estate from her bedroom window. When Lark, Alastair, and his older sister, Camille, met in the village school, they became friends out of circumstance. The class was small, so they shared a desk. They were neighbors and it made sense that they walk home together.

Lark knew the Felimath siblings were different from her. That they lived in a big house that had a name—Saltswan—and that their father owned all the land except for the small acreage where she and her brothers lived. Lark was never invited to visit them at Saltswan, and she never asked them to her cottage.

But none of that really mattered when they were passing notes beneath their desk, or racing one another to the border of the Arriscane woods on the way home. They were a trio, woven together like a triplicate knot, even if their friendship existed in a small, contained space.

It wasn’t until Lark’s eleventh birthday that she realized the difference couldn’t be eclipsed by penciled notes and after-school games. Alastair and Camille gave her a present, wrapped in tissue paper and tied with a pink velvet ribbon. Inside the parcel was a leather-bound notebook, with pages the color of milky tea. It was gleamingly new, with a gold stamp on the back cover marking the name of the stationery company.

Lark had visited that store once, when her brothers took her into the city. It had gilded lettering on the windows and the inside was as elegant as a museum, with pens inside locked cases and notebooks lining the polished wooden shelves.

“Camille and I have one as well,” Alastair said, taking a twin notebook from his pocket to show her.

“I don’t carry mine around everywhere, though,” Camille teased. She picked up the ribbon from the parcel and started to braid it into Lark’s hair. Musingly, she went on, “Do you know your hair is the exact color of honey?”

Lark hugged the notebook to her chest. She felt a strange, bright joy, sitting between Alastair and Camille as the courtyard tree spilled dappled shadows over them. It was like the syrupy, sugar-rich taste of the strawberry cake her brothers had served at breakfast: a birthday tradition.

Impulsively, she held the book against her heart like a talisman. “We should write in them when we’re apart, and then we can swap once the pages are full.”

Alastair cast her a sidelong glance. Her stomach dipped, and she wondered if she had crossed a line. If trying to make their friendship exist outside the school yard and their clifftop walks would somehow tarnish it, if she was asking too much. Alastair laughed, which softened some of her worry, but he looked nervous. “I wouldn’t know what to write,” he said, and then, a flush creeping over his cheeks, he went on hurriedly, “but I do like to draw.”

That afternoon, once they’d parted at the gate to the Arriscane woods, Lark went home and showed her brothers the gift. Oberon was quiet and solemn, and Henry turned the pages of the notebook, frowning at it, as though there were some unpleasant message invisibly written on the blank paper.

Finally, exasperated, Lark set her hands on her hips. “What’s the matter?”

“I don’t want you taking anything from the Felimaths,” Henry said.

“I didn’t take it, Henry. It was a present. For my birthday.”

Her nose started to prickle and she thought she might cry. Oberon took the notebook back from Henry and placed it in her hands. He put his arm around her shoulders.

“It’s a thoughtful gift, Lark. It’s just … very grown-up,” he sighed. He drew her against him and kissed the top of her head. “I suppose you are growing up.”

Henry offered an apologetic smile. But when she was upstairs, almost in her room, she heard him mutter to Oberon, “We already owe the Felimaths enough.”

Lark traced her fingers over the golden stamp on the back of the notebook. She knew that grown-up was Oberon’s tactful way of saying expensive. She knew that before they died, her parents had borrowed a lot of money from Alastair and Camille’s father. Her brothers were still repaying Marcus Felimath; after every salt harvest, Henry wrote out a check addressed to Saltswan.

Alastair and Camille giving her a present wasn’t the same as taking money from their father. Still, an unpleasant thought tugged at her, that somehow the expensive notebook was a reminder of her family’s debt.

Time passed; she began to fill the milk-tea-colored pages. She wrote about her weekends in the garden, helping plant new seeds. She copied passages from her library books, and glued in photostats of her favorite paintings. The unpleasant thought remained, but she pushed it down to the pit of her stomach. It lay buried, worn over time like a piece of glass turned smooth by the sea.

She never finished the notebook, though. When school ended for summer break and half the pages were still blank, Alastair and Camille went away—along with their father—across the sea to Trieste. They left so quickly that Lark didn’t even get to say goodbye.

At first, she had kept up her entries in the notebook, but as the year drew out, they still didn’t return. Marcus Felimath had telegrammed her brothers with an address to send their check at the end of the salt harvest, so when Henry mailed the payment, Lark asked him to include a letter she had written for Alastair and Camille. Neither of the siblings replied.

She had tucked away the notebook and tried not to think about how, perhaps, her friends had forgotten her. And now Alastair was back, so suddenly and unexpectedly that he almost didn’t seem real.

He was older, taller, his hair grown longer, waves brushing silkenly against his shirt collar. Lark wanted to ask him so many things—where he had been, why he never wrote to her—but she couldn’t make herself form the words. Instead, she looked up and down the beach, wondering if Camille was nearby. But the shore was deserted.

On the clifftop, Saltswan was closed up and shuttered, as empty as it had been all summer. Camille’s absence felt like the blank pages of the notebook that now lay buried in Lark’s dresser drawer.

Alastair caught the direction of her gaze, and his expression darkened with realization. “Camille is still in Trieste. She’s at boarding school there.”

“Oh,” Lark said. Without meaning to, she’d already begun to imagine the shape of days ahead: the three of them in class together sitting at their old desk in the back of the room, sharing lunches beneath the courtyard tree, walking home together in the spring twilight. “Will you come back to school in the village, now that you’re home?”

Alastair shook his head. “Father hired a tutor for me.”

Lark pressed her lips together and stared down at the ground. She felt hot and foolish for how she’d hoped. She’d clutched that hope like the knitted rabbit she still held when she slept, its ears worn down to tatters. Now, thinking about the way Alastair and Camille were divided not just from her but from each other, Lark wanted to cry.

“And you…?” Alastair asked, taking an uncertain step toward her. “How have you been?”

“I’m fine. I’ve been fine.” Forcing back the lump in her throat, Lark cast around for something to offer that would make everything feel like it had before. “Henry and Oberon took me on the train to the city last month. There’s a new bookstore opening next to the canals; it made me think of you.”

Alastair’s mouth tilted into a small, hesitant smile. “Did you see the Caedmon mural at the art gallery?”

Lark shook her head. Despite everything, a small flare of warmth sparked through her at the fact that Alastair had remembered her favorite painter. “It’s still being restored. Oberon promised we can try to visit next year; they’ll be too busy with the salt harvest until then.”

They both fell silent. Lark thought again of the debt her family owed to Alastair’s father, the check Henry would deliver to Saltswan once the harvest was done. Alastair tugged a hand through his hair, as though trying to smooth down the windswept strands. “That means your birthday must be soon.”

“Next month,” she said, and the warmth in her kindled brighter. She liked that he had remembered. If Alastair hadn’t forgotten her while they’d been apart, then maybe Camille was thinking of her, too. Perhaps they would still be a trio, even divided.

Alastair was quiet for a moment. His brow creased, and he looked nervous. “I have something for you. An … early present. Will you come back to Saltswan with me, so I can give it to you?”

Lark glanced quickly toward the house, large and formidable against the dimming sky. Her fingers picked anxiously at the sides of her skirts. She wanted to go with him, wanted it so terribly that it frightened her. Yet somehow, the thought of going inside the house felt like she would be putting her bare hand against the canvas of one of the artworks in the city gallery.

As though sensing her wariness, Alastair went on, “No one’s there. Father is still away on business.”

Lark took a deep breath and forced herself to stop fidgeting. “Lead the way, then.”

They left the beach behind and climbed to the clifftop in single file. It was as though they both knew that walking side by side would emphasize Camille’s absence.

Wildflowers dotted the edges of the path, their petals closed against the oncoming night. Saltswan grew larger and larger as they approached, and when they reached the wrought iron gateway, Lark had to subdue the urge to pinch herself. Even with the windows shuttered and the gate closed, the house was so beautiful that it didn’t seem real.

A silver chain and padlock were fastened around the gate. Alastair reached for the rails, then paused to look back at her. “I don’t have a key,” he said, glancing at the lock.

Lark had been about to ask why Alastair didn’t have a key to his own house, but she swallowed down the question when she saw how embarrassed he was, a dark stain coloring his cheeks. She watched as he climbed the gate with an ease that suggested practice. Then, gathering up her skirts, she climbed after him. They paused together at the top of the gate.

“Look, our footprints are still on the sand,” she said, pointing. They both looked down at the beach. From the top of the gate, Lark could see all the way along the coastline to her cottage, where lantern light gleamed in the front windows and her brothers would be preparing dinner.

Alastair smiled at her, then dropped to the ground on the other side. Lark followed him and started toward the main entrance of the house. Alastair shook his head. He looked embarrassed again, gesturing to a screen of espaliered trees that divided the front gardens from the rear grounds. “This way.”

Lark walked behind him and they slipped past the screen, going down a narrow dirt path to a smaller entrance, behind the closed-up garage. Alastair took out a plain metal key and unlocked the door, standing back to let Lark be the first inside. They were in an enormous kitchen. It was cool and dark, with wayward striations of light coming in between the closed shutters.

An awkward laugh escaped her. “Is this the service entrance? Your house is like something from a book.”

Alastair scowled in the same prickly way as when Camille made fun of him. He led her through the kitchen and up a narrow flight of stairs. She looked at Alastair’s bare feet as they climbed to the upper floor. Sand dusted his heels, and a piece of seaweed was tangled around one of his ankles like a bracelet. He left gritty prints on the stairs, and grains of sand crunched under the soles of Lark’s shoes.

“I didn’t mean to tease you,” she said. “It’s beautiful in here.”

“You really think so?” Alastair glanced back over his shoulder at her. In the dim light, she couldn’t make out his expression, but he sounded sad.

Lark nodded. They came to the top of the stairs, where a long hallway was decorated with flocked wallpaper the color of seafoam. Dozens of framed artworks covered the spaces between the closed doors. Saltswan was like a locked-up jewelry box, and even though she’d been invited, Lark felt giddy with transgression at being inside. Like she had stolen a bite of dessert instead of waiting until the end of dinner.

She turned a circle, her arms outstretched toward the paintings. “It’s like an art gallery.”

Alastair huffed out a laugh. “Unfortunately, all we have are portraits of dead relatives.”

Still, Lark eyed the portraits enviously. Her family had no pictures except a few snapshots of her, Henry, and Oberon. She had never seen photographs of her mother or father. Once, when she asked why there were none, Henry told her that the night they received the black-bordered telegram announcing their parents’ death, Oberon, grief-stricken, had burned all the photographs, and even the oil portrait that had hung in the upstairs hall.

Now, as she looked at all the paintings, Lark wondered how it would feel to see countless generations of your family laid out on the walls like the endless links of a chain.

Alastair opened a door and beckoned her inside. This room was brighter than the rest of the house because the shutter had been drawn back from the window. The curtains were open, revealing a view of the sea below; they were so high up that everything looked impossibly small. The room itself was dormitory-neat: an iron-framed bed, a desk pushed against the wall, a shelf filled with paperback books.

“Is this your bedroom?” Lark asked, peering incredulously around the space. “But it’s so tidy.”

Alastair was searching through the bookshelves. He glanced at her, one brow raised. “Camille’s room is messy enough for both of us.”

Lark tried to picture Camille’s room. She thought it would be similar to her own, which had pictures tacked on the walls and vases of dried flowers on every surface. Alastair was still looking at her. She started to imagine him in her bedroom, amid the clothes she never managed to fold or put away, her unmade bed and her cluttered dressing table. Their eyes met, and a hot blush scored her cheeks.

Suddenly, this moment—being here, alone, in his room—felt impossibly intimate. The narrow bed with its pin-striped sheet folded over the linen comforter, the glass jar of pencils on the desk, the way the air carried the scent of old paper, like her favorite part of the village library.

Alastair was blushing, too. Swiftly, he turned back to the shelves, intently scanning the books until he found a large hardcover volume tucked behind the paperbacks. “Here,” he said, holding it out to her. “Happy birthday.”

Lark accepted the book with shaking hands. On the cover was a penciled sketch cropped from a larger work. Even before she read the title, Lark knew the artist. “These are Caedmon’s works?”

She traced her fingers over the printed lettering: The Early Sketches of Ottavio Caedmon. Her knees felt suddenly weak and she took a step backward, sinking down onto Alastair’s bed before she realized what she was doing. She fumbled, about to stand back up, but he put out a placating hand as he came to sit beside her.

“They’re mostly landscapes,” Alastair explained, “but it also has some of the sketches he used to make The Dusk of the Gods.”

Lark turned through the pages, touching the corners of the glossy paper like they would crumble beneath her fingertips. She couldn’t speak; all her words were lost to the wonder of this. It was as though Alastair had given her a piece of a world that had been hidden from her until now, one she had never expected to see.

When she finally looked up, Alastair was watching her with a worried frown. “Is it—do you like it?”

She started to laugh. “Alastair, I love it. Thank you.”

He laughed, too, a choked sound, like he had been holding his breath. As she returned to the book, he relaxed slightly beside her. Some of the images were familiar; she’d seen the finished paintings in the art magazines she borrowed from the library. But so many of them were new to her. When she reached the section containing the sketches for the chthonic mural, she let out an audible gasp.

“I’m glad you like it,” Alastair said. He reached to his desk and took one of the pencils from the jar. “Here, let me inscribe it for you, otherwise it’s not a proper gift.”

Lark handed him the book. “He was Versian, you know. His studio was in the city, but he was born here.”

Alastair wrote something on the endpaper, then closed the cover and laid the book back on her knees. He cast a wistful glance toward the open window. “Sometimes I think I will always be in Verse, no matter where I am. I feel like the sea is in my blood; when I was away I couldn’t breathe properly until I came back and stood by the water.”

Lark smiled softly to herself, thinking of Alastair when she first sighted him on the shore, all windswept with the waves at his feet. She turned the pages of her book to find the sketches for The Dusk of the Gods, the famous mural she hadn’t been able to see in the city gallery. It wasn’t until she had finished looking at them that she realized Alastair spoke only of the ocean, and not Saltswan, when he talked about coming home.

“I missed you,” she said, her voice barely a whisper.

Silence spiraled out between them. She closed the book and hugged it to her chest, staring down at her lap. The sun had almost set, now, and the dove-gray light that spilled into the room made everything feel softened, blurred. Like they were in a shared dream.

Alastair laid his hand in the space between them. “Lacrimosa … even though I’m not coming back to school, it doesn’t mean we have to stop being friends.”

Lark reached to him. Her fingers trembled. She touched the back of his hand, and a shiver went down her spine. His skin was warm, despite the cool inside the room.

It was the first time she had ever touched him.

“I’d like that,” she said, and the words felt solemn as a vow. “I’d like for us to still be friends.”