Chapter Twenty-Three

Maggie

I climbed the cliff, rehearsing the lies that made up my new life. Divorce . . . father . . . two moons.

I pulled myself over the top and looked back. The rocks were deserted.

I turned to face the house, gray behind shuddering gusts of rain. I had to go now or I’d never go. I forced myself to take one step through the howling wind. Then another, across stone, and grass, the rain slapping my face, until I stood in front of a peeling wooden door.

I tried to think how a human boy would stand. I raised my hand, clenched a fist like Mam told me, and knocked. The sound echoed in the hollow behind the door. I was grateful for the dark and the wind snatching at the shreds of my hair and the rain pounding down so the woman couldn’t see me too closely at first.

A harsh light blinded me from above and the door swung open. All I could see was an outline, a shadow without a body. Shorter than Mam in longlimbs, and thinner, and stooped. A voice spoke urgently but my heart was pounding and the gale blowing and I couldn’t hear the words. She took a step closer—

A bony hand clamped down on my shoulder and pulled me inside.

The door banged shut. My breath rasped against the silence. The air smelled stale and sick.

“What happened?” Her voice was taut. A voice for emergencies.

She wasn’t as old as Grandmam, but her hair was dull and faded, and lines etched deep gullies down the sides of her face. It was as if the life had been sucked out of her, leaving an empty shell behind.

I couldn’t find my tongue.

“Was there an accident?” she said.

The room swirled around me in a confusion of colors and shapes. The walls were crawling with patterns, and the floor scratched my feet, and the heat pressed on my lungs.

“Can you answer me, son? Who’s with you? Is anyone hurt?”

Her questions, her anxious voice—didn’t she know who I was?

I took a step back. What if this was the wrong place? My body was screaming at me to run, but I couldn’t; I’d sworn that I’d stay here in this house, stay with . . .

“Maggie,” I said out loud.

She peered at me. “Do I know you?”

I gulped. “I’m Aran.” She didn’t move. “You told my mam I could stay.”

“Told your what?”

“My mam, my mother, she came to you because of the . . . the divorce, and my . . . my father, he beats me and . . .”

A horrified realization came into her eyes.

“And you said you’d hide me from him,” I sputtered on. “Because he . . . he might try to hurt us, or . . .”

“Oh my Lord!” She was shaking her head in dismay. “Is she still out there?” She ripped the door open and shouted into the dark, “Come back!”

The storm howled in reply.

“Come back!” she called, louder. Under the light, the rain slashed down like knife blades. Then she threw back her head, shouting so loud it was almost a scream, “He can’t stay here!”

It was too much for her. She started coughing and her chest caved in. She coughed and coughed and it didn’t stop, like she was going to cough her guts out. Like she was going to die.

I stared. I didn’t know what to do. I wanted to run and dive off the cliff and find Mam. I wanted to tell her the human hated me and wouldn’t let me stay. But I forced my feet to stay put. I’d made a Moon vow.

Maggie stumbled in and shut the door. The cough quieted, crawling back inside her like a beast settling into its lair. Finally she looked at me and croaked, “Come on.”

She led me deeper into the hot, stale room. We wove past puffy, cloth-covered lumps with legs and wooden planks with legs. The floor wore patches of mangy brown fur, as if it needed clothes, too. Every surface was cluttered with clusters of objects, small and strange, neither wood nor shell nor stone.

“You must be frozen,” she said. “Come sit by the fire.”

I only knew fire from lightning, and the charred smell of logs left behind by humans on beaches. Now I sat where she nodded, beside a black box perched on four legs. It was the source of the terrible heat. She opened a door in its side, threw in a log, and nodded as it burst into flame.

I jerked back, biting down a cry. Humans get cold, I told myself. Humans like fire.

“Here, take this blanket.”

She covered me with it, trapping the wet in my clothes. I started to steam.

She fell back into the perch across from me, her face drained and gray. I didn’t know whether to look at her or the fire or the floor. The silence lasted a lifetime.

Finally she spoke. “Did your mom leave you here on purpose?”

“You . . . you knew,” I said. “You told her I could stay.”

“I thought it was a dream.” Maggie shook her head. “A knock on my door in the middle of the night. There she stood, too beautiful to be real. Like a fairy-tale princess. She asked me to watch her son, and all I could do was nod, like I was under some kind of spell. I blinked and she was gone.”

“You said you’d keep me.”

“That’s how I knew it was a dream. I woke up, and the idea was so wild, I had to laugh. I’d never say yes to a boy staying here. How could I, with Jack?”

Mam hadn’t said anything about a Jack. The word bristled.

“You can stay here tonight,” she said. “No one can get here in this storm. But in the morning, you call your mom and tell her to come back and fetch you.”

“I can’t,” I said. “She’s gone.”

Her mouth narrowed. “Then I’ll call Social Services. They’ll come to the island and take you to foster care. They’re the ones can keep you safe from your dad, not me.”

Take me . . . Was that the cages, the zoo? She was going to send me away and Mam would never find me again. I had to stay here! The room was spinning and the heat was smothering me and I clenched my fists—

Hard metal dug into my palm.

The doubloons!

I leaped up and thrust my hand toward Maggie. The discs glowed softly on my palm.

Her brow wrinkled in confusion.

“It’s gold!” I said. “For you, to help with the costs.”

She picked one up with a pitying look. “Gold. Did your mom tell you that?”

I nodded, clinking the rest of them into her hand so she could feel their weight.

She sighed. “Toys, that’s what these are. Stuff they sell in little plastic chests at the tourist stores. Fake pirate gold.”

“It’s not fake! It’s real!”

“And I’m the queen of England.”

I didn’t understand, but I didn’t dare ask.

Maggie dropped the doubloons on a plank beside her and leaned closer, her hands on her knees. “Listen, son. I’m not going to sugarcoat this. A mom who dumps you with a stranger and doesn’t even come to see you’re all right—well, you’ll be better off with the state.”

“But I have to stay here,” I said. “Mam’s gone to get my—get help for us. She trusts you.”

Maggie pressed herself to her feet. “Let’s get you into a bath and then find you some dry clothes.”

“The gold will pay for me,” I said, following her across the room toward another door. “And I can help you. I’m strong. I can catch you fish. And it’s only until the second full Moon.”

Behind the door was a smaller room. This one wasn’t cluttered; it was hard and white and shiny. She bent to a handhold and water gushed into a long hollow.

“I’m sure you’d be helpful,” she said, swishing her hand in the water. “But my health’s not good. You can’t count on me. And you sure can’t count on Jack.”

“What’s Jack?”

“Not what. Who. My husband.”

“Is that like a mate?”

Her eyes told me I’d said something wrong, but she only said, “That’s right.”

“Mam said no one else lives here.”

“Well, she got that wrong. He’s up in Alaska, working on a fishing boat. You can’t be here when he gets home. Jack . . .” Her lips narrowed and she shook her head, hard and quick. “You never know what Jack’s going to do. Go on, take off those wet clothes and hop in the bath.”

Steam was rising from the pool. I stared at it in horror. Did people really boil themselves in hot water? I took a step back, and a movement across the room caught my eye.

A human boy was looking at me through a gap in the wall. He was slim and wiry, with a thicket of hair like grass growing in all directions. His clothes were wet, too, and clung to his arms and chest like seaweed once the tide has gone out. I gasped, and his mouth fell open. I took a step back and he stepped back, his eyes blazing.

One brown eye, one blue.

“Are you going to take off those wet things or not?” asked Maggie.

But I couldn’t take my eyes off the boy in the gap. I stepped closer, and closer; I reached out and he did, too. We touched fingers on a shiny surface.

The human boy was me.