Chapter Nine

The Knife

I ran inland so they wouldn’t follow, my eyes stinging, the world a blur. On the far side of the island, I stumbled down to a lonely patch of shore. I threw myself onto the rocks and buried my head on my knees, clenched in a tight ball, as if I could suck my limbs into my body and make them disappear.

My father was a man.

They’d known, every one of them. They’d known for as long as I’d been alive.

How could I have been so stupid? Blindly believing Mam—“Any day now, Aran”—without once asking why I was different, why I was so late to turn.

My father was a man. What did that make me?

I heard someone splashing up from the waves. Drops of water fell on my back. I smelled Mam’s pelt, and seaweed, and a scent I didn’t recognize: a harsh, mineral tang. Then something clattered down on the pebbles beside me and I opened my eyes.

It was the silver tooth. The one the man had used.

A red drop fell on the blade. I looked up at Mam. Her mouth was bleeding at the sides where she’d carried it. The red lines ran down her fur, a brutal decoration.

“It’s a knife,” she said, smiling.

Knife. I reached out a finger and ran it along the surface.

Mam said, “Careful of the—”

Too late. With a gasp I held up my finger. The thinnest red line traced the tip.

Mam’s voice was still happy. “It was hiding in a clump of seaweed. That’s why it took me so long to find. When I was swimming back, I saw you heading off to explore. I had to circle the island twice to find you.” She nudged the knife with a flipper. “It’s made of steel.”

Part of it wasn’t shiny. It was black and rounded where the man had held it. I hesitated, as if the knife might bite me again, and then wrapped my fingers around the black.

“He dropped it when he climbed in his boat,” she said. “Now it’s for you.”

For me. She’d brought it back for me. A man’s tool. For a—

“I don’t want it,” I said, dropping the knife back down on the pebbles.

“Don’t worry. Once you learn its ways, it won’t cut you again.”

I crossed my arms over my chest.

“I’ll teach you how to use it,” she went on. Her smile was gruesome with its red edges. I looked away.

“Don’t you see, Aran? You can cut oysters from the rocks and pry their shells open. You can lash it to a stick and catch fish after fish.”

“I already catch fish,” I mumbled. But it wasn’t fish I was picturing. It was the man’s fingers holding the knife. I shoved my hands deeper into my armpits.

“You’re a wonderful hunter,” said Mam. “But now you can catch bigger prey and slice off their heads and peel back their . . .”

I couldn’t hear her anymore. The anger was rising in my throat. She’d lied to me. She was still lying, pretending nothing was wrong.

Mam’s voice came from far away. “Aran, what is it?”

And then my hands were fists and my head flew up. “I’m not like him!” I shouted.

Mam looked at me oddly. “That man? Of course not.” She placed a soothing flipper on my knee.

I shoved her away. “No! My father. I’m not like him.”

She jerked back as if I’d hit her.

At the water’s edge, a loon cried, sad and bitter. I already wished my words unsaid. What had I let loose in the world? I should have joked along with Maura. I should have pretended it didn’t matter.

It was too late for that now. Very slowly, Mam nodded.

“It’s time you knew,” she said.