CHAPTER FIVE

My foot slid out from under me as the pebble-strewn earth gave way. I flailed my arms, clawing at the air. The large tin pail I’d brought sailed out of my hands and bounced down the path to the beach.

I landed on my backside, staring up at the brilliant morning sky. “Stupid Morag.” I wanted the satisfaction of cursing her while she couldn’t hear it. “Stupid beach.” I brushed dirt off my cloak and skirt. “Stupid eels.”

I couldn’t afford to lose the bucket. I refused to carry two dozen slimy snigs across town in my dress pockets. Trudging down the path between the cliffs, I took great care with each step. To my relief, the bucket had only tumbled a short distance.

The ocean flashed and sparkled under the sun in welcome, putting on a show for the girl on the island least likely to appreciate it. My bare feet met the mushy sand, making me cringe, and I picked my way around tide pools in search of the snigs.

If only Lugh and Cat could see me now.

As I walked along the shore, I fingered the horrible charm Morag had given me that morning.

“The throat bone of a Bollan wrasse,” she’d said gruffly, putting the pendant around my neck with oddly trembling hands. “Also known as a Bollan Cross. It’ll keep you from drowning.” The fishbone vaguely resembled a row of human teeth, but I’d seen wrasses’ impressive mouths enough times to know Morag wasn’t lying.

If only I had the faintest idea of where to look for snigs, I wouldn’t be on the beach long enough to need the bone’s protection.

When I was quite small, and unafraid of the water, Grandad had shown me a nest of snigs. The silvery eels were no bigger than his fingers. But their nest had been out in water up to my knobby toddler knees, and there was no way I’d ever walk into the sea of my own free will now.

Inhaling the nausea-inducing scents of brine and stranded shellfish, I hitched up my skirt and knelt shakily beside a deep tide pool. Who knew what was waiting to bite or sting me in there? Still, my conscience demanded I put forth some effort.

I braced myself for the chill water, rolled up my sleeve, and plunged my hand into the pool. A gray-shelled creature about the size of a coin skittered out of reach.

Gasping, I withdrew my hand. What was I thinking, coming here? I was too scared to pick up a wriggling eel. I couldn’t even stick my hand in a tide pool for a few seconds.

Rising unsteadily to my feet, I spotted a long piece of driftwood resting in the sand nearby and grasped it, thinking I might be able to spear a few snigs on its sharper end—even if I lost the contents of my stomach in the process.

Cold sand oozed between my toes as I paced, scanning the area for kittiwakes. The white and gray seabirds preferred to eat snigs, so seeing their feathers would give me hope.

Nothing stirred but the breeze tugging my hair. Even the sun appeared to be a distant spectator, refusing to warm the sea and sky.

I trained my eyes on the ground, searching for anything I could bring to Morag to appease her: a perfect scallop shell, a jumble of sea glass, a smooth lump of lightning-struck sand. I didn’t know what might put a smile on her wrinkled face, but gathering flotsam from the beach was worth the gamble for extra coin in my pocket.

A flash of emerald green caught my eye. I tossed my driftwood spear aside and grabbed it, expecting to feel the water-rounded sides of sea glass.

“Mollaght er!” I growled as a razor-sharp edge sliced into my thumb. Someone, probably a thoughtless tourist, had smashed a bottle and left it where anyone might stumble on the broken shards.

I wiped my stinging thumb on my cloak. Warm, sticky droplets trickled down my hand, but I’d earned cuts this painful from a tangle of briars plenty of times before. Picking up my driftwood, I scaled a hill of sand that didn’t quite pass for a dune and stopped cold.

At the waterline lay a dark-haired young man, naked and horribly still. Despite the distance, there was no mistaking the crimson gashes on his stomach. Waves lapped at his feet as the tide moved in, and I pictured the dribble of water from the dead girl’s mouth when the fishermen had turned her over.

This boy could be another victim. Of who or what, I wasn’t yet certain.

Heart thumping wildly, I abandoned my pail and driftwood to dash across the sand.

“Please don’t be dead,” I choked out, sinking to my knees beside him. His fingernails were bloody and ragged, as though he’d fought hard against something. “Please, please, please don’t be dead.”

The wounds in his stomach weren’t bleeding as I’d expected. I ran my thumb between the long gashes. His injuries had been made by something with massive claws or teeth. No Manx cat could make scratches that wide.

One of the boy’s arms was draped across his middle, preventing me from fully seeing the worst of his injuries. I cupped his wrist and carefully lifted his arm with an unsteady hand. As I touched the deepest wound, my fingers tingled like someone had pricked them with a sewing needle. I jerked my hand back and swallowed hard to avoid being sick all over him, then flexed my fingers as the tingling subsided, taking deep breaths.

His skin was warm to the touch, perhaps feverish, but his chest rose and fell in a regular rhythm.

Suddenly, he gave a low groan and shifted on the sand.

My frantic heartbeat bolted along at an even faster pace. I imagined him hovering between the blissful ignorance of sleep and the fresh pain waking would bring. Mr. Gill would have to send for a doctor from Peel.

But who was this boy? I studied his angular face, yet nothing about his straight nose or strong jaw reminded me of anyone in town. His curly, dark hair—long enough for small whorls to graze his sharp jaw—could’ve marked him as the son of any number of Port Coire families. But I was certain he wasn’t from these parts. I knew everyone my age in our town and the neighboring villages, and I’d never seen anyone so striking before. I would have remembered.

I glanced at his chest again, eager to reassure myself I hadn’t just studied the face of a handsome corpse. After noting the continued cadence of his breath, I stared at his tanned skin and the muscles carved into his arms and chest.

It occurred to me that I should be running back to town for help, but I lingered at his side. Not wanting to see the mess of oozing claw marks again, I skimmed over them and followed the thin line of dark hair trailing down his lower stomach.

Growing up without any brothers, nothing I’d seen or heard before could have prepared me for that moment. I froze, my face blazing like I had a terrible sunburn, startled by the unexpected sight but unable to rip my gaze away.

“Where—where am I?” a rough voice asked in careful English.

I shrieked, scuttling backward across the sand like a nervous crab.

The naked lad looked around the beach, then at me. He tried to rise to sitting, but from the strain on his face, it didn’t appear he could manage. He rolled onto his side, pushed up, and collapsed on the sand with a groan.

His dark blue eyes unsettled me. So did the rest of him. Heat crept up my neck, stinging my already hot face. With fumbling fingers, I unhooked the clasp of my cloak and threw it. The cloak landed on his legs, but not high enough to make him decent.

“What is it? Did—are you hurt, too?” He finally sat up, and pulled the cloak to his chest so the cloth covered his wounds … and other things. If he’d understood my gesture, maybe the gashes looked worse than they felt.

“Moghrey m-mie.” Why had I wished him a good morning when there was clearly nothing good about it?

He regarded me with a mixture of pain and confusion.

“Shooill marym rish tammylt beg?” I wished he wouldn’t look at me. My face continued to radiate heat.

He kept staring. Either he didn’t know Manx, or he didn’t speak to half-wild girls.

“Sorry. Can you walk?” I reverted to English with great difficulty. “We should get off the beach. I’ll find you a place to rest while someone brings a doctor. You might have a fever. Those cuts look infected.”

“I think I’m able.” He attempted a smile, but it twisted into a grimace. He glanced between me and the tide as it continued to creep in, then attempted to claw his way up the sand.

My stomach ached in sympathy at the thought of his gashes bleeding again, and I rushed to his side. “Let me help you.”

His large, warm hands covered mine. I sank a few inches in the wet sand, knees buckling as he hauled himself off the ground. Somehow, I remained on my feet and he kept the cloak pinned to his body. He draped an arm around my shoulders and swayed.

I grabbed him around the waist to help him balance. And to keep the cloak snugly in place. “I’m Bridey.” Warmth again spread across my skin, distracting me—at least mostly—from how near I was to the sea.

The stranger leaned on me as we carefully made our way down the beach, his breathing becoming more labored with each step. Once or twice, the heat of his gaze made my neck prickle. But each time I turned, he appeared to be watching the waves.

“What’s your name?” I wanted to keep him alert. If he fainted, I wouldn’t be able to carry him by myself.

“I don’t know.” He sounded more confused than he had earlier.

“Do you have family on the island?”

“What island?”

If I had woken up naked in a strange place, I would want to know immediately where I was. “You’re in Port Coire. On the Isle of Man.”

“Oh. No, I don’t.”

“Do you know who—or what—attacked you?”

He gave me a long look, then shook his head.

So much for conversation. Silence returned, heavier than before, as we passed the spot where I’d dropped my pail. I briefly considered claiming it, but another look at the stranger told me not to tarry.

Worrying at my lip, I considered where to take the naked, nameless lad. My first thought was the Gills’. Mr. Gill always knew what to do in a crisis, but Mrs. Gill would faint at the sight of a nude young man.

And then I realized I ought to bring him home. Mally had apprenticed as a midwife for over a year, and she knew how to clean cuts and scrapes. She’d done it for Grayse, Liss, and me countless times. And she’d been treating Mam’s headaches as best she could for years.

“I’m going to take you to my house. My sister knows some medicine. She can make you comfortable until a doctor arrives.”

He scowled. “No doctor.”

It was a relief to hear him speaking. “That will be Mally’s decision. I’m not going through the trouble of dragging you off this beach just to watch you die in our parlor.”

He arched his brows. “It’s my choice.” Judging by his wheezing, he was growing weaker. “I said, no doctor.”

“We’ll see.”

It might have been my imagination, but his next hiss of pain sounded more like an angry sigh.

We neared the tide pool in which I’d stuck my hand earlier. The sight of the path winding through the cliffs reminded me of how I’d fallen. “See there?” I pointed ahead. “It’ll be a tough go, understand?”

He nodded, looking paler than he had minutes before.

“We can manage if we go slowly. You’ll have to trust me, you, ah—you’re sure you don’t remember your name?”

“No.” He must have seen the dismay on my face, as he added, “Call me whatever you’d like.”

I shut my eyes. The black fin I’d seen in the harbor swam across my eyelids.

“Fynn.” I opened my eyes. “It’s all I can think of.”

“Fynn,” he repeated.

I took this as a sign of approval and guided him toward the path. “When we reach the top, keep my cloak around you as best you can. If we meet someone, you should at least look presentable.”

Fynn nodded distractedly.

I tightened my grip on his waist and hoped my feet wouldn’t fail me again. “Ready?”

While Mam and Mally tended Fynn’s wounds, the rest of my sisters and I were sent to Mrs. Kissack’s house, down the lane.

At dusk, Mally came to collect us, looking tired but pleased. I kept pace with her on the brisk walk home, the salty wind lifting our hair and skirts as it changed direction. “Is Fynn going to be all right? Did you send for a doctor?”

“Was he really naked?” Grayse added, eyes sparkling. She’d gleaned her information from Liss, who had eavesdropped from the bedroom when I brought Fynn home.

“Yes. No. And yes.” Mally smiled over her shoulder at Grayse. “But he’s wearing a pair of Da’s trousers now.”

“We’ve tended his fever and treated the infection,” she continued. “Now he needs to rest and let his body heal. If anyone can convince him of that.” She glanced sideways at me, her lips pursed. “I gave him something to help him sleep. He kept trying to pick off his bandages.”

“Did he say what attacked him? Those gashes looked quite nasty.” A gust of warm wind buffeted my face, bringing with it a smell worse than the decaying rubbish in Morag’s cottage. The wind was suddenly too salty, too sharp, like a freshly gutted fish. I opened my mouth to ask if anyone else had noticed the change, but the odor vanished with my next breath.

“No. He didn’t say much. He seemed grateful for what you did. You were brave today, Bry.” Mally drew me against her side, our hips bumping together with every step. “You deserve a medal.”

I only had to wait a few hours before everyone else turned in for the night. The day’s excitement had made us all drowsy, but as soon as Mam’s steps traveled down the hall to her bedroom, I slid out from beneath the covers and crept to the main room.

Fynn was asleep on the sofa, his head buried in the cushion as though he couldn’t stand his surroundings. Whatever concoction Mally had given him must have been powerful. Da’s trousers looked baggy belted around the lad’s waist, while my cloak covered his chest and most of his bandaged stomach.

I perched on a bit of cushion near his head, fighting the impulse to wake him. He hadn’t seemed too friendly on the walk home, but, then, he’d been hurting. I’d broken my arm rolling down a hill when I was Grayse’s age, and I’d howled and raged for hours afterward. Gashes like Fynn’s were bound to hurt even more.

I studied his dark curls and the tips of his ears, which were slender and sharper-looking than any I’d seen before. Gently pointed, like the leaves of an ash tree. Part of me wanted him to stay asleep so I could look at him for hours in the quiet, but another part wanted to wake him. To hear his voice again. To feel the unsettling swooping sensation that overtook me every time his eyes met mine.

Finally, here was someone new. Someone who was more than just a tourist, eager for a quick look around the island before taking the next boat to the mainland. Even if he was a tourist before, he was bound to stay a while now.

I wanted to keep vigil at his side, but my eyelids grew heavier by the minute. I didn’t bother covering my mouth to hide a huge yawn.

I had only taken a few steps back toward my bed when a rustling made me pause. Fynn was tossing and turning, kicking at the edge of the sofa. I thought a story might soothe his slumber. That always helped when I didn’t feel well.

I grabbed the paraffin lamp Mam kept near the door and lifted the glass chimney to light the wick. While I waited for the lamp to warm to full brightness, I carried it to the shelf that held Da’s mess of maps.

Beneath crumpled papers documenting his best fishing grounds, a treasure waited: Non-native Birds of the British Isles. A tourist had left it on the dock one day, and Lugh had claimed it, wrapping it in white paper and giving it to me on my fourteenth birthday. He thought the gift was clever because of my nickname, Bridey-bird.

I considered it special because it was the only book I owned. The scent of its yellowing pages and the crinkle they made when turned were a constant reminder of why I needed to leave the island.

The lamp flared like a small sun, revealing the corner of Non-native Birds. I picked it up and reclaimed my spot on the sofa, setting the lamp at my feet. If I angled the book toward the light, the words were fuzzy but readable.

I flipped to a random page and began in a low voice, “The Barnacle Goose was first introduced to Great Britain in …” I yawned, but Fynn had stopped shifting, so I continued on. “It is dis … dis-tin-guished by its white face and black plumage….”

The black-and-white sketch of the goose blurred as my eyes drifted shut. I curled up, clutching the book to my chest, Fynn’s hair tickling my feet. Somewhere in the distance—or perhaps on the fringes of the dream world—someone played a tune as soft as a lullaby. A small voice in the back of my mind wondered who would be fiddling at this hour, and urged me toward the nearest window, but sleep claimed me before I could turn thought into action.