MARION AND DENISE WERE WALKING the shore. A breeze was coming in from Luttrell, but not enough to extinguish their mirrored shapes, and the tide was warm as tea.
‘I can’t believe I’ll be in Bristol this autumn,’ Denise said.
‘You almost sound sad.’
Denise smiled back at her sister. She was wearing a sun-hat—Invercombe’s greatgrandmistress had made a considerable impression on her and she was striving to keep her complexion fashionably pale—but she looked more than ever like herself, her hair gleaming copper-red, her fine features dark with joined freckles, her eyes shining. ‘No. I’m not sad…’
They walked on, happy in each other’s company in a way they rarely had been when they were younger. Happiness for Marion was like good health had been for Ralph; in fact, the only surprising thing about happiness was how unsurprising it felt, and she wondered what particular shade of life the Marion Price of before this glorious summer had existed in. It had been a kind, she decided, of waiting. She chuckled and gave the water a kick so that it splashed across her bare legs.
‘Tell me again, Marion, that thing you were saying about how creatures were made.’
‘It’s all very simple—’
Denise laughed. ‘You said that before.’
‘It is. The way creatures die, the number of offspring they produce, is governed by how good they are at surviving. How strong they are. How well fed. How fertile.’
‘That’s common sense.’
‘Denise, it’s all common sense. We’re all different. You and I—look at us—even though we’re sisters. It’s the same with every living thing. That starfish is different to that one over there. So, if one creature has traits which make it particularly good at surviving, chances are it’ll have more offspring. And they’ll live longer as well and have more offspring of their own. Given enough time and enough variation, any characteristic can change and develop. Taller, smaller. Longer or lighter bones. Better ways of walking or swimming …’
‘That’s it? It doesn’t sound like much.’
That was part of the idea’s glory. ‘There’s clear evidence—there’s a species of moth which is much darker in cities. It doesn’t get seen and eaten by the birds so easily.’
‘Sounds a bit harsh to me, as well, Marion. All this stuff about creatures having babies and dying as if that’s all life is. You’ll be telling me that this is something different from the word of the Bible next.’
Marion swung her toes deeper through the limpid tide, glimpsing wormcasts and razorshells, the darting shapes of her own toes. Things developed. They evolved. That was the true beauty of creation: there was no need for the Elder’s interfering hand. Still, she sensed in her sister’s blank resistance the looming of a far bigger hurdle than she and Ralph had ever discussed. Not that anyone would ever care what Denise thought, but then there was Doctor Foot and the Reverend-Highermaster Brown, and all the unreasoning and set-in-its-ways rest of the world. And Denise was right. Ralph’s theory was harsh. Adapt or die. Adapt, in fact, and die anyway. I’m walking, the thought suddenly came from somewhere, in this place I know so well, and the tide will soon be over my knees, but I have no idea where I’m going …
Ralph’s bedroom back at Invercombe was a changed place. Books sprawled in teetering heaps. And every shelf, every space, every spare bit of floor, had gathered a collection of some kind of object which he and Marion had found. Dead insects, both natural and aethered. Chippings of rock. Scraps of plant. Skulls. Broken-spined drifts of worn-out notebooks. Everywhere, above all, there were shells. Goose barnacles withered on their dead tethers. Keyhole limpets and ormer shells. The windows remained open throughout most of the day and night, and their ledges too were heaped with drying tresses of horn wrack and sea belt, and what there was left of the floor was glittery with sand, and the room smelled of the shore. But the place seemed complete this way, as if Invercombe’s picture rails had always been waiting to be decorated with the spongy yellow egg cases of the common whelk. Learning for Ralph was different. Everything—everything—made sense in this new way they were looking at the world. It was as if they were reshaping it, making into something clearer and better.
‘One tip, though, sis,’ Denise said. ‘If you and Ralph really are planning to sell this idea to the world, it’ll need a good, catchy name. All the best things have one. Think of aether…’ A slight pause. ‘Or Pilton’s Universal Tooth Whitening.’
Marion laughed. ‘You’re right.’ She fished in her pocket and drew a tube out.
‘Thanks. You didn’t steal this from Invercombe, did you?’
‘Of course I didn’t. Why would that bother you?’
‘It wouldn’t. But it would bother you.’
‘Ralph gave it to me.’
‘Well. There’s a surprise.’
‘Shall I take it back?’
‘Of course not!’
The water was cooler now. Soon, she would have to get back to Invercombe. She and Ralph had measurements to take for Weatherman Ayres; a duty which would only come to a lesser maid—a shoregirl, even—on a summer day such as this, when the ships hung upside down in the Bristol Channel and Durnock Head, but for the wyrelit beacon of its Temple of Winds, had been swallowed entire by the blue of the sky.
‘I’m happy you’re happy with Ralph, sis,’ Denise said eventually. ‘But, well… The fact is, I don’t want you to end up in Alfies, and Mam’s too embarrassed to say anything, so it’s about time someone took the effort to explain—’
‘Alfies? Denise, what on earth are you on about?’
Denise took her sister’s hand. ‘Come on. We’ll sit by the dunes.’
Marion acquiesced. She’d already guessed what Denise wanted to say. Since that first perfect Midsummer night together beside the seapool, it had become a source of some difficulty and no little frustration between her and Ralph, and she knew enough to understand premature withdrawal was hardly a reliable contraceptive.
They sat in the tussocky grass, and Denise produced a small cork-stoppered jar. It was as dark as Pilton’s Universal Tooth Whitening was white, and lightning-flecked if you shook it. She explained the spell Marion should chant at the first sign of her bleeding, and the different one she should always whisper to the full moon. Little things really, but Marion found it amazing to hear of the way her sister’s words mingled the seasons of her own body with cold grey spheres of rock turning in space, and the flow of the tides.