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The clink of china broke into Skye’s concentration and she looked up from her pencil and paper. Morgan placed a tray with steaming cups and some desserts on the bare wooden floorboards near the sofa. Skye hadn’t even heard her come in.
“Argghh,” Hunter tossed his sketch pad aside with a groan of frustration. “Drawing is too hard! Saved by coffee.”
“Don’t move! I haven’t finished yet!” Skye held up her pencil as if it was evidence, trying to keep him in place, but Hunter rose swiftly from where he’d sprawled, and crossed to Morgan.
“Morgan Lauder, you are my saviour, and not just for sparing me my drawing attempt.” he picked up a cup and inhaled the aroma of the steaming coffee. “Are you sure you don’t need me to help in the café?” he asked her. “We’re only sketching out here.”
“Only sketching?” Skye said. “Drawing is the first step on the path to artistic genius. Am I right, Morgan?”
Morgan grinned. “Undoubtedly, but it’s not something I aspire to.”
Skye set aside her sketchbook to accept a coffee cup from Hunter. He moved closer and studied the open sketchbook beside her.
On the creamy page of the small teal blue book was the curve of his dark eyebrows, the fall of hair across his brow, and the frowning focus of a complete novice artist trying to draw. He grinned.
“I think you do magic with that pencil,” he said.
“Show me your drawing, now.”
“You said you wouldn’t look until I’d finished!” Balancing his cup in one hand as if he’d been walking on dry land and drinking hot coffee all his life instead of immersed in the cold ocean, Hunter picked up his drawing with his free hand and held it protectively to his chest.
“Incorrect,” Skye said archly. “We agreed we didn’t have to show each other our drawings until we’d finished. But you just blew that deal. Show. Show now.” She held out her hand and flapped it bossily. Morgan swooped in and snagged the sketch from him. She darted beyond his reach to give it to Skye, and stood looking at it over her shoulder, almost as curious as Skye. Hunter watched Skye’s reaction anxiously.
She stared at the bare-bones sketch, at a loss for words. Clearly embarrassed, he strode to stand beside them, and looked from the page to her face and back again. “No resemblance,” he said, despondent.
“Uh...”
He studied her face again. “I tried to get your long eyelashes. They’re so fine and fair that the tips don’t show unless the sunlight catches them. And your eyebrows, they’re darker than your lashes,” His husky voice softened as if he was reciting poetry. “Is there any similarity in my pencilled lines to these?” His long fingers hovered a touch away from her eyebrows, then her hair. “These tendrils, messy from sleep, like a tangle of silver-blond seaweed.”
“I brushed my hair before I came downstairs,” she said.
“It didn’t take. As I was saying,” he raised a quelling eyebrow, “I tried to capture your delicate freckles...” He looked back at his drawing, then at her, “and it looks like you have the pox,” he said flatly, and shook his head in exasperation. “It is incredible to me that waking and sleeping, I see your face. In all its expressions, in all the changing light. I’ve engraved your face in my memory, etched you into my soul. When I close my eyes, there you are. Yet I cannot communicate what I see via pencil to paper.”
She took his cup from him, and set it on the floor along with her own, then threw her arms around his neck. “I love it.”
“But it doesn’t look like you at all.”
“It doesn’t have to. It’s not a mirror. I know you see me, always. I love you for that, and I love this because you drew it.”
He pulled her close. “Even the pox?”
“Especially the pox.”
“You two are utterly sickening,” Morgan observed levelly, pretending to shield her eyes as she returned to the tray. “But I have to say, it’s good seeing you happy.” Grinning, Skye and Hunter drew apart, and Skye bent to pick up her abandoned drawing. Morgan’s eyes touched on the sketchbook that had led to her own obsession with the Nemaro. Her smile faded. She busied herself with offering them the desserts from the tray. “I made two kinds.”
“Are you okay?” Skye asked.
“What do you mean?” Morgan did her best to look ignorant.
Skye held up the sketchbook, partially closing it so Morgan could see the teal cover. “Sorry. Does it upset you seeing it?” Hunter looked at it with interest.
“No. Maybe. It ties in with... I guess now is as good a time as any.” Morgan plonked down on the long sofa and bent forward to pick up a plate from the tray.
Skye’s stomach plummeted, but she and Hunter followed suit, taking dessert and cutlery, and scooted across the floor a little until they were facing Morgan. Skye took a mouthful of lemon tart, usually her favourite, and mechanically chewed like it could hold bad news at bay.
Perhaps feeling the same as Skye, Morgan loaded a forkful of caramel tart and whipped cream into her mouth, then said around her mouthful, “Anyone here think recent events involving attempts,” she tilted her head towards the sea, “to either wipe out or recruit the Bannimor locals somehow bypassed the village radar?” She looked from one to the other.
The tension in Skye’s gut tightened, and she found swallowing her mouthful of tart an effort.
“You think it didn't?” Hunter said.
“Apart from Alan Noble, you mean? Have you been outside lately?”
They shook their heads.
“It’s dead. There’s almost no one around. And those people in the café? There’s a mix. A few locals have come in. They aren’t eating much, and the whole vibe is off. I can’t tell what’s going on. They seem a bit stunned, but also angry. Not directed at us...exactly. But it feels like something is brewing.”
“And the tourists?”
“Taking photos of each other, pretending to collapse.” Her expression said it all, and Skye felt sick. News had already got out.
“What do you think we should do?”
“Nothing. There’s nothing we can do. I mean - do about what?”
“You’re right,” Skye frowned. “It’s all out of our hands. We’ve done everything we can: let the stolen souls go. Stopped Jarrod. We stopped Thea, who is most likely dead.” Hunter made a slight movement. “No. That’s right. It had to be Thea who sent Connor here. I thought your clan would kill her. She must be the Nemaro equivalent of a cockroach.” She looked at Hunter, unsure if he was familiar with the reference, but she could see he got the gist. “But why would she send him?”
“I don’t know,” Hunter frowned, “and I don’t want to go looking for her to find out. I don’t want to get within an inch of her, ever again, if I can help it.”
“Don’t blame you,” whispered Skye.
“Neither,” Morgan nodded in agreement. Then she set her plate aside and pulled a piece of paper from her apron pocket. “I found this in the café.” She smoothed it out on the floor in front of them. “Someone in Bannimor has been working overtime.”
They leaned forward to see the headline, ‘Town Hall Meeting Wednesday night, all concerned citizens welcome.’ It looked a lot like the Bliss flyers Skye had handed out at the beginning of summer. But way less fun than live music and coffee.
“Did you see the agenda?” Morgan said.
Skye picked up the notice and read out loud, “Agenda: Mass Collapse in the Village. Returnees and Cult Activity. Proposed Tsunami Alerts.”
“That’s not so bad,” Hunter said.
“Apart from the Tsunami warning, it’s everything Thea and Jarrod did.” Morgan’s face looked pinched, and Skye knew it had cost her something to say Jarrod’s name. She got up from the floor and sat beside her best friend.
“I still don’t see a problem,” Hunter said, determined to minimise Morgan’s concerns. “It’s good if the village think the returned are from a cult. No one who left Jarrod’s court can remember anything.”
“You sure about that? Look at Connor.”
“He’d been talking to Thea. She stirred his memories.”
“We think. We don’t actually know that,” Skye said.
“We also don’t know that people who the Nemaro mesmerised can’t remember anything anymore. Or even that the Nemaro are still Forgotten.” Morgan’s neck was looking blotchy, and she was neglecting her slice of caramel tart, both sure signs she was upset. Skye rested her head on Morgan’s shoulder, willing comfort into her and wishing she could make everything go away.
Then her gaze fell on Hunter, and she realised that everything going away meant no Hunter. She couldn’t wish that. A helpless sense of impending trouble swelled even larger inside her. “Maybe we should just leave?” she said.
“Leave?” Morgan frowned. “Like, leave Bannimor?”
Skye nodded. “Yeah. We were just talking about it before. Get out now before everything goes...goes...into whatever is coming. I thought we shouldn’t. But...maybe we should?”
Morgan stared at her a moment longer, her frown deepening. Then she stood and looked down at her, raising lofty eyebrows. “Well, you can just get in the back of that line, my friend. If anyone is going anywhere, it’s me.”
“You?” Skye’s mouth dropped open, and Morgan gave a bark of laughter.
“See how dumb that is? Leaving? You can’t stir up a storm like this and just walk away.”
“Why not?” Hunter’s voice was quiet. “Why can’t we just...go?”
Morgan glared at him. “Hey, Neptune boy.” Her voice was flinty. “None of this would have happened if it weren’t for your people trying to own our people. If you really think it’s okay to just walk away from that, then - I guess just...go.”
He stared at her a while longer, then said, “Skye already told me I can’t just leave. And if the storm is coming... I’d hoped I would have this a little longer.”
“Have what?” Morgan asked.
“This.” He spread his hands, encompassing Skye, Morgan, and the room; himself. Skye felt dread join the tumult building inside her. Why did he think he was losing this?
Morgan’s tight expression softened a little. “I don’t blame you for this, Hunter. It’s not your fault. I definitely don’t blame you for escaping your prison. We just need to figure out what to do.”
“But why do we need to do anything?” Skye demanded, the words bursting out of her. She knew she was completely back-tracking, but everything inside her was screaming for this to be over. She left the sofa and stood between Morgan and Hunter. “Who says there’s a mess? Who says there is even a problem? And even if there is, what makes any of it our problem?”
“Skye-bear, I love you to bits, but - serious?” Morgan said.
“Deadly! No way is any of this our problem, whatever you think ‘this’ is.” She turned to Hunter. “I know what you’re thinking, but this isn’t your fight. You can’t go back. I mean - so what if people remember your clan exists? Right? Like you said, ‘So what’? Most people won’t believe it, and even if they do, what’s the worst that could happen? They could look for Lithus, but good luck finding it. And if they ever found it, what’s the worst then?”
She halted at the memory of the two Nemaro, dissolving as they crossed their boundary under Thea’s control. If humans ever caught the Nemaro and brought them to land... It was like a reverse nightmare of Hans Christian Andersen’s Little Mermaid’s fate. Did any of them deserve that fate?
But Morgan said, “Actually, I was thinking more like the village coming after Hunter. And by association, you.”
