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“Morning, morning,” a cheerful voice called out. Skye and Morgan turned to see a beaming woman popping her head in the door. Behind her other voices joined the greeting, and in a few minutes, there were half a dozen volunteers inside the paved courtyard. Morgan scrambled up to welcome them, and to push back the bifold doors to let the morning light in.
Skye didn’t know if she was sorry or glad at the interruption. She had teetered on the edge of telling Morgan everything. But instinctively she knew that simply revealing the truth wouldn’t be enough to free her from the Nemaro curse of being Forgotten.
Rowena arrived, and gave Skye the same warm welcome she gave to everyone, and admired her handiwork on the mural before being caught up with other people and her own tasks of the day. Skye had lost track of her days, but soon realised that Mike was at school, teaching. She wondered what her own name in the register looked like. Had it vanished, or did her teachers simply pass over it without seeing it?
She remembered Jasmine filming Jarrod and some of the Nemaro in the waves before Skye knew who, or what, Jarrod was. Afterwards, they had been nowhere in the film clip. Skye’s eyes stung as she tried to make peace again with how little she mattered in her old world anymore. But she could at least do this; make this mural good enough to not be painted over. Leave a little bit of herself here for Morgan, and Rowena and Mike, whether they knew it or not.
For the rest of the day, Skye lost herself in the mural, her thoughts swimming through the ocean with Hunter, resurfacing regularly to watch her friends and the others interact. It was heart-warming that the fear and suspicion directed towards the Lauders before the wave came had been washed away with the tide. No one deserved this support more than they did.
The afternoon grew late and the courtyard emptied as people left. When Rowena was ready to go, she called goodbye. When Skye didn’t hear her, she lingered at the door watching her. Her eyes looked misty when Skye looked up. “Keep up the good work, love,” Rowena said. “You’ll come to the grand opening, won’t you?”
“That would be great,” Skye said and smiled.
“Wonderful. Maggie May, are you helping across the road, or will I see you back at Mike’s?”
Skye ducked her head to hide the sharp pang that stabbed through her at the mention of Mike and home, and began to wash out her brushes while they talked. But she was too vigorous. In her distraction she tilted the water container too far and it slipped in her grip, dumping water over her hoodie and jeans before falling onto the drop sheet. “Oh! Oh no!” she said, as Morgan re-joined her. “I’m so sorry!”
“No, I’m so sorry,” Morgan said, mortified. “I should have given you an apron or something.”
“It doesn’t matter at all,” Skye said, “it will soon be -” She broke off. She couldn’t say ‘wet through by the sea’. “I have to go now anyway, it’s okay. I can change when I’m...home.”
“No, you can’t leave like that! There are spare clothes in my bedroom upstairs. You can bring them back whenever you’re finished with them. Get changed and then we’ll go across the road to check out the spirit-lights table.”
It was just too tempting. “Okay, thanks,” Skye accepted, shaking the excess water onto the drop sheet and heading for the stairs. She didn’t know what spirit lights were, but this felt like old times.
“It’s the door on the right,” Morgan called after her, reminding her that this wasn’t old times.
In Morgan’s bedroom, Skye allowed herself a few seconds to look around, letting the bittersweet memories of their shared past fill her. Then it took less than a minute to grab clothes she already knew fit her, and to change into them. She took one last look around, and her eye was caught by a small book on Morgan’s bedside table.
She couldn’t help herself. She crossed the room, and picked up her mother’s small, teal-blue sketchbook. The one Skye had started to use herself, drawing in it and adding her own fairy story. A scallop shell, in which was nestled a familiar gleaming grey shell ring, was on the side table next to where the book had been. The shell from Hunter! Skye smiled. Morgan had kept it after the wave, even without knowing what it was.
Hunter had imbued it with his own essence, making whoever wore it immune to the effects of the sea. Skye picked the shell ring up. It was still heavy with Hunter’s presence. Still able to protect Morgan should she ever venture into the sea and out of her depth.
She carefully set it down again, then rested her fingers on the cover of her mother’s book, her mind in turmoil. She couldn’t take it with her, the water would ruin it. But maybe... Maybe this could be a road map for Morgan to discover the truth, just as it had been for Skye in her quest to learn her mother’s fate.
Heart racing, she opened the drawer to get a pen she knew was there, and sat on the edge of Morgan’s bed. She flipped the pages to her own fairy story, and began to quickly write. She had never believed in happy ever after. But she wasn’t willing to give up her best friend and her human life yet. In fairy stories, anything could happen. And if the stubbornness she and Morgan shared was anything to go by, anything would happen.
She carefully tore out a blank page from the back and wrote.
“Read this every day’. Then she added ‘A girl called Skye is working on the mural’ just to give herself a head start tomorrow. She set the book on Morgan’s bedside table again, the note on its cover, and Hunter’s shell ring on the note. Then she went downstairs to join Morgan.
“So what’s happening across the road?” she asked as she followed Morgan out of the bifold doors and they climbed across the orange plastic mesh.
“Oh, it’s such a cool idea,” Morgan exclaimed. “It was decided at the last town meeting, the one about the wave clean-up. I guess you missed it? The first event is happening after dark tonight, but they’re setting up for it now. I think you’d love it!”
“Tell me?”
“Well, you know all the Bannimor stories about sea spirits?”
“Sure.”
“Well, they usually get the blame for any death or disappearance, don’t they?” Morgan looked a little self-conscious. “Here in the village, we’ve always had a love-hate relationship with the ocean. Loving what it gives us, hating it for taking away people we love. But...I think we’re all ready to make peace with it. Something, or someone, out there, was protecting us from tragedy. That’s what some of us believe anyway.” She waved her hand indicating herself, and the village. “We probably sound like a bunch of superstitious idiots, but there are too many dark stories, too much loss and strange rumour for there not to be some truth in some of the stories. Don’t you think so?”
They crossed the road, heading towards a group of men and women setting up trestle tables and spreading tablecloths on them. “I never used to think so, although Mum always did. The wave has added another entire chapter to that theme, and got a few more converts on board.”
Beside the tables were boxes piled high with wreaths, and a few of the helpers were setting out trays of tea-light candles, and boxes of long matches.
“A lot of people here believe that the reason the village is still standing is because something or someone out there stopped the wave,” Morgan gestured towards the Bay. “That the wave reached the outskirts of the village and was drawn back by sea spirits. Like my dream... Anyway, true or not, the village wants to say ‘thanks’ for protecting us, so we’re having a little festival of spirit-lights. And it’s not just to say thanks. For some of us, it’s also to light the souls of people we’ve lost safely to their home under the waves with the sea spirits.” Morgan reddened, looking embarrassed. “Do I sound like a crazy person? Like I’m seven years old?”
“No,” Skye smiled, tears blurring her vision. “I think it’s beautiful.” She picked up a wreath, and one of the people helping to set up showed her the brace in the centre that would take a tea-light candle out into the ocean.
Then Morgan said quietly, “You know how I said before that when I’m working on the refurb, I feel happy?”
“Yes, I remember.”
“It’s been like that again today.” she looked at Skye. “You will come back again, won’t you?”
Skye held Morgan’s gaze, and smiled. “Always,” she promised.
