Kraken (6 page)

Will’s shame stilled his tongue. He couldn’t believe how stupid he’d been, coming here with hopes folded neatly in his rollaway luggage.

“Are you staying with this guy now?” asked Parker.

“No, he just . . . Put me up for the night. I didn’t have anywhere to go. Obviously.”

“Will’s had less time than you to deal with this, Parker. He doesn’t need to explain himself to you,” said Sina. “Will, I’ll drop your bag off to you later today, okay? It’s best for everyone you leave the island.”

Will nodded his head, his eyes fixed on the tablecloth.

Sina reached across the table and laid a hand on his forearm. “I’m truly sorry, Will.

Will felt Sina and Parker leave, but he didn’t look up. Cyrus was holding the knapsack on his lap, his knuckles white, coffee untouched. When he spoke, Cyrus’s voice was very calm. “Wait here while I grab the groceries.” He stood before waiting for Will’s reply.

Fuck, he was so stupid, stupid. To think Parker would miss him. Bile rose into Will’s throat. Suddenly he couldn’t bear to sit any longer. He jerked to his feet, not bothering to pick up the white plastic chair as it clattered to the floor. Not out of interest, but only for an excuse to keep his hot cheeks facing away from the room, Will examined the framed black and white photographs liberally covering the nearest wall. Men with shovels flanked a long rectangular hole, men loaded sacks on a barge, men with axes propped their feet on gigantic felled trees. Glossy elevation plans came next, a large architectural model on a table beneath them: shiny white condos stacked like tilted shoeboxes on the grass-green foam.

“Ah, I see you found the new jewel in our crown.” It was the elderly man.

“Jewel?”

“Sandpiper Point. It’s going in between here and Cyrus’s, as a matter of fact. One of the old-timers was persuaded to sell her sections. She wasn’t using them, of course, just holding on because her father had bought land here back in the 1920s, when they thought there might be a proper town.

“It looks . . . nice?”

“Won’t it just be? This gorgeous island, it’s not right it’s kept for only a few people. Not too many full time residents at the moment, but there’s room for thousands. Tens of thousands. It would have been a different life, if we hadn’t been so isolated. But now we can open up this whole place. Not everyone’s in favor, of course. Some like the old ways.”

“The old ways have a lot going for them,” said Cy, walking up to them. “I thought you were going to stay put, Will. Don’t run off like that.”

“We haven’t actually been properly introduced,” said the old man. “How do you do? I’m Mr. Falconer. This is my store.”

Will grasped Mr. Falconer’s hand. His grip was warm, comforting.

“And may I say, it really is a pleasure to have you back, Mr. MacKenzie. Your grandparents missed you terribly after you left here, you know. I wasn’t surprised when they joined you in the city. I mean, I can understand it, a lad wants to be with his mother, after all, but I was surprised you never felt the need to return. Better late than never, of course. ”

Will gaped, astonished. “No, I’m sorry, that’s not me.”

The storekeeper looked at him over the top of his glasses.

“I haven’t . . . I haven’t been here before. I’ve barely left the city, only for the occasional overpriced resort where they treat me like a chocolate: delicate and requiring air conditioning. I don’t have grandparents. You’re confusing me with someone else.”

“Oh, I don’t think so, lad. You paid by credit card for your ferry ticket, hmm? And it was all just the other day, for me. I’m an old man, it seems. I don’t know where the years went. Time doesn’t go as quickly for me as it does for you.”

Will felt a sick weight descend on him, hot and heavy. “No.” He shook his head. “Not me.” It was never him. He had no family connections, no childhood buddies to bump into at ball games. It had always been just him and his mom. And then just him. The old guy was touched in the head. He might look pretty damn spry, but he was clearly losing his mind. And Will had more important things to worry about.

“Mr. Falconer, I have to get back to the mainland. As soon as possible. Now. When’s the next ferry?”

The old man looked at Cyrus, his face unreadable. “Already? I’m surprised our Mr. Keller is letting you get away quite so soon. Well, that’s a shame. But you’ll have to wait till tomorrow, I’m afraid. No more ferries today.”

Will stared at him. He could feel the incomprehension crawl across his face.

“Mechanical problems, I believe. A bent propeller shaft.”

“But I— “

“It’s no problem, Will. You’ll stay with me, of course,” said Cyrus.

“Of course he will,” said Mr. Falconer.

Will felt adrift. “I have to go
now
. Is there a private yacht I could get a lift on?”

Mr. Falconer scratched his chin. “None that I can think of. It’s the beginning of the weekend, you see. Everyone is just heading out. It’ll be quicker to wait until you can take a ferry tomorrow.”

“I see. Thank you.”

As if coming here hadn’t been disaster enough, now it looked like not even leaving was going to go right. Will was about to ask Cyrus if they were ready to leave, when he remembered the black armband, and gestured to it, more from politeness than any pressing desire to know. “Someone pass away?”

Mr. Falconer nodded his head. “Oh yes. The Christie boy, Cameron. A dreadful accident. Very sad. Not a young man, any more, of course. But still a loss. Isn’t that right, Mr. Keller?”

Cyrus shrugged. “He shouldn’t have tried to leave. He was needed here.” His arm tightened across Will’s shoulders. “But not any more.”

Will bit back an apology. He nearly told them he’d been there, seen it all, but he quailed at the idea of explaining the details. Cyrus mistook his silence.

“It will be quite all right, Will. Better, even,” said Cyrus. “You’ll see. C’mon, let’s go.”

Cyrus took hold of Will’s arm and steered him towards the door.

“Goodbye, gentlemen,” called out Mr. Falconer. “I’m sure I’ll be seeing you, Mr. MacKenzie.”

Cyrus walked Will back to the boat ramp in silence, keeping two steps ahead of him the whole way. The tension in his shoulders bled through his t-shirt. When Cyrus started to untie the dinghy painter Will realized he was expected to get back into the boat.

Oh no. There was
no
fucking way. “You are out of your mind if you think I am getting back in that thing.”

Cyrus turned, and for a moment Will thought he was going to actually lash out at him in anger. Then Cyrus’s eyes softened, and he stroked Will’s bicep, as if settling a skittish pony. “You already did it once. Why are you making such a big deal out of this? You know nothing will hurt you.”

“That’s not the point.” In the last eighteen hours nothing had been in Will’s control, but this was. And he was not doing it. “I’ll walk.” He stalked off.

He heard Cyrus’s exasperated voice behind him. “You don’t even know where you’re going.”

“Don’t care!” Will called over his shoulder. He knew it was petty and pathetic and more suited to a five-year-old. Something about Cyrus made him irrational.

He was nearly to the pretty Victorian house when he heard footsteps on the gravel behind him. “All right. Fine. You win this one. I can come back later and get it. We’ll walk back. You’ll need your shoes, though.” Cyrus thrust Will’s damp footwear at him, and they paused where the path met the rocky shoreline, while he laced them up.

Will wiped his hands on his trousers as he got to his feet, gesturing to the grand old home. “It’s unexpected, finding this on an island.”

“This was the mine manager’s house.”

“There’s a mine?”

“Was. Long gone now.”

“For what.”

“Copper.”

Will nodded absently.

“And that was the smelting house,” said Cyrus, pointing at the ruins of the sandstone building ahead. “The chimney’s still standing, see?”

Beyond the wooden fence the ground was a tangle of dandelions, wrapped around the foundations of the factory. Small poplar saplings with feathery leaves were growing inside, where once men worked the bellows to keep the coal burning. Modern wooden beams had been installed to hold up the crumbling sandstone walls.

Giant metal doors lay open on the ground, heavy iron chains disappearing upwards. Will craned his neck and saw them attached to the heavy steel beam overhead. He peered over the edge of the pit, the large open space below lined with red brick.

“Oh, old school, huh?”

“What?”

“It’s a reverberatory furnace. It’s an old Cornish way of refining copper. When were they mining, mid eighteen hundreds?”

“Ah, yeah, about then.”

“There’s a pulley system for opening and closing the doors. They’re too heavy for a person to lift, or even three or four.”

Will walked around to the other side of the ore pit. There on the wall was a large ratcheted wheel. He gave it an exploratory turn. The doors groaned and then rose an inch. “Hey, better than I expected. Someone must come in here with some CRC every now and then.”

“Probably Mr. Falconer. His family have been on the island a long time. Did you see all the photos in the store? He gets a kick out of all this old stuff.”

“There should be another door over here, for the coal.” He pulled up a creeper, revealing a smaller heavy metal door set into the stone floor. “It’s kind of like a big wetback for an open fire. You shovel the copper ore into that big oven and close the doors. The fire pit is over here, next to it. The big smokestack draws the heat from the fire pit into the furnace, and it bounces of the sides and melts the rock. There will be a room on the other side of the furnace with very narrow slits in the thick walls. You stick a scraper in and take the dross, the slag, off the top of the melting rock. You do this thing called poling, too. That what all the poplar is for. They would have planted them specially. At the end, you ladle it into ingot molds and voila, copper.”

Cyrus nodded as Will bent down. Under the ground cover melted rock littered the area. Will picked a handful of stones up. “Slag,” he said, throwing a rock at a ruined wall. “All that’s left once the copper is extracted.”

He held a piece of rock up, and let the play of sunlight bring out the oily rainbow slick hidden inside the black. “Only leftovers, but it’s still beautiful.” He tossed it into the ore pit, the echo rolling faintly around the ruined building. “They wouldn’t just leave this behind, now,” Will said. “They grind it up and sell it as an industrial abrasive. Gotta get every last cent out of the land. I’m surprised it’s so open like this. Anyone could get in there. You fall into that furnace, you’re not climbing out without a ladder. And those walls don’t look too stable.”

Cy picked up another stone, and threw it at a seagull perched on top of the wall, missing by a scant inch. “I guess it hasn’t mattered up till now. Not many people on the island. Certainly not many children. Not any more. Adults know better than to mess around in there. There haven’t been many children since you left. There’s only one now. Ella’s boy Ryan.”

The sick feeling was back, with reinforcements. “Since I what?”

“Left,” said Cyrus. “One day you left, and you never came back.”

Will stared at him. Had everyone gone mad but him? “I’m sorry, what?”

“Just that. You used to live here. I knew you. We knew each other. You left. Now you’ve come home.”

The strains of the last week suddenly seemed too much. Controlled Will, Will who never let anything surprise him or get under his collar, took a momentary vacation. “Stop fucking saying that!” he screamed. “People keep saying they know me! I’ve never been here! You do not recognize me! I do not have a familiar face!”

Will’s voice reverberated around the ruins, frightening a bluejay from its roost and shaking loose a cascade of detritus from a window sconce high above. The dust settled on Will’s shoulders, along with layers of embarrassment. Silence slunk back in.

Cyrus laughed hollowly. “I knew you the second I saw you, Will. I’ve been waiting sixteen years for you to find your way back to me.”