Red Rocks (9 page)

T
he sound of the sea rose up around them. Ted was staring at the photograph in his hands and Jessie was looking at Jake, as if waiting for him to speak. When it became clear that Ted had finished his story, Jake said to Jessie, ‘You’re not his granddaughter, are you?’

She shook her head — a little sadly, Jake thought. He looked around the room, and for the first time registered that with only one single
bed, where did Jessie sleep when she stayed? That was one clue he’d missed. Now that he knew the truth for sure, that Ted wasn’t really her grandfather, Jake knew she didn’t sleep in the hut at all.

Ted looked up. ‘There have been many Jessies, my boy. And Caras. They don’t replace my daughters, but if I can look out for them, even just while they’re small — give them clothes to wear, offer them some protection from humans — it takes away the worst of the guilt. And I can pretend for a while that my girls never left. This Cara first came to me last year — she was the same age Jessie is now. She was a sweet girl. Seals grow up a lot faster than humans, so she’s an adult now and I’d thought we wouldn’t be seeing her again. But she was drawn back. And this is the first time in all these years that one of my girls has lost their skins. I feared for her, and for the poor sod who had found it, but there wasn’t much I could do. Cara and your dad are both wrapped up in the enchantment
now. Nobody can reason with either of them.’

‘But why do they come to land and shed their skins?’ asked Jake. ‘Nobody’s explained it to me.’

Ted sighed, then shook his head. ‘Who knows, lad? Maybe it’s loneliness and sorrow that brings them out of the sea. Mine …’ He hung his head, as though ashamed. ‘… and now your dad’s. I don’t know. Maybe it’s just because they can. I’m sure they couldn’t explain it to you any more than I could.’

Could it be true? Was Dad so lonely that he had drawn a woman from a seal? And Jessie: was she just one in a line of selkie-children brought out of the sea by poor Ted’s suffering? Jake couldn’t believe that. She was too curious, too much her own person. He remembered what his dad had said, that night by the fire. ‘Wouldn’t you? Just to see what it was like?’

Jake looked at Jessie again. ‘Would you have ever told me? That you’re …’ He couldn’t finish his own sentence, and Jessie didn’t react. It
didn’t matter what she was. She was his friend, that was enough.

Jake fell silent again, thinking. Things were even scarier than he’d realised. Ted’s limp, and his badly scarred eyelid, were all because of his selkie wife. Dad was in danger — two-fold. If Cara found out he was hiding her skin — wherever it was! — she could hurt him, badly, even if he gave it back to her voluntarily. On the other hand, if Jake’s dad managed to keep the sealskin from her for long enough, he and Cara might have children, and Cara could die and leave him heartbroken, or worse, their children could follow their mother into the sea and drown.

Jake had to admit to himself that even though he’d been urging Dad to give back the skin for his own good, it had really been for selfish reasons. Jake had been jealous. He didn’t want his dad to start another family. But after Ted’s story, Jake realised things were far more complicated than that. 

With a start, something came to him that had been nagging him all this time — his dad could end up like Ted. Alone, sad, and slightly crazy.

Then another terrible thought struck him. Dad had insisted that Cara would stay with him even if he gave her back the skin. What if he decided to test his theory? Jake had to get back home, fast, to make sure he didn’t. He jumped to his feet.

‘I have to go,’ he said.

Ted stood up. ‘You know what you have to do now? Where to look?’

‘I think I have an idea. But even if I find it and give it back, won’t she be angry?’

Jessie piped up. She practically rolled her eyes, as if Jake was just a silly child. ‘You do not give it back to her, Jake. You put it back where you found it, then the spell will be broken and she can leave.’

‘Will you come with me? Help me look for it?’

‘No. She will get suspicious. You must do this on your own.’ She sounded to Jake like a grown-up in a child’s body. All this time he had thought of her as a little kid, but she was quickly becoming far wiser than he could hope to be in his lifetime.

He opened the front door cautiously, trying to make as little noise as possible. All was quiet. They must be out, thought Jake, but when he entered the living room, there was his father, sitting at the dining table, staring out the window. He was hunched over, wearing his holey black fishing jersey and faded brown corduroy pants. His whiskers were starting to resemble a proper beard. It was happening already — he was already starting to look like Ted. A younger version, but Ted all the same, like the Ted in the photograph.

There was no sign of Cara. Jake dared to hope that she had left, and everything was fine.

‘Hi, Dad.’ 

Dad turned his head slowly and looked at him. His eyes were glassy and it was as though it took him a second to recognise his own son. ‘Oh, Jake.’ His voice was listless. ‘You’re back.’

Jake sat down opposite him. ‘Where’s Cara?’ he asked.

‘She’s gone out for a walk.’

Looking for the skin, thought Jake, but didn’t say so. ‘And what are you doing?’ Jake was surprised his dad wasn’t taking the opportunity to work on his book.

‘I’m waiting for her.’

This was worse than Jake thought. Dad was completely under the selkie’s spell. He was like an empty shell; or a child waiting for its mother, not knowing how to entertain itself. But as Jake sat with him, the colour slowly came back into his father’s cheeks, the life back into his eyes. Suddenly Dad’s eyes opened wide.

‘Jake!’ he said, as if only just noticing him. ‘How’s your day going? Do you want some lunch?’ He stood up and started moving towards
the kitchen. Jake realised one important fact: his own presence was somehow diluting Cara’s spell. There was hope after all that they could fight this thing. Ted had been alone, with nobody to distract him from his enchantment. Perhaps things were going to be different this time.

‘We have to talk,’ said Jake.

Dad stopped. ‘Okay,’ he said, and sat down again.

Jake told him what had happened to Ted, in much fewer words. For the first time, his dad looked as though he might be listening. But still, he refused to believe that what he had with Cara was anything but love.

‘I’m sorry that happened to Ted,’ he said. ‘It must be horrible to lose your children like that. If anything ever happened to you, I don’t know what I’d do.’ He grabbed Jake’s hand across the table. ‘But, mate, this isn’t what’s happening here. I’m sure Ted’s wife just left him and he was so sad he just made up the story to make himself feel better.’

‘Dad!’ Jake shouted in frustration. ‘Don’t you see? We have to let Cara have her skin back, and we can’t let her know we’ve had it!’

But his father wasn’t looking at him any more. He was staring at the doorway to the living room. Jake turned, his stomach a pit of dread, knowing what he would see. Cara leant against the doorframe, listening.

‘My skin is here?’ Cara’s voice stayed calm, but she began advancing slowly towards them. Jake found himself shrinking away from her. She radiated a coldness that he could feel on his skin. ‘Where is it?’

Neither Jake nor his father said anything. Dad was staring at her, mesmerised, just the way Jake had stared at her that day in Ted’s cottage.

And then she began to change. It was her eyes at first — they seemed to grow in her face. Her pupils expanded in her irises, then her irises expanded and covered the whites of her eyes. Jake was cold with fear, and Dad gasped. But still neither of them spoke. They were both in
danger, and yet Jake couldn’t move.

‘Where is it?’ Her voice rose in pitch and volume and filled the air around them. She pulled her lips back in a grimace. Her teeth were small and pointed. She looked wildly around the room. Then she ran to the couch and started tearing at it with her bare hands. Within seconds the cushions were shredded, their stuffing floating through the air. She whirled around the room, throwing all the books from their shelves, upturning the coffee table. Next, she swept into the kitchen, and the sound of smashing glass and crockery rumbled through the house.

With Cara in the next room, Jake came to his senses and jumped to his feet. He grabbed his father’s arm. ‘Come on, we have to get out of here! If she finds it, she’ll kill us!’

But his father wrenched his arm free. ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ he said. ‘She’s just a bit upset, that’s all. I’ll tell her you were joking, that it was just a game.’ Jake could barely hear him over
the sound of splintering wood as Cara tore the kitchen apart.

‘Dad!’ Jake shouted. Suddenly, silence spilled from the kitchen. Cara appeared in the doorway. When she spoke, her voice was gravelly and low, a mixture of human voice and animal growl. Her eyes were black coals throbbing in her face. They pulsed with an unearthly light.

‘My love,’ she said to Dad. ‘Why do you keep that little room above the house locked? What is inside that you do not want me to see?’

‘It’s just my workroom, Cara,’ Dad said. ‘My computer’s in there. I keep the door locked so it doesn’t get stolen.’ Jake could see that the enchantment was slipping again. For the first time, he saw fear on his father’s face. Dad glanced at him. When Cara disappeared from view and they heard the back door open, Dad whispered urgently: ‘Go. The boat. It’s in the boat.’

It was as Jake suspected. He lunged for the hall and was out the front door in seconds.
As he tore through the gate, he turned to see the door to Dad’s writing room falling off its hinges; Cara had pulled it off with her bare hands. The next moment the computer crashed through the window and clattered onto the roof of the cottage, and all of his father’s papers exploded into the air and swirled around like a snowstorm. He only hoped that Dad could calm her down once she had finished, convince her that what she had overheard was indeed a joke, and that she wouldn’t turn her fury onto him. He ran as though his father’s life depended on it, because it did.

H
e had forgotten about the padlock on the boat locker but there it was, staring him in the face. Jake pulled at the doors desperately but they stayed shut, rocking slightly on their hinges. The wind had picked up and it threw grit in his eyes, making them water, mixing with tears of frustration. There was only one thing for it — he’d have to try and break the doors down. He looked around but there was
nobody else about to help him, which was probably just as well; he’d have a hard time convincing them he wasn’t just a delinquent breaking into a boat locker.

He picked up a rock from the beach, light enough to lift, but heavy enough to use as a sledgehammer. Bang! He brought it down on the top of the padlock, scraping his knuckles in the process. Nothing. He did it again, taking more skin off, but urgency made his hands numb to the pain. This time, he’d loosened it a little. Just one more … bang!

The screws came out of the soft, splintered wood and he was able to wrench and twist until the lock came away properly. He was in.

It didn’t take him long to find the skin — in such a small boat there were few places to hide anything. The rubbish sack he’d hidden the skin in himself was tucked into the bow, under the anchor and chain. He put his hand inside it to check, and when he touched the soft fur, the smell of it enveloped him. For a moment he
felt dizzy and closed his eyes. It was as if Cara was all around him; he felt her breath in his ear, and his heart suddenly swelled with warmth for her. A thought jolted him: what on earth was he doing? Returning the skin to the cave banishing Cara from their lives forever — is that really what he wanted? If he kept it here, hidden in the little boat, then his dad would be happy. He had seen the light in his face when she was around. And Cara could be like another mother for Jake — together, they could be a family. Wouldn’t that be nice?

Suddenly he thought he felt the skin move, and he tore his hand away. In that very moment, another vision popped into his head: Jessie’s face, telling him to be brave, and then — oddly, for he hadn’t thought of him much — his brother Davey. There was already a real family waiting for him back in Auckland: his mother, Greg, and his little brother. He and Dad were a real family too, in their own way, no matter what. Keeping Cara bound to them would not make them any
more of a family than they already were. In fact, when she was around, Jake was shut out.

He would have to be careful. Now he was in possession of the skin, he was falling under its spell again. He closed the bag and tied a tight knot at the top. Then he crawled out of the locker.

What was he going to do now? He couldn’t risk taking it back home and giving it to Cara; even walking past the house carried the danger of being seen and intercepted by her. And it was a long walk from Island Bay to the cave at Red Rocks. It could take him the rest of the day. But that would be too long. Who knew what state she was in and whether Dad had managed to calm her down?

There was only one option, one that scared Jake, but that he knew was his only choice.

He didn’t know where he found the strength, especially with his bruised wrist, but he tugged at the little boat with his skinny arms, jerking it across the sand and down to the water. The
beach was deserted, which was highly unusual — often there were families playing in the sand, or people walking their dogs. It was as if the whole world was staying away, determined to neither help nor hinder him in his task.

He attached the outboard motor as he’d watched his father do it, strapped on his life jacket, and launched himself and the dinghy into the water, rowing out into the depths. The wind was making the sea choppy but he kept his balance as he put down the oars and pulled the cord of the motor once, then again. It grumbled into life. Jake wished that his dad had had it fixed since the last time they’d been out in the boat, but with all the time he’d been spending with Cara, he wouldn’t have had time. The boat and its motor were the only way though, so Jake set out, now too fast, now too slow, trying to catch a feel for the throttle and fighting the fear in his belly, expecting the motor to fail at any moment as it had on their fishing trip.

He couldn’t stay too close to the shore, as there
were unseen rocks that could tear the bottom of the boat. And yet he worried that the further out he went, the more the pull of the tide might send him out to sea. He manoeuvred out of Island Bay between the island and the empty beach. Cold spray flew into his face and he had a moment of exhilaration, of feeling alone and free. He imagined keeping the nose of the boat southwards and chasing the ferry he could see in the distance, all the way to the South Island and away from the disaster he had created.

The engine hiccupped and lost power for a second, snapping Jake out of his reverie, but thankfully it soon roared again. He checked the shore to see how far he had come. He had left Island Bay and its bobbing fishing boats behind and was now turning the boat to the west. Away from the shelter of the island the waves grew larger; they slapped the side of the boat and he was soon soaked to the skin. His hands on the throttle stick became numb but he didn’t dare take them off to shake the feeling back into them.
He felt he was going quite fast, and yet the shore crawled by, along with the lonely cars in the café car park, the flax flowers that bent in the breeze. The sound of the motor buzzed in his brain, driving him on.

He closed his eyes for a moment. More than anything, he wished he could lie down and go to sleep, to pull warm, dry covers over his head and wake up to a bright day with no trouble. When he opened them again, the shore had receded, and now he was travelling past the bite of Owhiro Bay, with its rocky sand, the gulls crowded around, looking out at him. He searched for his father’s house — there it was, sitting idle and quiet, with no sign of life. Jake shuddered. Wait! A figure stood on a rock, looking out to sea, watching him. He recognised Cara’s bright red cardigan — but where was Dad? What had she done with him? He held his breath, expecting her to start moving, to run along the beach, or worse, to dive into the water and come for him. But it was as if her feet were part of the rock on which she stood.
Only her hair moved in the wind. Perhaps she could sense her skin was on the move, that Dad no longer had it in his possession, but she didn’t follow, only stood with her body straining towards the sea, waiting. Something behind her caught his eye and his stomach leapt inside him — Dad? — but it was the flapping of a curtain that had slipped loose through the broken window of the office. It was as though it were waving him on, urging him to go faster.

On he went, past the line of houses with their faces turned to the ocean. The car park for Red Rocks came into view. He was going to make it. He was nearly there. Still further, with the great grey cliffs looking blankly at him. He wondered how he must look to anyone standing up there — a small speck on the vast ocean, probably, with a tiny smudge of bright yellow for a life jacket. Insignificant.

There was Ted’s cabin. The smoke spiralled up before disappearing, stolen by the wind. A figure stood in front of the little shack. It was
Ted: he raised a hand high and then waved, painting huge strokes with his arms. There was no sign of Jessie. Jake waved back, bolstered by the old man’s faith in him. But as he did so, his cold hand slipped on the throttle and the boat jumped forward like a mullet being chased by a kahawai. He fell back and banged his head on the motor, losing his grip completely. The engine died and Jake was enveloped by the sound of water, all around, clawing at the boat. The wind whistled in his wet ears. He sat up. ‘No, no, no,’ he said quietly to himself. He pulled the starter cord. Nothing. He tried again. And again, and again until his arm ached with the effort. He was being pulled further away from the shore by the tide and if he let himself drift any more he’d be gone in no time.

Jake picked up the oars and, with shaking hands, jiggled the rowlocks into place. Then he began to row. He had made it this far, most of the way, now he had to rely on his physical strength to get him there. His wrist was still sore, and
doubt crowded into his mind — how on earth would he do it? He’d only learned to row last summer, had only just moved beyond turning the boat in circles and having no control over its direction. Plus, he was weak. Those older boys had spotted that fact a mile off, had pushed him around like a dandelion in the wind, and he had let them. How could he gather the strength to get him the last part of the way?