Surrendering (Swans Landing) (18 page)

“Hey,” Mara said, holding up her hands. “Leave us out of this.”

I slipped my arm around Mara’s waist, pulling her closer to me. I knew the jealousy that went through me at the thought of Mara and Dylan spending the summer here alone was irrational, but that didn’t stop it from coming.

“So it was just something to do to pass your time?” Sailor asked, following Dylan as he walked toward the kitchen. “You were so worried about me you needed something to distract you, is that it?”

Elizabeth still sat on the floor, her head bent, but she had stopped crying.

“What do you want me to say?” Dylan asked. “Do you want me to say that I would have chosen you if you were here? I don’t know. I don’t think of you that way, Sailor. You’re my best friend. You’re like a sister to me.”

Sailor stepped back, her mouth open. Those were the words she had never wanted to hear him say. She had told me before how much she loved him and had wanted him to notice her as more than just his friend. But he never had. I wasn’t sure exactly how she felt about Callum, but I knew that Dylan’s words had to hurt her.

“You have Callum anyway,” Dylan muttered. “Why does it matter to you who I’m with when you brought him back here?”

Sailor’s chin quivered. “Why her? Why do you want her?”

“He doesn’t.” Elizabeth wiped her cheeks, lifting her head and staring across the room at Dylan. “He doesn’t want me. It was like you said, just something to help him pass the time. He made that very clear a few months ago.”

“Is that true?” Sailor asked him. “You don’t feel anything for her?”

Dylan ran a hand through his hair, shifting back and forth as the two girls stared at him. He looked like he was facing down an execution line.

I cleared my throat. “This little drama is fun to watch,” I said, “but I think we have more important things to worry about.”

Sailor held up one finger toward me. “No. Right now, we’re talking about this.”

“Yes,” Elizabeth said. “I’d like to know how you really feel too, Dylan.”

Mara gave me a worried look, then said, “We should probably—”

“No!” Sailor shouted. “Do you love her or not, Dylan?”

Dylan took a deep breath. “I—”

“What is all of this shouting?” a weak voice croaked.

All of us jumped at the sight of Miss Gale standing at the end of the hall, leaning against the wall. Coral stood on her other side, their arms linked. They blinked at us, looking around at each of our faces.

“Grandma,” Sailor said, rushing over to her. “What are you doing out of bed?”

Miss Gale waved off Sailor’s attempts to coddle her. “You expect me to stay in bed forever, child? I ain’t stupid. I know there’s things going on here that none of you want me to know about.”

“How are you feeling?” Mara asked her.

Coral led Miss Gale over to the love seat and eased her down, then sat next to her mother, their hands still clasped.

“Better,” Miss Gale said. “There are days and weeks I don’t remember. But I’m feeling better.” She smiled at Coral and then Sailor. “Now that I have my girls back, I’ll be better.”

Miss Gale looked around the room again. “Now,” she said, letting out a long breath, “I think it’s time someone started telling me what’s happening here.”

We looked at each other, waiting for someone to go first. What should we say? That we had led a group of finfolk who wanted to take over our home directly to the island? That it was August and probably no more than fifty degrees outside? That my mother had told me she killed my father?

There was so much to tell and maybe not enough time to explain it all.

Miss Gale’s gaze settled on Sailor. “Tell me what happened after you left the island,” she said.

Sailor sat down on the floor by her grandmother’s knees, laying her head in Miss Gale’s lap. She told Miss Gale about our swim across the ocean and our time in Westray. She told how we’d found Hether Blether with Callum’s help, and about finding Coral there. I added my own observations to the story and tried to put all the pieces together in my head as I spoke, looking for anything that would help us save Swans Landing.

Then Mara and Dylan joined in as we told about what had happened in just the last few days. It seemed like it had been a lifetime since the finfolk had arrived on the island. It was hard to believe it had only been a day.

When we were done, Miss Gale cocked her head to the side. “Where is this key?” she asked.

I grabbed my bag and pulled it out, handing over the twisted piece of metal. Miss Gale turned it over in her hands, examining it with a furrowed brow.

“We need the key,” Coral said, leaning her head against her mother’s shoulder.

“What is it, sugar?” Miss Gale asked her gently. “Why do we need this key?”

“Oliver told me to get it,” Coral said, her gaze shifting to me.

“What did I need it for, Coral?” I asked, kneeling down in front of her. “Can you remember?”

“It’s the right key,” she said. “I found it for you.”

I stood, my shoulders slumping. She wasn’t much better than she had been back in Hether Blether. Whatever had caused her confusion wasn’t cured just by coming back home.

* * *

Each minute felt like an hour as we waited in the quiet house. The world outside was silent too, as if all life had disappeared from the island. Not even the caw of seagulls reached us.

“Do you think we’ll know?” Mara asked me quietly. “If something happens to them, I mean. How will we know that they’re not coming back?”

“They’re coming back,” Sailor snapped, glaring at Mara. “All of them.”

I knew she meant Callum. She still held out hope that he was on our side and hadn’t left us to join Domnall. I wasn’t sure what to think anymore.

Miss Gale rubbed Sailor’s back comfortingly. “They’ll be back, sugar. We have to keep up hope.” She looked so tired, but she refused to go back to bed, saying that she couldn’t sleep while everything was so up in the air.

Mara ignored Sailor and leaned toward me, lowering her voice. “We need to do something. We can’t sit and wait forever.”

“We’re not going to sit and wait,” I said. “We’re going to find an answer.” I picked up my dad’s papers. They were the only lead we had at the moment.

Mara settled into my corner with me, our backs pressed to the wall as we sat side by side. She took half of the stack of papers still left and I took the other one. Then I bent my head over the notes, trying to block out everyone else in the room.

Like before, most of the notes were about air and water temperatures, the weather for each day, and his observations about the sea life. If I had been searching for reasons why my father would have an affair, I couldn’t find any. These papers were all pretty mundane, mostly facts and statistics. Why would he have Coral hide them?

September 5 - I’m learning to sing the finfolk song. I wasn’t even sure that I had the ability to do it. I am part finfolk through my paternal grandmother, but I don’t have the ability to change form like she did. My father couldn’t change form either. I’ve thought a lot about the reasons why I feel so drawn to the ocean and the finfolk people, and I’ve theorized that even without the ability to change, some of the things that make one finfolk still exist inside me. The connection to the land and sea, for example.

I didn’t want anyone else to know about my desire to learn the song if it turned out that I couldn’t actually sing like they do, so I had to be discreet. During one of our morning rides out on the water to pull in catches, I asked Lake Westray if he would humor me and try to teach me the song.

I reread the last sentence again. My dad worked with Lake on the water? He had mentioned before that he often rode out with fisherman to observe their catches because it helped in his research of the fish population, but this was the first mention I’d seen that he had gone with Lake specifically.

Mara shifted next to me, her eyes scanning over the notebook in her hands. I wondered if I should tell her this fact. But I was eager to know more, so I turned back the page.

Lake was doubtful, of course, but he agreed. I’ve come to feel that I can trust him more than most people on the island. He’s not someone who gets involved in local gossip.

I was able to pick up the melody of the song after only a couple of tries. The gold bursts in the corners of my eyes as I hummed told me I had found the right notes. I did it. As far as technicalities go, I am human. I don’t change form in the ocean and I can’t breathe the water. But I can sing, proving that even without the ability to change, a part of me is still finfolk inside.

I let the words I had just read seep into my head as a tingle spread through me. My dad could sing the songs. He wasn’t just an ordinary human, even though he had appeared to be one. He had proven that a human with finfolk blood who couldn’t change could still sing.

I scanned over the next few days’ notes, skipping past more temperature readings and fish population notes. A word on one page—Finfolkaheem—caught my eye and I stopped.

November 21 - Observed a whirlpool near Pirate’s Cove again today. It lasted only a brief moment before disappearing.

It’s Song Night and the finfolk are out in the water. I’m sitting on the beach at Pirate’s Cove, listening to them and studying the mists that always accompany this night.

I’ve been doing research on finfolk myths, though information is hard to find. Of course, there are no records written by finfolk about their origins—none that we have here in the human world, anyway. Maybe they keep those records in Finfolkaheem, but if so, no human eyes have ever seen them as far as I know.

I have developed theories about the vanishing isles that the finfolk are said to live on. My visit to Eynhallow didn’t give me much observable evidence, so I can only go on guesses. Eynhallow—also known as Hildaland—is the only known island that is said to have once belonged to finfolk and was one of their vanishing isles until it was taken from them by humans. There is said to be at least one other island the finfolk still own, Hether Blether, though it remains hidden in the mists that protect it.

How can an island that once vanished become permanently visible to human eyes? We know that finfolk have taken humans—sometimes by force and sometimes willingly—to their islands throughout history, but just the presence of humans on the land doesn’t make the island visible.

My theory is that Hildaland (Eynhallow) was not “taken” by humans, but was given up by the finfolk who once lived there. The mists come when the finfolk sing. Our population of finfolk here in Swans Landing is small, but what if there were a larger population on the island? Would the mists that appear on Song Night stick around longer? Permanently?

The finfolk who inhabited Hildaland gave up the island for whatever reason, and without their song the mists faded and the island became visible to humans. I can only guess that they either went home to Finfolkaheem as a permanent residence, or they combined with the finfolk of Hether Blether.

My heart pounded in my ears as I skimmed over the next pages, looking for more of my dad’s theories about the finfolk. He was right. Domnall had told me himself that the song protected Hether Blether. With fewer finfolk, the song’s power faded and that was why Domnall claimed he needed the Swans Landing finfolk.

But I didn’t think that the Hildaland finfolk had gone to Hether Blether. If they had, there would have been more of them still there. Hether Blether was dying out with such a small community after the split that had caused our ancestors to come to Swans Landing. That had to mean that the Hildaland finfolk had gone to Finfolkaheem.

But where was it? How could I find the door?

November 27 - Observed a whirlpool near Pirate’s Cove again today. It lasted only a brief moment before disappearing.

I’ve been rereading the finfolk myths again. One stuck out at me this time. The myth of the finfolk key. It is said that a human girl was taken by finfolk to Hether Blether. Her father and brother had gone out to look for her, but were unable to find her. During a storm, their little boat became lost in the mists and they found their way to the vanishing isle, where the girl greeted them. Before they left, she gave them a twisted piece of metal that she said would bring them back to Hether Blether in the future.

What if this key led not only to the vanishing isle, but to the finfolk home under the ocean?

November 30 – The whirlpool reappeared and Coral swam out to it. She said it sucked her under, the current so rough that she almost couldn’t control herself. Near the bottom was a light and as she neared it, it grew larger, opening like a door. Her own fear made her fight to get away and come back to shore. I won’t ask her to go into the light, whatever it is, but my thoughts about the finfolk key have my mind spinning with possibilities.

December 7 – We’ve been trying to find the whirlpool again, but it hasn’t reappeared. It seems to be random, but maybe it isn’t. If it was a door, like Coral thought, shouldn’t there be a way to open it on command?