The Ghost's Child (11 page)

As the monsters warred and the sea animals hared about, the ocean began to spin. Loosely at first, the water looped the combatants as though it would fence them in; as the fighters raged on, the water spun faster; then faster and faster, and faster again, until it was flying like quicksilver and became not merely water but a whirlpool, which is water gone mad. Maddy watched in horror as the flashing hoop began to widen across the waves, its glassy center sucking down toward the seafloor. The kraken and the leviathan, caught in the rotating maw, fought on ferociously, forced together by the water now, unable to break apart. Maddy dragged in the anchor and pinned the oars, aware she had just moments to escape the maelstrom's grip. Even as she splashed the blades into the foam, the kraken and the leviathan were snatched under the waves, the whirlpool effortlessly stronger than both of them. The ocean circled violently, the whirlpool scooping up and swallowing everything in its reach; every creature that was able to turned and frantically fled. Maddy pulled against the oars, and the
Albatross
lurched back — only to pitch forward immediately, charging for the whirling rings. Maddy wailed in terror, her heart banging in her ears. Her boat was captured, and so was she — there was no salvation in jumping overboard. In the next moment she would be sucked into the funnel of pounding water, where the
Albatross
would break apart and she would be spun into oblivion. She jerked the oars pathetically as the boat skipped toward the vortex, helpless as a kitten on a chain. Petrified, she had only one clear thought: that Feather had left her to fight alone. Feather didn't care what happened to her.

Then, inexplicably, the boat jumped backward, bucking like a pony. The sails sagged, puffed again, turned inside out. Against all logic, the
Albatross
changed course, wrenching itself from the grip of the maelstrom, swinging to starboard, and speeding for clear water. Maddy clung dripping to the oars, speechless with astonishment. The breeze whipped up by the racing boat pulled her hair and billowed her oilskin. The boat rushed on until the whirlpool vanished in the distance, and the ocean lay smooth all around.

Then a voice said, “Hello! That was a close call! One more moment, and you would have been feeling rather dizzy! I hear you've been looking for me?”

“Zephyrus?” Maddy peeped.

“The one and only!” The west wind blew friskily, riffling the sails. “How may I be of assistance?”

“Zephyrus!” Galvanized by relief, Maddy jumped to her feet. “I'm looking for Feather. I need to ask him a question. A whale said you'd seen him.”

“I certainly have! I helped
him
too. I am quite thoughtful like that.”

Maddy clapped her hands to her cheeks. “Please,” she beseeched the tangerine sky, “please, please, would you tell me where he is?”

“Please, please, please, where, where, where. Now let me
think.
Let me try to
remember.
” The wind twanged the halyards and danced on the planks teasingly, hanging her on tenterhooks. Finally it volunteered, “Feather's on an Island of Stillness, not far from here.”

“Oh! . . . An Island of Stillness? What's that?”

“Don't you know anything?” Zephyrus gusted smugly. “It's an
island
that is
still.
Whoever lives on an Island of Stillness is granted their dearest desire — forgetfulness, fulfillment, that kind of thing. They live that way forever, punished or unpunished, forgiven or unforgiven, remembering or forgetting, smart, stupid, happy, sad. The islands used to float about, following the summer, until somebody realized that the islands should stand still. Because that's what endless fulfillment is, isn't it? That's what forgetfulness is. Just stopping still. So the islands stopped floating, and now, on an Island of Stillness, everything is still.”

“How awful that sounds,” mused Maddy.

Zephyrus shrugged breezily. “You'd be surprised. Some people
like
things that way.”

Maddy looked at the clouds. “Zephyrus,” she said, “will you take me to him? So I can have an answer, finally?”

“Since you ask so nicely,” the wind replied, “I suppose I will. I haven't got anything better to do. But remember, it's
Feather's
island, not yours. It's
his
dearest desire, not yours. His answer might not be what you want to hear. And anyway, does a girl who's voyaged across an ocean without compass or maps, who's talked to whales and wind and watched sea monsters war, need an answer from anyone?”

Maddy hesitated, glancing away. Her eye was caught by her reflection wobbling beneath her. Gazing at her from the water was a girl who knew the friendship of narguns and trees. She'd weathered the bafflement of her childhood, and her bleak school years. She'd survived the disappearance of her traveling father, and the shattering loss of the fay. She'd poured the best of herself into love, and seen that love turned away; yet she'd managed to keep faith in herself. Was there any answer to any question that such a girl couldn't discover for herself?

“But you have come such a long way, haven't you?” prompted Zephyrus. “It would be a shame to give up. Every journey must be finished.”

A little flame in Maddy's heart had simmered to almost nothing: now it sprang up again. “That's true.” She smiled. “Every journey must be finished.”

With that, the boat's nose swung to face a new direction. The sails filled, the rudder dipped, and with an electric, tiger-like leap, the
Albatross
began cutting through the water. Maddy sat at the tiller, her hands on her knees, watching the ocean flash by. Overhead, the sky was mottling cobalt and ruby. The earliest stars came out to glitter on the waves. The moon hung frostily, close to the water, a skating rink for fireflies.

Darkness had not closed in completely for the night, but the sky was stained a rich navy when the sails began to flutter, the boat slowed down, and a low, rocky island rose into view. “Land ahoy,” said Zephyrus, and Maddy stepped to the prow, her blood hammering.

E
very atom in Maddy fizzed with nervousness by the time the
Albatross
beached on the island's shore. She was tempted to beg the west wind to take her straight home. The sand made a raspy grinding noise against the boat's wooden keel: to Maddy, it was the sound of resistance, a sound that said
begone.
Zephyrus was no comfort at all. “Good luck!” the west wind chortled. “Better you than me! Whistle when you want me to get you out of here.”

Maddy watched the wind sweep away, a dust devil of sand blustering in its wake. She hoped it wouldn't go far. Never in her life — not in the pine forest at home after Feather had gone, not in the juddery midst of the cold ocean — had she felt as isolated and apprehensive as she did now. For the first time in such a long time, Maddy was close to Feather — but she felt high up and untouchable, lost to everywhere.

She lit the lamp and carried it with her up the beach. She had imagined the sand would be clean and powdery, but it was coarse under her bare feet. She turned up the flame and held the lamp aloft, expecting to see palm trees and pools of azure water and the tumbling quills of gorgeous birds. Instead she saw craggy ocher rocks piled haphazardly upon one another, a harsh rent scenery like the floor of an exhausted quarry. She picked a path over and between the boulders, slipping on yellow grit. As she climbed, she listened for the grumble of hyenas or rattlesnakes. The island seemed the sort of place such bad-tempered creatures might call home.

She struggled to the point of a jagged peak, hoping that beyond the citadel of rocks might sprawl a lush oasis. At a height, the breeze blew sulkily cool. The indigo sky and burnished moon cast a velvet light over the island, which was small — Maddy could see, not too far away, the ocean looping the land's other side. Looking down from her vantage point she was pleased to discover clusters of palm trees, their spiky fronds lounging from skinny, flaking trunks. But there weren't many trees, and they stood apart like strangers, and around their feet was worn, bristly ground. They were also very quiet trees, making not the faintest rustle — as if they had spied, and disliked, and agreed to be frosty toward her. Between her lookout and the island's opposite shore Maddy saw no streams of water, no swaying grass, no flowers or mounds of rich soil. There was nothing that moved; there was a pallor of strange deadness; there was nothing pleasing to see.

“Feather!” Maddy yelled, and not even a skink took fright. She stared about herself, thinking that obviously the west wind had made a mistake. Feather, who loved the pulse of living things, could never have desired to find himself in this barren place.

But then a sure voice said, “Maddy,” and she turned, and he was there.

In the moonlight, he looked more beautiful than ever — more feathery, more silvery, more smoky and unplaceable. Scraps of cloth hung about him like the plumes of a ruffled bird. His fair hair was longer, and disarrayed again, draping into his eyes. He looked strong and lean and stood lightly, coppery around the edges. Maddy had always imagined herself running to him, leaping into his arms, both of them laughing exultantly. Instead she hung back, warm with shyness, and the air enclosing them was still. “Hello, Feather,” she said.

He said, “Come and sit under the trees.”

She followed him down the cliffs to the flat sandy land below. After all the months of talking to him in her head, Maddy was bewildered to find she had nothing to say. Her mind was empty of inspiration, her mouth hollow of words. The importance had completely sputtered out of the question she'd burned for so long to ask him. She felt as brutish as the cliff boulders. Feather, walking ahead, glanced over his shoulder at her. “I wish you could see the island in daylight,” he said, and his voice was the same, as restful as swans. “The rocks gleam like chests filled with jewels. The grass is green as a riverbank. Sleeping on the earth in the afternoon is like sleeping on a water lily in the middle of a lake.”

Maddy glanced down at the crusty dry dirt — it didn't feel like a lake to her, but rough as a lion's tongue. Shriveled grass, husky as hay, cracked under each step. The rocks were pocked and charmless, inert angular things. She could even smell the burly odor of decaying seaweed. Surely mere daylight couldn't make a difference to this. “Is light bewitching here?” she asked, suddenly thinking she'd found the explanation. “Does sunrise transform everything into something lovely?”

Feather shook his head. “No, it's not bewitching light. Everything is always lovely. In the moonlight, it's lovely. In the daylight it's lovelier, that's all.”

“Oh,” said Maddy; and felt prickly with awkwardness, and let the subject drop.

They stopped in the center of a ring of palms; Maddy sat down to pick burrs from her feet while Feather built a fire of grass and sticks. The sky had thickened to an incubus blue but the moon was low and lustrous, brighter than the lamp. Mosquitoes and tiny midges arrived to fumble about peskily. Feather did not seem to notice them. He sat down and looked through the flames at her, fire glinting off his eyes. “It's nice to see you,” he said.

His voice was so familiar and evocative to Maddy, such an unpredicted cause of pain: hearing it made her remember everything, and forget the brave girl she'd seen reflected in the sea. The sorrows that had bleached her life returned, spilling like chilled water down her spine. Her heart gave an oceanic lurch: the fay was gone, her great love was gone, there was nothing worth waking for.
Come back,
she ached to say,
come to me.
“I've missed you,” she said.

Feather looked aside. “See the spiderwebs on the leaves.” He pointed. “A galaxy is caught inside them.”

Maddy turned her head reluctantly, saw two or three stars hanging like parched bugs inside webs, a sight that seemed somehow annoying to her. Indeed, anything her eye glanced upon managed to vaguely irritate her. She looked back at Feather, asked, “Is this island the thing you were longing for, all those days and nights when you roamed the beach so restlessly?”

“Of course,” he said, as if she were a child asking the most quaintly naive question in the world.

Maddy looked at him over the weaving flames — at his slender brown feet, his square empty hands, the scaffold of bones in his shoulders. She couldn't think of a thing to reply. Seeing him should have been thrilling, but instead she felt shut behind a wall. The island was horrible, all her struggle seemed wasted, and Feather was someone she couldn't understand.
Come back,
she might have pleaded:
Return, be what you were.
Rather she said, “Zephyrus says that an Island of Stillness grants a person's dearest desire. Will you tell me what your island has given you, Feather?”

Feather replied, “Eternal peace.”

He said it simply, as he'd say the name of a dog or plant, as though eternal peace was an everyday thing you might trip over if you didn't watch where you walked — but proudly too, it plainly being something he considered enviable. Maddy cocked her head, frowning. “Is that why you left?” she asked. “Because I didn't bring you peace? I loved you, we trusted one another, I would never have hurt you, we were friends: wasn't there peace in that?”

Feather sighed, and shifted his place, because he heard plaintiveness in her voice, and plaintiveness can be a bore. He poked the fire with a stick and raised a wraith of hot sparks, looking away from her. “Sometimes,” he said, “love is not the strongest or the most important thing in the world. For you to be happy, Maddy, you need someone different to what I am. For you to be happy, I would have had to change. And I did change — all that I could. But I must be true to myself, as you're always true to yourself. And I'm true to myself when I'm here.”

Maddy smiled thinly. Without doubt, she had always loved him more than he'd loved her. His love had been mediocre: her love had been a hawk. She would willingly have changed herself for him, eternally, utterly — he'd needed only to ask. The imbalance between them was painful, and made her want to cause pain. “But what exactly are you, when you're here?” she asked. “With me, you were vital, and wanted, and adored. What are you, what use are you, what
good
are you, in this lonesome place? Eternal peace might make you peaceful, Feather, but that's
all
it will make you. You'll never be anything else.”