Tides Page 5

  “And your brother? Does he know?” Maebh was shouting now. “And the young—” She stopped and glanced toward Noah. He thought she’d liked him well enough when they met, but the look she gave him now made him feel like a kidnapper. He stared down at the floor, his whole body tense.

  “Come with me,” Maebh hissed. She tightened her hold on Mara and dragged her outside. Noah could hear her shouting again after the door slammed shut, and Mara shouting back, just as angry.

  Gemm and Lo sat at the table, their mouths slightly open.

  Noah stood speechless for a moment, blinking in surprise. “So I guess they know each other,” he said.

  He sank down onto the couch and leaned his head back. He officially gave up on making any friends this summer.

  “Um,” said Lo. “What was that all about?”

  Their grandmother sighed. “Just family troubles. In fact, I’m surprised it didn’t happen sooner.” She shook her head. “But—I think Maebh would rather I didn’t talk about it.”

  “Oh.” Lo looked no more satisfied than Noah felt.

  Gemm stood and started clearing the table. It looked as if they had just been finishing dinner when Noah and Mara walked in.

  “Sorry I’m late, Gemm,” said Noah, standing up to help with the dishes. If he arrived this late for dinner at his parents’ house, his mother would sulk at him for days.

  “Don’t worry about it, honey,” Gemm said. She started humming to herself as she soaped up the plates.

  Noah waited for a passive-aggressive remark to follow, but Gemm really seemed okay with it. He dried the dishes as she washed, then sat down with a plate of spaghetti.

  He ate his first bite in peaceful silence, and then realized that Lo was staring at him. No—she was staring at his dinner, wearing such an intense expression of longing that Noah had to look at it again himself, to reconsider how good it looked. But it was just regular spaghetti with Bolognese sauce and a sprinkling of Parmesan. It did smell good, but it was nothing fancy.

  “Want some?” he asked.

  “No,” Lo said, and looked away.

  “I can’t believe you’re still full from lunchtime,” said Gemm. “When I was your age, I ate like a horse.”

  Lo shifted in her seat.

  Noah shook his head slightly at Gemm. She raised her eyebrows and then shrugged.

  Lo was staring at Noah’s food again. He was holding his fork, a bite of pasta in midswirl. He didn’t want to move.

  Lo made an ugly sound, half groan and half cough. “I’m better now, remember?” she said, standing up. “I went to the doctor, I went to therapy, and I got better. Watch me.” She yanked Noah’s fork out of his hand and took a big slurping bite. “Would I do that if I were still sick?” she asked. She grabbed her stomach and jiggled her hand up and down. “Christ, would I look like this?” Tears started in her brown eyes.

  Noah looked down at his plate, once again trapped by his inability to say the right thing. He knew she wasn’t better. He knew it. Still, he was glad that at least she looked healthy now, not like the wasted skeleton she’d been two years ago. He remembered the note he’d found on her calendar: October 20th, ninety pounds. Her thirteenth birthday and her goal weight.

  He’d had to tell their parents. They put Lo in therapy, and Mom watched her closely to make sure she ate. They had dinner as a family every night. But when Dad’s health insurance stopped covering the therapy, they pulled her out.

  And yes, Lo had been eating. Sometimes only celery, sometimes whole batches of cookies, but at least she ate. Noah was happy to see medium- and large-size tags on her clothes when it was his turn to do the laundry, and he pretended he didn’t notice when she started cutting the tags off. He made up excuses for her when he heard her get sick in the bathroom. But now, seeing how angry she was, how much she hated her perfectly normal body, he couldn’t pretend.

  “I’ve heard you,” he said, standing up. “You make yourself throw up. You think you’re so smart, like it’s this big secret, but it’s not.” He glanced at Gemm, who was holding out her hand as if she wanted to touch Lo’s shoulder. “I thought maybe if we both came here this summer, you’d stop. If Mom and Dad weren’t around. I guess I was wrong.”

  Lo’s lips pulled together. “You think this is all about Mom and Dad?” she whispered.

  “No, I—” Part of him knew that nothing he could say would be the right thing, but he couldn’t stop. “You keep hurting yourself!” he yelled, unable to quiet his voice. “Can’t you see that’s all you’re doing?”

  Lo snorted and turned away from him, tucked her chin down, and stared at the floor.

  “Lo, honey.” Gemm walked into the space between them. “I’m sure Noah just wants you to be healthy.” She let her hand rest, finally, on Lo’s shoulder. Lo shuddered but didn’t move away.

  Noah reached out his hand toward hers and she flinched and bolted for the stairs.

  “Just leave me alone,” she said, pausing halfway up. “I thought at least here—” She ran the rest of the way upstairs and slammed the bedroom door shut.

  Noah closed his eyes and rubbed his temples. He couldn’t believe how angry he was—angrier than he should have been, angry at Lo for being sick and immature and unable to understand that she was just fine the way she was. Angry at his parents for their constant criticism. Angry at himself for being angry.

  Then Gemm put her arm around him. She was tall enough that he could lean against her, and he let her support him for a moment. She patted his back and pulled away enough to look at him.

  “I didn’t know. I’m sorry I caused an argument, truly.” She sat down on the ragged couch. “Your parents don’t tell me much about you. I wish I’d known.”

  She looked over at the framed advertisements on the wall. “I’ve read about these things,” she murmured, “and I knew a girl or two who did that. Made themselves sick. But such thinness wasn’t important in my day.” She chuckled, her face tired and sad.

  Noah looked at her photos, and it was true. The women in the old advertisements had soft cheeks, curved waists, flaring hips. None of them would have made it into the modern fashion magazines his mother and Lo kept around the house.

  Noah remembered the feel of Mara’s torso between his hands, strong but soft, slippery with water. He had to remind himself of her hostility, her teasing, her bizarre encounter with Maebh. No, he told himself, he was not interested. He’d be perfectly happy if he didn’t see Mara again for the rest of the summer—or ever.

  What was wrong with him? He should be worrying about Lo. For the second time that evening, Noah pushed the memory of Mara’s body from his mind.

  He heard the couch springs creak, and he turned to see Gemm walking toward the stairs.

  “I’ll see if I can talk to her,” she said. She smiled at Noah and lowered her voice. “Maybe you should stay down here for a while?”

  “Right,” he said. “I’m not tired yet, anyway. Take your time.” He hoped Gemm would get through to Lo. God knew he never could.

  Noah settled onto the couch. He heard Gemm opening the door to his and Lo’s room, and the faint sound of Lo crying. He tried not to listen in on them. He drummed his hands against the cushions, unable to sit still.

  The wind knocked urgently against the windows and doors. Noah remembered a rocky cliff by the lighthouse that stood on the far end of Gemm’s island. The waves sprang up and shattered on the gray rocks, with the lighthouse standing, weather-beaten and stoic, above everything. When he’d seen it from the ferry yesterday, he’d thought it was beautiful, but he hadn’t had time to visit it up close since he’d arrived.

  He creaked the door open, nearly tripping on the uneven jamb.

  The air outside was cool, and the wind roughed up his hair. The darkness erased the island’s boundaries, breathing infinite space around it. Noah stepped carefully, knowing the island must be smaller than it seemed.

  There was a small path between the cottage and the lighthouse, lined on either
side with stubs of driftwood. Gemm had said there used to be a whole covered corridor linking the lighthouse to the keeper’s cottage. But years ago a storm had blown it all away, and now there was just this path. Crabgrass grew on it, crunching under his feet. There was seaweed, too, strung in dry bands at the tide lines.

  The darkness deepened. The lighthouse was the only shape Noah could make out, illuminated by its own swirling beam. As long as he faced away from it, the whole world was contained in one rotating flash, one circle of light. Everything else was simple, immeasurable darkness.

  He moved off the path and edged toward the shore, guided by the sound of the waves. The water rejected the light and glinted it back to him. Moonlight turned the beach gravel to rough pearls under a thin, retracting blanket of sea foam. He sat down.

  Noah reminded himself why he’d decided to come here. A summer without his parents—that would be good for him, and even better for Lo, or so he’d thought. He’d known his parents wouldn’t let her go away unless he went with her, so he’d been glad to give her this chance. He’d wanted to get to know Gemm better, too. And the internship had sounded so perfect, he would have done anything to take it, even if he hadn’t wanted to help Lo get away.

  Those had all seemed like good reasons then. But sitting here now, on a cold, damp rock on the edge of a still-colder and damper ocean, on a tiny island miles off the coast of his lifelong home . . . he wasn’t sure why he’d come. Things weren’t working out as he’d hoped.

  He pulled off a sandal and dipped his foot in the waves. Water bubbled around his toes.

  A motorboat by Gemm’s dock clinked against its mooring. He focused on the sound, and the rhythm of his own breath, trying to forget about tomorrow. It was good, he decided, sitting out here in the dark. There was something satisfying about being so alone, with no one asking anything of him.

  Then he squinted at the motorboat and frowned. When he’d seen it that afternoon, he’d assumed it was Maebh’s. But of course, if he’d stopped to think, he would have remembered that Gemm had two boats and that this one was the Minke. And now Maebh was gone—Mara, too—and the boat remained.

  The selkie story whispered back to Noah from Gemm’s cottage. He looked over his shoulder. All the lights were out but the one he’d left on in the kitchen. The lighthouse beam flashed over the house and left it behind in an even, wide sweep over the night ocean.

  He imagined Mara out there, floating on a dark wave, watching him from the purplish water. He knew from firsthand experience that she had legs, but in his vision she had a long mermaid tail instead, smooth and gray like a dolphin’s, undulating in the deep. She smiled, but her teeth were too sharp, too carnivorous, and shiny with venom. Venom he wanted to taste.

  Noah shivered. It had gotten cold, and the wind was picking up. The waves quickened, slapping against the shore. He couldn’t see the sky, but he felt a storm coming.

  He stood up. Mara wasn’t looking back at him from the ocean, he knew—she was asleep on another island, not even thinking of him, her legs normal human legs tucked under blankets as she dreamed, her mouth a normal human mouth.

  Noah didn’t need a mystery or a fairy tale. What he needed, he lectured himself, was to go to sleep, so he could have some chance of not making a total fool of himself at the Center tomorrow.

  He turned away from the shore and made his way back to the cottage.

  nine

  POD

  THE younglings were hungry and anxious, and Ronan didn’t know what to do. He’d tried to distract them, leading them in races out to the edges of the harbor. He wanted to go hunting. But that wasn’t his job tonight—at least, it wasn’t supposed to be.

  The younglings were too tired to play anymore. They huddled on Whale Rock, their little bellies rising with each yawn. Ronan circled them protectively, spiraling in the water, diving up and down to run off his energy. Bubbles from his angry breaths spurted up to the surface.

  He shouldn’t even be here. He should have been gone months ago, searching for the others. The Elder had told him he could leave this year, but she’d gone back on her promise just as he knew she would. He’d been grown for almost seven seasons, but he was still trapped here like a youngling. She even refused to let the true younglings mature, and she knew Ronan wouldn’t leave while they still needed his protection.

  He looked away from the shallow water around the islands, out into the wild deep of the open Atlantic. They were out there somewhere, the ones who had left him behind. They were waiting for the Elder to lead the younglings to maturity, and then they could all leave these crowded islands and join their family at the other edge of the sea, their true home on the Irish coast.

  He still missed them, each one. Now Ronan was the only grown male left. He tried to be father and brother and teacher to the younglings, but he couldn’t be everything at once.

  He watched Lir and Bram and Nab, still little boys, teasing their sisters even as their own heads sagged with weariness. They needed someone to show them how to be men, and Ronan wasn’t up to the task alone. He knew the best thing for them would be to bring them ashore so they could start to grow up. The Elder was supposed to do that for them, but it had been five years since she’d let the younglings go on land. Five years since Aine had vanished.

  He felt Mara and Maebh approach. Their minds hummed with anxiety and anger. What have I done now? Ronan wondered, before remembering that he was the one who should be angry. They were both late, both irresponsible; yet they still managed to make him feel guilty. As always, Ronan was outnumbered.

  They finally swam into his line of sight, Mara trailing obediently behind. Large stripers trailed from their mouths—at least the younglings would eat well tonight. Fear radiated from both of them, Mara’s tinted with shame, Maebh’s with deep sorrow. Of course, Maebh was the Elder, which meant she could hide some of her feelings. Ronan would probably never know what Maebh truly felt unless she desired it.

  In seal form there was only so much he could say, mostly “Food over here” or “Look out!” Instead, Ronan sent curiosity through his link to Mara, hoping she would meet him on the surface later. He sent his indignation, too, just to make sure she’d know how he felt.

  He couldn’t believe this. He knew Mara had her reasons for leaving the pod from time to time, just as he did, and he respected her privacy as long as she respected his. But she’d never come back so late before, and she’d been found out. Maebh was obviously furious—and scared. And that meant what Maebh’s fear always meant: hiding the pod in deeper water, keeping the younglings farther from land. More important, it meant neither Ronan nor Mara would get much time away anymore.

  To think he’d hoped Maebh was close to letting go. Mara’s carelessness would cost the younglings another season at least before Maebh would let them grow up, and that meant another season of Ronan’s staying stuck here on the Goddess-forsaken Isles of Shoals.

  Mara nodded at Ronan on her way to the younglings. Maebh herded the smallest toward the fish first, making the stronger younglings wait their turn.

  Ronan kept telling Maebh how sparse the fish populations had gotten here, but she’d told him to be patient. That was when Ronan started raiding lobster pots. He took only the best, females with lots of tiny, savory eggs or big males with tender, oversize claws. He liked to imagine the frustrated fishermen pulling up their traps—his favorite, in fact, was a lobster from a pot already reeling up to the surface.

  Maebh took over his guard, switching between watching the younglings eat and glaring at Mara. Ronan swam over to Maebh, hoping he could do something to help. She was so angry—even the water seemed murkier around her.

  He nudged her flipper gently, for once pretending he was the youngling she wanted him to be. Her black shining eyes flashed at him.

  He made a short series of moans and purrs, sounds that meant, I’m going away. He nodded toward Mara. In his mind, he tried to show Maebh only concern, not the curiosity and hurt he truly felt.

&n
bsp; Maebh huffed out a stream of bubbles, then said, Come back soon. Her mind was all fierceness and potential punishments.

  Ronan dove and swam to Mara.

  She set off before he reached her, tunneling through the water, kelp parting in her wake. They swam toward White Island, far enough from the pod that they wouldn’t be overheard.

  When they broke through the waves, a storm was brewing. Water swept up and down in jagged crests, foaming around them.

  Ronan focused—taking off half the skin was always hard, but he needed to both speak and swim tonight. It peeled slowly at first, from his crown, but then it wanted to separate, to let him turn fully human. Mature selkies mastered the skin’s will and their own, denying themselves that temptation, keeping seal form from the waist down. Ronan still had trouble. He had to yank the skin forcibly up his hips and will it to meld back onto his torso.

  By the time he sorted himself out, Mara was staring toward White Island, her human arms crossed over her chest. Ronan looked where she looked, but he could barely see through the rain that drove into his eyes. The keeper’s cottage was dark; the only thing he could make out was the flashing beam of the lighthouse.

  He looked back at Mara, hoping she would explain herself so he wouldn’t have to ask questions. She said nothing. The only feeling he could sense from her was shame.

  Ronan clenched his fists, wishing he could tear the waves apart. He was sick of it, sick of the silence and sick of waiting around for Maebh and Mara to speak up when he could be doing something instead of just hanging on their every word.

  “What happened?” he demanded.

  She said nothing.

  He repeated the question, louder, and she flinched.

  When she finally spoke, her voice was quiet and rough. “Maebh found me.”

  “Found you?” Ronan tried to keep his voice calm. “What were you doing?”

  Mara said nothing.