Hail Mary, full of grace. The Lord is with thee.

  Sometimes Iris enters the kirk at night and the flickering impressions always rouse Cassandra from her patchy, restless sleep. Cassandra half-dreams of Iris pacing down the aisle. The cold. Smell of dust. Iris’s pale, narrow hands. Iris likes the kirk at night. She sometimes imagines the sea rising up to claim the islands and the sinners. She likes to imagine the strong, the just, the true packed in here as the rest of the world is washed away. A sort of Noah’s ark, but the kirk is all that survives. Fanciful, she knows. Still, she feels safe here. It’s always been a place of final refuge.

  ‘Oh, Iris,’ Cassandra will mutter crossly, and begin the slow process of rolling over in bed.

  Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.

  Iris goes through the rosary. After, she wraps her jacket more firmly around her, for the kirk always feels colder on this side of the transept. She gazes up at the mouth of Haaken’s Hole.

  Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death. Amen.

  If she ever senses Cassandra’s exasperation, her impatience, Iris never gives herself away.

  Luda thinks of cold, dark places. Sometimes the thoughts are like waking nightmares, in which she forgets the sun, the ground, the breeze. There are hands in the dark. The women come nearer when her thoughts shadow themselves like this. They don’t ever speak, but they draw close. They watch her. Often, she sees her distress mirrored on their faces.

  Sometimes, when this happens, she makes a high-pitched noise. Darcy will shake her shoulder and Min will less gently thump her on the back. Or else Min will be gentle and Darcy will be rough. Her children switch roles. They are never gentle at the same time.

  ‘Do you remember it?’ she asks Tristan-from-the-in-between. ‘Do you remember being under the water?’

  ‘I remember the whales and the cold.’ A frown. ‘I remember you holding my hand.’

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  JUNE (THEIR THIRD YEAR)

  Summer. Pale arms exposed to the slow, lazy sun. Someone submits a photograph to the exhibition of Corrigan’s cans spelling out the word Garbage Girl. Iris rips it into little pieces and nobody says anything about it.

  Min had briefly considered wearing a dress, but she doesn’t own any dresses and she feels strange about going through her mother’s things. Her mother feels too much like a stranger now. Instead, she wears a pair of black leggings and a clean, warm jumper that’s a sort of dusty blue. She looks in the mirror and is startled. She looks older, her face thinner. She tries to think back to the last time she’d studied herself closely in a mirror but can’t.

  Theo puts his chin on her shoulder, inspecting her reflection. ‘Beautiful,’ he says, very gravely. And she turns to rub her nose against the side of his face, smiling.

  ‘Your mum already gone across with Violet?’ he asks.

  ‘Yup.’

  ‘And Darcy?’

  ‘Not coming. Let’s go.’

  Theo pulls Ewan’s old beanie down over his hair and puts on the thick-rimmed glasses that he sometimes wears when the islands swell with tourists.

  ‘Oh, what an elaborate disguise,’ says Min.

  Walking across the causeway, Theo and Min both feel young and a little enthralled by everything. For a moment, it’s like they’re about to run to the Wailing Cliffs to drink stolen whisky and rage at the sea. Instead they link arms and walk steadily, like adults, to the kirk.

  The stairs leading up to the kirk entrance are lit with small lanterns. The tree is strung with fairy lights. Theo pauses as they get close. Finally, he stops. Min glances at him. ‘What?’

  ‘I haven’t been inside … Not for years.’

  ‘I thought you wanted to come.’

  ‘I did. I do.’ He exhales.

  ‘I hate it in there,’ Min says in a quiet voice. ‘I hate that there are people buried under the floor. And I hate the hole and I hate the dock. Ghosts, Theo. I can’t … I can’t stand the idea of ghosts.’

  Theo nods, puts an arm around her shoulders. His own hands tremble a little inside their gloves. The crowds; the kirk itself. The noise.

  Wordless, bound in wildness. The two of them approach the doors – thrown open, revealing a glow of candles. Theo glances around before stepping more fully inside. He clasps Min’s shoulders tightly and she can feel the change in his body, like something electric, as they’re engulfed by the crowds of noisy, moving people. Violet, not far from the door, wide-eyed, one hand touching the cross she wears around her throat, as though she has been swept there by mistake.

  Theo’s voice is tight. ‘Where are your mum’s photos?’

  ‘I don’t know, T.’ She looks at him. ‘You alright?’

  His cheeks are flushed, but he nods. He lets go of her and tugs his beanie down over his ears. ‘I’ll be okay,’ he says. He begins to move across the room to the photos, staying as close to the walls as he can. Min goes to follow him but feels an urgent tug on the back of her jumper. She turns to face Ewan, who looks shocked; his brows drawn low over his eyes.

  ‘What?’ she says.

  ‘Is Darcy here too?’

  ‘No, he’s not coming. Why?’

  ‘Get Theo out of here.’

  ‘What? Why?’

  Ewan grabs her arm and drags her around the back of the space. ‘Ouch!’ Min snaps, wrenching free. ‘What the hell is wrong with you?’

  Ewan nods at the wall and Min looks up, still irritated. Luda’s work spreads across the back wall. Min gasps.

  There are photos of the byre and the house and the land bitten hard by the sea. There are images of an old whale vertebra. The vertebra is like a tiny, curled-up child. Vulnerable and disquieting. Once, Darcy had looked up the proper names for the different parts of the whale bone and told Min. The shapes that are so like wings, flaring on either side, are called transverse processes. Whale wings, she thinks.

  And then.

  Min feels the world tilt, rage rising in her. Despair at the damage these images will do. The blurred shapes of naked bodies, frozen on gelatin silver. She thinks that it was always going to happen; her mother taking photographs of bodies on the island. Scarred skin.

  ‘Oh, Mum,’ says Min softly. Then she straightens, turns to Ewan. ‘We need to find Theo.’

  Cassandra had bribed Lorraine and Iris into bringing her to the kirk for the exhibition, mostly to watch Father Lee’s slow implosion over the whole thing. She accepts a third glass of champagne and smiles up at Lorraine. ‘You’re an angel,’ Cassandra tells her.

  ‘So you keep telling me.’

  Iris grips her crucifix. Runs it backward and forward along the chain. There is nothing between her and Cassandra here. She is keeping it all to herself. She blinks quickly, catches Cassandra watching her and pulls a childish face.

  ‘August would have loved this,’ Cassandra says lightly. ‘The kirk filled up with photos. Imagine!’

  Iris says nothing, just gives Cassandra another look and goes off to inspect the images on the far side of the kirk. Cassandra knows that Iris has been thinking about August a lot lately. That it unsettles her. Iris has always preferred to keep her mother tucked neatly into the box Iris has in the back of her mind labelled: A BAD WITCH.

  Cassandra squints, but cannot see what Iris is seeing. Iris pulling the rosary beads from her pocket. Hail, holy Queen, Mother of mercy, our life, our sweetness, and our hope.

  The devil’s scars that August used to trace with coal and marvel at and weep over; the scars that Iris has always, much to Cassandra’s exasperation, done her best to ignore.

  Luda has captured them. Cassandra drains her glass of champagne. Of course she has.

  Luda stands resolutely on the upper level of the kirk, touching her fingers to the hangman’s ladder. The dock. Her fingers finding shapes carved there that she has never noticed before. The whale-shaped witch marks she knows from the walls of the ghost house. She can see Haaken’s Hole from here, but cannot reach it without going down into the crowds.

  There are those from the other place everywhere tonight, drawn from wherever it is they dwell by the swell of noise and flickering light. The figure Luda sees so often is not among them for she does not leave the tidal island.

  The women. Summoning the whales. Her hand drops. She looks down at the bright, full kirk. See what I have done. See what I have done. It is not hysteria. She thinks of the women from the other place, the witch markings, Tristan. Tristan. Tristan.

  ‘Uh-huh,’ says Tristan. The Tristan-from-the-in-between, watching with his hands clasped behind his back. Luda doesn’t look at him. Mutters at him to go away, if he’s going to be like that. He doesn’t go anywhere. Doesn’t smile. He is extremely disappointed in her.

  Min follows Theo onto the street and finds him leaning with his head against the rough-cut stones of the building’s outer wall. She’s relieved to be out of the kirk. That place of death and spirits. She places a hand on his arm and feels the warmth of his skin.

  ‘Theo? T?’

  He backs away, nostrils flaring, as he had in those early weeks of the Managans being here. For a moment, Min is mesmerised. She had forgotten the precise shape of his wildness.

  ‘No one will know it’s you two,’ she says.

  ‘You did.’

  ‘Only because it’s me.’

  ‘Darcy’s so … so private. Being naked in a photo …’ He closes his eyes. ‘Ewan?’

  Min exhales. ‘Ewan recognised you both, too. But that doesn’t mean anyone else will.’

  He shudders and turns away. For a moment he’s still, his whole body poised for flight with the glare of the bright summer night behind him. Then he runs.

  She stands, staring after him. The empty road. Damp, even in summer. She counts her breaths and then goes slowly back inside, heart uneven. A tremor.

  Would Luda have done it if she were well?

  She already had. The dam. The drought. The cliffs. But, if she were well, would she have done it again?

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  JUNE (THEIR THIRD YEAR)

  In the rush that follows the closing of the kirk for the night, the image of Theo and Darcy is taken down from the wall. It is carried resolutely into a dark, windy place. It is set alight.

  The clink of rosary beads and the memory of gorse.

  It becomes ash and is blown by a sudden gust of wind out to sea.

  The air is raw in his chest now. His heart is thunder. Theo stops his headlong run just outside the caravan and catches his breath. Then he opens the door without knocking.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ Darcy asks, his voice softened by sleep. He is still dressed, lying under just the top blanket of his bed. Face down next to him is his tattered copy of The Salt Boy.

  He thinks of the book. Of Carter. Of the bishop’s palace all lit up with stars. Of how the scars on other people’s skin become more vivid to him the more that he’s been hurt.

  ‘The photos,’ Darcy says. He looks searchingly into Theo’s face. ‘What’s she done?’

  ‘She took a photo of us.’ He is back on the shoreline, without words, without any sort of knowing. He is in the alleyway. He is locked in the cupboard at the kirk. He is windswept and staring into the maw of the crypt on the lonely island. He thinks of Darcy – Darcy’s naked body. Darcy’s skin. Darcy. But everything else, too. The sea-drenched flickers of his life, before. Being wordless. Being submerged in a world he does not know.

  ‘When?’ Darcy asks sharply.

  Theo doesn’t look at him.

  Darcy lets out a shuddering breath. ‘When, Theo?’

  ‘When we were on the beach.’

  ‘That … that was only a few seconds!’

  ‘I know.’ Theo makes himself look up at Darcy then. Darcy’s face is coloured with panic, his pupils very large. He runs a hand through his hair, making it stick up oddly. Then, like a switch, his expression goes carefully blank and he reaches up to smooth his hair back down, his eyes fixed on the other side of the caravan. It’s fascinating and awful to watch.

  Darcy stands up. ‘I’m going to get it taken down.’

  ‘Now?’

  ‘Yes. Now.’

  ‘I can come with you.’

  Darcy shakes his head. A flare of panic like a starburst. ‘No, it’s … no. Thanks.’

  ‘Well, I’m sorry I woke you,’ Theo says. He makes a small, involuntary move towards Darcy, and Darcy moves quickly away, every line of his body tight with tension.

  Theo sighs.

  Darcy’s voice is dull. ‘I’m sorry.’ He pulls his shoes on, a jumper. ‘I’m sorry.’

  It’s late by the time Darcy gets to the kirk. There are still some people in clusters near the kirk yard gate, like flotsam left behind by the tide. The summer nights are hard to leave. Darcy strides past them up to the kirk’s main door. It’s locked, so he goes around to the side door. This handle, too, is unyielding beneath his fingers and he feels his throat thicken.

  He sinks down, back against the door, his breath coming hard and fast. Flashes of things he does not want to think about. The curtains of that goddamn room sliding closed. The scent of freshly mown grass. The image of him in the dried-out dam plastered across all the lockers at school. Bursts of blue and red lights. The wreck of their car disappearing on the back of a flatbed truck. The cliff giving way. The keening of Violet Reynolds.

  He pinches his legs through his pants until he feels more present. He tries to slow his breathing, but can’t stop gasping. Gulping air, as though he is sinking into the deep, like Min on one of her dives.

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  JUNE (THEIR THIRD YEAR)

  Here is a secret that only Iris knows: that on the day of the car accident, she had stood near the wild, rushing water and she had murmured the words of that long-remembered spell – to raise a procession of the dead. She was flooded with memories of her mother and Cassandra. How much had she learnt from Cassandra in this way? From the others? Listening on the edge of things, pretending that she wasn’t. All those spells.

  On the day of the accident, Iris murmured it whole for the first time in her life – those fractured pieces of magic woven back together. Save them. Save them. Save them. It was all she could think of to help and, in that moment, all Iris wanted was to help.

  She felt a jolt, a warmth, a shiver. Iris had no altar; no circle. She had not properly grounded herself. But still she murmured the spell, again and again, as Min dived into the water. As Min saved Luda, and then Tristan, from the sea.

  Luda wakes to the sound of footsteps across the kitchen floor. Violet, making coffee. Luda sits up from the couch, her head and back both aching. For a moment, she’s not sure where she is. Narra; here; other. Luda is freezing cold. She shivers. Her arms hurt. Tristan-from-the-in-between watches from across the table. ‘What are you looking at?’ she snaps.

  ‘You didn’t listen,’ Tristan-from-the-in-between says.

  ‘What?’ says Violet to Luda. She glances at the empty kitchen table and back at her.

  Luda looks away from Tristan-from-the-in-between. ‘Nothing.’

  Violet notices her shivering and reaches over to switch on the electric heater. ‘Your kids are furious,’ she says.

  ‘They’re always mad at me over something.’

  ‘You shouldn’t have taken that photo.’

  ‘You told me to take them!’ Luda looks at Violet, exasperated. ‘It’s about the scars! I’ve proven that they’re real. It matters.’

  Violet looks at her, drops her voice still further. ‘They love each other, Luda.’

  ‘She’s right,’ says Tristan-from-the-in-between.

  ‘No one’s asking you,’ Luda snaps at him before turning back to Violet. ‘Theo and Darcy?’

  ‘Aye. Theo and Darcy.’

  For a moment Luda looks puzzled, then happy, then puzzled again. ‘Why aren’t they together, then?’

  ‘Luda,’ Violet says, sighing. ‘Love isn’t always enough, is it?’

  Luda lifts up her chin. ‘Well, they’re not recognisable in the photo. It could have been anyone.’

  Violet sighs. ‘But it’s not anyone, Luda. It’s them.’

  Darcy blinks his eyes open, squinting against sunlight. He is still against the kirk’s side door, his body stiff.

  A shadow moves. ‘Sleep well?’

  Scars. The photo. His skin. The unyielding locks of the kirk’s thick doors. He sits up, ready to claw his way through the side door behind him if he has to; to interrupt mass. Anything to get that photo out of sight.

  Min frowns. ‘You okay?’

  Darcy stands up. ‘No.’

  ‘Where are you going?’ she asks.

  Darcy stalks around to the front of the kirk. A couple of people from the Art Society give him startled looks. Then he sees Iris and she sees him. Her expression gives her away; she knows about the photo. Knows that it’s him in it. Recognises the horror of what his mother has done.

  ‘Where is it?’ he says.

  ‘Where’s what?’

  ‘Where’s the photo?’ he says through gritted teeth.

  ‘It’s gone missing.’

  ‘Missing?’

  ‘Aye. Wasn’t here when we opened up this morning.’

  He leans against the pew.

  ‘What?’ he says. ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘It’s gone,’ is all she says, and then someone he does not know presses a chipped mug of water into his hands. And Min sits down next to him and he shakes and shakes – everything from before the accident spilling over.

  Why had his mother never told them how impossible it was to hold the past at bay?

  By the time they’re back on Seannay, Darcy has stopped replying to Min and his face is set in that stubborn, immovable way of his. She follows him into the caravan and watches as he packs clean underwear and socks and his laptop and clothes into his backpack and zips it up.