‘They’re not a good family for you to be spending time with, Theofin. A bad influence. Your mother’s worried.’

  Theo loves Iris, but she is not his mother. She has never claimed to be. He has always been Theo and she has always been Iris and he belongs to her, but she has never been his mother. Does Father Lee really think that calling someone a bad influence is going to stop him from seeing them?

  ‘I’ll be sure to let them know next time I see them,’ Theo says.

  Father Lee surveys him gravely. Then he settles back in his seat, as though preparing for a long, long stay.

  In the kirk, Min rears back from Haaken’s Hole. Luda does not say anything. She always seems to say the wrong thing when her children are upset. She gives Min’s arm a pat. She peers up at the fine fretwork. She squints at the stained glass. Oh, she had come because the job had landed in her lap, because she thought it might be nice to see this place where her great-grandparents came from. But it is here, in this crypt of a church, that Luda feels the lilting sensation of something that has not yet happened. A quickening. I am here. I am here. I am here.

  PART TWO

  Chapter Eight

  MAY (THEIR FIRST YEAR)

  Late spring and Big Island bursts into a flurry of gorse and wildflowers. The rocks along the shorelines gleam like seal hides in lengthening sunlight. People linger on the streets to talk and to laugh, bowed against bright wind. There is still talk of the man writing the book; talk about how he seems to know people’s names; their connection to Theo. He’s clever, people tell each other. He comes at them sideways. He asks them about the old stories of the selkies. He asks them about seals and tides and whales and whispers. People try to outdo each other with the volatility of their family’s refusals until it seems that Carter has been tossed out of boats and set alight and punched in the face countless times. Still, he lingers. Still, he comes at them sideways. Something that is known without words on the islands: that if a selkie goes into the water without their skin, they will die.

  Sometimes, while at school, Darcy will see a flicker of Theo, through a classroom window. Seeing Theo is like catching sight of a seabird, shocking against cloud and sky.

  But Theo never comes into the school grounds, even as he occasionally wanders their perimeter, pausing here and there, examining things that Darcy can’t even guess at.

  In this way, Darcy will occasionally miss whole chunks of class. The accents here can easily drift over him if he doesn’t pay careful attention. The words turn themselves inside out and become tidal.

  As Darcy watches, Theo jumps up onto a very high fence that blocks this road off from the main street. He stands, buffeted by the wind, and then drops lithely down onto the other side, out of sight.

  Darcy lets out an uneven breath.

  More and more often, Theo stands outside the school grounds as the final bell rings, waiting for Darcy and Min. Today, Darcy stays back late and it is Min who spots Theo, standing motionless at the entrance to one of the back lanes into town.

  Although she is with Kole, is meant to be going with him to get some drink from the older brother of someone who had once gone to the island school, she hesitates. Stops. She wants to go with Theo. She gestures for him to come, pointing towards the town. He shakes his head once, disappears down the lane.

  ‘Hey, I’ll need to dash in a bit,’ she says to Kole. He’s meeting up with his friends soon anyway. The only part of this afternoon that will not be tedious is the part happening right now.

  He looks confused and she’s not sure whether it’s because he can’t fathom her not spending the whole afternoon with him, or whether she’s accidentally used an unfamiliar phrase with her flat, Australian accent.

  He looks at the laneway where Theo had been standing.

  ‘People ask me things about him all the time,’ she says, as they begin walking again. ‘Like I should know all of his darkest secrets just because we hang out sometimes.’

  She likes Kole best when they’re alone. He softens, and moves more slowly. He is more likely to think before he talks rather than go straight for a spiteful joke.

  Kole shrugs. ‘Well, he doesn’t really spend time with anyone. Never has. You and your brother are the first.’

  ‘Do you know my brother’s name?’ A few weeks ago, she would not have asked, but since meeting Theo, she has begun to feel braver. Being alone, on the outer, feels less scary with both him and Darcy already there.

  Kole glances at her. ‘What?’

  ‘My brother. Do you know his name.’

  He flushes. ‘What? Why?’

  She stops walking. ‘Do you know it or not?’

  ‘What’s that got to do with anything?’

  ‘Because I know that your mum’s called Lily and your dad’s called Patrick. I know that you tell people you’re allergic to meat, even though you actually just don’t like the idea of eating animals. I know you lost a tooth playing football and you like the colour orange and you’re mean when you’re impatient. I know you want your parents to take more notice of you, and you think that hanging out with me is a good way to get them to do that.’ She takes a breath. ‘Now, what’s his name?’

  He begins to walk again, ears pink. She thinks that it’s over; that she’s relegated herself to the edges of the social world on the islands; then he speaks, still facing away, his words muffled.

  Min swallows. ‘What?’

  Kole blows a breath out. ‘I said, his name is Darcy.’

  From the laneway, Theo goes to the barrows on the far side of Big Island. It’s a place he has not yet taken Min; a place that is still his alone. Darcy rarely comes with them when they go tramping across the expanse of earth between one sea and the next. Instead, Darcy reads to him, in the loft of the ghost house with its crosshatching of spells, or else on the rocks by the water of the bay. Normally, the barrows soothe Theo as much as being on Seannay does. He sometimes feels so ragged in the town that he digs his nails into the palms of his hands and can’t sleep deeply enough to ever feel properly rested. Today the steep grassy mound with its belly of crypts is not calming; whatever magic he usually finds there eludes him. It remains grass and wind and hidden bone. Another sort of magic, but not the sort he craves.

  After, he trudges around the back of the hostel as he passes through the town on his way home. He wonders if Darcy might one day teach him to read – whether Darcy might be able to do this without making Theo feel small and worthless. Or whether it would be worse, somehow, if it were Darcy teaching him.

  He hears footsteps.

  Hands on his body, the smack of the cobbles against his cheek. He gasps and rolls over. Would fight, except that there are too many hands. A knee presses down on his chest and he swears and bucks, but the knee doesn’t move. He thinks, wildly, that he will kill them. Kill them.

  The men – so young, more like lads – laugh. Still, all larger than him; their breaths thick with the raw scent of spirits. The one that Min hangs out with (if Theo asks her why, she just shrugs). Theo knows better than to walk this way on a Friday afternoon, when a lot of them buy sixpacks of ale and bottles of island whisky to drink at the hostel (cheaper, everyone knows, than the Blue Fin). Theo had forgotten the day of the week. He had been thinking about words.

  Splayed on the cobbles. Raw breath. They smell of diesel and fishing bait. His gloves are pulled off and tossed aside, his webbed fingers are splayed out until the skin between them burns. Their laughter gives way to quiet as they study the fine, translucent webbing between his fingers. He feels his cheeks flush. He is aware of the weight of the knee still on his chest. He is aware of his heart pulsing through his ears, his head, his limbs.

  ‘No scales,’ someone says, sounding disappointed.

  ‘How freaky’s the webbing, though?’ someone else breathes, touching it with a damp finger. Theo wants to throw up.

  He manages to work one arm free and he immediately swings it as hard as he can into the space above him. He makes contact with a shin, a stomach. There’s a grunt and then the knee on his chest presses down still harder. Breathing immediately becomes an effort.

  He should not have swung at them. The quality of the air changes, becomes more charged. A pause as something unspoken passes between the men (the lads) above him.

  A snigger. Then there are hands on his belt buckle. ‘Let’s see what else is webbed.’

  Theo forces himself to draw in one ragged, strained breath and then another. His whole body begins to tremble with rage. Fear. He will kill them. He will dig his hands into their flesh. He will –

  ‘Hey!’ A new voice. Sharper. Older. There is a scuffle, the sound of the men swearing, spitting. The knee disappears from Theo’s chest. The sound of running feet.

  Theo lies gasping for a moment. Air. Air. Then he sits up, ready to run – whether towards them in a frenzy of fury or away from them to safety, he can’t yet tell. He’s suddenly overcome with dizziness and presses his hands to his head, wincing at the pain in his cheek.

  ‘That happen a lot?’ the man asks.

  ‘Sometimes.’ Theo looks up at him. It’s the man from the black car. The one, Theo is sure, who came knocking when he was in the ghost house. The man holds a hand out. Theo stands by himself and pulls his gloves back on. ‘I can take two or three, but not that many.’

  ‘I’m Carter.’

  ‘I know.’

  The man nods. ‘Can I give you a lift?’

  Theo starts walking. Stops. His head throbs; his feet feel very far away from the rest of him. His head must have hit the cobblestones harder than he’d realised. He rubs a hand over his eyes, trying to steady himself.

  ‘Get in,’ says Carter, gesturing to his car, and Theo does.

  ‘Do you need the hospital?’

  ‘No.’ Theo rests his head against the window. He crosses his arms over his chest. ‘Just take me home.’

  Carter starts driving and Theo notices – but finds he does not care – that Carter hasn’t bothered to pretend he does not know where Theo lives.

  ‘What do you want?’ Theo asks.

  ‘To drive you home.’

  ‘What else do you want?’

  ‘I’m sure you’ve heard. I’m writing a book about you. Well, it’s largely around media frenzies and the way falsities take hold. I’m sure you can see how your story fits in with that.’

  Theo shakes his head. He is aware that Carter doesn’t speak to him in that slow, loud voice that so many people use when they talk to him.

  ‘I want to interview you.’ Carter pulls up outside the house and neither of them move.

  ‘I don’t do interviews.’

  Carter looks at him. ‘Aren’t there things you want to say? Things you want people to know? This is your chance, Theo.’

  The way Carter says his name. Like they’re friends. Like he knows Theo. ‘I don’t do interviews.’

  Carter sighs. He stares out through the windscreen, his hands still on the wheel. ‘I’m going to publish the book anyway. Just so you know.’

  ‘I don’t care.’ Theo opens the door and pauses. A shudder passes through him – the future he had only narrowly avoided. Exposed and dizzy on the damp cobblestones; his gloves still out of reach. ‘Thanks. For stopping them.’

  Cassandra drinks whisky and pins a brooch to Wilhelmina’s jumper. Iris watches, her ankles neatly crossed, a load of Cassandra’s freshly purchased medicines on the table between them.

  ‘You should hear the way Kole’s voice changes when he thinks one of his mates is around. He makes himself sound …’ Wilhelmina frowns.

  ‘Oafish?’ Cassandra offers.

  ‘Yes! Yes, oafish. But when it’s just us, we get along. We’re friends. But I don’t want to be friends with the person he is when his mates are around. You know the graffiti on that old dancing class advertisement near the newsagency?’

  ‘No,’ says Cassandra.

  Iris clears her throat. ‘I believe it involves a penis and a speech bubble.’

  ‘Yeah – that one. Anyway, we saw it the other day after school and he said it was gross and sexist and everything. And then I heard him with his mates the next day and they were pissing themselves over how funny it was.’ Wilhelmina looks down at a glittery dolphin brooch. ‘This is terrifying, Cass.’

  Iris almost smiles. ‘Isn’t it?’

  ‘Alright, aye. That’s enough out of you two.’

  Wilhelmina glances at Iris. Cassandra can sense Wilhelmina’s wariness; her curiosity. It blooms purple and cream. Theo. Wilhelmina is aware of how much he loves Iris; how different they are.

  ‘Don’t let the prayer beads fool you,’ Cassandra says to Wilhelmina. ‘Iris knows that our Father Lee is an unholy arse.’

  ‘Cassandra, don’t.’

  ‘Well, he is.’ Cassandra takes the dolphin brooch off and pins a cactus with dangly arms and sunglasses in its place.

  ‘I’ll admit his last –’ Iris breaks off. Flickers of Father Lee’s smug face, his large hand closed over something. Patting his pocket.

  ‘What’s he done now?’

  Iris waves a hand. ‘Och, nothing. It’s nothing. He’s just trying to help Theo get over his kirk aversion.’

  ‘How this time?’

  ‘He found a piece of sea glass Theo’s very fond of and he’s insisting that Theo pick it up from him at the kirk. That’s all.’

  ‘Found it, did he? In Theo’s room? In his wallet?’

  ‘Don’t. He’s trying to help.’

  ‘Obviously, you’re going to get the sea glass back and tell Marcus where he can shove his –’

  Iris presses her fingers to her temples, gives Cassandra a look that communicates all of the arguments they’ve had over the years. Cassandra’s impatience and temper; Iris’s rigidity and stubbornness. It’s a cloudy thing, their history. At once blurred and perfectly clear. Exasperation and necessity and love. Please. Don’t.

  Wilhelmina takes the cactus brooch off. She still has a sparkly parrot and a navy-and-cream rowboat. She begins to describe the colour of the seaweed she’d seen on the rocks. Cassandra finds herself charmed by this; how much attention Wilhelmina gives to the words she uses to describe the colour of the sea. She pauses, often, to think of the best words to use. As she inspects them, an impression flares of words skittering like silver fish, startled by the fall of a shadow.

  ‘Like … flagstones that aren’t gleaming wet, but more than damp. That sort of soft, deep grey.’ A pause. ‘It makes the water look warmer than it is, somehow. It makes the cold a shock.’

  Cassandra finds that the house already feels a little hollow in her absence. She relishes the raw edges. She had long thought herself past missing anyone.

  Chapter Nine

  MAY (THEIR FIRST YEAR)

  It is a truth universally acknowledged on the islands that if a man has too much ale and he hurts someone, he cannot really be blamed. What man hasn’t drunk a few too many ales with the lads and had things get out of hand? It is also a truth universally acknowledged that if a woman drinks too much ale and is the one being hurt, she has really brought the whole thing on herself.

  Theo can’t stop thinking of the damp finger touching the webbing on his hands. His cheek aches for days. He reaches for his sea glass over and over. His hand hits the bottom of an empty pocket.

  Father Lee had told him to come and collect the sea glass at worship on Sunday. Theo fantasises about setting his maroon station wagon on fire.

  Instead, he hangs out by the hostel, his body braced against the loud voices, the jokes he does not find funny, the occasional sound of piss hitting the walls of the alleyway nearby.

  A couple of the quieter residents nod at him, smile. They carry wrapped packages of fish and chips or a bag of things to cook up in the communal kitchen. Theo nods back, heart pounding. He waits.

  He remembers their faces. When he sees them again, they seem so much smaller than they had when he’d been pinned to the cobblestones. They appear in ones or twos. Freckled faces; windburnt faces; faces thick with acne. Five of them. And Kole, who Theo will find after. Or perhaps not. Perhaps he will leave Kole, because of Min. Because Min would not want him hurt. Probably.

  The fifth one keeps him waiting. It’s getting cold and his hands are throbbing, his wrists tingling in that way they tingle when he’s spent too many hours working on his strange, formless drawings. The fifth one is larger than the others. He approaches warily, his fists clenched, his nostrils flared.

  It does not help him.

  Theo straightens a moment later, breathing hard, wincing at the pain in his hands. He cracks his neck, leaves the road near the hostel. He wants his shard of sea glass.

  Some men are such animals.

  Luda slowly makes her way through the contents of Tristan’s witch box. Among the journal articles and scanned notes and the books that were too niche for the local library, she finds a scanned scrap of paper recounting the denouncement of the women who had called the whales in from the sound.

  She discovers that the man who had denounced the women often visited Seannay with his wife to collect seaweed and shellfish. The man claimed that his wife, Magdalena, had made a pact with the devil. The man claimed that Magdalena could see the ghost-scars on his skin. That she and her sister could raise the dead. The man claimed that Magdalena met with a group of other women, including her sister Susan, on Seannay and called the whales in from the sea.

  Luda sits back from the kitchen table, her neck knotted. She keeps thinking about what Tristan had said, about a photo being enough to bring about condemnation. Persecution. She will never forget the sight of the cliff collapsing.