Chapter 2
I leash the canoe to its tree and fill in the details of my drawing of Shadow and Scull. My favorite filly, Oh-Lolly, pulls her head from the bough of fir she is nibbling and blows a raspberry. Though I haven’t even left the island yet, a moment of nostalgia snares my heart.
I pat the piebald’s forelock. “When I leave, I will miss you the most. But maybe Mr. Sanders will let me return one day to visit you.”
And maybe seagulls will fly me in.
Mr. Sanders won’t like the news. Nowhere’s famous shipbuilding patron, my employer, promoted me from kitchen help to research assistant just last year. Now I’m leaving him for the University of Washington. Classes start in two weeks. He’ll call it ingratitude.
I burn the next few hours working color into the picture—blues, greens, even streaks of pink and red. The sun tips overhead when I finish. Time to go. If I hurry, I can catch Mr. Sanders before his afternoon swim.
I swing into the saddle. My tan trousers and flannel shirt— what I call my scouting duds—have dried wrinkled.
I steer through a passageway of hemlock and Douglas fir up the east leg of the island. Each squelch of the gravel—the round kind imported from the mainland that won’t cut the horses’ feet—is like a tsk of the tongue.
At least the weather today is balmy, the sun admiring itself in the leaf-shaped Cascade Lake stretching alongside us. Summers in Nowhere last only long enough to give a peek at what could be, before fog and gloom snatch it all away again.
Will Mr. Sanders send me off right away? He never lets sentiment get in the way of business. You don’t get to rule the lion’s share of the island without a certain ruthlessness. I grip the reins tighter. I must be ready.
My own heart jumps as another horse clops toward us. Oh-Lolly, who has already smelled Goliath, the great black stallion, and his rider, Koa Kāne, continues at her fast clip.
I feign the same indifference as my filly, though the sight of Koa, looking sharp in his tan cavalry-style uniform, chases a thrill through me. “Scaring the residents. Is that what you Rifles do?”
Koa pushes up his cowboy hat, his expression grumpier than usual.
His thick hair is tied back, a curl brushing the nape of his neck before vanishing into his crisp jacket.
Riding trousers and polished boots give him command even astride a horse.
A short rifle is strapped to his back. All Mr. Sanders’s watch guards wear them, to deter not just the wild boars, but also the smugglers and rumrunners.
“You took a canoe. I saw you from Crow Point.”
I toss my dark braid behind me, covering a stab of unease. Why did his rounds take him to the southern border, where there’s nothing to patrol but seals?
“With the sea wolves,” he adds in his soft voice, with its natural growl that can both soothe horses and stop a wild boar in its tracks.
“But I got my picture.” I grin and pat my satchel, which Koa gave me yesterday for my birthday. The nurse said I couldn’t have been more than twenty-four hours old when I floated in, and so that day was designated my birthday: August 13.
Koa doesn’t smile back. He and I grew up as close as butter and jam, but lately it is hard to be easy with him.
“Mr. Sanders wanted the sea wolves the most,” I say, remembering how he pressed a new sketch pad into my hand.
The sea wolves will not come to you. You must go to them.
But only when you are ready. I’ve only done half the drawings for Wilds of Orcas Island, his book project, but perhaps with this offering I will have his blessing to leave.
“Your recklessness is going to get you killed.” Square in his saddle, even angry, he is as handsome as a summer sunset, always making the girls blush when he passes. I know he’s fooled around with a couple of them, but he doesn’t tell me about all that anymore.
“I’m sorry,” I lie. “I’ll try to be more careful next time.”
“Next time?” He snatches at a fly, then casts it away. “Unless you’re on a big boat with an engine, stay out of the water.” A frown mars his cheek, and I sense I’m not the only thing troubling him.
“What’s wrong?”
He clamps his gaze to the curved road ahead of us. “We found a seal’s head on Crow Beach a couple of nights ago.”
A cool breeze skims my shoulders. So that’s why he was patrolling Crow Point. “Second one in two weeks,” I murmur.
When the first one was found on the day of the Salmon Smokeout, a Nowhere tradition held the first day of August, the crowd, already dispirited by the lack of salmon, broke apart even before Cookie’s pie was served.
Severed seal heads had appeared mysteriously on the beaches of Orcas Island before, but never on Nowhere.
Whispers spread fast. They never looked into that case, did they now?
and It’s that demon that done in the Can Man. Sprinkle your homes with holy water.
“The cut was clean and curved around the head. That rules out an axe or a saw.” Koa’s face hardens, his shark’s-tooth nose twitching. He rubs the flat gold nugget at his throat like a worry stone. “I looked for the body. Didn’t find one.”
“So it wasn’t the sea wolves.”
“Some won’t see it that way. It’s goddamned unnatural.”
“Don’t tell me you believe in the Orkus.” With solid land underfoot, my tone is cavalier.
Koa’s light brown eyes darken, and he glances up toward Mount Consternation, looming like a phantom.
They say the Orkus, half eagle and half fish, feeds there.
The highest point on all of Orcas Island—not just the eastern leg—is cut up with ravines so deep, they’re said to have never seen sunlight or color.
“You better not mention that. It can get you axed.”
I snort. Mr. Sanders forbids mentioning the Orkus on pain of banishment. Such rumors only breed hysteria and slow progress, he says. He even cleared a path to the summit so all could access the “enlightened” 360-degree view of all the land masses in the San Juan Island chain.
“There’s no one here but us”—I glance at the hills unfolding around the lake—“and I’m leaving soon anyway. The sea wolves were my last drawing.”
His frown deepens. He pulls off a leather glove and works at his neck.
Koa knows of my longing to leave. He and his father, God rest him, came from the Hawaiian Islands when he was seven. He has been my rock over the years. “You have a pretty sweet life here: You can do what you love, go where you want, when you want. Who will look after you in Seattle?”
“I will,” I shoot back. The thought of being in a big city, alone, terrifies me.
But I won’t tell him. He’d only do something ridiculous—like follow me.
Koa was just promoted to head of the six-man watch guard, the Rifles, after the old head guard unexpectedly stepped down.
Soon he will have his own house on Mr. Sanders’s thousand-acre estate.
Mr. Sanders allows his chief employees to keep those homes as long as they live.
He grunts. “You just swam with sea wolves. What’s next? Running with boars?”
I chew my bottom lip. How do I explain to Koa that this fish outgrew its pond long ago?
He loves this island, but for me, Nowhere only echoes with unanswered questions: Where did I come from?
Who put me in the canoe? Why did Mr. Sanders take in a strange baby instead of sending me to the nearest orphanage?
I’m grateful, of course. But Mr. Sanders never cared to raise me as a daughter.
He barely spoke to me until last year. It’s time to widen my view of the world—and myself.
“It won’t be forever,” I say more gently, stifling the urge to touch him.
He scowls.
I lied to Oh-Lolly. It is Koa whom I will miss most when I leave.
Soon the three-story mansion, or “big house,” rises before us, a work of fine craftsmanship painted the white of overcast clouds. Mr. Sanders designed it to resemble an ocean liner, arched porticos wrapping the upper floors, crisp marine flags snapping from the copper roof.
An avalanche of sound pours forth from the plate-glass windows, low rumbles growing to a chorus of triumphant notes. Mr. Sanders plays his 1,972-pipe Aeolian organ at full volume only when there are visitors.
I glance at Koa. He knows at all times who’s visiting.
The organ music cuts off.
“Nash is here.” Koa doesn’t bother to hide his irritation. He tucks his gold pendant back under his shirt. “He arrived this morning.”
“He’s early.” Mr. Sanders’s nephew, whom Koa considers a presumptuous city rat, isn’t due until the Gatheround fête ten days from now.
The last time I saw Nash was at Daniel’s funeral one year ago. The summer before that, he had stolen a kiss from me on the tennis court. I’d thought him hurt, bent close—and then his arm pulled me down to the clay. I didn’t know you cared, he’d murmured, lips brushing mine.
I feel Koa’s attention on me, though he’s frowning down a path leading to Viridian House. Mr. Sanders built it for his sister, Viridian Sanders-Byre: his only sibling and Nash’s late mother. “He comes and goes when he wants,” Koa grumbles.
I never told him about the kiss, and I especially didn’t tell him I’d kissed Nash back. Nash had let out a surprised grunt, pulling me closer, and I’d tasted something sweet and deliciously unfamiliar. Eventually, I’d recovered my senses.
Electric lampposts alternate with cedar trees up a paved driveway.
Cookie says we should revere the sacred wood, but those sentries with their drooping branches always look ready to grab whoever walks under them.
At least they will be trimmed for the Gatheround.
Wealthy people like to get photographed when they donate money, and so even the trees must look their best.
The front door bursts open. Shimmelfen, the valet, staggers out, his slick hair broken into unruly waves, his frowning mouth hanging open in outrage. He blinks in the sun’s glare.