Epilogue
Sometimes the world moves too slowly, each day welded to the next in a never-ending chain. But today, two weeks from the day I was nearly buried alive, someone has cranked the gears too hard.
Koa is leaving Nowhere.
I knew this day would come, but as I watch him pull Goliath’s forehead to his own, the breeze of the marina streaming through both their manes, I wish I could set the clock back to a simpler age. Days of combing vertical marshes for duck eggs. Tasting waterfalls.
With a last pat, Koa lets Red take Goliath and offers me his arm.
My ankle hasn’t healed completely, but I insisted on seeing him off.
I will miss the way his presence puts a solid feeling in me.
I will miss the curls at the back of his neck.
His sharp nose inhales as if catching a whiff of a sweet-smelling future, one in which he and his Hawaiian cousin with the biplane will be starting an aircraft business of their own in Seattle.
“I hear stars aren’t all they’re cracked up to be,” I grouse. “They’re a lot farther than you think. Already have a big one up there.” As if conspiring against me, the late summer sun hides in a wool blanket. I’m babbling, stretching out the moment despite the warning toot of the ferry.
Koa’s gaze falls to me and softens. “I won’t be that far.”
“Yes, you will.” My voice cracks.
Setting down his canvas bag, he lets me hold him one last time. Then he steps onto that swaying platform, off to navigate his own map of the world.
Morning fog nudges away the last of summer. The birdsong of breeders has faded, replaced by the chattering of migrators, gorging themselves on our shoreline buffet.
The Lady Vee barely causes a stir among sandpipers racing along the coast, but black-bellied plovers halt mid-step as Nash salutes them.
I have put the Nowhere coffers under much strain. It is time to explore what treasure awaits on Parish Isle.
“Are you sure about this?” Nash asks me as the fog-bound land mass grows closer. “Your window-boat is coming along nicely, and you already have a waiting list for tours, which means a steady income. People are certainly curious about the glamorous heiress of Nowhere who solved two murders.”
Simon Sayes’s trial was quick, and he is scheduled to exchange his dog collar for one of hemp for the murders of Mr. Sanders and my father, and the attempted murder of me.
“It will be a scientific tour focused on the sea wolves and our natural marine life,” I reply. “I will be wearing my scouting duds, not a ball gown.”
Knowing I am making my father and Mr. Sanders’s dream a reality lifts some of the sadness that has followed me all my life. Gray was the sadness, the color of not knowing.
Now, even with overcast skies, Nowhere has taken on hues I have never seen before.
Spiky conifers spackled with moss and fungi cloak the shoulders of the mountains like a rich green cape.
I convinced the Brain Trust we should give Mount Consternation back to the State of Washington for a park.
I never thought it was right to own a mountain.
Perhaps one day the return will redeem Mr. Sanders a little in Cookie’s eyes, wherever she is.
“Maybe some mysteries don’t need solving,” Nash muses. “Isn’t that what makes life interesting?”
“Not always,” I say as the boy with the hen-scratch scar surfaces in my head.
My dugout canoe was discovered missing, along with Jeddah’s small tackle box and his sheepskin coat. Gilly has gone in search of his son, and I wished him Godspeed.
“If we go back, we will disappoint Mary, who has come all the way from Seattle.” I twist around, where Eva and the statuesque young botanist Mary Paul are perched with an immense carpetbag of books and equipment between them.
Though the dark-eyed academician with her intense stare is quiet with me, she seems to have much in common with Eva, including a love of seashells and the book Frankenstein by Mary Shelley.
“I would not be disappointed,” the botanist says, pushing her straw hat back on her thick hair.
“Already I have seen many wonderful things in Nowhere and would like to explore more.” She has not found any China blue in her foraging here and posits that the wild boars may have decimated it.
Meanwhile, we seem to have decimated the boars.
Not every wild thing that finds its way here will survive.
I wonder if Mary, whose grandfather helped the explorer George Vancouver identify plants on Nootka Island, would consider a post as researcher for Wilds of Orcas Island.
For illustrations, I’ve already engaged Mr. Gotze’s interpreter, Wai, who has also guided me in tracing my father’s roots.
Apparently there are family associations by surname, and I’m scheduled to visit the Tang society next month in Seattle.
Parish Isle beckons to me, a distant cloud on the water. “The tours might be a bust. What do you think, Eva? How soon do you think we’ll be able to start selling our redesigned Specialties?”
Gasoline engines are several times less noisy than diesel ones, and we hope for a “noiseless” invention in time.
My stalwart secretary watches a loon rise, its throat the same scarlet as her knitted beret. Eva has taken on more color too, but only in small doses. “It may require a few months. Sveyn and Boots are already pitching them to customers, but they don’t have Mr. Sanders’s touch.”
I slide my gaze to Nash, who is frowning at Parish Isle from under the brim of Poggie #1. “You look like you want a favor,” he remarks without even glancing at me.
“ ‘Throw out your hook. I’ll reel ’em in.’ ” I deliver my loftiest mimicry of him. “You could do it without even trying.”
Abruptly, he eases up on the throttle, and I catch myself on the dash.
A dozen dark silhouettes have surfaced, drifting, lounging, exhaling their sighs into the fog.
A shiver runs along my spine. Even though I constantly feel them all around me, the sight of the sea wolves still leaves me breathless.
I know they are not evil. But it is always risky for mice to play in grass where lions tread.
With the havoc wreaked by the island bosses now eased, the sea wolves are peaceful—for now.
Temperance and Prosper are no longer speaking to Mr. Tavernish, whose actions deprived them of Truth, while I am getting to know my aunt and cousin.
For the lime man, good relations with them will depend on remaining in my good graces, which means that spilled lime won’t be a problem anymore.
As for Mr. Gotze, when rumors of my sea-wolf sense reached his ears, he put away the guns and the traps. I doubt I could ever get a wild thing to obey my orders. Still, let him think it.
A hundred feet to my right, a spyhopping sea wolf begins to float: her own island. With a wet explosion, a smaller, sleeker form jumps next to her, crashing with a self-important kerchunk!
“Scull,” I whisper.
The ripples from the calf’s landing gently nudge us toward Parish Isle.
Nash’s hand finds mine, his touch making me feel reckless.
Some people coast to the inevitability of their destinies.
Others, like Mr. Sanders, are like meteors, always hurtling.
But most must crawl steadily toward it, by instinct, or magnetic currents, or just sheer determination.
Sometimes our branches grow a little crooked.
But they are always reaching for the light.
I imagine that mysterious China blue on that unseen isle pointing toward me. Seek the mystery.
Lucy Nowhere takes in the world flourishing around her, birds streaming like ribbons over the sky, sea wolves making the ocean move. The breathless faces of her crew await her command. She gives it: “Onward.”