Chapter 22
That night, Harper found herself on the deck of the dream ship and was instantly relieved that while she was firmly ensconced in a dream, it was not the waking nightmare of the deathbed below the deck.
The smell of sickness and rot was washed away by the chill salt air.
She stood next to the stern man with the rough beard.
His presence was as much a fear as it was comfort.
His anger was dissipated, only grief remained.
Harper’s dream-self stood next to him in the night air, slight and diminutive in comparison.
A handful of faceless figures in rough, woolen cloaks stood near with their heads down, chanting a phrase over and over.
Harper realized her own lips were moving as well, though she could not hear her own voice.
And I saw one of his heads as it were wounded to death, but his deadly wound was healed, and all the world wondered and followed the beast.
A small figure lay on the deck wrapped in linen cloth, and Harper knew it to be the child she had nursed in the previous vision.
Her heart broke anew and she stumbled in her recitation.
She felt the condemning eyes of the man with the rough beard at her side, and she forced the words from her throat despite the well of tears that threatened to break forth.
Next to her, the man cleared his throat and the chanting stopped.
“We find ourselves on this mournful night to witness the passage of this bairn of our Lord. Lost to the sick, born of sin that was not his own. We pray for his soul.”
Harper felt herself join the whispered response from the small circle.
“May God hold you in the hollow of his hand.”
“We cast his form to the sea, where his soul will fly to our Father above and where he will join the angels in praying for our release from the dark and predatory spirits of the beast that feed on our faith and our spirit. Sisters. It is time.”
Harper found herself helping the others, all women, she realized now, to lift the small form, his weight no more than a bundle of firewood, his body already stiff with death.
With a moment of hesitation, the group held the boy’s body steady as the man with the rough beard tied an iron weight that sat on the ship’s deck to the boy’s waist with a span of thick rope.
“The eternal God is thy refuge, and underneath are the everlasting arms.”
With that, Harper found herself letting the boy’s slight form slide from her hands over the rail of the ship to the rough waters below as the man followed it with the weight that would carry the body to the ocean floor.
“Yer young and will bear many bairn yet to come. We must trust in the will of our Lord.” The man’s voice rang in her ear and a red-hot hand encased her shoulder as Harper’s dream-self shook with sobs as the ocean spray mixed with her tears.
Harper opened her eyes to the breaking dawn through her curtains, her face wet with dream tears. Polly was curled on her stomach and looked up sleepily as Harper stirred.
“Hello, Polly,” Harper whispered in a choked voice as she stroked the cat’s fur. Polly purred and stretched her front paws, curling back up in sleep.
Harper closed her eyes and tried to visualize the dream.
The nighttime ship deck, the clarity of the man’s voice and the figures surrounding her, the overwhelming grief and fear that still hung in her core.
It was so vivid it made her question what was real, that world or the bed she had woken up in, Polly, the ache in her muscles from yesterday’s incident.
Already the images were fading, but the words were so clear, the chant, the gravelly tone of the man’s voice, the feeling of devotion to him mixed with loathing and fear, the grief for the child that maybe had been her dream-self’s son?
She was younger in her dreams, but not much.
Late teens, but with the mind of one decades older.
Harper sighed and opened her eyes. The fallacy here was treating this as though it were anything other than dreams, strange dreams to be sure, but dreams nonetheless.
She heard movement in the other room, the clack of Shuri’s crutches as she moved around the kitchen. Harper sat up, prompting Polly to jump off the bed and saunter through her cracked doorway.
In the kitchen, Shuri stood on crutches in front of the tea kettle, watching water boil with a defeated look on her face.
“Hey,” Harper said as she sat at the table.
“Hey,” Shuri answered, and joined her, carefully sitting, grimacing with pain as she adjusted her casted leg.
“You really oughtn’t be up and on that thing,” Harper said. “Let me.” She stood and began preparing Shuri’s tea. “Toast?” she asked as Shuri nodded silently.
“The coordinates were off, but the air pockets? And what you saw? Boston can’t deny that, right?” Shuri stared out the window, deep in her thoughts. “Rogue waves are the coming together of multiple forces, they can indicate something much bigger. We call them namija back home.”
“What does it mean?” Harper closed her eyes and felt the icy water pulling her down.
“Quite literally means ‘water snake,’ but it’s more of a kind of deep-sea dragon. It’s all stories, superstition really, but the presence of namija is a warning of sorts.” Shuri rubbed her temples, her exhaustion clear. “Want to include that in the report to Boston?”
“Too late. Already filed and the more I wrote the crazier it sounded. Look, if anything comes of this, I’ll make sure your name is on the published paper. You are part of this crew.” Harper delivered toast and tea to Shuri and sat back down.
“Harper, the dead thing that Polly brought in … what do you think it was, what do you really think it was?”
Harper tapped her finger on the tabletop, looking for words. “I-I’m not sure really. But I think there are things on this island that aren’t any other place.”
Shuri nodded. “I think so too. I saw something one night. I didn’t say anything, I didn’t want to wake anyone, and I didn’t even know what to say if I did. It looked a little like that dead thing.”
“Where?” Harper asked, leaning in.
“Outside, I woke up early, sun wasn’t quite up.
I went outside to see the sunrise. It was in the shadows, near your window.
It saw me and ran away. It all happened so fast, I didn’t know what to think, but it was …
strange, stick-like. It looked like it had bark for skin.
” Shuri waved her hands in front of her face as though she could erase the memory.
“My mother said she saw things here too. The skipper for her team, the one who had an accident? According to my mother, she saw more.”
“She did?” Harper held back the barrage of questions she had for Shuri, not wanting to stop her.
“Yeah, Mom said the skipper called them elves, tried to take photos of them. Mom thought she was nuts, and then the accident happened and her camera was lost.” Shuri sipped her tea.
“What? Her camera?” Harper said. “Why haven’t I heard this part before?”
“Not sure anyone else knew, it was just stories my mother told me. But the skipper’s camera fell into the water, she could never show anyone what she’d seen,” Shuri said carefully. “But I think I saw one that morning. Do you think that was what Polly killed?”
Harper nodded. “I do, actually. And I think whatever they are wouldn’t like to be photographed.”
“That’s what my mother always thought too, but she never told anyone but me.
” Shuri paused. “I know what’s in the reports about the New Brunswick team.
And I know at least some of the stories here on the island.
But you should know, Harper, that my mother didn’t feel right about everything that went on with that team. ”
Harper regarded her curiously. “What do you mean?”
“She didn’t talk about it much. My mother was the last off the island before the hurricane hit.
It wasn’t because she was a hero. She had split from the team right before everything happened.
They had a big break between her and them, and she had moved to a boardinghouse off of Main Street.
She had been trying to contact their home office in Saint John.
” Shuri looked up at Harper, her face conflicted.
“Why? What happened?” Harper asked, Einar’s stories of Florence Manning swirling in her head.
“She wouldn’t say, not really. All she would tell me was that it didn’t matter anyway because any evidence she had that things were not right was destroyed in the hurricane.
She seemed frightened to talk about it.” Shuri shook her head.
“She asked me never to tell anyone, and now I told you, so there’s that. ”
“I really wish you didn’t have to go,” Harper said, emotion tugging at her words.
“Me too,” Shuri said softly. “But part of me knows I need to, there’s a lot more than Thalassa here.”
Murphy drove the team and Shuri’s bags to the West Dock for the 9:00 a.m. ferry.
Einar waved at Harper from the deck, and Kyle nudged her with a conspiratorial wink.
Harper rolled her eyes at Kyle and waved back.
Hugs and promises to keep her updated, Einar descended the gangplank to carry Shuri aboard.
She looked no more than a child in his arms, and Harper couldn’t help but smile.
“He’s very strong,” Kyle said while staring at Harper with wide, amused eyes.
“You have no idea how high up on the wrong tree you are here,” Harper replied.
Kyle snorted a laugh and they waved at the ferry as it pulled out of the dock and headed back to Boston.
“Kyle, the girl who left before I arrived, you knew her from Boston?” Harper asked, watching the ferry on the water.
Kyle nodded. “A bit. She was in the bio department.”
“What did she see that made her leave?” Harper asked, turning to face Kyle.
Kyle’s eyes were fixed on the horizon. “Nothing that makes any sense. She came in that afternoon, the day before you arrived, all shook. I asked her what was going on, and she wouldn’t answer, just started packing. Just like that, she left.”