Chapter Six Idris #2
Abram steps into the lead, taking us down a natural slope, quiet and calm after all the hurry of main street.
My small yole is hauled out and beached on the grass noust, high on the slope of the land before it meets the water.
The Prospect is painted along the bow in looping script.
My steps slow as Abram’s quicken. This boat has been in our family for generations, back as far as Mervyn.
Some storytellers claim it is his own boat from the impossible quests, though Abram hasn’t been able to confirm that in any of our documents.
But what if it was Mervyn’s boat? Does it mean something if I have inherited both his boat and his curse? Or maybe that’s just my privilege as the eldest.
Abram has the lines already tossed inside and pushes the boat easily into the water. He glances back at me. “Everything all—”
“Right. Yes. Everything is all right.” I try to shake off my apprehension and clamber aboard.
The boat rocks, and it’s strange how the comfort of that familiar motion mixes with all my sudden unease.
True jumps in behind me, and when I take the forward bench he climbs over me to sit in the gap right in the bow.
Abram pushes the yole deeper and hops aboard last, settling with one of the oars.
We’ve been doing this since we were boys, and we barely need to think as we maneuver out of the inlet and into the broader harbor.
The main street might be busy, but this calm stretch of protected water is the lifeblood of Stromwell.
I watch the haar swirling around the buildings, as thick as ever.
I can’t see our house up on the hill above town.
The water livens once we clear the sheltered harbor.
We hoist the sail, and Abram at the tiller turns us south.
I keep my focus on the haar, preferring to stare at the gray rather than at my brother’s face.
I think, again, of Kit, wondering absently if she is even now gazing at the fog north of the loch, toward me, as I gaze south toward her.
“You said you didn’t propose,” Abram says suddenly. “I thought that was rather the purpose for going down there? What put you off?”
I shrug, trimming the sail. I could tell him.
Speir didn’t say I needed to keep it a secret.
But I know Abram. He’d press into the story, dig out my reasons, and finding himself in the mix he’d take on the weight as surely as if I’d handed the curse to him.
And while Father can’t be right about looking the other way and passing the curse on down the line, a part of me wonders if it wouldn’t be better to let the whole thing sink with me.
End with me. If I don’t tell Abram, maybe it will spare him something.
“I just … didn’t think she really liked me,” I say instead. It’s the truth too. “She’s pleasant and agreeable, but something didn’t fit between us.”
I glance over to see if he’ll accept that. Abram seems preoccupied with the tiller, rubbing a rag over a bird dropping near the handle. He doesn’t look up from his task for a few minutes.
“I’m sorry for that,” he says, finally lifting his gaze. There’s a smile in the corner of his mouth.
I narrow my eyes. “Are you?”
His ears and neck turn so red, even the dim light can’t hide it.
I laugh, surprised. “Were you …? Wait, how many times did you dance with her?” I ask, trying to think back.
My memories of that evening have blurred, other than the garden confrontation.
Even my conversation with Kit has shifted into flashes of moments—her eyes avoiding mine, the curl of one strand of blonde-brown hair against her freckled cheekbone, the way she hesitated before giving her hand. “Twice?”
Abram coughs. “Four times.”
I jab him in the shoulder. “What scandal! My own brother!”
He’s still red as a sunburn. “I wasn’t—I mean—it wasn’t—I was only—”
“Trying to steal a princess from under my nose?”
Abram looks genuinely horrified. “I would never do that! And anyway, it isn’t anything nearly that serious.
I only talked with her, and it was nice, and the dancing was nice, and she was nice.
” He runs a hand through his hair, then adjusts the tiller to guide us toward shore.
“I only thought—if you weren’t—then maybe—but it’s nothing serious. ”
He seems sincerely worried, so I curb my teasing. In as near a serious tone as I can, I say, “It’s fine, Abram. She is nice. And even a polite princess wouldn’t spend four dances with you if she didn’t like you.”
Abram glances at me, mortified and hopeful, but quickly turns his attention back to the shore. “Help me get us in. The haar’s making it hard to spot the noust.”
I let the conversation drop as we locate our landing spot, a slope carved into the shoreline by some long-ago sailors. Once we’ve hauled the yole a safe distance from the sea, we gather our empty bags and set off for the holms.
In the spring, we can’t step near this place without terns diving for our heads. But in the late autumn, it’s silent and still. The first tidal island is little more than a jumble of rocks and seaweed, and then the second another jumble, and finally an even smaller holm after that.
Abram turns his attention to the tide line, searching the rocks. I make a halfhearted search myself. True slips and slides over the rocks until he reaches the grass of the first holm, and then takes off to hunt rabbits.
My luck isn’t good today. There are only rocks, some bird bones, and a whole lot of kelp. The stony causeway keeps rolling under my feet, and my ankles pinch in protest. Sore from the dances, I think again bitterly.
When I reach the first grassy holm, I have a look at the ruined chapel while Abram catches up. The crumbled walls are almost entirely covered in grass, buried by the centuries. The storm doesn’t seem to have exposed anything new, but I try pulling up a chunk of overhanging turf anyway.
“No, don’t expose it,” Abram says, hurrying up to me.
I try not to let out a sigh. “Why don’t you just go digging, if you’re so curious about it?”
Abram moves my hand away from the grass clump. “It’s protected like this. I don’t want to accidentally destroy anything.”
I look at his lean form and then out at the churning sea. “Um, I don’t think you can do more harm than that.”
“You’d be surprised how much harm a person can do,” Abram says, smiling.
My mouth tastes bitter suddenly. I don’t think even Abram knows how right he is. I force a smile and move on, not about to let him in on it.
Should I, though? I wonder as I poke at some old oystercatcher nets. Is keeping it from him so different from what Father did to us?
Eventually, I plop down near to the rocky causeway that leads to the second holm.
I pull a few stones closer and, like a boy, begin absently stacking them into a cairn.
True comes to join me, rabbit-less, and leans his body against my back.
It’s almost enough to put me off balance, but I’m grateful for the added warmth against the rising wind.
I’ve been dancing somewhere for several nights now. But where is it? And will it always be like this—sleepwalking with only dust to show for it?