Chapter Eighteen Idris
Chapter Eighteen
Idris
I dock by the pier in Stromwell but remain in my yole.
I don’t seem up to standing, much less hauling the yole onto the noust. My thoughts keep circling back to Kit on that cliff, and her offer to cure me, and my blundering, half-baked confession.
And then there’s her adamant rejection. A lot of not-so-pleasant memories to haunt however many days I have left.
The boat rocks as True moves closer to me. He puts his large head on my knee and lifts his eyes. It’s dark now, but somehow his eyes still shine with doggy adoration. I feel a laugh tickle my chest, but only manage a small smile.
“You’ve chosen the wrong human, True,” I say.
True wags his tail, recognizing his name if nothing else.
My quest to find the Hidden One’s selkie skin has gone exactly nowhere. And in a few hours I’ll be sailing out again—this time without Kit. Perhaps it’s the fever or our conversation or something else, but a cloud of finality has settled over me. I feel like maybe I won’t come back this time.
What is the point of returning, anyway? I am only prolonging the inevitable and hurting everyone in the process.
If I just left and stayed away, I could fade somewhere where the people who love me won’t have to see it.
Maybe the most I can hope for is to minimize their pain while seeking some sort of redemption for my family.
It’s too late to avoid hurting everyone on this side of the Hidden Lands with my choice, but there’s still something I can do to help redeem my family there.
The Hidden Folk can’t touch the iron shoes, but I can.
And perhaps I can get them off. That’s one thing I can do to take away some pain, instead of causing it.
With a deep breath, I push myself to my feet and clamber onto the dock.
True springs up behind me. I turn toward the city and the forge.
With the sun down, my body seems to know that these are the only hours I have for sleep, and I fight the impulse to lie on the flagstones and close my eyes.
I’m not sure I’ll even bother going home tonight—I’m not sure I could make it up the hill in this state.
Outside the smithy, the confounded noise starts again: Clink, clink, bang.
But this time it’s not in my head. It’s the sound of the smith working.
The blacksmith hands over the tools I ask for with a confused look.
I wonder whether the whole city—the whole island—knows that I’m cursed at this point.
It does seem that people’s gazes skirt away from mine when I step back into the street.
Like there’s something uncanny about me.
I want to give them a pat on the shoulder and say, Not much longer now.
I’m on my way back to my yole when I notice a boat has docked near mine.
It’s a bit bigger, with the word Suraya painted in white on the bow.
My mother’s name; my father’s vessel. I’m tempted to duck back into the dark streets and wait until he’s cleared the harbor.
But if I don’t return home, I will never see him again, and there is a small, young part of me that wants to speak.
To say goodbye, even if I don’t use those words.
As I approach, my father disembarks. He calls back to the captain, “Mind the rudder is repaired before we sail again.”
I slow to a stop. “Did the ship take damage?”
Father glances at me in surprise. “We ran too close to a rock.” His gaze gets more concerned as he comes within reach of me. “You look terrible. Why aren’t you sleeping at the manor?”
I shrug. The world tilts under my feet, and my father catches my arm to steady me. The tools in my pockets weigh me down. I feel heavier than a barrel of cannonballs.
“Come, sit a minute.” Father directs me toward Mr. Muir and his bench. He raises his voice to call. “Mind if we borrow this, Merlin?”
“Was just about to retreat to the pub anyway,” Mr. Muir says, rising. “There’s a storm on the wind tonight.”
Father nods his thanks and tugs me to the bench. I sink without resistance. The night must be cold, and the wind tangles in my hair, but I feverishly think I could close my eyes and sleep right here.
Father frowns. “I’ll have someone bring a horse around. You need to go home.”
“No,” I say, rousing myself. “I’m fine.”
Father makes a frustrated sound in the back of his throat. “You only have a few hours before you’ll be enchanted out to sea. You should be spending them in peace, not wandering around the docks.”
I rub my face. “I don’t want to go all the way up.”
“Then we’ll get you a room at the Stromwall Hotel.” Father turns away.
“Just leave it alone,” I snap, my ire rising. “Stop trying to command me!”
“I’m not trying to command you. I’m trying to help you.”
“I can do this on my own.” I try to push myself off the bench. “I chose this. And I’ll finish it.”
Father plants his hands on my shoulders. “The point is, you don’t have to.” When my strength gives out under the slightest pressure from his arms, he sighs sharply. “Damn it, Idris, why do you have to be like this?”
Something tugs in my chest, the deep hollow between my ribs. A despair that doesn’t begin here. I close my eyes and concentrate. There is a memory, far back and faded.
“Did you ever hold me?” I ask. Not an accusation—just an idle curiosity. “As a child, I mean. I don’t remember you ever holding me.”
Father looks startled. “What are you talking about?”
“It was that way with your father,” I continue, almost to myself. “Wasn’t it?”
I see through the eyes of a small child.
Mother, in bed, her face drawn as the injury in her leg slowly drains her life away.
I am snuggled against her, listening to every rattling heartbeat with my ear to her chest. Grandfather, my father’s father, is reading aloud from the Psalms. Father sits nearby, and as he watches me, his eyes begin to fill with tears.
Grandfather suddenly cuts short his reading. “Stop that, Hugh. Control yourself.” I shrink closer to Mother and he gestures to me. “Look at your son—if you aren’t stronger, he’ll turn out as soft as Erik. Do you hear that, boy? Do you want to be like Mervyn’s useless brother?”
My mother rouses herself and says other things, kinder things—and I want to hear these other things, I want to remember them. But I don’t.
I am too tender when she is hurt. Too wild when she is gone. Too much.
“What does this have to do with anything?” Father asks.
“You asked why I’m the way I am.” I lift my gaze to his, and the effort even of that small movement is enough to make my head swim. “I am what Mervyn made, what Great-grandfather and Grandfather made, what you made.”
For me, it wasn’t one dramatic moment. It wasn’t a violent confrontation, a ferocious flash of lightning, a sharp word that went straight to the marrow.
For me, it was a thousand small seconds. A glimmer of disappointment. A reprimand edged with annoyance. A quiet thrum of not enough and too much that whispered in silences until it seemed to shout.
Father puts his cold hand against my forehead. “You are delirious.”
“Maybe you were right,” I mumble.
He looks at me with wary surprise. “About what?”
“Maybe I didn’t do any of this out of noble intentions.
I only chose the hardest path because I felt I …
needed to. That I deserved it. Not because it was the right thing for the family, but because it was the cruelest thing for me.
” I stare at my lap. “I inherited all the empathy and guilt that you postponed.”
“Don’t talk like this,” Father says. “Of course you don’t deserve this.”
“Mother held me, didn’t she?” I ask, mild and calm. “Until the fever’s end. And I suppose she held no one after that.”
Father opens and closes his mouth.
“King Hugh!” calls a man’s voice from down the street. There’s something familiar about it, but my mind is too exhausted to place the name, to identify the prick of unease that stirs in my heart.
Father turns toward the man—he’s still some distance from us—and I take the opportunity to stand.
Father reaches to stop me, but the voice is saying something else, and I slip away while his attention is divided.
True follows beside me as I duck onto the nearest street toward the stable beside the hotel.
It’s cozy and warm, lit by a single lantern, and presently empty of stablehands.
I find a rope in the tack room and loop it round True’s collar, my stomach tight. The sense that I must be going, must leave before Father or anyone else can stop me, thrums with urgency. I linger, resting my hand on True’s head. He wags his tail and looks at me in confusion.
“Sorry,” I say. “But if I’m not coming back, you have to stay here. You’ll be safe. Abram will look after you.”
True licks my palm, not understanding. I swallow on a dry throat and make myself step away.
I grab a hold of the stable doors and step through.
Behind me, True whines, then yelps. I glance back.
He’s pulling against the rope, straining to get to me, and barking frantically now.
I want to cry, but I pull the doors shut. The noise dulls behind the thick wood.
I return to my yole, raise the sails, and turn to leave the harbor.
It isn’t yet time for the curse to guide me to the Hidden Lands, so I settle for a cove about ten miles down the coast. I anchor my boat, then lie down against the hull and pull an oilskin over me. It’s not comfortable, but I am asleep as soon as my head comes to rest against the wood.
It scarcely seems seconds later when the curse stirs in my chest. I’m too far out to hear the cathedral bells, but it must be midnight. My body buzzes with energy, though my head feels too heavy to hold up. I raise the anchor and hoist the sails.
The wind has risen, and I find myself sinking into the half-conscious state I used to be in when enchanted.
Without Kit, my senses fade in and out—one moment, the sway of the boat and the texture of the wood fill my attention, the next all is mist and dark.
A storm is coming in, and the rain is mixed with snow and ice.
But even the sting of the cold can’t keep me from falling into a daze.
I cannot tell if an hour has passed or only a few minutes when, by the sharp rocks and whirlpools, I realize I’ve come to the cliff.
My voice rips out of me. “Open, black cliff, and let the young prince in and out with his boat!”
And out. The words escape before I think to stop them, though I don’t intend to leave. I feel the emptiness at my feet, where True would normally sit. Ahead, in the dark, the rocks cleave in a blast of thunder, and I know the passageway is opening.
A bout of dizziness rocks me to one side, and my hand slips, jerking the tiller. I duck just in time to avoid the swinging boom as it whooshes inches above my head. But before I can correct the course, wood crunches on stone, and I’m tossed over the side onto sharp rocks.
A surface as jagged as daggers cuts my palms and saltwater burns into the wounds.
I cough, digging my fingers into the rock as a wave sloshes over me, dragging at my heavy greatcoat.
I shake hair out of my face, looking for my yole.
Without my weight to hold the boat down, the sea has pulled it free of the breech. It’s already nearly five feet away.
I lunge for the gunwale. But another wave hits me from the side, and I’m plunged into the freezing water.
I kick for the surface, fighting the weight of the blacksmith tools, but the current twists and drags and I can’t find air.
My shoulder rams into another rock, and pain splinters down my arm.
I scramble for a purchase and manage to haul myself up enough for one breath. Then I’m under again.
The curse tightens over my limbs, and my senses go dull and then sharp again.
I kick, propelling myself toward the Hidden Lands, even though I have no idea what direction is up.
A compass inside of me points directly toward my destination.
A moment ago, I was too tired to do anything beyond sit in my boat, but now I swim harder than ever in my life.
The current propels me forward, and I gasp a lungful of air when I crest a wave. Then I’m down again.
I lose track of how many times it happens—half a lungful of air, half a lungful of water, and the turbulent sea everywhere. My skin goes from burning with cold to numb. Even when my arms and legs feel too heavy to move, I’m pulled forward, more by the curse than my own will.
My foot hits something submerged, but it isn’t the cutting rocks. It’s soft and gives way. I push myself off from it and find air again. Warm air. The water ripples around me, calmly, and I blink the haze out of my eyes. The cove. I’m in the cove.
I settle my feet on the sand, surprised to find I can touch the bottom.
But no sooner do I put weight on my legs than my knees give out.
I can’t tell if I’m injured or just too exhausted to stand.
I swim until I can crawl, then drag myself up onto the beach.
Digging my fingers into the hot, pale sand, I close my eyes and sink into darkness.