Chapter 16
As she suspected, the evening ferry had not left the dock. As she approached, a heavily bundled man shouted from the deck.
“No runs tonight, sorry! Tomorrow morning will be better.”
Harper looked up at the sky, it was starting to darken even though it wasn’t even four o’clock yet. “No worries, I’m looking for Einar, he on board?”
“Yah, just a sec.” The man disappeared, and Einar reappeared on deck, giving Harper a wave. He climbed down and crossed the gangway.
He stopped and grinned. “Hello, Harper of the Mist. Hope you weren’t trying to get to the mainland tonight.”
“Nope. I came to find you, actually.” Harper was shivering despite her many layers. The wind had ice in it, and the tiny hairs in her nose were crystalizing with every breath.
“What a nice surprise. C’mon in the office, have some terrible coffee.” Einar nodded toward a cottage next to Murphy’s cabin.
“What can I do for you?” Einar placed a mug of hot coffee in front of Harper, who was warming her hands over a space heater.
“Nothing really, I just wanted to talk to someone who knows the place.” Harper hesitated, realizing now how utterly strange her questions really were.
Einar blew on his coffee, a childlike action for such a large man that utterly disarmed Harper.
She was hit with another wave of déjà vu, not for this cabin or this person, but this feeling, this view, the odd familiarity she felt with this man she’d met only once.
Einar looked at her with a single raised eyebrow.
“You’ve seen something. That earthquake shake you up? Get it … shake you …”
Harper smiled and allowed her tensed muscles to relax a bit. “I get it. That was worse than this coffee.” She paused. “No, I mean yes, but not the earthquake. I just, I went to Bell Manor.”
“So I heard. Lucky. Lady Bell is really something, isn’t she?” Einar grinned, his face full of pride.
“She is, truly she is. The manor is, well, I don’t have words. It’s a house basically, but it’s more than that, it’s … alive,” Harper said slowly, trying to parse out all the thoughts in her head.
“That’s a nice way to put it.” Einar set his mug down and regarded Harper.
“I’ve only been up there to help with the harvests and planting.
I’ve never seen the inside of the manor.
My folks have, though, they said essentially the same thing.
” He paused. “They said they’ve seen you and your crew in the store. ”
“I’ve seen them,” Harper replied. “I’m not sure what I came here to ask, it’s more like an observation, but I just wanted someone to hear it? Does that make sense? It’s strange.”
“Go for it. I love strange.” Einar grinned and sipped his coffee.
“I feel like I’ve been here before, but it’s more than that.
I feel like everything is different now, but that’s not possible because I’ve never seen it before, but like a memory.
It’s like when you come home and realize how small your bedroom really is?
” Harper blurted the words out and immediately regretted them.
She barely knew this man, but like the odd feeling of familiarity everywhere, she knew him.
Einar gave her a small nod, carefully crafting his words.
“I left Bell after high school, which is a nightmare on this island by the way. K–12 in one building. My graduating class had twelve kids, and I had gone to school with those twelve kids since we were five. You know they tried to hold a prom. A prom! For twelve of us. They try every year and it is a bust every year. It’s basically correspondence school, well, online school now, with supervision.
When I was a kid we filled out packet after packet and they sent it all to the mainland on a ferry every Friday night.
” Einar shook his head. “I’m wandering. My point.
I left after high school, went to Roxbury Community College, got my electrician license, learned plumbing, pretty high-brow stuff.
But at night, I took other courses. They weren’t practical and I never told my folks, but I took them anyway.
Folklore, Shakespeare, literature. The thing about what I was reading, especially the folklore, was that I’d seen it before, like a memory, like that small bedroom you come home to?
I realized that most of the stuff I was reading, I had seen, experienced, lived, and that everyone on this island just accepted it for truth.
What do they call that in magical realism?
Fantastical happenings? Yeah, so no, you’re not strange, and yes, I know what you mean.
” Einar smiled and finished off his coffee, setting his mug on the table.
Harper stared at him for a long moment. “Why did you come back?”
Einar shrugged. “I didn’t right away. I moved to Beverly, worked for the city, made pretty good money too, but I missed the place, so I went back to Roxbury, brushed up my sailing license to commercial level, and there you go.
I don’t live at home, though, I’m not quite that pathetic.
” He chuckled. “I’m next to Murph, just one over.
” He paused again, his face darkening slightly as he searched for the words.
“You will see things out here that really oughtn’t be, and no one will talk about it with you, so you can tell me, but you won’t get much conversation on it otherwise. ”
Harper nodded. “I have another question, and it’s been something no one will say … but I don’t know if you know, but my parents died in the hurricane fifteen years ago. They were on a research vessel off the coast and it went down in the storm.” Harper paused.
“Jesus, I’m sorry. I only know that my mother knew your mother. But she never mentioned how your folks passed. This has to be incredibly hard to be here. They weren’t part of the New Brunswick team, were they?” Einar asked, his eyes emanating concern.
“No, they weren’t. They had started the research that the New Brunswick team was here for, but they were doing their own thing.
I don’t really know why they were back just then, by all rights their job with the team was done.
I guess what I’m asking is, before the hurricane hit, the skipper for the research crew was attacked?
Pushed off the dock? I’ve heard it was angry townsfolk, I’ve heard it was the wind, so what was it? ”
Einar looked out the window. “I was here then, I remember it pretty well. And I do remember the vessel that was lost off the coast. It’s a little surreal to know that it was your parents on board.
There was the explosion. I was fourteen, working here on the dock.
The sailors were all spooked. If I had heard your parents’ names, they wouldn’t have meant anything to me back then.
” Einar took a deep breath and looked back at Harper.
“I know the locals might not come off as overly friendly, but they aren’t like to stir trouble, either.
You asked about the skipper for the New Brunswick team?
The folks on this island would never attack a fellow skipper.
If anything is sacred here, it’s the ability to command these waters.
I tell you it was something else, everyone on that crew saw things they didn’t believe could be true, and the skipper you ask about?
She saw more than others. She was a bit like you in that. ”
“Am I likely to be shoved off a dock too?” Harper asked without humor.
Einar chuckled again. “I wouldn’t worry. You had an audience with the Lady, your skipper all those years ago did not. And, how to put this. She might have been a scientist like you, but that is where the similarities end.”
“Explain,” Harper said, intrigued.
“Florence Manning had ill intent. Any sea creature she found, she would have hunted it down as a trophy. The huldufólk knew it. All of us knew it.”
“Your Icelandic heritage is showing.” Harper looked at Einar curiously. “We also call them the álfafólk. How do you know the huldufólk?” Harper asked slowly.
“Everyone on Bell knows the huldufólk. You’ve seen them, I know you have. You said yourself strange things happen here. The cats that watch everything you do, the little oddities you explain away every time but stay in your mind.” Einar paused and looked down at his coffee.
“I get the feeling there’s more you’re not saying.” Harper took a sip of her coffee.
“There is, I just … I suppose this is my turn to sound strange, but … your octopus, the Thalassa? There’s another name for it on the island, one that goes back well before the New Brunswick team or any researchers for that matter.”
“Like a folktale?” Harper asked. “There are plenty in Iceland. I grew up with the Hafgufa, kind of like the oceanic Yule cat.”
Einar nodded, his expression clouded. “A bit like that, but more, I don’t know …
real? Nothing against the oceanic Yule cat.
” Einar looked up and met Harper’s eyes.
“For as long as anyone’s been on Bell, way back to the beginning, there have been stories of the Blódughadda, daughter of Rán, who is more than just a goddess, she is the sea herself.
The Blódughadda is her daughter, the word literally means ‘bloody hair,’ but it’s not accurate.
The stories go that she appears like a translucent creature, shimmering, lots of colors, but also see-through.
She lives at the bottom of the sea, and the stories say that she warns us when harm is headed to the island. ”
Harper had forgotten to breathe, she could feel the silk-soft touch of the tentacles on the back of her neck, a soft clicking rang in her ears. “How does she warn you?”
Einar glanced at the door as though he were afraid someone might be listening.
“According to the lore, she picks a person, a protector, and that person is like a conduit, a messenger. The thing about that skipper from fifteen years ago? The old folks on Bell say she was chosen and refused the call, and that’s why Hurricane Audra hit without warning, why there was so much destruction. ”
Harper shook her head, trying to process Einar’s words. “Wait, so Florence Manning was chosen by Blódughadda, refused to listen, and that’s why there was a hurricane?”
Einar took a deep breath. “It sounds mad, I know. But according to the old folks here on Bell, it’s not why there was a hurricane.
The hurricane would have happened no matter what.
But Florence Manning was called to protect the island, raise the alarm, help the people.
And she didn’t. If she knew about Audra, she sure didn’t tell anyone.
But that’s not all of it. She not only refused the call but also tried to betray the Blódughadda.
The story goes that huldufólk pushed her, and she broke her leg.
” He held up a finger to stop Harper’s interjection.
“But, there’s more. You should ask my mother about it, she’s the expert, but evidently Florence Manning and the research team were planning on not just studying your octopus but capturing it, killing it, bringing it back for research, dissection, whatever. ”
Harper felt a chill go up her spine. “But that’s totally unethical, I can’t imagine …”
“You all are from the university? Right? Fifteen years ago, the New Brunswick team was being funded by some private group. They were working with a whole different set of rules.”
“So that’s why the huldufólk attacked Florence Manning, to punish her for ignoring Blódughadda’s call, and then plotting to destroy Thalassa.” Harper said the words softly, mostly to herself.
Einar set his hands down on the table. “Strictly speaking, I’m not supposed to be discussing this with an outsider.
But you’re not really, though, are you? Your mother was born here, so you’re one of us.
There’s a lot about this island that defies explanation, but it’s the way it is here.
Outsiders don’t get it, but I think you might.
You’re less outside than you think yourself to be.
” Einar poured himself more coffee and gestured the pot toward Harper, who shook her head.
“I suppose you’re right.” Harper was interrupted by an enormous, shaggy black cat with bright gold eyes that pushed her way through the front door.
“Oh, well hello,” Einar said, and extended a hand. The cat leapt onto the table and allowed Einar to stroke her ears.
Harper watched the scene amused. “What’s her name?”
“Don’t believe in naming cats, when they want you to know their name, they’ll tell you,” Einar said as the black cat moved to his lap and settled in for a nap.
“I should go,” Harper said. “It’s getting dark already, and I … well, it’s been a weird day.”
“Come back anytime,” Einar said. “And in case you were curious, Anna sometimes can be found at the pub around nine o’clock or so.”
“How did you know …?” Harper shook her head.
“The huldufólk like to chatter.” Einar winked. “Either that or my mother saw you two coming back from the manor the other night.”
Harper laughed. “You had me for a minute there, but good to know the small-town gossip machine is just as strong here as anywhere.”
“Stronger. The manor road is like to be closed still but when it opens, that’s useful information to have.” Einar gestured to his lap. “I’d get up, but I’m being occupied.”
“No need, thank you.” Harper stood and pulled her jacket on.
“Anytime,” Einar said as he stroked the sleeping cat. “Anytime.”