Chapter 17
Chapter Seventeen
B ee woke up outside on the grassy slope, her head pounding. The hill tomb looked exactly as it had minutes earlier when she had walked inside. Not minutes, she realised, seeing the sun low in the West. It was late afternoon and hours had passed. She sat up gingerly, scanning her body for signs of injury. She ached all over and her neck had a sharp pain, like she had slept in an awkward position, but she was otherwise unhurt. Lucky, Bee chided herself. You are extremely lucky.
The boat trip back to Unholy Island was fast. As though the winds were helping her to leave the quiet place. The sky was getting darker by the moment and rain began to splatter as she crossed the halfway point to Harbour Bay. She held the tiller of the motor and faced forward, only glancing back once. àite Marbh was fading into the sea mist and the wake of the boat bumping across the waves was dissolving unnaturally fast, hiding her path. She didn’t look back again.
On Harbour Bay, Bee dragged the boat onto the sand. It was a low-lying harbour where the island simply melted into the sea. There was a pontoon for when it was an especially high tide, but they usually just dragged the boat into the water and stepped in once it was floating.
A sleek brown head popped up between the waves further out. It was joined by a second a moment after. Bee watched the seals swimming and then turned to walk up the sand toward the coast path. She hadn’t gone very far when she heard Fiona’s voice behind her. The selkie was in human form, but with her thoroughly drenched hair slicked back from her face and her eyes looking rounder and darker than they usually did, there was something seal-like about her. Bee raised a hand in greeting and waited for Fiona to catch up.
‘Did you see—?’
‘No,’ Bee cut in quickly, wanting to get Fiona’s expression of disappointment over with as soon as possible.
‘I thought,’ Fiona started, and then she made a garbled sound. Words gone wrong. She shook her head. ‘Sorry. Doesn’t translate. It takes a wee while when I’ve been… I’ll try again. Did you see any sign of him?’
‘Nothing,’ Bee said. ‘The gateway threw me out.’
‘There’s an actual gate?’
‘A doorway, I suppose. I’m not sure if it’s inside the cairn or whether the doorway is the doorway into the hillside. The latter, maybe.’ Bee realised that she had felt that she had gone Elsewhere the moment she had crossed the threshold. The line that ran beneath the primitive stone lintel.
‘Are you hurt?’
‘No.’ Bee shrugged, shooting a small smile. ‘Just my pride.’
The rain that had started as Bee was sailing was coming in more heavily now. Fiona looked around and Bee followed her gaze. Euan was visible behind Hammer’s boathouse, making his way to the pathway ahead of them.
‘How is he doing?’
‘Better. Now that Oliver is no longer with us. He likes having Hamish around, too. Those two are thick as thieves.’
Bee nodded. She realised she ought to ask after the baby. It was the human thing to do, so she did, even though her mind was still taken up with her failure and what it meant.
‘Esme is looking after him.’
Fiona has misunderstood her, Bee realised. She hoped the selkie didn’t think that Bee had been criticising her caregiving skills. ‘I didn’t think you had left him home alone,’ she said gently. ‘He’s a very lucky little boy.’
‘Thank you,’ Fiona said, mollified. ‘But a grumpy gateway doesn’t sound ideal. Should we be worried?’
‘I don’t know,’ Bee said. Her calm somewhat restored. That was the thing about humanity. Ask them to name a ship and they’ll vote for Boaty McBoatface and tell them there’s a tear in the fabric of the reality that they know and they call it a ‘grumpy gateway’. Fiona wasn’t really human, of course, but she spent the majority of her time living as one. Like Bee. And that had obviously infected them both. Hopefully, with the best that humanity had to offer.
Bee walked with Fiona to Esme’s bed-and-breakfast. There was a washing-up bowl and plastic jug and cups discarded in the front garden. A note stuck to the door had fallen onto the step and Bee picked it up. It said ‘come right in’ in rain-streaked letters. So they did.
Following the sounds of voices – Hamish’s high-pitched babble and Esme’s lower tones – they found Esme sitting on the sofa in the living room with Hamish next to her. They were clearly in the middle of a mammoth reading session with a pile of board books. The coffee table was covered in detritus, including a plastic plate with some soggy strips of toast, some chunky toy cars, and a green Sippy cup.
‘Mama!’ Hamish launched himself bodily at Fiona the moment she walked into the room. Esme caught the child around the middle to stop him from going headfirst off the furniture and he began to wail.
Fiona scooped him up and the tears stopped. ‘Hello wee man,’ she said. ‘Have you been good for your Auntie Esme?’
‘He’s been great. We’ve had a lovely time.’
‘I’ll put the kettle on,’ Bee said, backing out of the room.
‘Thanks,’ Esme said, stacking the books and removing a strip of toast from the front of her clothes where it had stuck, butter side down.
Once Bee had made three teas and carried them back through, she heard Fiona saying ‘Thank you, again,’ to Esme.
‘Anytime,’ Esme said, grabbing a tea from Bee’s tray like a woman dying of thirst. ‘It was fun.’
‘It was exhausting, I bet,’ Fiona said. ‘You can be honest.’
Esme shook her head and smiled, drinking tea. ‘I enjoyed it.’ She looked at Bee. ‘Is this a social visit or…?’
‘I need to talk to you.’
‘Should we go?’ Fiona glanced down at Hamish, who was sitting on her feet, driving a plastic car across the carpet.
‘No,’ Bee said. ‘You can hear this.’
‘What is it?’
‘You know the wards and that they protect the island? It’s not all they do.’
‘Okay,’ Esme wasn’t looking worried and Bee knew that was about to change.
‘The wards protect the world.’
Esme stared at Bee for a beat. ‘The wards protect the world,’ she repeated eventually. ‘I don’t understand how…’
‘àite Marbh is a thin place. Like at All Hallow’s Eve, but all the time. It’s a doorway. The ancient people who lived here sensed it, so that’s why they built their tomb where they did. Archaeologists assume it was to honour their high-ranking dead, but it might have been that they sensed it was a place that needed guarding. Maybe things came through at that place that needed to be imprisoned.’
‘Or it was a kind of church or temple. Could it have been a sacred place?’
Bee considered the question. ‘Why do you ask?’
‘I’ve been reading about cairns and standing stones. Ancient sites.’ She shrugged a little self-consciously. ‘The only thing I can do is research. It makes me feel like I’m doing something at least. I’ve felt so useless.’
‘You are not useless,’ Bee said.
‘Sounds like you have the most important job on the island,’ Fiona said. Her eyes had lightened, turning fully human on the walk from the beach to Esme’s. Now they seemed to be flooding darker again. Bee gave her a warning look until she looked down, composing herself.
‘So how do I fix this?’
‘There has been a Ward Witch on this island for a very long time. As long as you tend the wards and live on the island, that is all that is required. Just being the Ward Witch is all that matters.’
Esme frowned. ‘It’s purely symbolic? The gate knows there is a Ward Witch, so they assume the way is shut?’
‘Exactly,’ Bee said.
‘It’s sentient?’ Fiona asked.
‘Kind of. It’s hard to explain. But we’re pretty sure the things in Elsewhere don’t know about it, otherwise they would be trying harder to come through. They would have tested it by now, Ward Witch or not.’
‘Well, that’s not very reassuring,’ Fiona said. ‘If they test it, they’ll find…’ she gestured to Esme. ‘No offence, hen.’
‘So I’m the symbolic guardian of a doorway between realities? And we’ve been relying on my title to stop things even trying to sneak through?’
‘That’s the size of it. But the gateway has been working to keep things locked up, too. It’s not exactly sentient, not in the sense you probably mean, but I get the impression that it knows it’s not meant to be used. It errs on the side of staying shut in both directions.’
‘Well, that’s something.’
‘So how did Tobias go through?’
Bee looked at the two women. A selkie and a witch.
‘I know he’s special,’ Esme said with a touch of impatience. ‘But what is he?’
‘Have you ever looked?’ Bee asked, curious.
‘No,’ Esme said. ‘That would be rude.’
Bee smiled. She really was very fond of Esme. She patted her arm. ‘It’s probably for the best. Might have been blinding.’
‘What do you mean?’ Fiona was looking between them.
‘He’s a god.’