Changeling's Island - eARC (14 page)

CHAPTER 14

The next weeks of the December holidays were so busy, Tim rather forgot about being bored. The summer days were long and his grandmother believed that daylight was the time to be doing things. Some of those things were fun, spearing fish, even beachcombing for paper-nautilus shells and other flotsam, trying to teach Bunce how to herd sheep…Molly was determined he could learn, but so far all that the big wolfhound had proved was that he had no interest in hunting or killing sheep. And he did come when called…but that was the limit of his natural sheepdog skills. He was almost impossible not to like, he seemed to feel leaning up against you and whipping you with his tail were his duty, and one he loved doing. But he just didn’t quite get what they wanted him to do.

It made the two of them laugh until their sides ached a few times. Molly would get a bit defensive about her dog, but he
was
a big dork sometimes. He’d probably be really good at running down a wolf, but sheep-work was like another dimension to him.

It was a bit like Molly’s dad and beach fishing. He was a nice guy, and had shown Tim how to cast properly, and how to fillet. And in a week Tim could do both better than he could. The guy was just like Bunce to sheep with the sea and fishing. Anyone could see where there was a gutter in the waves. The water was a slightly different color; the waves would be peaking and then flatten when they rolled into it…The foam and seaweed moved differently. It was so obvious that that would be where the big fish would move—to feed on the little fish, shellfish and scraps that washed off the banks by the waves—plain as the nose on your face, and Molly’s dad would cast past it. And even when Tim put him on precisely the right place, he just didn’t seem to get it. Tim knew when a fish was taking little pecks at his bait. How didn’t you know? You could feel it…it was a very different thing from the movement of the water or the waves on the line. Molly’s dad said he couldn’t ever tell the difference. A fish just about had to commit suicide and jump out the water by itself before he caught it. It was kind of embarrassing, when Tim would have four fish and be ready to go home, and the guy didn’t even know he’d had a bite yet, even though his bait had been cleaned out. After the first couple of times, Tim would catch two, gut and fillet them, and stop and supervise and chat with Molly, and stop Bunce from eating the bait or the fillets—or from getting himself spiked by a fish coming out.

It was still fun, even if it was really, really weird to realize that fishing was not like the rest of his life. He was sort of good at it. Better than them, anyway. Everything else he’d ever done, he’d been, well, trying to be good enough not to make a fool of himself. Not that it made any difference. It wasn’t like being an ace hacker or great at footy or something. In the real world, back in Melbourne, being able to catch or spear fish would be unimportant. They’d care about as much about that as they would about herding sheep or growing spuds.

He’d been out a few more times with Jon, when his deckie had called in sick. That wasn’t merely fun. That was just brilliant.

And then school came around, and he realized he’d never gotten back to Melbourne. Mum hadn’t done anything more about it, and he hadn’t chased her or his dad about it. It came to him one evening when he was sitting reading in his room, and Gran was listening to ABC in the dark, like she always did, that maybe his mother didn’t want him back there, ever. Was she getting together with someone else, like Gran thought? He hadn’t even gotten a Christmas call from his father. Hadn’t heard from him again since the Boxing Day call. That was just too like his father: he’d promise, but never quite get to doing it, hoping it would go away before he had to. Had they all just written him off to Flinders Island forever? Like sending someone to Australia in the old days, and forgetting they existed. Even if he had enough money to get to Melbourne…where would he live if Mum didn’t want him? The idea of living on the street scared him. And he’d never have enough money to get a place of his own. He wasn’t sure how or if he could get some kind of job.

He wasn’t wanted, and had no one who cared much.

It was a pretty miserable thought.

It was still bothering him the next afternoon after school, so when he’d finished fixing the water trough down at the beach paddock, the one that ran along the crown reserve and had next-to-useless grazing, he walked down onto the beach through the saltbush.

The sky was patchy with cloud, and the sea had that “warning” color to it. It wouldn’t be much good for fishing. There was nasty weather coming soon, by the look of it. He wouldn’t have known that three months ago. Now, he could look at the sea, work out that the tide had just turned, look at the flecks of white out on the blue-gray, and know that meant “southwesterly” and know what the swell would be doing.

And there, about twenty meters from the beach, was that gorgeous surfer girl in her skintight wetsuit, standing waist deep in the foaming waves. She waved to him. “Help!” she called. “I’m so glad to see you! I’ve got my foot stuck in a crack in the limestone and another rock has washed onto it. I can’t reach down to move it. I think my ankle might be broken. I’ve been calling and calling. Scared the tide might come in before anyone came.”

“I’ll go and get help!” said Tim. “I’ll run back and call…”

“Just come out here. I am sure you can shift it. It’s just too sore for me to move the rock.”

Tim was less than sure, and was going to go and get help anyway, when a furious wind gust tore along the beach. The weather change must be closer than he thought. He took his runners off and walked straight into the water, not waiting even to take his shirt off.

* * *

Áed summoned the girl desperately, again, just as he had when the master suddenly headed to the beach, using the power he’d put into that piece of blue baling twine on the beach when she and the master had caught fish together the first time. He’d felt the master was troubled, but the day with the other young ones at the school had gone well. The master was at ease with most of them, and they with him. That Maeve! She was too quick and too clever. She must have been waiting for this moment.

Áed had raised the wind, and that had made it worse.

* * *

She didn’t seem to be in that much pain. She was smiling. An odd smile for someone in trouble, thought Tim, just a second too late. She moved like oiled lightning, grabbing his hands with a viselike grip. “I’ve got you this time. Now I’ll show you what I can do to you if you don’t cooperate.” And as he drew breath to scream, she pulled him under. He barely had time to close his mouth.

He was terrified…and then furious, even as he was desperate for air, as she towed him through the water. He kicked at her. What a stupid practical joke!

Briefly, he got a chance to gasp air and start to yell before she pulled him under again. Now the anger turned, at least in part, to fear. She was going to drown him! He began to struggle with every ounce of his strength. He had his knife…

He managed to kick himself free—to the surface. He gasped air and frantically tore at his wet pocket as she grabbed his legs again.

Opening the knife was an act of desperation, and he nearly lost it, but she let go. He thrashed in the deep water, a wave foaming and peaking next to him. So far from shore already—he must be seventy yards out now—and his foot kicked something that clung around it. His first panicky thought was that it was her. He reached under, stabbing in his fear…and came up with a broad strand of seaweed on the blade. He extended his foot that way and touched rock. A limestone pinnacle, a spike of rock that had not eroded away. Jon looked for them to dive on, and it was why the sea foamed here. Tim had even seen and noticed this one from the beach. He scrambled up onto it. The water surged up to his chest with the waves, but it was something to stand on.

He looked around for the madwoman.

The black shape torpedoed through the water, so close he screamed. Came up, and the dog-face of the seal grinned at him, showing white teeth.

It was not a pretty-seal-at-SeaWorld seal’s smile. Or a cartoon seal smile. This was a wild thing in command of its environment. And the wild thing rolled…and became the woman.

Now Tim screamed again, pure hysteria. He dug his toes desperately into the slippery, seaweedy rock.

After the third scream, when the seal-woman hadn’t gone away, but was treading water about two yards off, looking at him, he managed to get some small kind of grip on himself.

“Found the rock, have you?” she said coolly. “Well, no matter. The tide and waves will get to you, if you don’t do as I wish.”

“Wh-wh-what are you?” demanded Tim holding the knife in front of himself in a shaking hand. “What are you trying to drown me for?”

“I won’t drown you unless I have to, changeling-child,” said the seal-woman. “I just wanted you away from the land that gives you strength, away from your little familiar. He’s trying all sorts of small magics to help you, but here you are in my realm. King Finvarra wants the key back.”

“What the hell are you talking about, you madwoman? What are you?” Fright or the cold made him shiver.

She turned into a seal again, swam around him, and then returned to looking human. She didn’t look much like Lorde now. “That answers your second question. I am Maeve, and I can drown you. It’s not me you need to know about to understand the first question. It is who
you
are and where your blood came from.”

“What are you talking about? I can’t believe this.” He wiped his eyes with his hand. Not the hand with the knife clutched so hard his knuckles were white, but the other hand.

“Believe your eyes,” she said, disdainfully. “Your kind, or rather your great-great-great-great-great-grandmother’s kind, are good at deceiving themselves. Your male forefather’s ilk were good at deceiving them. Which is how Finvarra seduced the silly girl and took her away to the hollow hills, to his palace beneath Cnoc Meadha. Your great-great-great-great-grandfather was her get, and like all of his half-blood kind, put out of Aos Sí lands to grow to manhood among mortal men.”

“What are you trying to tell me? I don’t
believe
this stuff.” A part of him did, though. “Are you telling me that, like, I’m descended from some king?”

“A king of what you would call Faerie. There are many other half-blood children, many full-blood princes in the Hollow Lands. They ride and hunt and dance and feast, and are waited on by the lesser spirits and creatures of magic. Even as you are. Your birthright, the key, and the servant. The key will take you to Faerie lands. The door is closed, otherwise.”

“I don’t have any servants, and I don’t have any keys. You’ve got the wrong person. I’m just Tim Ryan.”

“I know your name, as I knew your father’s name, and his father before him and his father before him, and indeed the two generations before that. You are all marked. And your servant…is frantically striving to bring you help from the beach. He is even calling the old ones of this place. They will not help you. You’re not on their land anymore.”

As she said that, Tim knew she was lying, because his feet told him so. It seemed to make him stronger. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Go away or I’ll stab you.” If she was magical…“Cold iron. You can’t touch me.”

“I could command the sharks to do it for me. Their blood will just add to their frenzy. You would never reach the shore.”

“Look, I don’t have any keys. Just let me go.”

“It lies hidden on that island out there. Your ancestor decided to flee Ireland, and brought it with him. He was shipwrecked, and took it and his few small treasures, and hid them. That much I have established. He joined the half-wild men there, the sealers, and took himself a wife, a woman taken from the Aboriginal people of Tasmania. He died there—his blood ran into the water so I knew of it—but not before he had fathered a son. The key is the birthright of the changeling, or of the eldest son of the changeling. And it has come down to you across the long generations.”

“And you want to take it from me? I don’t even know where it is, let alone want to give it to you.”

“I do not want it,” said the seal-woman. “I am a creature of the sea, not the endless lands of Faerie. King Finvarra wants it back. I am bound to see it returned to him. The Aos Sí do not cross salt water, or he would have sent his own warriors. The keys to Faerie lands are precious, and not to be left for any passing mortal to find. So I was sent. I need to fulfil my geas, and be free of the bargain I made. You are the last heir. You will not leave here without my consent, and the tide is rising.”

A thought dawned on Tim, and with it a bubble of anger. “Yeah? Really?” he said sarcastically. “If you could get it without me, you would. And if you kill me, you won’t.”

The selkie tossed her hair back. Sighed. “Yes. But I can make you suffer. Or I can reward you. These lands protect you, but here in the water…I could take a leg off. Or both hands. You could still have children for me to get it from, even if I maim you and you still hold off. But I cannot find it without you. It lies on that island. The place protects those of the blood of the land, your great-great-great-great-grandmother’s people, against my magic. It will not let me ashore. I would rather make a bargain with you than maim you. I wanted to frighten you first, that was all.”

Tim didn’t trust her. “Yeah. Like I’d believe you after what you tried to do to me.”

“I was taking you to those floats over there,” she pointed to a bunch of cray pot floats, all tied together, some forty or fifty meters farther out. “I wanted you away from the land. And we do not give our oaths lightly and easily like humans. There is no need for either of us to lose. You could take the key to Finvarra yourself. You have the right to enter the hollow hill. It is your birthright, your key, the birth-gift to your ancestor, and even though it has passed down to the oldest son, across the long generations, it is still your birthright. You would be welcomed and rewarded well. I swear this on my cape, that which allows me to change my form, and there is no more compelling oath I can give. The women of Faerie are beautiful, and willing and eager for young mortal lovers. They see few, now, and you would have the charm of novelty to them in their loving. There is feasting, and dancing and laughter, and there are great hunts across the endless fields of Faerie. I have seen the joy of the hunt in you, and you would love it. You would be a prince among them, not someone who labors, who chops wood, hauls water and shovels dung. You would be the darling and pleasure of the court. You would live out long days in happiness. What can this scrap of land offer you but hard labor and poverty? Look. I will show you.”