Kraken (14 page)

“Wait,” said Will. “Isn’t that Aiden’s?”

Cy smiled at him. “Was Aiden’s.
Was
. Mine now.”

Will looked at him.

“He knew they didn’t belong to him. He gave them to me to return. You don’t remember?”

Will shook his head. He wasn’t sure what was wrong with him today. “I guess I had a big day. I’m still not sure. It seemed shorter.” But he was Cy’s. That was something clear and true. He reached out a hand, let it linger across Cy’s strong shoulder. He wished Cy would touch him again.

“That’s all right, my love. Like I said, you had a lot to drink last night.” Cy wrapped the stone in Will’s garment, and placed it tenderly into the bag.

“Today we’re going to put this back where it belongs. You ready?”

Will nodded. It seemed so strange to just dress and eat and go. He thought about his laptop and tablet, packed away in his bag. He didn’t even know if they were charged or not. Suddenly he seemed to have no room in his life for them.

The dinghy was waiting for them at the bottom of the cliff.

“When did you fetch this back?” asked Will.

“While you were asleep,” said Cy. “You really zonked out. Get in.”

Will’s breath still hitched at the thought of being on top of deep water, but one look from Cy and he hopped into the dinghy.

Cy rowed them out into the harbor, heading north. Will sat in the stern, trying to keep his hands away from the edge of the little boat. He wished he had something else to think about, than the depths below them. Will could see the head of the harbor now, and the mouth of a small river, and a long low wetland spread out in front of them, with tall dusty marsh grass growing in thick clumps. Cy took them unerringly up a hidden stream. Will relaxed now the water was clearly shallow. The stream only extended a few feet either side of the boat, and the banks were full of deep crab holes. A few basking yellow-green crabs waved tiny arms at them threateningly, where the water was beginning to retreat. Cy kept the boat in the centre of a narrow blue channel that wound like an unfurled ribbon across the mud and grass. The air smelt of a dead tide.

At last Cy nosed the boat into a bank.

“Hop out here.”

The two of them pulled the dinghy well up above the high tide mark, tying it to a tree.

Cy pointed inland, towards a steep ridge with deep tree cover. “We have to climb that. It’s a lot easier once we’re at the top, I promise. Usually I’d just swim around the island to get there, but I don’t think you’re quite ready for that.”

Will blanched. “Uh. No.”

“One day,” Cy promised.

The climb was incredibly steep, with no apparent trail. Will’s feet frequently slipped on the cushion of needles underfoot, and his hands grew sticky from the sap of the pine trunks he had to grab on to. Will was well out of breath thirty minutes later when abruptly the hill topped out and they walked from deep shadow into open sunlight. A clear-cut trail led either way along the top of the ridge, peppered with baby aspen and pine saplings. The other side of the trail was covered with a fragrant lemony scrub, waist high, instead of pine.

“Well done, lovely. C’mon over here.” Cy opened his arms and Will leaned gratefully into them. Cy kissed his hair and held him close. “You’re adjusting so well. I’m proud of you. You were meant to be here.”

Will rubbed his face against Cy’s shoulder.

Cy held him a moment longer, then released him, and Will missed the heavy weight of Cy’s arms holding him close. They set off west along the trail. Lazy insects buzzed slowly on all sides.

“How come there’s a track here?”

“Once, not long ago, this was all farmland. Look.”

Cy walked a foot off the trail and bent to the ground, reaching under a spindly bush, then crouched back up, holding up a strand of barbed wire. A rotten fencepost feebly tried to stand to attention.

“This was a road. People would drive along it in their buggies, pulled by horses. Sheep and cattle browsed all over there.” Cy gestured to the dense scrub to their right.

“What happened?”

“The mine flooded. The land wasn’t rich enough for farming. The people left. The woods are coming back now. See all the saplings? Another couple of decades and there’ll be no trace of this road. It won’t take long. In a hundred years you’ll never find a sign of people.”

Will thought about the development model at the store, but didn’t argue.

“Cy? Tell me about me when I still lived here?”

“All right.” He was silent for a minute, as if considering what to say.

“You lived with your grandparents, across the harbor from me. I used to swim over to see you. You got an Optimist the last year you were here: sometimes you’d sail over to my side. I always knew we’d be together.”

“Where was my mom?”

Cy shrugged. “I don’t know. She left you with your grandparents when you were very young. Just a baby. I never met her.”

“But I grew up with her.”

“One day, when you were eight, she came on the ferry. And she took you away with her.”nFor the first time, Will could hear emotion in Cy’s voice. “I couldn’t believe you were gone. It was too soon. We were supposed to— “

Cy broke off, and Will reached out and took his hand, squeezing it lightly.

“I’m sorry. And I’m sorry I don’t remember.” Will paused. He definitely got the feeling Cy didn’t want to talk about this, but he had to know. “What were my grandparents like?”

Cy frowned. “They were old. And you were an outdoors kind of boy. Strong. Beautiful. Brave. You liked exploring. You didn’t spend much time with them.”

They walked together for a long while in silence. Will didn’t feel his usual sensation of having to fill up the empty space. They crested the hill.

“Oh my god,” breathed Will. The whole back half of the island was visible: olive and emerald and celadon slopes falling away on all sides, with the trail turning to the left, like a sandy snake along its spine. Directly ahead of them a bite had been taken out of the dark green, and a wide expanse of Prussian blue flecked with whitecaps licked in towards them.

Cy grinned at Will’s face. “It’s amazing, isn’t it? Highest point on my island.”

Will gaped, and spun slowly in a three-sixty. Abruptly he threw his arms out to the side and ran whooping down the hill toward the sea, pushing through the scrubby brush.

As he grew nearer the shoreline the slope deepened into a valley, and the trees thinned out, bent over like old gray men in the face of the strong sea breeze. A startled rabbit bounded across the slope away from Will, heading for the distant side of the valley where a rocky escarpment met sparse grass.

Cy caught up to him and grabbed him by the waist, whirling him around. His fingers brushed the skin in the gap between Will’s shirt and pants, and Will shivered.

Cy kissed the cold skin of his ear, then buried his face in Will’s neck. “Don’t run. It’s too steep. And there’d be no help coming if anything happened to you.”

The bay was right below them now, heavy rollers pounding in to a wide rock berm that pushed out aggressively into the ocean. A boulder-strewn beach prefaced a wide lagoon carved out of the rock, where a trickle of water from the gully played across the beach and ran into the sea, as if a teardrop had fallen from the ocean to touch the sand.

Cy pointed out to sea, where a distant sail made a periwinkle triangle against white clouds. “If we swam straight out there we’d hit nothing for about five thousand miles.”

The route down to the sea’s edge was steep and trackless, as if no one had ever visited before. The beach however, was strewn with flotsam: detergent bottles, barnacle-encrusted fishing floats, and fragments of bait pots, covered with a veil of tattered nets. Everywhere lay bone-white driftwood, hiding a trove of single shoes.

What had looked from afar like sand was dunes of broken shells in ankle-deep drifts of orange and white. They trickled in over the tops of Will’s shoes, jabbing at the skin.

“Best to take them off,” said Cy. He placed his knapsack on the ground and shucked all his clothes, folding and stacking them on a huge ivory tree-trunk lying on its side that reached to Will’s shoulder. Cy naked looked like part of the rugged scenery.

“What if someone comes?”

“I’ve been coming here . . . well, a very long time. And I’ve never met another person. Get them off. I brought something along just for you.”

Cy dug into the knapsack. He pulled out the bulky package of Will’s t-shirt, and then something else, holding it out to Will. Will walked over, feet sliding in the drifts, and wincing at the shells in his shoes. His hand closed on rubber: a diving mask.

“I think you’ll be better when you can see underwater, you know?

Will was touched. “Thanks, Cy.” He looped the head strap over his arm.

Cy pointed at him. “Off.”

Will toed off his shoes, and shyly undid his jeans, pushing them down to his feet. He pulled them off, then shook them to shed the damp hem of broken shells they’d collected.

“Boxers?” Cy frowned.

“Commando just isn’t my thing, Cy. It’s kind of . . . gross?”

“You’re mine now, lovely. I make the decisions.”

“Cy, could you maybe not say that? Please? It’s freaking me out a little.”

“Don’t be tiresome. Come. Swim.”

Cy stood next to him, and bent down to kiss his neck softly, pulling his arms out of his shirt sleeves one by one, as Will swapped the dive mask into his other hand. Cy pulled the shirt over Will’s head and flung it behind them. With one hand he grabbed Will’s hardening cock, and led him by it towards the sea, grinning.

“Oh, wait!” He released Will and ran back to the knapsack.” Cy picked up his cargo, unswaddling it from the t-shirt. He cradled it against his side and loped back over to Will. “Can’t forget the most important thing.”

“What are you going to do with it? Why’d we bring it?”

“Put it back where it belongs.”

Will already knew better than to hesitate on entering the water, although it was much colder than the gentler waters of the harbor. The entrance to the lagoon was only a few feet wide, but the rolling breakers that dashed themselves against the rocks on either side still made their way in through the shallow gap, breaking rhythmically and splashing Will’s face, getting salt in his eyes. The lagoon floor fell away precipitously, going from knee deep to over his head within a few feet. The depths beneath him were a dark, rich blue, and Will’s breath quickened involuntarily.

Ahead of him, Cy lazily rolled onto his back and, with one arm, sculled out to the centre of the lagoon.

Will stuck to the edges of the pool, where he could still see the shallow sloping sides, and feel assured he could make it to the edge if anything happened. His nerves jangled. Cy caught his eye, smiled at him, then with a swirl dove under the surface. Will caught a glimpse of inky tentacles in the tiny whirlpools left behind. He was gone for long minutes, and Will began to shiver with more than the ocean’s cold caress.

Will brought the mask up to his face, spitting into it and wiping the saliva around, making a disgusted sound in the back of his throat. When the mask was prepped he hooked the strap around the back of his head and settled the facemask into place. He breathed in through his nose to check the seal was tight, then lowered his head into the water.

It was worse than he thought. The bottom of the lagoon was . . . well, it wasn’t. There was no bottom; it went down into perfect blueness. Will’s heart raced, and a deep fear gripped him. He thrashed away from the edge of the hole, grabbing for the rocks surrounding the lagoon.

All at once a great peaceful pleasure descended on him. The sensation was overwhelming, like a wave of bliss catching him in its grasp and dumping him into sensation. He felt himself go boneless, limp, and a warm creeping sensation ran from ear to ear across the back of his head.

He slumped down into the water, and slipped beneath the surface. Now he could see tiny anemones clutching the walls of the lagoon in patterns of verdigris and mauve, and orange starfish, plump and round as if stuffed with wadding.