Body of Water (13 page)

Dom seemed to have interest in nothing but the object that my father had taken from him. If Maggs had come across it and showed him its location then maybe he'd take it and be on his way.

I wasn't sure how I felt about his potential departure. As much as I distrusted him I had to admit that he intrigued me. Dom was mean and aggressive, unpredictable and surly, but he was a beautiful creature too, like a bull penned in before a fight.

And I was increasingly certain that what I'd seen the night before was real. Dom had knelt on the floor of that mill-house, bearing an impossibly heavy weight, and mouthed a few words before he disappeared. I had to find out how he'd done it, where he'd gone, and why that stone was so important.

Mouth still dry, I started to make tea. I knew that a glass of water would have been better for me physically but I needed a sweet brew right now. As I sat at the table, flicking slowly through a newspaper full of names of people and places I didn't recognise, I heard Dom's heavy boots stomping towards the house. But there was something different about his stride; it was slower than usual and one boot dragged from time to time.

I started to ask if he was all right even before I saw his face and when I did I stopped asking. He had looked tired before but now he looked exhausted, his face more drawn, his eyes even redder. He didn't acknowledge my unfinished question.

I asked a new one. "What happened?"

As I watched the back of him retreat through the lounge and up the staircase I caught a few words. "... just need to rest."

Upstairs, a key turned in a lock and a door opened and closed. Several muted steps and then nothing.

I turned back to the paper but didn't read. My mind filled with questions. The longer I stayed here the more questions I had. If anyone here had answers they were reluctant to share them with me but I wasn't going to stop asking them.

A movement to my left surprised me and, as the sharp intake of breath filled my lungs, my ribs protested.

Maggs stood in the kitchen doorway, her short round silhouette looking squat in its frame.

She looked surprised to see me sitting at the table. Her eyes darted from me to the mug of tea to the paper and back again. "Ye should be resting."

It wasn't an admonishment or order. The sincerity in her voice reassured me that Maggs wanted me gone for my own good.

"Why do you think I'm in danger?"

She wrung her hands, looking uncomfortable.

I sighed heavily and pushed the paper away from me. "Sit down, Maggs. I'll make a cup of tea."

As soon as I made to get up she hurried into the room to push me gently back down into my chair before leaping into a flurry of activity. "Don't be making me tea. I can do that perfectly well for myself." Her coat was off and her sleeves rolled up before I could protest so I sat back and watched her. The routine calmed her posture but her eyes still avoided mine. She appeared relieved to be occupied and the sound of her tea-making filled the yawning void of unanswered questions that stretched between us.

In a few minutes she had made her own tea and refilled mine. She sat to my right, facing the kitchen door.

I asked again. "Why do you think I'm in danger?"

"I'm starting to think that Dom was right. Maybe we're all in danger."

"But before he said that you were insistent that I was in danger. Just me. Why?"

"Yer mother told me that ye were." Avoiding my gaze again she dug at the surface of the painted mug with her thumbnail, as if to gouge off the glaze.

"My mother?"

"She'd appeared on Mackay's arm one day. He showed her off and rightly so. She was the loveliest thing to ever set foot on the island and more beautiful than the simmer dim itself. My father had lost a sheep and I was walking the shore, trying to find it, and there she was, exhausted, sobbing, and heavy with child. I knew there wasn't much time; that ye were on yer way, so I helped deliver you right there on the beach. After ye were with us I went to bathe ye in the water but she grabbed me by my wrist. I've never known ferocity and strength like it for one so gentle and slight. She grabbed me by the wrist and told me to keep ye away from the water at all costs. I thought she was delirious, talking nonsense, but when I looked into her eyes I knew she believed it. She made me promise to protect ye."

"From water?"

"Yes, Michael."

The name, spoken so easily, startled me. "But I have showers, take baths, swim in pools. I'm fine."

"Ruth let ye swim?" The disapproval in her voice prodded my temper but it fizzled away when I realised that she'd used Mum's name.

"You knew my mum?"

"Oh ye poor, sweet boy, of course I did." Maggs laughed and leaned forward to grasp my hand in hers. Who do ye think led her to ye?"

I shook my head, starting to feel sick. "I don't believe this."

"I'm the only one you can believe, my boy. No one else can tell you what I know, even if they wanted to. There's a magic spell preventing it."

It hit me then, all the times people seemed on the brink of telling me what I wanted to know but shying away from the truth, always leaving me with more questions, more uncertainty, and more frustration. "So how would you know someone had cast a spell?"

"Because it was me that cast it."

"So you're a witch?"

Rammed into one corner of the sofa, curled into a ball, seemed to be the safest place to be while Maggs mopped up my vomit from the kitchen floor and opened the door and windows to allow the rooms downstairs to air. I pulled the blanket tighter around me, hoping that if I pulled tight enough it might keep my entire being from exploding. The answers I was finally getting made things seem foggier, not clearer.

She bustled into the room, wiping her chapped, red hands on her skirt. "No, not a witch. I'm not magical by nature so I don't go casting spells hither and thither. The toll on my body would be too great. Drink yer water, beuy."

She jutted her chin to the glass that sat on the table between us. I eyed it warily and she rolled her eyes.

"It's just water, Michael. Drink it."

"Will you please stop calling me that? My name is Leven."

"No, it's Michael. I named ye at yer mother's request. It was my grandfather's name and she liked it when I suggested it."

I snatched the glass up and drained it. "Listen to me. My name is Leven. I don't care what you called me when I was born or what's on my records. My name is Leven."

Her beady eyes surveyed me for a moment before she sat in the chair opposite me. "All right, beuy. All right. Leven it is."

"And why are you suddenly telling me the truth, assuming this is the truth? You couldn't wait to get rid of me the other night so why now?"

"The truth might be the only thing to convince ye to go back home."

"So where do we go from here? You're going to undo your spell and set me free on the island to find out what's going on?"

She cocked her head to one side. "How much has Dom told ye about himself?"

"Not much apart from he's some sort of prisoner or slave and that Mackay has something of his that's keeping him here."

"That's as much as he can tell ye. Have ye pushed him for more information?"

"Of course but he says that he can't..."

Maggs smiled triumphantly. "Ye see? He wants to tell ye but he can't."

"But what Dom wants to tell me isn't actually about me, is it?"

"No, but the spell isn't that specific. It's designed to keep the truth about this place from you. Dom is a part of this place, that's all. If I could punch a hole in the spell and let Dom's truth be shared, would you believe me and leave the island?"

"I think that you should answer a few more of my questions. How come I've been okay around water? You mentioned pools but I've been in swimming pools."

"It's living water that ye have to be kept from; anything that's connected to the sea. The continuous flow of river to ocean is forbidden for ye, even if ye're upstream."

"But why?"

"Something is waiting in the water for ye, beuy. Something ancient, something chaotic, something evil. Don't ye feel it when ye're here, so close to the sea?"

I thought back to the sensation I'd had travelling here, and again when I stood on the beach with Dom. I had felt something on both of those occasions but written it off as motion sickness.

"What happened to my mother?"

Maggs shrugged. "I honestly don't know. I left ye with her and went to find some clean water but when I returned only ye were there."

"So, you...?"

She smiled thinly. "I looked after ye as best I could but I'm not the mothering type. I'm clumsy at best. The only reason I haven't been fired from the pub for breaking so many glasses is that I own it myself."

"You gave me up for adoption?"

"Eventually, yes. I travelled down to London to keep ye as far from this place as I could but still keep you safe."

"There's a bloody great river in London, Maggs."

She chuckled then, the twinkle back in her eye. "I worried about that for a while but folk told me it was so dirty that no one in their right mind would ever dip their child's toe in it, let alone take them swimming. Disgusting thing."

"And my mum? You said you'd led her to me."

Maggs's smile turned sad then and she looked down at her hands as she spoke, her voice barely audible. "She was a good woman, Ruth. I've forgotten how many rituals I'd tried to see into yer future but nothing worked. All I could see was yer present and it broke my heart to see ye so alone and so angry at the world. As soon as I met her I knew she'd be the perfect mother for a young man like ye. She knew our folklore and customs, and longed for a baby from these islands, but the community was so small she soon realised that would never happen. She told me her story the night before she and Alex were due to move to London. They'd met and married while he'd been working here on one of those new-fangled energy-producing wave machines. I told her about ye, and where ye were."

My thoughts formed as I spoke them. "I know you think you saved me, and that you're still protecting me, but my whole life has been filled with questions that no one could ever answer. I have terrible dreams. I can do things that ordinary people can't do. I've grown up knowing that I'm different to everyone around me. No one could tell me why. But you knew. You could have told me-"

"I couldn't. It wasn't safe."

"Safe? My life has been anything but safe. I've been farmed out to live with some despicable people, Maggs. I'd rather you'd brought me up and dropped me a few times than some of the things I've gone through at the hands of others."

She wrung her hands as she spoke. "I'm sorry, beuy. I thought it was for yer own good."

"And now I'm here anyway. Great plan, Maggs, really great plan."

"I see yer point. I'm sorry that I've interfered as I have. I thought I was doing the right thing. Ye didn't answer my question. If I can allow Dom to tell ye the truth about him, why he's really here, will ye leave?"

"I'll consider it."

She closed her eyes and her lips moved a little, as if rehearsing or recalling some half-remembered phrase. Then she opened her eyes and smiled at me. "It's done. I'll leave ye two to talk."

After gathering her things she left. I watched her shuffle off into the distance and then, confident the house was aired, closed the door and windows.

My body still ached from my injuries but I climbed the stairs to rest and wait for Dom to rise.

As I turned left to go into my room I noticed that Dom's bedroom door was slightly ajar. I hesitated at my own door and listened. His deep, slow breathing was all I could hear. I guessed that he was asleep. Slowly, I pushed against his door hoping that the hinges wouldn't squeak. I pushed a little too hard and to my horror the door swung inwards so fast that I was frightened it would bang against the wall and wake Dom.

I leaped forward and caught the handle just in time. To do so I crossed the threshold into his room.

Looking up my jaw slackened.

Pinned to every surface of each wall was a newspaper cutting. Dom hadn't closed his curtains and enough light made it through the filthy nets that hung at his window to make those closest to me visible. Each one detailed the killing of one or more seals, the bodies of which had been washed, or in some cases dumped, onto the beach. In one story a naked man had been seen running from the scene. The police had investigated but found nothing to link the two incidents together.

Almost all of the yellowed cuttings blamed fishermen for the killings. The sharp decline in fish stocks meant greater competition and seals could be stopped with a bullet no matter how unethical it was.

There were too many articles to read. I made it across one half of the wall to my left when I heard a movement behind me. Startled, it turned to see Dom's face swathed in shadow, only the glint of his eyes signalling that he was awake and watching me.

"What is this?"

He didn't answer. I took a step towards him, to ask again, but he pulled his knees up and hugged them to his chest as if afraid of me. I'd seen that reaction before in the children's home when a kid was scared to speak the truth. "Do ye remember being born?"

"Of course I don't." It might have been a lie. My earliest memory was fragmented. I recalled a body of water, stillness, raised voices, a terrible, spinning wall of waves, but that was all. It might have been some half-remembered dream. "Are you telling me that you do?"

He nodded, pulling his knees up tighter to his chest. It was the same position I had taken on the sofa an hour ago after emptying my stomach onto the kitchen floor. "Like my brothers and sisters before me, Ah had two births; the first in water, the second on land."

I stood, speechless. Whatever Maggs had tried to do, it seemed to have worked. Lowering myself to the floor, I mirrored Dom's posture.

He watched me settle down to listen before he continued. "Ah don't remember ma first birth but ma second was... brutal. As Ah climbed out of the sea ma skin fell away. Ah became something else. A man. Ah couldn't understand with the feelings that rushed in tae take the place of what Ah now know tae be instincts. Ah howled like an abandoned pup and dove back into the water tae escape them but the feelings followed me, crashing against my skull like waves on rock. My mother nudged me, eager that Ah return to the land if only to retrieve ma skin. Ah closed my throat tight and reached out of the water, feeling for ma skin but the prickle of rough stone on these," he held out his right hand and flexed his fingers as if seeing them for the first time, "scared me."