Silver Tides (Silver Tides Series) (35 page)

six minutes

It took a long time for my eyes to adjust to the darkness. My body felt hypersensitive like every particle of oxygen brushing against my skin was leaving grazes. I felt cramped even though there was lots of room. I stayed a couple of paces behind Arthur, using the rugged stonewall to stabilize me as I walked further into the dark.

“Follow me closely,” rasped Arthur. “The left will open into a hole that ye most likely don’t want to fall into.”

He was moving easily, which made me wonder if he’d been faking his slow movements when we’d first entered the cave. The hairs rose on the back of my neck as I fell in behind my unpredictable guide.

The cave floor sloped down dramatically, forcing me to shuffle my feet so as not to trip on the uneven surface or slip down the descent.

“Is it far?” I asked, my voice sounding small in the enormous cavern that had opened out around us.

“No,” he replied, his tone unconvincing.

I hoped that Charlie and Daniel would follow me sooner than six minutes, the further we descended into the earth, the more claustrophobic I felt.

“You need to duck your head,” Arthur said gruffly, entering into a smaller space.

Even without the torchlight I knew that we’d entered into a smaller cavern. I could feel the walls ready to close in; it took all my self-control to not back out of the cave and shuffle run back up into the cottage.

“It’s over here,” Arthur said making his way to the far wall of the cave. I followed him lamely, wanting to be near the light.

Suddenly there was a rumbling sound behind me, I turned to see something shifting in the shadows. It took me a moment to realize that the hole we’d just entered had closed up. I rushed to the hole and found what felt like a jagged rock door. Despite it being futile, I slapped my hand against its cold hard surface.

“This is what you wanted,” Arthur said calmly, tossing a worn brown leather bag at me.

My hands automatically reached out, plucking the bag from the air. I could feel the starfish shape through the soft leather sack, but being locked under ground had filled me with such untold fear that even holding the Heart of the Sea in my hands didn’t offer any comfort.

“The exit closed,” I stuttered, feeling like the room was closing in on me, “is there another way out of here.”

“No.” Arthur cackled maniacally. “Didn’t yer mother tell you to not talk to strangers.”

Arthur approached me menacingly, the torchlight capturing the madness in his eyes.

I stowed the Heart of the Sea in my pocket, taking a fighters stance. “I will knock you down,” I warned.

Arthur laughed his voice cold. “Don’t worry, I’m not going to hurt ye princess.”

His reassurance meant nothing. “You’ve trapped me here deliberately!” I accused.

He nodded a Cheshire cat smile spread across his lips. “You were right, I was going to die by myself; but now I’m not.”

He’d deliberately led me into the cave so that he wouldn’t be alone when he died. In the torchlight, age spots were spreading up his arms, and the stoop of his back was more pronounced than when we’d entered the cave. Death was chasing Arthur. Soon it would be over. I felt sorry for him and would have stayed had he asked, but being locked under ground was causing a significant blockage to my sympathy.

“Let me out of here,” I ordered, allowing my outrage to give me strength.

“I’m not going to do that.” He coughed before taking a seat on the cold floor, a show of his immovability.

Turning back to the door I began to run my fingers around its edge, trying to find a lever or something to jimmy the rock open. There was nothing. I continued to run my fingers around the cave walls, sweeping my hands up and down the cave surface, feeling for something unnatural. When I reached the door again, I leaned my back against it and sunk to the floor.

“So you’re going to die in here, and then what?” I asked in disgust. “Then I’m going to starve to death in here? You stole Kerensa’s life and now you’re stealing mine, and Daniel’s and the selkie pups. You’re so selfish, even now, you’re willing to put your needs above everyone else’s.”

Arthur chuckled. “Ye sound just like Kerensa. Get comfortable, yer not going anywhere. There’s no way out. I always wanted to be buried here, and now I will be.”

I hung my head between my knees, realizing that there was nothing I could say to change his mind. I’d stupidly followed him to my death. He’d probably planned to bring Kerensa into the cave and let them die together, but I’d freed her, and now I would take her place. He was insane, and I had been stupid enough to trust him.

Arthur began to cough, a deep chest-rupturing hacking filled the cavern.

“It won’t be long now,” he sighed, lying on the cold stone floor, his torch left abandoned beside him.

I couldn’t bring myself to respond. I’d been so stupid to believe that I could outsmart someone in their own home. I felt the pity party start with a shower of tears, then my thoughts spiraled. Daniel and Charlie might find me, but they could just as easily miss me under the caves. They could get lost, anything could happen to them, all because I got cocky and believed I could retrieve the Heart of the Sea on my own.

The tears continued to flow down my cheeks, a silent tribute to my shame. Not only had I put the people I loved in danger, but I’d been mean to a dying man. A person I was now going to spend my last moments with. I didn’t know what had gotten into me, that I would say all those mean things. If I’d just walked away I would be safe with Daniel. But Daniel would be dead without the Heart of the Sea, he was dead now, even with the relic pressing into my thigh in my jeans pocket.

Arthur moaned, a pathetic lonely sound that only added to my sorrow.

“My father said, that no one would ever want me,” Arthur’s hoarse whisper filled the cave, he swallowed hard, the words filled with decades of pent up emotion. “He was right. The only woman who ever loved me was my mother…”

I shook my head, unable to speak because of my own turmoil.

“When I first met Kerensa, she smiled so pretty at me, it made me heart ache,” he continued, “when she agreed to go out for a walk with me... I thought I was the luckiest man alive. She was so beautiful, her long black hair flowing down her back and the way her lips curled when she smiled. Then she met me Ma, and she didn’t wanna marry me no more, said we were different folk. I didn’t see her again for almost a year before I captured her pelt. She was so different, all grown and mature, in less than a year. When I saw her, I knew I couldn’t be without her. So I decided to keep her pelt. She followed me home, begging me to give it back to her. Telling me that true love sets ye free.”

Arthur’s disgusted chortle filled the cave. “Ye know why I never set her free, cos I knew she wouldn’t come back. She’d made it clear when she left that she didn’t want me. I couldn’t live without her, she was all I wanted. Everyone says that real love lets go, but that’s a lie, true love holds on. It keeps the person safe.”

“No,” I disagreed, my voice small, in the oppressive darkness. “Selfishness holds on. The part of us that does what feels good for us at the expense of all else, that’s not real love. Real love lets the other person be free.”

“Yer young,” Arthur replied, implying that I didn’t understand.

“I know that Kerensa was married when you stole her pelt,” I said quietly. “I know that by keeping her captive, you kept yourself captive. You could have found someone that truly reciprocated your feelings, but your fear kept you from ever trying.”

A heart rending sob escaped Arthur’s lips, my eyes surveyed his prone body shaking with sorrow. I wanted to let him die alone, untouched and unloved, the selfish part of me said
Let him rot.

I didn’t want to be that heartless person, his bereft sobs drew me closer. As I crawled across the sharp rocks toward Arthur and his torch, I could see the tears glistening on his skin as they rolled out of his eyes and onto the cave floor.

“I never knew she was married,” Arthur said to himself. “Me father always told me I was a monster. He was right, no one wanted me, and I kept another man’s wife. Now I’m gonna meet me God, an adulterer and thief...” The words released a wave of sobs through his rapidly aging body. In the few minutes we’d been in the cave he’d aged decades.

He was getting the reward for his actions; even though I was with him, he was alone. Despite keeping Kerensa all those years, he’d never had her company or her heart. He was a man who’d never grown up because he’d chosen his father’s negative definition of his life for himself.

I’d crawled within arms reach of his face. The pain of loneliness etched into his decrepit face moved something in me. Even before I’d met Arthur, I’d judged him as thief and a monster, but seeing him lying alone in the dark weeping over a wasted life made me realize that there was so much more to him. He’d been hurting, and the only way he’d ever known to get company for himself was to trap it, just like the only way he knew how to make a living was by fishing. That principle had ruled his life.

Tears rolled down my cheeks again, but this time for the loss that I’d inflicted on Arthur, for my narrow mindedness and re-enforcing the things that he’s always suspected were true about himself.

Moved by my part in his pain, I reached out and smoothed the hair back from his forehead. He recoiled from my touch, his eyes frightened, like a wild animal.

“I’m not sorry that I returned Kerensa’s pelt to her,” I explained gently. “But I am sorry that I said you were a monster and that no one loves you. That was wrong for me to say, and a lie.”

He shook his head, lowering it back within reach. “Ye were right. I wouldn’t know love if it bite me in the heel.”

A weak smile crossed my lips at his words. I didn’t want him to die. I didn’t want to be buried alive with a corpse. Yet my actions had led me to that place, and I had to make the best of it. The only way that I could live with myself was to do what I felt was right.

I moved closer to Arthur. His face had wrinkled like Chinese Shar Pei fighting dog. His life would have been so different if someone had loved him, and even if it was for a few moments I wanted to show him what that was like.

“When I was sick, my Mum used to run her fingers through my hair like this,” I said inching closer to Arthur, and smoothing his grey hair with my hand. For an old guy he had a healthy shock of white hair.

He stiffened at my touch, waiting for me to hurt him or threaten him. It flashed into my mind that all Arthur had known was violence, threat and fear. No one had ever just been kind to him for the sake of being kind. I wasn’t someone who could offer last rites, but I could show him kindness in his last moments of life. There was a part of me that wanted to kick him and shout and scream that he was killing me for no reason, but it would achieve nothing. He couldn’t free me if he wanted to, his life was ebbing away, and he’d already told me that he’d deliberately left no way out.

I didn’t want to change who I was because of circumstances. It was easy to be nice to Miranda when I had all her friends support and everything was going my way. Now I had to be the person my mother had raised me to be, a citizen of earth. A person of integrity; no matter what the situation. I always tried to treat others the way that I wanted to be treated. In my final moments, I would want someone to comfort me; I would want someone to be there with me. No matter how hard it was, I needed to do that for Arthur.

Seeing the kindness in my eyes, he relaxed into my touch. I let my fingers gently massage the fine silver locks. I focused my eyes on his hair, trying to find words of comfort.

“When I was a little girl.” I remembered nostalgically. “I used to be scared of the dark. Mum would pat my hair till I fell asleep. If I woke through the night frightened, she would tell me that there was a beautiful guardian angel, whose entire purpose it was to look after me. That she would keep me safe, and ferry messages to God on my behalf when I didn’t know what to say. I used to pray to God every night to make sure that my guardian angel was well rested, so that she could watch me all through the night. I don’t know if I believe all that stuff now, but I know there has to be more to this life than just living and dying. Mum always says that there’s lots of room for mistake-makers at God’s table, sounds like a good place to be...”

Our house was the place where all my friends gathered. Mum would set a place for each of them, my home was their home. When Jaimie’s parents’ divorce was raging, our home had become a refuge during the custody wars. I remembered a night when Mum invited both Jaimie’s parents to dinner, and they had been civil the whole time, there was even a moment when they laughed, it seemed like old times. I remembered thinking that heaven would be like that, enemies putting their differences aside and being at home in God’s house.