Changeling's Island - eARC, page 11
Two days before Christmas, McKay stopped shipping, and Tim got paid. It added a lot to the neck pouch. “I guess you’ll be able to buy a few more presents,” said Jon, with a grin. “Speaking of which, I have one for you. With my talent for wrapping stuff up, it’s still in the box they sent it in. You can pop it under the Christmas tree. Don’t get overexcited. I don’t have much experience of buying presents. I always buy Rob and my dad a bottle of Scotch, and my mother chocolates. And Louise I make a mess of.” Louise was Jon’s on-again-off-again girlfriend. She was an artist who spent most of her time in Hobart. She’d just come over for the Christmas break, and so far Tim had decided he really didn’t like her. She was beautiful, he supposed. But she wore loads of tinkling jewelry and talked about opera, or ballet, or art, and not about fish and the sea.
“I really feel bad now. I haven’t got you anything,” said Tim awkwardly.
Jon just laughed. “Didn’t expect you to. Rob’s back after New Year, but he’s prone to taking Monday off sick, and sometimes Friday too, so I might give you a call. And Mally is coming over again at the end of January. He’ll want to go fishing again.”
“I’d be keen!” said Tim, grinning. “We can teach him a thing or two.”
“Heh. I know you would. You’ll have to fish off the beach in the meanwhile.”
Tim was thinking about this, about what he could possibly get McKay for Christmas, walking down the track to the farmhouse, when he realized there was a vehicle behind him.
It was a police ute.
CHAPTER 10
The holidays were Molly’s parents’ busiest time of the year and Molly had her bit to do too. Of course there was more spare time, and there was quite a lot happening on the island, from cricket matches to concerts, but as she couldn’t drive alone yet, it meant someone had to take her, and she felt guilty asking. Still, with the long daylight of summer, and the water warming up, there was time to run Bunce on the beach and to swim afterward. The endless beaches and coves to yourself were something you took for granted, until there was someone else on the beach. Then it felt like they were intruders.
She ran into a sulky-faced Hailey Burke wandering around in the little supermarket in town when they’d gone in for their weekly shop. “Hello,” said Hailey. “Are you stuck in this dead boring place too? Are there any parties I don’t know about?”
“New Year’s…”
“Oh, I’ll be gone by then. We’re going skiing in Chamonix. I hate this place. I wish I could have stayed in Melbourne. My stepmother thinks I’m nothing but a babysitter.”
Molly had to laugh to herself translating “Chamonix” back into the place Hailey was boastfully referring to. Cham as in “Charles” and nix as in “Nicks”—not “Shamonee,” as Dad’s climbing friend called it. It was going to be funny when Hailey tried that on the first bunch of other skiers.
“I wondered why I hadn’t been asked to sit over there for a while,” Molly said. “Oh, look, my dad’s at the checkout. I have to go. He’s waiting for the lettuce.”
Molly made her escape. There were times when she thought the island boring too. But that girl made her want to defend it. And what on earth had a nice guy like Tim seen in her? Hailey was, Molly admitted to herself, what most guys would think was beautiful. And she was good at makeup, and at choosing clothes to make her breasts look like they were going to pop out the top of them. And she had enough to pop, not like Molly. But Tim could have found someone with boobs, looks and brains, or at least a nice personality surely? Thinking of Tim, Molly wondered what he was up to. She hadn’t seen him since school broke up. Maybe he’d gone back to Melbourne for the holidays. Just as well. She could see a bored Hailey using him for a toy to run after her, until she left again, or found something better.
* * *
Tim wondered for a moment if he should run. Naked panic nearly took him headlong into the bush.
Then there was a loud bang behind him. And he really did dive into the bush, squirming into its thickness, dropping the parcel Jon had given him.
They couldn’t just shoot him! Couldn’t! It wasn’t allowed! He peeped back from the cover of the ti-tree to see which way to worm in its dense thicket. The vehicle had stopped; the driver was out of it. But the driver wasn’t looking at him. Rather at his ute, and scratching his head. There was no gun in sight.
Tim put his head up a little more, just as the cop turned to look at him, his hands empty, and a rueful look on his face. “I really am sorry about that, son,” called the big policeman. “Didn’t mean to give you a fright. My tire just burst.”
Tim stood up, too angry to be frightened anymore. “I thought you were shooting at me! If you broke my present, I’ll…I’ll…”
“Tell the coppers?” said the policeman with a smile. “Look, I really must apologize. If it is broken, well, I’ll replace it. Can’t say fairer than that, can I?” He walked forward, picked the box up, and handed it to Tim. “Tamar Marine, eh? What is it?”
“I don’t know. I just got given it. It’s my Christmas present.”
“Well, if it is broken, really, I’ll replace it. That tire-burst nearly gave me heart failure. It must have been even louder out here. I am sorry. Good thing it happened here, though. If I’d been on the road, driving faster, it could have been serious. I’m looking for the Symons place. I am supposed to inspect a gun safe there.”
Relief washed through Tim, and without meaning to, he started to laugh. And laugh. He laughed so much he couldn’t breathe, and had to sit down. The cop looked a little worried. “Sorry,” he said when he could breathe again. “I don’t know what came over me. I just got such a fright with the bang. Molly, uh, their place is about two kilometers further along the road. There’s a sign.”
“Ah. This’ll be the Ryan place then,” said cop, in a questioning tone.
Tim nodded, unease returning. A sudden angry gust of wind blew in the police ute’s open door and scattered papers out of it, into the bush. “Oh, my word! I need those. Give me a hand to catch them,” said the policeman.
By the time they’d gathered the forms, and Tim had helped to change the tire, he was no longer quite so terrified of the big policeman. He wouldn’t want to be on the wrong side of him, but he seemed more interested in fishing and boats than in Tim’s past.
He put the ruined tire in the back and said: “Well, thank you. I’ll give you a lift for your fright.”
“I can walk,” said Tim.
“Well, I can’t turn around here, and I don’t want to reverse back to the gate. So I am going your way.”
So Tim got his second ride in a police vehicle. It was more pleasant than the first, but he still wouldn’t have minded missing it. The policeman said he was new here and asked questions about the island, casually, but Tim would bet he was doing more than just being curious, by the too-casual questions about the neighboring farms and people. “I don’t really know. I haven’t been here long. I’m just staying with my grandmother,” said Tim, quite relieved to give a true answer. He got the feeling that lying to this cop wouldn’t work well.
“And there I thought you were an islander,” said the copper.
“I’m from Melbourne.”
The cop smiled and said, as if he was giving a compliment, “You look more like the son of a local fisherman than a city boy.”
Tim’s first take was to be a bit offended. But he was in his oldest jeans, and they were quite salt-stained. And he did like fishing. They’d talked about flathead, earlier. “Well, um, I’m not.”
* * *
Áed had not felt such a burst of fear and rage from his young master for many days now. This place had had a calming influence. He could have burned the vehicle, but Áed had worked out that the last fire he’d started had…caused complications. The ways of humans were strange to incomprehensible. So he merely settled for making the wheel lose its trapped air. Air did not like being trapped, and Áed was quite good at exerting his power over it. At the same time…well, this was the master’s place and the land spirits welcomed him. They were powerful even if very, very old. “Help him!”
The answer was not quite in words, not even in the tongue of creatures of the air and darkness. But Áed understood it anyway.
The land would lend him strength. But this child-of-the-land would have to use that strength and be a man and deal with his enemy all by himself. The land would not do it for him. He would never be a man then.
This was alien to the little creature of air and darkness. They existed to do their master’s will, to defend. Perhaps that was why Fae were not men.
He’d raised a little wind to help anyway.
* * *
They arrived at the farmhouse. Tim saw his grandmother come out. And with that odd sideways look…turn white and sit down on the step, clutching the rail. They both bailed out of the ute and ran to her.
“Tim? Is he…” she quavered.
“I’m here, Nan. I’m here,” said Tim, taking her arm.
His grandmother pulled herself upright on his arm, and then to her feet. “He’s a good boy,” she said belligerently, as if she was going to take the big cop’s head off. She held on to his arm, tightly.
“Yes, Ma’am. He’s a very good youngster,” said the policeman. “He helped me out. I was lost and gave him a bit of a fright.”
“Yer gave me one too. Now get out of here. You ain’t welcome.” Her voice would have frozen a volcano.
“I really must apologize,” said the policeman calmly. Tim was surprised he could be so calm-faced with Nan like this. “It was an accidental thing, and I didn’t mean to give anyone a shock, let alone both of you. I’ll be off now. Tim, don’t forget your parcel. If it is damaged, I’ll replace it.”
Tim went to collect it and the policeman drove off.
“Make some tea and tell me what’s going on,” said his grandmother, looking after the departing vehicle with grim satisfaction.
So Tim did, explaining about the burst tire. “He probably thinks we’re criminals, shouting at him. He was just lost.”
“Hmph!” snorted his grandmother. “Him. He ain’t lost. He’s just nosing about. Looking for clues about who is growing cannabis. Looking for signs of money.”
Well, he wouldn’t see it here, Tim thought to himself.
“And what’s the parcel?” His grandmother asked.
“Jon…Mr. McKay gave it to me. He said it was a Christmas present. I dropped it when I thought I was being shot at.”
“I haven’t got much for yer myself,” said his grandmother. “I ain’t got a tree or anything.” She sounded faintly guilty. “Good thing that copper didn’t look in the fridge though, because I did get us a goose for our Christmas dinner.”
Tim blinked. “A Cape Barren goose?” There were quite a few around the farm, big gray birds with pale green upper beaks. They fouled up the drinking pools on the lower paddock, and his grandmother did a fair job of cursing them for it. They were protected birds in Australia, but very common on the island.
His grandmother nodded. “My little helper caught him.”
“Some people do shoot them. They were talking about it at school.”
“Yes, but yer got to have a permit for that, an’ that costs money, which we ain’t got. I’ll claim it’s Aboriginal hunting if they asked me.”
“But you’re not Aboriginal,” said Tim.
She snorted. “They say I am. So, so are you. Now drink yer tea, we got some cows to shift.”
Tim was left to puzzle this out, as his grandmother was plainly not going to tell him any more about it. Her tone—and he’d gotten quite good at reading that—said he shouldn’t ask. They moved cows, patched a piece of broken, rusty fence, and went back to the house. It was hot, but windy. “Pity about the wind. I’d love to go for flounder again,” said Tim.
“It’ll settle in a few days. Yer could try for flathead off the beach. There’s an old rod of mine in the back of the shed yer could take. Call it an early present.”
Once, not even that long ago, that would have not raised much excitement. Now it was different. “Really?”
“Yer looked after yer grandfather’s flask well enough, and yer seem to have bit of common sense, when you’re not driving,” said his grandmother, dryly.
“I will look after it. I promise. I’ve never done any fishing, except on the boat with a hand-line. I don’t really know what to do.”
“Yer put a bait on and cast…oh, get it out. There’s a canvas bag next to it with sinkers and stuff. I’ll show yer quickly, and you can go and try. I’ve got to do some baking. You keep your knife by you, stay away from seals, and don’t talk to any strange women.”
So she showed him, and soon Tim was walking down through the paddocks and bush to the sea, a long rod on his shoulder, wondering just how many strange women his nutty grandmother thought he’d find down there.
The sea was a far call from the calm of his flounder-spearing night, but not as rough as on some days he’d been working for Jon out on it. He looked at the low-tide-exposed gleaming sand where his grandmother assured him there’d be pipis and nippers for bait. She obviously thought anyone who could breathe would know what those were, and Tim hadn’t wanted to ask any more questions in case she changed her mind. It was good to be down here, with the wind and salt in his face, the beach under his bare feet. His toes would have to dig into the sand like roots to keep him from blowing away if the wind got up any more, thought Tim, burrowing them into the wet sand anyway, and feeling, somehow, like a tall tree, firm against the wind. He stood there for a while leaning into the wind, before walking toward the low rock that jutted into the water, that he’d been told to fish off.
And there was a strange woman…riding a surfboard, so it was kind of logical for her to be here. She was hot, and not just for her wave riding. Tim had fantasies about a girl that looked like Lorde, and this girl looked very like her. The black wetsuit didn’t leave that much to his imagination. She waved. He waved back, more than just a little surprised.
There was obviously a deeper patch of water, there near the rock, because the waves were not breaking there. The surfer girl paddled into that and sat up on her board to talk to him: “Hello. You must be Tim Ryan.”
She had a beautiful smile and long, dark wavy hair that hung down over her breasts. The wetsuit was unzipped enough to let Tim wonder what, if anything, she was wearing under it. He was trying not to stare, and failing. “Uh. Yes.”
“I’m Maeve,” she said, giving him a little wave.
Her smile made Hailey’s best try to be charming look like a candle to a searchlight. Tim swallowed, trying to find something not stupid to say, and to stop staring. She had a rich lilting voice…and his mother’s Irish accent.
* * *
Áed had been afraid that the selkie would be in ambush. He’d been sure she would be waiting and watching, but Áed had hoped that he’d made her wary. Instead it seemed to have made the seal-woman determined to use her powers to the fullest. Because seals looked graceful and their little ones soft, because men and sharks had hunted them…men seemed to forget that seals too were relentless hunters. She was drawing on the human side of Áed’s master, letting Áed master’s own idea of beauty provide the magical glamour. She looked like the woman of his dreams, because she was what he dreamed, rather than her own more voluptuous self.
Áed searched desperately for some way to distract his master. But she was easily able to counter his small magics. She could probably kill him, if she chose, or get the master to banish him, he was that enthralled. Yet…Áed’s poor master should have just rushed into the water after her…blinded by the charm and magic, not even aware that he was drowning. And he hadn’t. She was trying to talk him away from the land that gave him strength. The land touched the master’s bare feet, and he was a part of it, and it seemed its spirits, even if they would not help him fight men, protected him, at least from magics and enchantments. That…and maybe the Aos Sí blood that allowed him to look at her glamour, and perhaps see through it.
But would it be enough? She was clever, she watched humans and understood them all too well, and there was nothing a little creature of air and darkness could do against her power, drawn from the vastness of the sea.
Her look told him that he would suffer if he even tried.
Áed fled…
To find help.
Fortunately, it was on the beach, and it had very long legs. Four of them, and when taunted by Áed, the huge wolfhound could run faster than a stag.
The human girl who had been with the dog was left far behind, even if she too had long legs and could run well for her kind.
* * *
“I’d love to try it! But I haven’t got any bathers,” said Tim. “Anyway, I’ve never surfed, and really I wouldn’t know what to do.” A cautious part of his mind said he would only make a complete fool of himself if he took her up on her offer of having a go at riding the board.
“Oh, it’s easy enough. I’ll show you,” she said.
There was an enormous splash. Tim turned and saw what he first took for a sea monster, and then realized that it was merely a huge brown coarse-haired whiskery dog’s head above the water—with the rest of the dog submerged, but swimming, and barking.
Looking back along the beach, Tim could see Molly pelting along the beach.
The surfer girl looked at the dog, at Tim, at the runner…and said: “I see you have friends. Another time.” And she paddled the board away, far faster than the swimming Bunce, who did a deep-throated woof at her and it, before he turned shoreward.
“Bunce!” gasped Molly. “Come here,”…pant…“bad dog!”
The bad dog in question surged and bounced out of the shallows with a vast doggy grin, hurtled out of the water to Tim, and leaned against his legs, wet and hairy. Bunce looked adoringly up at Tim, tongue lolling, as if he was best thing he’d ever seen. He didn’t have to look that far up, either. He was a huge dog. It was a hard look to resist. Tim patted the big head, a bit warily. He hadn’t had much to do with dogs, let alone ones quite this size. He got a big, sloppy lick of appreciation.
