Changeling's Island: Chapter Ten

    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.

    “Don’t think you can hide behind Tim, you…you faithless ratbag,” said Molly, grabbing him by the studded collar. The collar was more imposing than the dog, who was pretending to be very small, and succeeding quite well, for a cart-horse. “Sorry, Tim. He just took off. I don’t know what got” — she panted — “into him.” She stared crossly at the large dog thumping his tail at her and panting back. “He always comes when I call him.”

    “He just can’t resist surfboards,” said Tim, mildly irritated that the gorgeous woman had paddled off, but still pleased to see Molly and her daft dog.

    Molly wrinkled her brow. “What surfboard?” she asked.

    “That woman on a surfboard. She was here when Bunce came to show off his moustache.” Tim pointed out at the sea. And then blinked because neither the woman nor the surfboard was visible. “Hello. Where has she gone?”

    Molly looked at the sea. Dug into the magazine pocket of her camo trousers, and came out with a book and a small pair of binoculars. She stared at the water, searching. “There’s a seal. Did you think that was a surfboard? Maybe Bunce thought the seal was another dog. He’s not very fond of other dogs.”

    Before Tim could tell her that he wasn’t blind, didn’t need glasses and did know the difference between a woman and a seal, the Irish wolfhound curved his back.

    Molly let go of his collar and backed off, but not quite fast enough, as he shook himself, sending what seemed like half the ocean spraying over the two of them. “Oh, Bunce! If you’ve damaged the binocs I’ll kill you, and Dad’ll kill me!” shrieked Molly.

    By the time the binoculars had been carefully dried of the few droplets, inspected and the end result greeted with some relief, with an apologetic dog trying to lick them, the surfer had been momentarily forgotten. The two of them were talking with the ease that bus journeys together had brought, about how the holidays had been so far, and that had led into books, and the folly of parents, or in Tim’s case, a grandparent. “She says I am to take this old knife with me everywhere. And not talk to strange women.”

    Molly stuck her tongue out at him. “I’m not that strange.”

    Tim laughed until he had to sit down on the wet sand. It was neat to have someone like himself to talk to. He hadn’t realized he’d missed it so much.

    He was a lot different from the miserable kid who had been kind to her on the flight over, thought Molly. That kid had been pale and a bit weedy, and had looked out of place. Tim was tanned to quite dark-skinned now, and his shirt looked too tight for him. And he looked more comfortable here even than he had been on the bus or at school. More confident. Telling her about how cool it was to go spearing flounder in the dark. Very full of his adventures on the boat with Jon McKay. Other than the fact that he was an ab diver, Molly didn’t know much about the guy. Tim plainly thought his word was law.

    It was strange that Tim been here for so long during the holidays without showing up at the island’s functions and parties. But then, his grandmother never seemed to go out.

    Talk went on to fishing. “I’m supposed to find nippers or pipis,” admitted Tim. “Gran seemed to think I’d know what they are, and how to find them. I have used squid and a hand line, but not this stuff.” He pointed at the rod.

    “Dad fishes off the beach. But he mostly catches little flathead, too small to keep. I’ve helped him collect bait. If you want pipis, they’re just about wall-to-wall in the next bay. We’ve got a sort of pump for the sand-yabbies. I don’t think you can catch them with your hands.”

    Soon they had their trousers rolled up and were collecting the little shellfish, “helped” by Bunce’s earnest digging, and then trying to work out how to put a shell on a hook. It was, Molly admitted to herself, more fun than she’d had so far that holiday. And fishing with Tim was more exciting, too, because it was not like with her dad, standing around waiting for something to happen, getting bored. Things happened, and fast. They had only managed — as a team effort — to cast out the broken shells on a hook on the third try, and that had barely had time to get wet before they had a fish on the hook, pulling the line, and jerking the rod around, bending it like a grass-stalk in the breeze.

    “It’s a big one! What do I do now?” asked Tim, clinging onto the rod, as the reel screamed.

    “Wind it in! Keep the rod pointed up,” said Molly. That was the extent of her knowledge.

    The reel screamed again. “It’s heavy! It’s pulling like mad. I’ll keep the rod up, if you wind the reel. I need two hands.”

    Bunce started barking and prancing around them with the excitement. Eventually they had to run backward up the beach — and fall over Bunce — and get up and run again, to pull the fish up onto the shining wet sand.

    It was a mammoth-sized flathead, yellow with leopard-pattern brown spots and dots of red, and a huge, wide, flat mouth full of sharp teeth, and eyes with a golden iris that formed an odd crescent. It looked like a fantasy book’s dragon’s eye, staring at them.

    “Watch it! The gill-covers have nasty spikes,” yelled Tim as she bent to try and pick it up. “Here, hold the rod. I’ll kill it.”

    He did, stabbing it neatly through the head with the knife from his pocket. “Quick and clean, Jon says.”

    Molly was glad he was there to do it. Bunce growled at the fish and sniffed it. “Don’t you dare eat it, you menace!” said Molly. “Boy, my dad would be green with envy!”

    Tim laughed. “We’d better catch another then, so you can take this one home. Nan told me she was expecting fish for tea.”

    “We’ll never catch two.”

    But they did, the second not quite the size of the first, or quite so difficult or so mixed up in their efforts, but still a big fish. And then Tim…stopped. Put the reel down carefully on the bag. “I suppose we’d better fillet them and clean the guts out. Only I am not too sure how to do it…I was just doing the skinning with Mally. How can we carry the fillets? I haven’t got a plastic bag or anything.”

    “Aren’t you going to try again?” asked Molly.

    He shook his head, looking a little regretful. “That’s enough. Jon says you always leave fish in the sea for tomorrow, and we don’t have a freezer, and we’ve got a goose for tomorrow…” He colored. “Gran caught it. She thought the copper was on to her.”

    “The copper?” asked Molly.

    Tim looked uncomfortable. “He wanted to know where your place was. Something about a gun safe. He was lost.”

    “But he came and had a cup of tea back in November. With that nice guy you went fishing with.”

    Tim bit his lip and stood silent for a moment. Then he looked at the fish. “Well…I suppose I’d better try to deal with these.”

    Molly wondered just what it was about the policeman that had made Tim so uncomfortable. She nearly asked, but then a tangle of blue baling twine and bits of dry seaweed, which had obviously been cast up by the tide, blew along the beach and nearly hit her in the face. It would have, if she hadn’t caught it. She held it out to him: “Boy, the wind is getting up. We could put the fish on some of this string and carry them home. My dad knows how to fillet fish.”

    “I wish mine was around to show me,” said Tim, quietly.

    What did you say to that? You could hear it hurt him. “We could at least take the guts out. I know how to do that from catching wrasse,” she said, changing the subject.

    Tim grinned, obviously making an effort to pull himself away from whatever he’d been thinking of. “Here’s my knife,” he said, holding it out. “Just don’t tell Gran. She said I was never to let go of it.”

    “She sounds, like, really weird,” said Molly.

    “No!” he said defensively, and then pulled a face. “Yeah, I guess she is a bit. But she’s, well, I guess sort of living in the past or something. Like we don’t have TV, let alone the Internet. I didn’t think I could live without it.”

    “I don’t think I could,” said Molly, cutting the fish’s belly open. “You can haul out the stuff inside. So, like, what do you do? I mean, no Internet, no TV…”

    “Pull out fish guts,” he said, waving them around. “I’ve been working during the holidays, and Gran has always got jobs for me to do when I get home. I read. Play Starcraft. It’s a bit dead, but I’ve been so tired after being at sea. And I might be going to Melbourne later in the holidays. Or Jon said he was going to organize for me to take a motorboat handler’s ticket. That’d be cool. He’s a good guy, Jon.”

    “I can lend you some books,” said Molly. It all sounded fairly dreary to her. Well, the motorboat part might be all right.

    “That’d be great! I was wondering about the library, but it’s a long way to town.”

    “We go in to fetch guests, and on Wednesdays when the ferry comes in, to shop.”

    “Ah. I might scrounge a lift sometime. Nan gets Hailey’s dad, uh, Mr. Burke to collect our post and stuff.” He pushed a strand of the blue baling twine through the fish’s mouth. “There you go. Bunce will think you are carrying it for him.” The wolfhound lolled against Tim, panting affectionately.

    “He likes you anyway. You can’t give it to me, though.”

    “Why not? They’re too big for us to eat more than a fillet each,” said Tim, taking the guts out of the second fish.

    It would be nice to shock her father with it. And, well, she felt she’d been part of catching it, and he really didn’t seem to be only being polite. “Um, like, if you’re sure? My dad will be green with envy.”

    Tim nodded, waved at the sea. “Yeah. There are more fish out there, anyway.”

    A little later Molly walked home with the flathead. The string was heavy and cut at her hand, but it was still going to be worth it, just to show her father. She found herself grinning at the thought of their method of catching fish. It had all been a lot more fun than just a walk down the beach with Bunce. It must be so strange for Tim. She didn’t really know a lot about him, about his family, or his weird grandmother. Why was he afraid of the cops? Why did he get miserable so easily? Maybe his grandmother was up to something. Or…were his parents really divorced? Maybe his father was in jail or something?

    Áed was pleased with his work. He had made his peace with the Cu — the noble hound. It would seem the dog had the blood of the ancient hounds of the Irish chieftains in its veins, and was proof against most magics. Too, the steel studs in its collar had protected it from the sea-dog, and it had driven her off. And the dog’s mistress was helping to counter the selkie’s charms as well. Young humans had more in common than an old fae and young human, no matter what magics she used to make herself beautiful and seductive.

    He’d flung the sea-wrack blue cord at the Cu’s mistress, set with the little charms that he had been able to add to it. She had taken his actions, as many humans did, for the wind, and “accepted” the gift by catching the tangle of twine before it hit her in the face. Such are the traps and gifts of Faerie. And she had taken a piece of it with her to string the fish onto. In way of such charms…she might try to throw it away, but it would fall into a pocket or end up being used for something in her home. The spells he’d placed on it would work, slowly, on her. He could summon her now. She would come and help to protect the master when Áed called.