Changeling's Island: Chapter Six

    The week was one long drift of confusion, every waking hour. Tim was as careful as he could be at school not to draw any attention to himself. They were the living dead, but he was stuck here. And at least they had computers and a school library. He didn’t want to do the stuff he had to on the farm. He resented it. Why should he? Only…it was so difficult not to. His grandmother worked at everything next to him. He’d gotten used to looking to see what she was doing, so he could learn how to do it, as most of it he had no idea just how to manage. And, well, she must have eyes in the back of her head. Or the little people she talked to must be telling on him, which was just as crazy.

    About the only good thing he could say was walking eight kilometers a day, four there and four back, having to get up far too early, mostly because he wasn’t going to be embarrassed by a lift again — he didn’t want them seeing that he had to walk — and then digging, or sawing, or hauling poles around, well, he was so tired he nearly fell asleep into his food every night.

    He was locked down into “survive” mode. He could handle it for a few weeks until his mum sorted things out.

    Áed, now with the little fenodree helping, steered the master past disasters. He would have cut his foot half off, and been kicked by the cow, otherwise, as well as gotten lost. They’d had their hands full that week.

    Áed realized he’d better brave finding out what the selkie was after. When the master was safe asleep, and the fenodree was out cutting hay for the beasts, Áed went down to the wide and wasteful ocean. It was, as the sea always was, hungry. It frightened him, but unlike the great ones in the hollow hills, for Áed the sea itself was not accursed and deadly. He could cross it by boat or plane, or even fly above it himself, quite cheerfully.

    The selkie must have been watching, because she came. But the fenodree was right: when Áed backed off she would not follow him onto the dune. Well, he’d seen the powers of the land here. “What do you want?” he asked in his own tongue, as she crooned. He felt her drawing spell, but it had little effect on him. That, too, was good to know. This place must protect him too.

    “I want the key, little one.”

    “What key?” Áed asked, warily, knowing a little, but fishing to find out as much as he could.

    “The key to the door into the hollow hill, where King Finvarra feasts with his host,” she answered.

    “And what would that be doing here?” asked Áed, doing his best at innocence. Such a precious thing would not be given to mortals, but only those of the blood.

    The selkie looked at him and put on the appearance of a teacher. Such things amused the seal-people. “It was given, as such always are, to the royal halfling child which was put out as a changeling to live among humans, so he can return to the hollow hills when he is grown. Only this child did not return. Neither did the key. It was taken away, beyond the reach of the king. He wants it back.”

    Áed knew that the blood of the Aos Sí kings ran in his master. That was why Áed himself had been drawn from the hollow hill, to the boy. The master had been a boy then, and not a man, as the people of the hollow hills and old country called being of age. Humans and indeed the Aos Sí were of age when they could father children, not before. It had only been when the master had begun to change from a boy to a man that he had become Áed’s master.

    The Aos Sí lords and kings got bored sometimes, and mixed with mortal men…or rather, with the women, with inevitable results: children.

    The hollow hills were not good for those children of mixed blood though. They seemed to need sunlight. Áed liked sunlight himself. The half-bloods were exchanged for human babes, and fostered in human homes. When they came of age…they came home. The human children stayed among the Aos Sí, and did not return to the sunlight. They died in the hollow hills.

    Humans lived such short lives, in exchange for souls.

    Áed had never heard of a changeling who had not gone back. Sometimes they left children of their own behind, under the sun. The green land of Ireland was full of such traces of Aos Sí. Áed knew that others of his kind were sometimes drawn to such, until they were banished again.

    The selkie spoke again. “King Finvarra wants his key. He wants it back with or without the one whose birthright it is. It has passed through too many generations unclaimed. It should never have left the old country. I have searched for a long time to find it again.”

    “Then why don’t you collect it and be on your way?” asked Áed, knowing the answer was important, and suspecting that he knew the answer already, but wanting it confirmed.

    The selkie smiled, a nasty smile, all teeth and no humor. “This place. The land. It binds, little one. It will bind you too. If I leave the ocean, it would bind me. I don’t want to age and die, trapped here. So bring it to me. Bring me the key, and I will free you too. I do not wish to do you, or your master, ill. I just want the key. But if I don’t get it, I will hurt him. Kill him, if need be.”

    She was lying. Only the master could send Áed away, and that would be in disgrace and back to the hollow hills, rather than freedom. “You will have to fetch it yourself. Or ask my master. It is his birthright.”

    The selkie had tried to splash him. That was pure spite, Áed knew. So were the names she called him as he left her sitting in the salt water.

    For Tim the week came to a final low on Friday night. He was tired. Well, he had been tired every night, but he’d been coping pretty well, he thought. But then the phone rang.

    His grandmother answered it. “Yes,” she said. “Yer can talk to him.”

    Hearing his mother’s voice on the phone tore Tim up inside. In the background he could hear the sound of traffic. The sounds of Melbourne. “When can I come home? Please?”

    There was a long silence down the phone. A sigh. “I shouldn’t have called. My friend Melanie said to let you have a month just to settle. Look, you’re not coming back to Melbourne for now, Tim. I…I just called to let you know the police were here today. They’re investigating a case of arson at that store. I had to tell them where you were. Someone may want to talk to you.”

    “I didn’t do anything. I want to come home!”

    “You can’t. Look, it’s for your own good, Tim. You’re there to keep you away from…from that stuff.”

    “I told you I didn’t. I didn’t, I didn’t! I need to come home. I hate it here!”

    “Look, Tim, you’ll just have to get used to it. Maybe next year…”

    “A year! You can’t. You can’t!” he yelled his voice cracking.

    “You brought it on yourself. Now try and…”

    Tim slammed the phone down. He looked at the bare, empty dining room, with its single globe. At the darkness outside the curtainless windows. It still frightened him. He wanted to go off and…and just go. But where? How?

    He walked to his bedroom, slammed the door, and threw himself on the bed and lay there.

    He didn’t even answer when Gran called him for supper.

    He just lay there, wishing it would all go away. Wishing he could make all of them as miserable as he was.

    Gran didn’t call him again. And somehow he slept, a sleep full of troubled, angry dreams of burning stores, a weeping mother, and tall people on horses, with lances and pennants, riding across the night sky.

    He woke once, enough to think the last part of the dream was weird, but then burrowed back into sleep; even if it was odd in his dreams, at least it was escape from here.

    When the woman phoned, Mary Ryan had been half tempted to give her an earful. Now, after sitting in the kitchen, listening…she really wished she had.

    She hadn’t thought how unhappy the boy must be. He kept his feelings in, and she couldn’t see his face well. He didn’t say much at all. Well, she didn’t either. But she’d heard those cries from the heart. It had not occurred to her that her grandson might not think of this place as “home.”

    She sighed. He’d also sounded just like her son, his father. Using words he’d used, later, when he’d suddenly decided he had to go out into the wide world, and that anything was better than Flinders Island.

    She’d always taken on the knock-downs by getting up and fighting on, even that worst knock-down, when her husband John had been killed. She’d had to, for her boy. Well, she had to now, for this boy. She wouldn’t take help for herself, but, well, that fellow seemed good with Tim. She went to the telephone, wondering just how she’d get the number. She could call Dickie Burke…The phone burred under her hand and she picked it up before it could ring. If it was that woman again…

    But it wasn’t. It was young McKay, the very person she’d been planning to call, to remind of what he’d said, and feeling very uncomfortable to do so. “Hello, Mrs. Ryan,” he said. “I’m going to get a few flathead with a mate of mine tomorrow. Would your boy like to come along?” he’d asked.

    That he’d remembered impressed her, warmed her. This McKay was like his Uncle Giles, a good man. He’d been one of the few who had never looked down on her, and had done…little things she hadn’t appreciated much at the time, when John had died. He’d also always remembered what he’d said, and kept to it. “It’d be good for him,” she said gruffly. “Tell you the truth, I was goin’ to ask yer. He’s a bit low. Missing home. He’s in bed now, but…where are yer launching from?” That could be very awkward. Driving was not easy or safe, really.

    “West End. We’re coming right past. I’ll pick him up if you like. Easier. I’ll give you a buzz in the morning when I leave here, I should be there in twenty minutes. Probably about sevenish for the tide.”

    That was a relief! “I’ll try to have him at the gate for yer. I don’t drive much so I’d be grateful.”

    “Not to worry. I’ll come down to the house, that way it won’t matter if I’m a few minutes out. I’ll have Malcolm with me — a friend of mine from away — to open the gates.”

    “‘Preciate it. The boy needs to have a good time.”

    There was a brief silence. “He should be having one. I did when I was his age here. I lived for coming over to Uncle Giles. And if he likes catching fish, we’ll see what we can do.”

    “He was a good man, yer Uncle. He’d be proud of yer.”

    “He’d give me a thick ear for the state my boat is in, but I’m going fishing tomorrow anyway. I’ll call, unless the weather turns bad.”

    Gran shook him awake. Tim had heard her coming with the cup and teaspoon clatter, and simply burrowed himself deeper into the pillow. He was not going to get up. Not going to dig or weed or carry hay or muck out the milking shed. Not!

    “Yer friend McKay will be here in less than half an hour. You need some tucker in you if you’re going to be out at sea all day,” she said. “Porridge will be ready in a few minutes. Better look sharp or he’ll go without you.”

    Tim sat up. “What?”

    “I said porridge will be ready in a few minutes. And Mr. McKay is on his way. He phoned about ten minutes ago. Not a lazy beggar like you. I said I’d wake yer to talk to him, and he says no, just tell him to have his lunch and hat ready to go fishing. Yer better take a coat too. The weather could come in.” She turned and walked out. Tim could hear her opening the oven in the kitchen. Stirring something.

    Tim took a deep breath, and without thinking about it, reached out and took the cup and drank most of it in a gulp. It was half cold. That really wasn’t normal. He usually had to blow on it to not have his mouth scalded. Had…had it been sitting in the kitchen? Had his gran not planned to wake him or something?

    That thought got him out of bed and scrambling into clothes. In the kitchen the porridge was ready, along with the smell of new-baked something. Spicy, yeasty and rich, it had been calling him from halfway down the passage. “I made yer some cinnamon buns to take to sea. There’s hot tea in the flask,” she said, pointing to a bag. “Yer take care of it, see. It was yer…grandfather’s flask.” She looked, for once, straight at him. “I’m trusting yer with a lot.”

    Gran sounded really a little odd when she said that. Like she was giving him a Blackberry and an Xbox together, and they were made of thin glass. And like she didn’t want to, but still did it. “Thank you. I’ll try my best.”

    “You do that, and I’ll be well pleased, I reckon. Now you be polite to young McKay. And make yerself useful on the boat. Don’t wait for him to tell yer what to do; ask and watch. Then he’ll maybe take yer again.”

    Tim nodded. “I thought he said he’d take me…just to be polite.”

    “His Uncle Giles was a decent feller. Kept his word. Seems like this young feller is like him. I made extra porridge, as I reckon you’ll be hungry after last night.”

    He was. Starving, actually. He had three platefuls, and was just finished when his grandmother cocked her head. “I reckon I hear yer ride coming.” She didn’t seem to see too well, but his gran could hear a mouse tiptoe across the barn from inside the house.