Magic by the Sea

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Chapter Nine

Fleeing the Ocean

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‘We can only tell you what we know. This war was supposedly almost two hundred years ago. We were told many legends of this area in my navy years. The story of pirates was a favourite of the local sailors and fishermen so I learnt it well.’ Ryan’s grandfather handed him the mug of tea. Ryan clung to it tight, absorbing the heat from the patterned ceramic. He made a ‘go on’ motion.

‘Well, I trust you know the start of the story.’ Ryan frowned but gave a little nod.

‘I may have taken a peek at the page you were up to in that book of yours. I’ll get to that in a minute. After the war there were a small handful of surviving pirates. They, like the merpeople, were trapped by the curse of the islands, never aging, never dying but unable to leave the islands and sea they had fought to own. Your father, the captain of the Petrel fled from island to island, always staying one jump ahead of the merman king who pursued him.’ Jo sat back in his chair, into a pose that Ryan had long come to recognise as the man’s storytelling posture.

‘But any man can become lonely after spending so many decades on the run and after a long time he started to drift closer and closer to civilisation. In the 1980s this island became inhabited with a large enough population to be considered a town. In that town was a young woman. She was pretty, naive and a little loose between the ears. She had a pa who was a sailor who enjoyed far too much drink and a ma who had long since turned off any response that could be called emotional. One day, this beautiful young lady met a stranger at the docks and fell in love.’ Ryan frowned. Water from the tap was dripping steadily into the sink. Alice was still staring at her clasped hands.

‘The man said they could not spend their lives together as he couldn’t stay in one place. The girl was smitten with him though and either couldn’t or wouldn’t hear sense from anyone. Despite the risks, he came back to her, time and time again. Before long she was pregnant with his child. It is here that things become more tangled. The merman king was catching up and had discovered the pirate returning to the same place every time. The king guessed that he had taken a lover and was determined to kill them both in hopes of ending the curse.’

The edge of the chair was cutting into the backs of Ryan’s legs as he sat rigidly in place. Alice sipped her tea. Some of it spilt over the sides of the cup. Her hands were shaking.

‘The pregnancy was difficult. She had a sister who helped to hide the pregnancy for as long as possible but there is only so long that could go on. When her pa found out, he was furious. Of course, by then she was showing and there wasn’t much to be done but have the child. The baby was born, a healthy little boy and an image of his father. Still a working sailor myself back then, I knew her pa and heard from him how she had given birth to a bastard child.’

‘For the most part the baby was an ordinary healthy boy except for when the family took the newborn to the mainland to see a doctor for a check-up. Apparently, he came down with a fever.’ Alice coughed into her cup. Ryan glanced over at her. She was glaring rather angrily at the tablecloth as though it had grievously offended her.

‘The doctor sent them home. When they brought the child back to the island, he was fine. The baby’s father still came to visit him and began to understand that his worst fears had come to light. His son would be affected by the curse just as he was.’

‘He wanted to give the baby a chance. It was certain death for the boy if the merking found them. So, he made the only decision he could. The plan was well executed. He took the child’s blanket and filled it with the ashes of some dead animal as well as a few of the boy’s things and threw it into the ocean. He gave the baby away to another family on the island, outsiders who had never had a history with the war or its ancestors. He used himself as bait to draw the merking away and was inevitably captured and executed.’

The rain was thundering down now, and the little kitchen was becoming cold. Alice got up to stoke the fire while his grandfather took a long drink of his tea. Ryan had a distinct lump in his throat.

‘Of course, the boy’s mother, your mother, didn’t want to give up the child. The loss of her baby drove the poor woman insane. She was never the calm level-headed woman she needed to be but giving away her only baby completely unhinged her. She never recovered and never once admitted to anyone what had really happened or why. She had very few friends with the exception of her young sister and people didn’t ask. Most assumed she had simply lost the baby during childbirth. Alice was still new to the island and the arrival of a new baby to her family was not considered suspicious.’

‘What happened to her?’ Ryan croaked.

‘Her pa died not long after all this, his liver finally gave out. The woman’s mother abandoned her daughters and the island. Haven’t the faintest idea what became of her. Your mother stayed close by though. Though she knew she could never have any kind of relationship with you, she could never leave,’ Grandpa Jo murmured.

A conversation from several weeks ago wafted through his mind. Ryan’s mouth had gone completely dry as he finally put the pieces together. Because there was someone on the island that he knew, someone that fit that description, someone who had refused to acknowledge or interact with him for as long as he could remember. He knew who his mother was…

‘…she’s not… well she’s not quite all there,’ Alice explained softly. Tyler tipped his head curiously.

‘Where’s the rest of her?’ Tyler giggled. Ryan gave his little brother a fond smile.

‘Probably at the bottom of the ocean,’ Ryan teased.

‘You’re not wrong,’ Grandpa Jo said in a strange voice.

Alice watched him tensely as Ryan raised his head to look her in the eye, positive that he was correct in his conclusion.

‘It’s Dania, isn’t it? Dania is my mother.’

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Ryan watched his mother pack in stunned silence.

‘What are you doing?’ he asked. She flung several shirts into the open suitcase, her eyes fixed on her task. It was like she didn’t even hear him. He tried to grab her arm, but she flew past him into the bathroom, grabbing toothbrushes and toothpaste. She grabbed the tube with such violence that the paste oozed out from beneath the closed lid.

The more she ignored him, the more panicked he became. There had to be more to the story than that! There just had to be! It didn’t explain anything about the curse or how to get to rid of it. Curses could be broken, couldn’t they? That was a thing? At least it was in the story books.

Story book…

Ryan rushed back to his room to find the odd novel he had left on his nightstand. It wasn’t there. He shoved the bedcovers back, checked on his desk, behind the bookcase and even got down on his hands and knees to check under the bed. It had gone.

‘Where-’

‘We’re leaving Ryan. We are getting on a ferry today and going to see your cousins,’ his mother snapped, almost shoving him over as she rushed back past to seize the contents of his sock drawer.

‘For how long?’ he yelped.

‘I don’t know.’ Her voice was strangled. He glanced over her shoulder into the open suitcase. All the clothes had been haphazardly shoved inside. Still, he saw no flash of colour from a hardcover book. Ryan followed her back out to the kitchen. His grandfather was sitting at the counter, his face worried.

‘Alice, dear, maybe-’ But she cut across her father too.

‘Are you going to sit there or are you going to help me pack?’ she barked. Grandpa Jo seemed to shrink in the chair.

‘You have to stop her!’ Ryan begged. His grandfather gave him a sad look.

‘You don’t know what it’s been like here without you, kiddo,’ he replied, his voice thick.

The teen hesitated, his throat closing a little. Then he shook his head. ‘At least let me talk to Dania!’ Ryan said, heading for the door. At this his grandfather seemed to reanimate like a puppet whose strings had been wrenched. The old man leapt with shocking speed to block the front door.

‘You can’t,’ Jo said. Ryan threw his hands up in exasperation.

‘Why?! What aren’t you telling me?’ he shouted. The old man just shook his head.

‘Nothing, Ryan, but the woman isn’t right in the head. There is nothing that she can tell you. Forcing this on her now would break her,’ his grandfather said hastily, hands pressed over the doorknob at his back. Ryan looked from his grandfather to his mother who was now rushing back in, two large suitcases in tow.

‘What about the curse!? You said I got sick last time I left the island,’ Ryan said, really starting to panic now. Alice shot them both a sharp glare.

‘You were a baby, and you got a fever. I’ve never heard of a baby that didn’t get sick in its infancy,’ she barked, shoving him towards the door. ‘You have been to visit your cousins plenty of times. Now move,’ she snapped. Ryan tripped over his own feet as he was shunted towards the door.

That fact was oddly true…. He had seen his cousins on the mainland several times. Granted, it had only ever been for a couple of days, but he had gone. There was one other very large problem. A problem that was still thick and heavy around his neck. Ryan had dared a glance in the mirror after he had his shower.

The collar was tucked under the collar of his shirt. He wasn’t sure why his mother hadn’t noticed. Given how wide and darting her eyes were and how pale her pallor, he guessed that the woman was far too busy with her own panic to notice.

He bit his lip hard. Should he tell them? He had to at some point but what was the use now? He needed to get more information and his mother knew there was more to the story. She would never tell him here. He also missed Tyler.

‘Okay,’ he said, backing down.

For now.

Alice looked mildly relieved. Jo moved away from the front door and pulled it open. The three rushed out. The rain had stopped, and low thick fog had rolled in. Ominous and thick, it made the journey to the wharf an uncomfortable one. The heavy wet air was hard to breathe. Before long, Ryan’s clean cotton shirt felt damp and clammy.

The small group made it all the way to the dock without seeing another living soul. Everything had been so hectic since he had got back, Ryan hadn’t even had a chance to check in with Trent. He looked back up the dirt road they had come down, but with the thick curtain of fog, the houses weren’t even visible.

That wait in that cold fog on that dreary afternoon would be one Ryan would remember for the rest of his life. They stood, so tensely still, his mother at his back, his grandfather at his front. Every breaking wave against the rocks sounded like voices. Every rasp on grasses like scales on the wooden pier. Every breath hurt his lungs.

Fear, raw and living, squirmed in his chest. He knew this wouldn’t be allowed. If Firth discovered he was leaving the island, even if he was still within the time limit, Ryan suspected he would stop him. Maybe he would take him straight back to the depths of the ocean. Maybe he would be left there. Alone until something found him.

The two daggers were still under the bed back in his bedroom. He hadn’t had time to grab them! Was that a figure moving in the fog or just the wind? Were the waves coming in faster? Was the air getting thicker?

It had been one of the longest days of Ryan life. He was almost swaying with fatigue, the long swim and overload of information mixing together to form the perfect cocktail of exhaustion. He wanted to lie down. He wanted to go back to his house, climb into bed and pull the blankets over his head. For the first time ever, he felt like a child rather than a teenager. It was all too much.

‘It will be okay,’ Alice whispered, squeezing his shoulders hard. He wanted to believe her, but she only knew half of what the problem was. The task ahead of him seemed impossible. How was he to end a curse when his own father had failed? He still didn’t even know the man’s name!

‘Here it is,’ Grandpa Jo called, obvious relief in his voice. Several lights could be seen through the fog, coming towards them across the water. Ryan moved forward with his mother, trying to pretend he wasn’t hearing something moving in the grass. Whatever it was sounded heavy and slick.

His mother rushed forward to speak to the ferryman. Ryan was gently pushed forward onto the rocking vessel, his grandfather stepping on after him.

Ryan put his hands on the railing. Grip tight, he tried to take in air. The salty sea air coated his palate. It was so familiar and yet now, so new and thick with hidden terrors. The hair rose on the back of his arms as the ferry set off. No one else got on the ferry and no one had gotten off. There were just tall shapes of people in the gloom. Ryan looked down at his feet.

He jumped violently when a piece of driftwood bumped into the side of the vessel. He refused to look up, not trusting his own eyes. Cold sweat made his palms sweaty as he held onto the paint chipped railing.

‘Not long,’ his grandfather murmured though to who, he wasn’t sure.

‘What did you tell everyone whilst I was away?’ Ryan whispered, finally asking a question he had been wondering since he has first woken in that underwater prison.

‘We weren’t sure what to tell everyone at first. There was no explanation that would help us. We called for a search team though we knew we wouldn’t find you.’ Alice’s voice was barely audible over the sound of the ferry and the crashing waves.

‘In the morning we put the word out that we had found you,’ she said, shocking the hell out of him. Ryan felt his jaw drop.

‘You what?’ he yelped. A couple of the strange figures shifted silently from where they stood.

‘We told everyone that you needed some time on the mainland, away from the island so we were sending you away for the rest of the school holidays.’ Ryan was in shock. He didn’t know whether to be royally pissed off at his mother or upset that anyone actually believed her. What about Trent? Ryan hadn’t even had the chance to check his phone. Come to think of it, he hadn’t seen that on his nightstand either.

Surely his best friend wouldn’t have believed that he would just disappear off to the mainland without saying goodbye. Without saying anything to anyone!?

‘Why would you do that?’ His voice came out rather embarrassingly squeaky.

‘We didn’t know that you were coming back but we prayed that you would. That you would find a way to escape and come home.’ His chest tightened at the sound of a formed sob in his mother’s throat.

‘But I…’

He didn’t escape.

They let him go.

They would also take him back if they realized he was trying to escape the islands. If he could.

‘We just needed to buy some time, work out what to do,’ she finished. He felt cold. It hurt to unclench his teeth.

‘And if I had never come back?’ he rasped. His mother didn’t answer him. The journey felt like an eternity. He tried to lose himself in the rocking of the boat. Ryan felt like an insect being tossed around in a glass bottle. He was so small, so visible in an unforgiving churning sea. He felt that at any minute a hand could pluck him from the deck of the ferry, and he would be dragged back under the crashing waves.

As they got closer to the city, there were lights and colours to bleed through the gloom. For the first time in his life, Ryan was relieved and happy to see them. The fog wasn’t so thick here and he could see perfectly ordinary people walking down the road and sitting in the cafes. He could see cars in the beachside carpark and other boats tethered to the pier. The world suddenly felt ordinary, and he was his normal size again. He breathed a little easier.

The wheels of the suitcase clacked loudly on the ramp as they got off the ferry. Ryan realized with some confusion that they were headed to the carp park.

‘Urh, where are we going? Aunt Joanne’s house is that way?’ Ryan said, looking back at the street sign to Pickerton Crescent. His grandfather hesitated. Alice cleared her throat.

‘Your aunt isn’t staying at their holiday house at the moment. We are driving to see them inland.’

Ryan stared at her. ‘What?’ She kept walking until Ryan was forced to jog to catch up. She stopped by a small white sedan. She opened the passenger door.

‘We can’t!’ he shouted.

‘We are going,’ she said stoutly.

‘It’s not that simple! I don’t think-’ She whirled around, her expression one he had never seen before in his life.

‘Ryan Regale, I don’t care what you think right now! I raised you! I am your mother, and you will do what I say and what I’m saying right now is get in the damn car!’ she shouted. The street went uncomfortably quiet.

Still shaking, still red in the face, Ryan opened the car door and slid into the back seat. Alice slammed the door shut and leapt into the driver’s seat. As Ryan fumbled with his seat belt, he glanced up at the rear-view mirror. He couldn’t control that overwhelming feeling of dread.

Nor could he ignore how the salt-stained grey windows of the beach houses all looked like the dead eyes. Milky grey and fish like, those eyes were watching him as the car engine roared to life. They watched him without blinking as the car wheels started to move. Alice put her foot down and they took off down the road, leaving the beach and its roaring ocean behind.

For just half a moment before they rounded the bend Ryan could have sworn, he had seen a cloaked figure standing beside one of those empty buildings. It was unnaturally tall and unmoving. But then they hit the corner and the figure was gone.

Out of sight but certainly not out of mind. Ryan knew even as he sank low in his seat, that he had made a terrible decision.

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END

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