Seawitch

TWENTY-THREE

It wasn’t tiny but on the map Jones Island wasn’t much more. There were smaller islands in the San Juans, but few as oddly alone as Jones. Smack in the middle of the confluence of several channels, the misshapen little island seemed isolated from its neighbors, though none of them was actually far away. The looming bulk of San Juan stood to its west and the long finger of Spieden pointed just over it to the massive curve of Orcas on the east. A few smaller islands stood below it like fallen crumbs and above it opened the passage to the northernmost islands, an empty stretch of churning water where the currents of the tidal race began their restless way through the riddles and gyres of the north Sound.

“North Cove’s a pretty place,” Zantree said, considering the chart, “but no one I know ever drops their hook there for long.”

“I imagine that the merfolk make sure it stays that way,” I said. Even if they aren’t entirely corporeal all the time, the denizens of the Grey have ways of making their presence known and driving off the unwanted attentions of normal people without showing their true nature: cold breezes, unpleasant smells, disquieting glimpses from the corner of your eye that are gone when you turn around, and the sense that—for no reason you can name—you need to leave. With all that deep cold water to play in, they probably had a whole host of tricks I’d never seen before, too, but I had no doubt I’d get familiar with them soon enough.

Once Mambo Moon had fought clear of the rocks and currents, the rest of the trip up Haro Strait was easy enough. But even with the current now in our favor, once we turned southeast above Henry Island the trip down Spieden Channel was a bitter fight for every yard in the teeth of a cold and adverse wind that sprang from nowhere and rushed up the narrow passage like a fury. Ragged white lines appeared where current-driven wave tops were whipped into foam by the wind coming from the opposite direction. The water in the channel became a choppy ribbon of dark blue crossed with white that sent the boat lurching up and then banging down like a hobbyhorse with a squirrely front end.

We each took a turn at the bow—mine cut a bit short by the swooning pain in my ribs—clipped safely in place with lines from our flotation vests to the rails. We kept a lookout for anything that might come under the boat as it reared up, but nothing significant did and we all got chilled in our damp, borrowed slickers as the sun started its slow summer crawl to the horizon. With the bulk of Vancouver Island far behind, the channel was cast into shadow long before dusk.

As we bowed and reared, the Valencia’s bell gave out occasional muffled chimes that sent a frisson through me and plunged the world into a dark cloud of the Grey for a few moments. The noise seemed to be folding reality, layering the normal and the Grey into a pleat where both appeared equally solid and real for the fleeting moments that they remained aligned. Between the motion, my cranky rib, and the fluttering of the worlds, I felt distinctly seasick by the time Mambo Moon finally exited Spieden Channel. Directly ahead lay Jones Island, shining gold in the westering sun between purple shadows lying on the water from San Juan and Spieden islands, closing on the little nub of land with their encroaching darkness like the pincers of a giant black crab.

Within a minute of the boat’s leaving the channel, the wind died down and the swells smoothed out as we hit the wider, more populated water. I was the last on lookout duty and I slogged my way along the deck sideways, bent and favoring my aching side. The bridge had its own doors that opened onto steps down to the side decks and I climbed them at a snail’s pace to leave my moist coat on a hook just inside the starboard door. The three men were in the pilothouse when I entered, panting.

“You look done in, Harper,” Zantree said from his post at the wheel.

I nodded. Quinton stepped close to draw me in tight against his chest so my back pressed to his heat while his arms circled my waist. Since I’m taller than he is, it was a little awkward, but I didn’t care. Warmth is warmth and when it comes from an attractive man who loves you, you don’t quibble about the way his chin hits your shoulder.

“How much longer?” I asked.

Zantree scrubbed at his damp hair with one hand as he answered. “Well, assuming we’re in the right place and all, maybe forty minutes at this pace. But I don’t get how we’re going to see anything but the park service dock and a few tourists.”

“I’ll have to get our hosts to come out and open the gate to Neverland,” I said.

I tried ringing the bell, but inside the confines of the pilothouse I couldn’t generate a solid peal, only an anemic clank or ping that shuttered the world in darkness for a moment before it fell away again. The men all flinched as the overlapping world flickered in and out of view.

I looked at each of them. “What are you seeing or hearing that’s making you cringe like that?” I knew what I was experiencing, but none of them were Greywalkers or even particularly sensitive to the Grey, though Solis seemed to take it in a bit more. Did the bell actually have some power to call up an entrance or was I imagining—hoping for—more than was possible?

“It’s fast,” Quinton said. “For just a second . . . it’s like seeing the world in the light of an eclipse.”

“Bleak,” Solis said. “It is not just a darkness but . . . a loss.”

“Storm light’s what it looks like to me,” Zantree said. “Like we’re on the edge of a hurricane or a blow coming down.”

“Do you feel something or is it just visual?” I asked.

“It’s cold,” Quinton said, and Zantree nodded.

But Solis frowned, shaking his head a little. “There is . . . expectation. Something waiting in the cold.”

Maybe it’s a cop thing—that intuition the good ones develop—that was giving Solis that extra bit of knowledge, but whether it was from his background, his family, his job, or being dragged in by me, he was picking up more than either of the other men. It was strange that Quinton wasn’t getting more, considering how much time he spent with me, but perhaps the difference in perception was in kind rather than in degree. Either way, I guessed I needed a louder, longer tone before the phenomenon would hold steady.

“I guess I have to take it outside,” I said.

“Why?” Quinton asked.

“The bell seems to resist ringing indoors. At a guess, I’d say the ghosts are deliberately muffling it and all I can think of is to try it outside. Don’t know why they’d care but they do seem to.”

“It doesn’t have to be you who takes it,” he said. “You’re tired already and chances are good that a lot of whatever has to be done next will fall on your shoulders. So why don’t you sit down and I’ll do it?”

I didn’t get to reply. Solis cut me off. “I will take it. You and Zantree know the boat. Blaine needs rest. I have been almost useless so far.”

It looked as if Quinton would have argued but Zantree talked right over him.

“So long as you don’t go overboard again,” Zantree said. “If we’re as close as Harper thinks, I doubt we’ll be able to haul you back if those fish-tailed man snatchers drag you over this time. Get the harness on and clip in soon as you’re out the door. Or I’ll toss y’down below and lock you in till we’re heading home. Not having any more rescue drills on this cruise, damn it.”

Solis cocked one eyebrow but all he returned was a sardonic, “Aye, Captain.”

Quinton helped Solis with the safety harness and the flotation gear, giving him a funny look. “Not wearing a red shirt under there, are you?”

“What?”

“Star Trek—the red shirt guys always get the ax.”

“Ah. No.”

“You only need to ring it once,” I said. “I’ll know if it works.” I wanted to tell him to be careful but that seemed condescending. Instead I shut up and watched with a double flutter of anxiety—both mine and Quinton’s—in my chest as Solis stepped outside with the bronze bell clutched in his hands and secured to his life vest by a line and clip through the loop on top. I hoped it wouldn’t drag him down if he was again swept overboard.

Solis didn’t go all the way out to the bow as I’d half expected, but stopped at the side deck, attaching his safety line to the nearest rail. He didn’t need more room and it was foolish to go farther than he had to—a choice I mentally applauded. He didn’t take any chances with grabby monsters this time but hooked his left arm around the hand rail on the stairs he’d just descended. Then he held the bell out and let it swing from its loop until the clapper struck hard against the body.

A loud, round peal rolled out from the bell like the report from a cannon, visible in the Grey as a rushing wave that rippled the material of the world and spun a hollow bubble of ghost-stuff around us, encapsulating Mambo Moon in a sphere that was both Grey and normal at the same time. The walls of the overlapping worlds shimmered and wavered like the skin of a soap bubble riding a paranormal breeze.

In the distance a chorus of unearthly voices roared in fury and an answering clang, and a shriek, less musical but more forceful, shivered the air, pushing on our bubble. The thin skin of mist and darkness around the boat held together, but quivered and melded to the arriving shock front, leaving us with only the thinnest barrier of Grey against Grey to hold back whatever had generated the opposing force.

I watched this odd phenomenon—like two soap bubbles kissing and then creating a flat section where they met, the surfaces shivering with reflections and the sliding play of storm light on the curved surfaces—and paid scant attention to my companions in the pilothouse until I heard Quinton whisper, “Is this . . . what it’s like . . . ?”

I shook myself and turned my head to him, barely noticing the twitching of the chronometer on the navigation console.

“What it’s like? I don’t know. What do you see?” I asked, my voice low and uncomfortably rough in my throat.

Quinton stared out at the curved walls of our bubble and the sphere of the next pressing against it. “Beautiful and cold . . . like ice in the Arctic, colors buried in deep chill, running from the sky in ribbons like the aurora. . . .”

I felt the fleeting warmth and soaring sensation of his wonder but had to say, “Not to me. That’s not what I see.” And a colder feeling, born of memory and mist-touched terrors, dulled his reflected excitement and left me a little sad.

“I hate it,” Zantree growled. “Give me the plain blue sea over this . . . pea-soup nightmare anytime.”

So . . . like other aspects of the Grey, this one also reflected the viewer’s own expectation and memory. Quinton saw cold beauty while Zantree experienced a mist filled with dangers.

I looked out at Solis and saw the interface of the two Grey spheres bow toward him. I threw myself out the door as the glassy surface between them shattered under a rush of water as white as a bridal dress and deadly cold.

Solis turned his shoulder to the falling wave, bending his body over the bell and crouching against the deck as the wave crashed into him. I shot down the steps with a sharp pang, oblivious to my lack of safety gear, and snatched at his lifeline.

“Solis!” I yelled as I yanked him toward the steps, only to feel my feet swept out from under me. I landed hard on my hip, dazed and breathless with pain.

Something hard and cold banged into my shoulder and I found myself scooped up and shoved back up the steps and into the pilothouse. Solis came through, dripping, behind me and slammed the door shut against the collapsing wall of water as both bubbles of Grey popped and dissolved.

Mambo Moon rocked violently and then bobbed back up, settling into the water again as the shadow of Vancouver and Spieden islands dropped away and let us back into the golden light of a summer’s evening. The noise of the bells cut off as suddenly as the wave had receded and we bobbed again on a gently rolling sea of deep blue, Jones Island dead ahead and as large as Rushmore.

Solis coughed a little and pulled off his safety gear, untying the bell from his vest and laying it on the floor, mouth down. “Fifteen minutes,” he said.

“What was fifteen minutes?” I gasped, trying to sit up without wincing.

“The elapsed time since I rang the bell. I thought it would be useful to know. . . .”

I blinked as I caught my breath and got myself upright. I hadn’t thought of it and I supposed no one else had either, but it was helpful since the chronometer on the nav indicated a passage of only five minutes. The bell’s Grey state lasted three times longer than the passage of normal time. Or was it the other way around?

“Whatever it was, we’ve drifted up close on Jones,” Zantree observed. “I’ll have to steer hard to port to make the turn around the point safely, so hold on.”

The boat swayed as Zantree turned it away from the island, heading north, and then corrected back down in a few minutes to position us just outside the mouth of the cove. There he reversed the engines and brought Mambo Moon to a halt.

“Well,” he asked, “do we go on as we are or do we ring the doorbell first?”

“I think we’ll have to ring,” I replied.

This time I made Solis stay inside and went out to strike the bell myself, the dark silver storm front of the Grey chime this time expanding outward and away from us to enclose most of the tiny bay instead of the boat. The bubble didn’t grow evenly but seemed to cleave to some invisible edge, climbing the cliff on the west and leaving a crescent of untouched, normal water near the eastern shore while a fugue of mist and thrashing wavelets filled the space within the visible half of the sphere. Dead white things flashed below the churned surface and broached to reveal glimpses of glazed eyes and restless tentacles that trailed seaweed.

I swallowed hard, feeling my stomach flip over at the sight of the unsettled Grey waters. We waited but nothing gave any indication that we should advance or turn back.

Zantree looked at me. “What do we do now, commander?”

“I’m not sure. Can you make it to that clear stretch without entering the bubble?” I asked, pointing to the calm stretch of eastern water.

He studied the cove a moment, then nodded. “Yup. I can get her in there. But why do you want me to avoid the bubble, exactly? It didn’t do us any harm the last time.”

“We were alone inside last time. I don’t really want to be inside with those things just yet,” I said.

He nodded, brought the burbling engines back up just a little, and then put the big boat in forward gear, easing it around the flickering mist edge of the Grey boundary, keeping us in the normal and the things inside undisturbed by our passage.

As we slipped between the two arms of land that enclosed the cove, he brought the boat around sharply to port once again, keeping as much safe distance between us and the bubble as possible. We slid without challenge into the tiny cove on the island’s north shore.

The cove was nearly a perfect circle of water, embraced in the two reaching arms of the north and east points that enclosed the short spit of the park service dock at the south extreme of the bowl, directly across from the entrance. In spite of the early-summer weather, the calm little anchorage was abandoned; no other boat stood anywhere within the bay. The island beyond rose to a spine of rocky ground covered in still-green grass and tall, slim firs and cedars. The gentle slope at the dock’s end rose into craggy, tumbled cliffs on the curving scarp of the encircling points that enfolded the cove. To the west lay the northernmost point of the island, tall, stark, and black in the shadow of the slowly creeping sunset. On the east the cliff fell into a scatter of massive stones that had rolled down from the treed, curving spine of the island. The sun struck the wet black rocks a burnished gold that writhed with creatures.

“Don’t know that I’ve ever seen it this . . . empty,” Zantree said, his voice hushed as if he feared something watching us with malevolent intent.

I pointed to the eastern cliffs and their strange movement. “What’s that?”

Zantree peered at it, then pulled a pair of binoculars from a box fixed to the side of the steering station and looked through them.

“Otters. It’s a colony of sea otters. Well, I’ll be blowed. . . .”