The Monster's Wife(2)

She skimmed stones, seven, ten, thirty of them, one for each humdrum person in Quoy. Not one of them worth daydreaming about. Not one of them as dear to her as May was, damn her eyes.





2


Oona fancied that the three long days and nights Jonah spent in the belly of the whale were neither as dark nor as foul as her week had been. No May to divert her and nothing but jobs to do for Granny. Now, when May finally had time to spend with her, she found herself on a beach that stank of carrion and was quite as dark as a sea monster’s guts, abroad in a storm, with sideways rain burning her cheeks. As for Jonah’s self-sacrifice, it was nothing to hers. For she had put aside her quarrel with May to follow her to the brink of the raging sea on some mysterious errand and a thankless task it was, too.

“See there?” May pointed into the darkness.

“That black shadow in the black night sky?”

“No! That jagged trench, hare-brain.” The wind whisked the last word away from them.

Oona strained her eyes. She could just make out the lone candle burning in the window of Cormick’s dwelling. It cast enough light to expose a shadowy darkness on the sand in front of the shack. It seemed to be the trench May spoke of. “It’s no more than a noust, May, such as the fishermen build for their boats in winter.” Even as she spoke the words, though, she thought this one looked rougher than usual.

“That’s where the doctor landed according to Old Cormick. He was beside himself.”

“Cormick’s always beside himself and he’s always beside some ale. That’s why he tells so many tall tales.”

“I believe this tall tale’s true.” May tugged her sleeve. “Come on.”

Oona rolled her eyes, knowing the gesture would be lost in the darkness. “So you led me here at the witching hour to prove that old drunk’s story? I thought you knew more about how the doctor arrived here than anyone.”

“Ruffled you, did it?” May laughed. “Well, perhaps if you do as I say tonight, you’ll discover more.”

“Don’t care to!” Oona retorted, yet she found herself following May’s footsteps across the wet rocks.

The sea spewed freezing water at them. It was hard to stay upright, let alone move forward, so they went slowly, picking a toehold here, bending there to stop from slipping.

Clouds parted and the moon shone. All at once the beach lay before them like a picture in Reverend Yule’s storybooks. Perhaps Jonah had felt this way when the whale finally puked him out from the darkness.

Rocks red as skinned things were splayed out in front of them. A white crescent shivered in the tide. Oona thought it was the moon reflected in the water, but when they came nearer to it, she saw a small eye, the dark gouge of a mouth.

It was another dead dolphin. They had been washing up for two weeks now, making a cold pilgrimage ashore. There were five tonight. Oona ached to see their gleaming bodies laid out like a path to the shack. The way they smiled at their deaths was the saddest thing of all.

At the edge of the jagged hole, they stopped and looked down. Bobbing in the tide was a fishing boat loaded with crates. The word Elver was licked round the prow in white. The name and a strange head, half girl half seal, whittled into the prow, told Oona that the old tub was one of Cormick’s vessels, heavy with his catch by the smell of it. A rope leading up from it was pinioned to the land above with a slab of rock.

Oona pressed her shawl to her nose. “Foul!”

“Oh quit your carping. You put on airs for no better reason than that your Granny taught you letters. A stranger would think you weren’t come from fisherfolk.” May jumped down with a splash and clambered in to the boat, beckoning. “Come on. We’ve crates to sink.”

“You’ve lost your buttons May Edith Norquoy!”

“You promised, Oona. Please?” May beamed up at her.

Oona crossed her arms. “You’ve cut me this fortnight past and barely spoken five words to me since the doctor arrived. But now you want help, you’re all smiles.” She wouldn’t be gulled this time.

“Suit yourself.” May wound up the anchor. “As you see fit.” Her face was set, eyes on the water, mouth turned down the way it did when she was displeased.

Oh, suit yourself yourself, sulky minx, thought Oona, glancing wistfully back at the candlelit windows of Quoy, soft constellations of warmth and sleep.

Her feet betrayed her first, falling into the trench, then her hands, lifting her drenched skirts round her waist, and finally her mouth. “You row and I’ll push it out.” Her head stayed loyal to her heart, though, and firm in its knowledge of May’s foolishness.

And yet, when they were through the shallows and Oona had dragged herself aboard, slick as a seal and shivering, and they had an oar each and were slicing the rumpled water, she grew giddy and her belly flailed. She stifled a laugh, imagining Cormick twitching his rags of curtains, seeing his boat gone. How May devised this scheme she could not guess. Perhaps she’d coaxed Cormick into giving her the boat. That was the truth about May. She was eternally making people pander to her. The gift of the gab, everyone said, an angel’s face and the Devil’s tongue.

Out at sea, where the earth and sky joined, lightning cracked. Three, five, ten and the thunder rolled. Oona thrilled at the sound, pushing her numb face towards the wind that pinched her cheeks. Then the lightning again and the taste of rain filling the clouds’ grey bellies.