The Monster's Wife(33)

“A girl that’s betrothed, but French words for it. It’s the name Victor gave me.” There was a wistful note in May’s voice, something between nostalgia and regret. Victor, she’d called him, just as he had told Oona to do, and the way she spoke the name sounded intimate.

Oona stifled a pang of envy, inhaled and exhaled, floating a little higher on the earthen taste of the smoke. “Are you looking forward to your bridecog?” She passed the pipe back.

May puffed out smoke rings that drifted out across the sea’s dark glass, unknowable. Slick black heads broke the surface, curious seals (or Selkies depending on who you asked). Oona wondered how they occupied themselves under the tide’s slick lid, whether they lived wild, sad, intricate lives like some humans do, or dull ones.

The pipe went out.

“Time to launder some linens and sweep some floors.” Oona stood, a little dizzy.

May tapped the pipe on a stone. “Help me up?”

Oona grasped May’s hands and heaved her upright.

“I need a breath of air before I slave over the stove, Oona. Let’s walk a different way today.” There was something melancholy in the way May spoke the words.

Despite the swelling heat, Oona shivered, feeling a strange sense of foreboding.





28


Slow and cider-heavy, Oona followed May through the shallows. Rounding the long sandstone nose that divided one beach from the next, they came to the red rocks framing Cormick’s beach like bloody hair.

It was a treacherous place when the tide crept in. Twenty steps away, black waves boomed and shattered into silver shards. They roared in Oona’s bones as she skidded from one foothold to the next. Over the hunched backs of the boulders she saw that Cormick had dragged the dolphins away from the shore and thrown them upon his stinking midden. By daylight, their bodies looked still more decrepit as well as sad and undignified.

May stopped on a plateau of rock below Oona. She looked up, her eyebrows pinched against light that suddenly spilled from between clouds. “Remember the other night when Cormick took his old feller out and pished on us?”

“Thanks, I was trying to forget.”

May smiled, but her eyes were forlorn. She turned and began climbing. Oona followed, wishing she could recapture their merriment on the other beach. She wanted to laugh and laugh until she couldn’t breathe. She caught May up, reached for her hand.

“Remember when we played here as wee’uns? We thought there were cities in these sandstone shelves.”

May frowned. Her hand slipped from Oona’s, moving to hitch her skirt above her ankles. “We shouldn’t have come this way.” She wouldn’t meet Oona’s eye.

“Are you well, May? You look so pale.”

May said nothing.

There was a plunge in Oona’s belly like a skipped stone that won’t fly and just sinks down. She chattered on nervously to fill the silence. “I remember we had a whole world made up from rocks and shells and sea,” she pointed to a spindly outcrop the tide crashed against. “Over there was the castle Rasteal, built by the King of the Finmen.” The light behind it made it look black. It held up the roof of a cave long ago, that the sea had brought down and now this sharp toothy-peg was all there was left. “And that gloup on the cliff where the water glugs we named Younsoun—”

“The dungeon that held Goreen, the Queen of the Trows.” May smiled her sad half-smile again. “How odd we were, making tales out of everything instead of playing with the other lasses. I suppose we were always...different.”

“Our world was full of finmen and trows and fairy rings. Full of magic.”

“I miss it too.” May squeezed Oona’s hand. Her touch was clammy, as if a fever had come on her. She stopped suddenly.

Oona slipped forward and had to steady herself on the curve of an upturned keel. Their hands fell apart.

They had strayed far from the path to the big house. Oona was afraid to ask why. She thought of May’s sharp words about Victor’s engagement, the wistfulness in her voice when she mentioned the doctor’s pet name for her. Jeune fille á marier. Was she having second thoughts?

In front of them Cormick’s shack slumped between scuppered boats and a ruddy collar of cliff. The stones had been hewn from the rock and built back into it. Coarse grass swathed the roof and huddled in clumps around the doorway. The midden spreading out in front of the shack was strewn with starfish and the clenched lips of razor clams. A grey cat rootling in the muck dug out a fish head and started licking it.

May peered through the windows, standing on tiptoe to get a better view. She craned her neck, looking too hard, too long for it to be mere curiosity. The cat sidled up and twisted around her ankles, purring. Its yellow eyes gleamed unblinkingly.

“Shoo!” May’s leg twitched the cat away, toppling a pail from which mussels spilled. The curtain covering the door opened. She turned to Oona, mouth sprawled open in panic. “Quick. Let’s get out of here.”

Cormick stood in the doorway of the sagging shack. His eyes were red and there was a mean look on his face. If he was pleased to see them, he hid it well. “Well lookee. Wee Mayflower and her sheepdog barging in nice as you please. After a boat are you?” He shambled towards them, his whisky breath reeking. “Or you just here to wreck my house?”

“Wreck it? This place is a dung heap.” She walked up to Cormick.