The Monster's Wife(73)

64


The sky turned from white to yellow, yellow to crimson to dark. Oona stayed by the grave watching the heavens bruise. The old man was still inside. He must be hiding, murmuring his prayers.

Dusk thickened and swifts skimmed low over the mossy stones, snapping up midges with their open beaks. She thought of picking up the wooden board that bore her name and breaking it over the old man’s head. Victor had said she was stronger than anyone. It would be so easy. But the image of the board breaking, of blood and pain, felt like Victor’s tools boring into her head. She clutched her face and rocked until her mind was blank again.

Night came. Stars shone and the waning moon looked down on her, one side whittled away. They’d called her cursed, a ghost, a demon. Victor had fixed her with tools. She was broken, but she was alive and strong too. She had a second chance. The thoughts padded through her head like night things, yowling. They gave her no peace and none seemed to be the answer. Owls whooped oaths and the burn babbled curses at the sleeping sky. The night was half gone by the time she knew what to do and stood.

She untied the scarf from her head and picked up four of the stones that marked her grave, laying them gently inside the cloth as if they were food. The sling dangled by her thigh as she wove between graves. She swung it in time to the gurgling burn as strode down the brae. When she got to the beach, the firth stretched out darkling and strange. The tall white torches that men put on the small islands flung their silver over the sea. Under the water’s rough weft was a selkie who’d once been a human girl. The Finman took her down there with seven strokes of his oar and when she came back, her kind didn’t know her again.

Oona tied the scarf round her waist so that the round stones were cradled in the small of her back, the ends knotted tightly over her hip. Waves licked her feet, inviting her to take another step closer, one more step. She began to run through the shallows, remembering another time when she’d run like this and turned round to see a young man watching her from the shore.

The cold water climbed her calves and thighs, planting salty kisses on her breasts. The sea was a lover warming his cold hands on her, tickling up goosebumps along her bare arms, holding her so tightly it was hard to breathe. She closed her eyes and felt the world below open for her.

Her feet tiptoed along the soft mush of drowned sand. Salt seeped between her lips. She opened her mouth, letting it trickle down her throat, burning and cooling, filling her. Underneath, seed pearls spilled from her, surged to the surface and burst. She smiled. She was going home.

Hands grabbed her hard around the waist and dragged her back. They gripped her from behind, knocking the last breath from her. She broke the surface, spluttering scalding salt, face smacking the frozen air, chest on fire. The scarf was ripped off and plunged away. Silt scorched her heels, then her calves and thighs. She gulped in air, hearing the hoarse notes her body made as if they came from somewhere else. She flung her arm back. It collided with hard flesh. She kicked back and clawed, gasps turning into shrieks. But whatever had her kept on hauling her back through the sea until they were on dry land and it set her down.

She lay in the sand, her eyes blurred and stinging, rough coughs ripping from her lungs. Through a haze of saltwater, she saw a tawny face half hidden by a dark hood. A man knelt over her, smelling of peat ash and sealskin. He put his hand under her neck, gently tilting her head to the side so that the water trickled from her mouth. Her hand flailed out and struck him a blow to the head. He caught her wrist and smiled with one side of his mouth.

“Be still.”

She tried to shout No, but the word was no more than a splutter of water. He let go of her and she heaved herself onto her side and retched. She must run, but she was still too weak. She closed her eyes and saw a hooded man staring from his sealskin covering, watching her from a boat as she rowed. Had he been following her?

She hauled herself onto her haunches, saw the sand and red cloth stuck to her scarred thighs swarming with pale dots and flecks of gold. She sat back down and retched more salt water. His hand was on her shoulder. She looked up. A scar ran down between his nose and his top lip. Another began on his sun-brown cheek and vanished from view beneath the hood. His blue eyes had yellowed whites, like hers when she stared in the mirror.

He gripped her shoulders. “Why did you do it?”

She tried to twist free, but he was too strong. “Leave me be!” She eyed the distance from the sand to the grass, from the grass to the field and the stooks.

“I promise not to hurt you.” His hand moved to her neck, a thin layer of grit dividing skin from skin. He turned her face from one side to the other, staring.

She seized his wrist, pressing down hard, crushing the bones. “I make no such promise.”

“You seem better at hurting yourself.” He peeled her fingers from his wrist as if she were a child.

Her hands and feet scrabbled the sand at the same time. She balled her fist and smashed his face as she had smashed the glass. He reeled back, bleeding. Then, with a kick of pebbles, she was up and out of his reach, halfway down the beach with his feet crashing behind her.

She glanced back, tripped over a branch and landed flat on her palms. He picked her up by the waist and she kicked him hard. He turned her round in his arms and she bit his hand, drew more blood. It pleased her to see it run between his knuckles.

“Stop fighting me. I want to help you.”