The Monster's Wife(84)

She felt the sting of each knuckle. Stuart’s fists joined Dod’s. She kicked their legs. Stuart stepped out of the way. He was the devil who’d crushed the life from May on Cormick’s beach. Her fist flung out at Stuart, hit air.

Dougie Flett’s boot caught her in the ribs while Stuart’s aimed at her knees, between her legs. She was slack as wet cloth pounded over and over in the burn, the part that was Oona running off downstream, guttering out while the people she’d known all her life kicked her and laughed.





76


Their boots fell still, as if they’d lost interest. It was dark inside Oona and in the darkness, everything screamed. The men spoke in low voices but the words were chopped into sharp pieces so they didn’t make sense. She tasted nails, felt her cheeks swell inward and smother her tongue. Pain ground her down. It pulsed and gouged. She smelled burning peat, sharp and salt. Light beat her swollen lids. The sharp bits of sound merged together.

“She looks dead to me.”

“Dead for the second time.”

“You’d think she’d have learned from the first.”

Her lashes lifted a hair’s breadth.

“Drag her over with the other beast. Let them be man and wife.”

Hands grabbed her. Her arms flew over her head. She went wrist-first over the ground, the heather scoring her back. Her wrists seemed to loosen. The fire roared next to her ear. Her cheek burned. Cooled again. The hands dropped her. She peeked through her lashes.

Andrew’s fair hair was limp and yellow as wet straw. He dragged his sleeve over his brow. He didn’t smile this time, just looked down as if he was searching for something in the midden’s muck. He smoothed his hair back and wiped his eyes, then vanished behind the fire with the rest.

Her head rolled away from the fire, bones grating in her neck as it moved. She opened her eyes. A body lay in the black heather next to her, not moving but not burnt either. It wore Adam’s shirt. She stretched her arm towards it, felt the warm skin, the shallow rise and fall of breathing.

“Adam.” Blood and spit sprayed from her lips in a haze like pink steam. The name sounded broken. “Up.”

He didn’t move. She sat up and the pain throbbed between her legs, in her knees and ribs and head. He was wrapped in fishing nets, his hands joined with a hook, as if in prayer.

She shuffled next to him and pushed at the metal spike gouging the back of his hand. Blood ran from the hole and slicked her fingers. The hook sunk down low enough for her to slip her fingers between his skin and the curved haft. It stopped, stuck. She pulled harder and heard a sucking sound. The hook came free. She straddled him and began to tug at the nets. They wouldn’t budge. With a groan, Adam woke and looked up at her. His glazed eyes fixed on a point behind her head.

She turned around slowly, hiding the hook in her sleeve. Stuart stood over her. He bent down and stroked Oona’s cheek. “What are you thinking of wee’un?”

“Killing you.”

He laughed. “Much as you sicken me, I ken you’ve got guts.”

He yanked Oona’s head up by the hair and pulled her up from Adam. He dragged her a few steps further, pushed her down and drove her face into the heather. His fingers twisted harder in her hair. He jerked her head back until her neck burned and slammed it forward. She cried out, rolled over. He stood and she heard him spit, felt the warm wetness of it on her face.

She staggered to her feet. Stuart grabbed her by the waist. She stumbled forward, clawing at the flesh of the arm that choked her, the world a blur. Wood fell in the fire, raining sparks on them. Stuart’s arm lost its grip. They slid apart in a slither of sweat. She slipped the hook from her sleeve and swung round fiercely. Stuart hit the earth hard and fell face down. She jabbed the hook into him. He cried out. His blood wet her hand. He staggered up, clutching his back. She faced him, the hook between her fingers like a claw.

Smoke whirled above them like ghosts, gold embers dancing. Over Stuart’s shoulder, she saw the others scatter, their forms shrunk and darkened against the green of the hills. Another man appeared, face dyed red by the flames. Adam walked towards them, blood-shod, smiling.

He wiped his face, slicking it black with the mark of his kill, licking his lips, a monster, a killer, like her.

Stuart didn’t see Adam. He cocked his head and charged. Oona swung the sharp point. It sunk in to Stuart’s gut. His blood sprayed over her, soaking her clothes, blinding her. She let go and he sank to his knees.

“For May,” she muttered to the red world in general.

Adam reached for her hand. She took it and their skin touched, blood-joined, kin. Then her feet were moving under her and they were running, flying, over the heather, away from the fire, running hard and fast until they reached a huge hole in the rock by the cliff edge.

Oona knelt down and peered at the turquoise water rippling below, glugging and sucking against the black rock. “We call them gloups, caves with broken roofs. The water flows fast in them, straight out to sea.”

Adam knelt beside her. “See where that ledge angles down. We can climb to the bottom.”

He sat on the ledge, lifting his body’s weight onto his hands, lowering himself until he almost lay on the puckered rock. She let him go before her, watching him work his way over clefts in the rock. Sometimes drunk men fell into gloups and the tide pulled them out so fast, they woke up half frozen in the Northern floes. Sometimes their heads were dashed on the rocks and they had to be pulled up with ropes, their broken bodies hefted along the coast road to crofts where their stoic wives sat by candlelight, stitching their shrouds. She started after him, swinging herself onto the ledge, the rock digging into her back. Her arms ached. Her fingers slipped from a shallow hold and she grabbed the side of the ledge, almost fell, skinning her palms and scraping the skin from her wrists. Salt sweat pooled cruelly in her cuts. She bit her lip, waving her foot out, groping for the next ledge, forcing her mind not to see the broken shapes of those men.