The Rattled Bones(72)

Sam and I walk the beach and then the granite rise of the island.

Today the king’s shack is here, the unmistakably large two-room house. I don’t know how its structure greets me in the morning light, but I can see racks of salted cod hanging and drying in the sea air, vegetable gardens throwing out vining crops, creeping tomatoes. The door opens, and a child steps outside. He’s a young boy with high boots and standing-up hair. His shirt is too big for his small body, and the open neck exposes his collarbone. I recognize him from the photos of unidentified children at the schoolhouse. My heart reaches for him.

The boy runs to the back of the house, calling for Aggie. My breath stills, waiting for her to come.

“What is it?” Sam asks.

“Don’t you see?”

“See what?”

“The king’s house.” My words are a whisper. “The little boy.”

I draw in the smell of smoke. It rises from the chimney, curling into a twist as it reaches for the dull morning sky. The smoke makes the scent of boiling fish rise, and something else, too. Something as thick and starchy as the clouds crowding the sky. Potatoes, I think. Fish and potato stew. The little boy darts out from behind the house and runs off in the direction of the boatbuilder’s house.

I point in the eager boy’s direction, but only with a small flick of my finger, oddly afraid someone will think me rude for pointing at this boy who doesn’t see we’re here. “There.” My fingers fumble for the side of Sam’s shirt and tug at it so that his eyes can follow the boy.

But then the child is gone.

“I don’t see him, Rilla.” Sam keeps his voice low.

I turn to the house, but it has vanished too. Only the starch clings to the air, an echo of fish and potatoes and fire. “He ran off. Toward the carpenter’s house.” That place where I was attacked. I fear for the boy.

“Can you see him still?”

I will my eyes to re-see, re-conjure. “No. Everything’s gone now.”

Sam takes my hand, and I’m so fully aware of my body in this moment. I want to tell my limbs to return to that other place, the in-between place where a boy can run in front of me, run out from the past. “What else can you remember, Rilla? This is important.”

The sky begins to gather light. Soft at first, a painted promise of the sun.

“You saw the house and the boy for a reason. There has to be a reason.”

“How is this possible, Sam? I’m literally seeing things that aren’t there.”

“What’s happening to you, Rilla, it’s special. Only you can see the islanders, their past. That has to mean something.” His voice is so soft, as if he doesn’t want to wake the people that might be on Malaga still. The Water People. The Island People. “I envy you.” He seems to realize he’s holding my hand and lets it go.

“You envy me?”

He thrusts his hands in his pockets. “The reason I dig in the dirt is so the past will talk to me. But you’re there, Rilla. Something is taking you there.”

“Or someone.”

“Not just someone. Agnes.”

“That’s what the little boy said, just now.” I bring up this additional detail for Sam. “He ran out of the house yelling for Aggie. The boy was running to the site of the boatbuilder’s house, like he knew he’d find Agnes in that place.”

Sam hikes his pack higher on his back. “We need to dig there.” I hear the excitement in his voice, like he knows the earth will help us.

As we approach the spot where I was attacked, my heart races. My skin fires with fear. I take small steps, waiting for those invisible hands. And then I find my words, scratched into the dirt, a twig as their underline.

YOU’RE HERE.

Above them, a blooming Flame Freesia.

Its bright orange cups glow in the rising sun. I bend to this fiery orange mound, steady a soft bloom between my two fingers.

Sam falls to his knees next to me. “This wasn’t here yesterday.”

I shake my head. “But it’s here now.”

“And there.” Sam points to another flaming orange plant just down the slope, it’s green mound showing off a healthy spray of blooms.

“How did we not see these before?”

“I don’t think we missed anything, Rilla. I think they’re a new trail. Look.” He nods to the handful of plants leading toward the water on the opposite side of the beach. The south side, the one that holds deadly rips. The plants are all blooming, thriving. They’re scattered from one another, a dozen feet or more between each burst of bloom. Sam is right; they’re a trail. “Agnes left us a map of flowers.”

“A floral footprint.”

My skin wraps my bones in cold.

We walk slowly along the jagged line of Flames. The sun rises to shed its full light. I drop my bag at the last bloom. “Here.”

Sam lowers his pack, cordons off a new dig site with his stakes and twine, creating a neat rectangle that is so similar to the tidy vegetable gardens that once fed island families.

It takes hours just to peel back the first inches of dirt, our trowels and brushes intent on finding the clues that will lead us to Agnes. By midday the sun ducks behind the clouds, which threaten rain.

“Will you tell your professor about what we’re doing here? Following clues like this?”