The Rattled Bones(77)

Like that first day, I arc my arms above me. I call to her. “Agnes, stop! I’ll do anything! Anything you ask! Just leave him alone! He has nothing to do with this!”

The fire around Sam closes in. I can’t see him behind the height of the reaching flames.

I scream my bargain. “Save him and I will save you!”

The fire doesn’t cease. I search my brain for anything. Everything. The attic, her portraits, her calling to me underwater, waking next to me in my bed . . . and scratching her words into my sill: FIND ME. Find her. Find the girl who doesn’t show up on census records, whose name was never registered at the state asylum. The girl who has slipped from history’s memory.

“Save him and we will find you! I need his help! Please, I promise you! I promise we will find you!”

The fire quells, softens into soft orange liquid before churning into the cool sea black of the waves. Impossibly, the sea becomes the sea once again. I know the sea.

I maneuver the Rilla Brae as close as I can to Sam and throw him a life float. He fits the ring over his head and uses his remaining strength to force his exhausted limbs to climb the ladder to my deck. He collapses there, a puddle of fatigue.

Agnes waits for us on the shore. For a split second I consider leaving, racing my boat all the way to the edge of the horizon and beyond, but I couldn’t leave Gram behind, and a part of me knows that Agnes would find me, follow me. Or she would haunt Gram in a new and terrible way that I can’t allow. Sam coughs up seawater as I edge us closer to Malaga. I help Sam into the dingy and row the small boat ashore.

I glance back at Fairtide, fearing this is the last time I’ll see my home. The lawn is quiet, dark. Sleeping. All the homes on the peninsula are dark. Too dark. I squint, trying to find light along the shore, among the trees, but the homes are pitched into a blackness that feels wrong. Around us, the air is as dark as death.

Agnes reaches for my hand. She cradles a bundle in her opposite hand. I think it is the baby, but the infant is too quiet. Whatever she holds is wrapped like a package, a gift. Agnes pulls me up the open-air stairs that connect the beach to the highest part of the island now. Sam follows, his steps stumbling from exhaustion.

There are homes on the island. Fishing shacks with small front porches. The same ones from the photographs. There are vegetable gardens, plants reaching for the sun that will rise with tomorrow. We pass the school with its straight lines and shingled roof. I turn to Sam. “Do you see? The homes everywhere?”

“No.”

“Take my hand.” Sam wraps my grip with his, and something electric passes between us. He squeezes my fingers as we step onto the beach.

He gasps. “I see it now.”

“You see her?”

“I see everything.”

I hold tighter to him, Agnes leading us both now. I don’t want to break our connection. I need Sam to see what I see. What Agnes needs us to see.

The island is asleep, the homes visible only because of the spray of moonlight casting Malaga in a soft glow. There are no lights in any of the homes, no candles burning in the windows. Only smoke lifting from the chimneys, small rivers of gray rising up to the clouds.

Then there’s movement behind us, a sound.

Footsteps crunching shells.

So many footsteps.

Silent men slip up the beach. Agnes stops when the men and their quiet feet reach the top of the island. Three men stand in front of each home. The men are coordinated, this whole night planned. Then the island fills with bursts of light as torches flame in front of the homes. Each man lights his torch, a whoosh of fire against the night. There’s the smell of burning hay. Then the men and their flames duck inside the meager houses.

All at once the screams fill the air. Women. Children. Their screeches so loud they burn my ears. But I can’t block it out. I can’t put my hands to my ears. Agnes wants me to hear the cries. It’s why she holds my hand so tight. And I don’t dare let go of Sam, because he needs to be connected to me. I can’t survive this alone.

The way Agnes has had to survive this alone.

Terror sweeps across the island as the men move through the houses like a storm, tearing the residents from their beds, setting fire to the emptied shacks. Each home is set ablaze. The fire burns too close to my skin. Sam grips my fingers as if he’s trying to hold on to my bones.

Men order barked calls. “Get up!” “Get out!”

A woman pleads. Children call for their mothers.

Agnes pulls us across the island, and the voices rise, the cries of panic drowning out all words. She wrenches us past the house with a rocking chair ablaze in the front yard, the red reaching flames rocking backandforth, backandforth, backandforth. The old woman, already gone.

“Tell us how we can help you,” I beg, even as I fear Agnes won’t tell. She drags us farther across the island, the night lit by fire and terror and the ghostly cry of islanders.

I want to run to the men with their torches and drown their flames and their hate in the sea. I want to talk to Agnes. I want her to tell us her story, all the reasons why we are here. And then we see her.

Agnes is at the south side of the island, on a dark pocket of granite. So far from us now. Yet Agnes holds my hand still. She is more real than ever and she watches this other Agnes so near to us.

The Agnes at the water settles her bundle into an old skiff. The skiff from that first day, the dory with its flaked paint and sturdy lines.