The Keeper of Night (The Keeper of Night #1)(63)

Chapter Fourteen


The sea carried us along the coast as if it were one of Hiro’s close friends. Hiro sat at the bow of our small wooden canoe, which he’d nervously told us he’d “borrowed” from a local fisherman before dawn. He dipped his oar in the water every now and then, but it accomplished little more than petting the waves the way one might pet a cat. The waters had their own path in mind for us. Far to our left, the shore had turned to jagged brown rocks and hidden caves and cliffside. To our right lay a thousand miles of sea.

Unable to determine whether Iso Onna’s hair, voice, or blood was her essence, I’d decided to carve all three of them out of her with my freshly sharpened knives. This time, I’d be able to turn time without worrying about frostbite, so in theory all I had to do was find her, freeze her, and kill her. It sounded so simple, but the endless stretch of lonely sea and distant shroud of fog around us made me uneasy.

Neven sat behind me, watching the minutes tick by on his clock. He’d said almost nothing to me since he’d woken up, but Hiro seemed all too ready to fill up the silence.

“You’re telling me that there are actually fairies in England?”

“It’s not as remarkable as you’re imagining,” I said. “They’re more like large, handsome insects that try to con you into making wishes.”

“Can you eat them?”

“You can eat anything, but that doesn’t mean you should.”

“Then what is their purpose, if not food?”

“To maintain the flora and exasperate Reapers.”

Hiro hummed and dipped his oar to the side of the boat, steering us around a rock formation. “I’m not certain I believe that England is a real place,” he said. “It sounds more like a storybook. Are you sure it’s where you’ve come from? Or perhaps all of your life was an elaborate dream.”

“I’ve thought the same thing about Japan,” I said.

I looked back once more at Neven, who had tucked his clock in his pocket and was staring at the rocky coast. We hadn’t had such a serious disagreement since we were children, and I no longer knew how to resolve it. Whenever I looked at him, my fingers twitched with the need to shatter some light bulbs or extinguish a couple stars. I could grudgingly forgive his ignorance for my feelings, since I knew he was busy being terrified by Yuki Onna, but his persistent disdain for Hiro was tiresome. We were one-third finished with my quest thanks to Hiro’s help, and he had already saved my life twice. I wasn’t sure what else he could possibly do to appease Neven, and I was beginning to suspect that nothing he did would ever be enough.

“The sea won’t take us any farther,” Hiro said.

Indeed, no matter how much Hiro rowed, the boat couldn’t fight the waves pushing us backward. The ocean all around us was jagged with pillars of black rock. To our left, a white fog hovered over a distant shore, taller towers of rock piercing through the haze.

“This seems like a good place for a shipwreck,” I said.

“The ocean wouldn’t overturn a boat while I’m in it,” Hiro said, “but I think you’re right.” He plunged his oar into the water, changing our course back to shore.

The fog parted to let us through, like a great gate opening its doors. With one final push from the ocean, our boat scraped up onto the shore. In low tide pools around us, garlands of kelp swayed and stuck to the rocks like shiny brown ribbons.

We stepped out onto a jagged puzzle of jutting black stones that wrapped around a rocky cliffside. Rocks the size and shape of eyeballs rolled away as I clambered onto land, the shore cool from the shade of towering boulders leaning precariously against each other. All the rocks had the same ash-black cast, as if the whole landscape had been scorched. Water crashed up against our feet in a white froth, slicking the rocks and soaking our shoes.

“Where are all the bones?” I said, looking to the wet sand. I could smell Death faintly on the island, but this shore had no sign of the skeletons that Hakutaku’s book had spoken of.

Neven jolted at the mention of bones, but Hiro only shrugged.

“I don’t know,” he said, “maybe—”

The edge of his right foot landed on a wet stone and he slipped sideways with a sharp sound of surprise.

I reached for my clock to save him the trouble of hitting his head on a nearby boulder, but the ocean rushed up to catch him in a spray of foam, crashing against his falling momentum and setting him back on his feet, soaked but stable.

“The ocean seems to like you,” I said, cuffing salt water from my face where the backsplash had caught me.

Hiro smiled, spitting out a bit of salt water. “I am the ocean,” he said.

Then another wave came and lapped at my ankles, curling up my calf and tickling the back of my leg.

“Stop that,” I said, but there was no anger behind my words and Hiro must have known it, because he kept smiling, even when I splashed water at his face in retaliation. “You could be hanged for that in England.” I wasn’t sure if that was true, but indecent Reapers had been whipped for less.

“Just that?” Hiro said, grinning. “That’s far from the worst thing I’ve done.”

He raised his hands as if to splash me and I took a step back into a tide pool, since my shoes were already soaked.

The water around my feet bubbled like a boiling stew, though the temperature remained cold. The ribbons of kelp tickling my ankles went rigid, as if made of glass, then turned black and crumbled into pieces, turning the tide pool the color of ink.