The Lighthouse Witches(51)

I was reeling from what she told me. From the connections they were all drawing between terrible, gruesome events and innocent children. “I’m sorry for you, and for your family,” I said carefully. “And I’m sorry about your brother,” I said, turning to Isla. “But . . . the risk you run in telling such stories is that you persuade people to do terrible things.”

“There is a way to distinguish between perfectly innocent children and the wildlings who mimic them,” Ruqayya said. She moved forward, onto her hands and knees, staring down at the scroll. “There,” she said, pointing at an image of numbers. “A red mark, a burn, with scratches in it. If you look closely enough you’ll see they’re numbers. Always numbers.”

I looked where she pointed. There was a large set of numbers drawn in a row.

“My mother wouldn’t hurt a fly,” Isla said. “But the mark she found on the wildling was undeniable. It had four numbers, just like the curse said. The wildling cried for her, and her heart was broken, but she went through with it. She dragged that thing to the burning trees up by the Brae and did what was needed. She never spoke of it until many years later, and only then it was to warn me. She took no pleasure in what she did. But she’d had to bury my grandfather because she’d hesitated. And the day after, the storms stopped.”

My stomach dropped as I realized what she’d said. Isla was telling me that her mother murdered her little brother. And if that wasn’t bad enough, Isla believed what she did was right.

Carefully, I set down my glass and stood up, measuring my words carefully. “Ladies, I appreciate you telling me all this. But really, there is no need. If I see the boy again, I’ll call the police.”

They all looked up at me from their circle as I stood to leave. I didn’t want to offend them. I didn’t want to lose their friendship. But I could take none of it seriously, and I needed to process what Isla had revealed to me.

As I went to walk out, I felt someone grab my hand. It was Isla.

“You should consider leaving the island,” she said, her eyes stern and her grip hard. “There might still be time.”

I pulled my hand away and forced a smile on my face. “Oh, I bet we’ll be fine,” I said, and walked quickly out of the door.


III

I don’t think I’ve ever felt as alone as I did that night.

Once the girls had gone to bed, I sat in the armchair of the living room in the bothy, looking out the window at the moon streaking the back of the sea with a white stripe of light. I had spent some nights here feeling increasingly at home, soothed by the waves and the vast spread of the horizon. But now I felt sick to my stomach. The thought of Isla’s mother murdering her little brother played over and over in my head. A helpless little boy, his life taken in the most brutal way because of some ridiculous superstition. No justice for him. And the superstition persisted, even now, in 1998. It made me so angry.

No call had come from the police about the missing child, and I felt worried. I had made a nuisance of myself, calling again and again and pressing each officer who answered about whether there had been a report of a missing child from the parents. No, they said. No one had reported a missing child.

The boy was still out there. And the women I so admired, my new group of friends . . . they’d suggested that the boy I’d seen and comforted wasn’t human. That he was some kind of creature, a fae. And that if I saw him again, I was to kill him.

I tried to put aside my disgust at Isla’s story in order to imagine how a history like the one experienced by the community of Lòn Haven might filter down to the present day. Everyone believed in one false narrative or another, I reasoned. I remembered my mother telling me that for every child that was born, someone close to them had to die. I remembered that every time someone died, I linked it to someone who was pregnant, or who had given birth, and the narrative began to make sense to me. Even when Saffy was born, I started calling my grandparents more often, worried that her birth would cause one of them to die. And when my grandfather did die a year later, I told myself it was related to Saffy’s birth. That he’d just clung on a little longer.

Such bullshit.

A wild place with a Viking soul, Lòn Haven had a violent and tragic history that had clearly infected the minds of its inhabitants, creating beliefs rooted deeply in fear. And they were prepared to slaughter innocent children in order to protect their community.

I couldn’t get past what Isla had told me. I was fast learning that Lòn Haven was an island of two halves.

I was just about to go to bed when I spotted something outside, moving toward the Longing. A figure. The boy.

This time, I didn’t hesitate. I raced outside and ran after him, slipping on the rocks, my voice carried off by the wind. I pulled open the door of the Longing and went inside, shouting, “Hello! Hello!”

My own voice answered, echoing again and again as it spiraled up the walls of the building. Then I took to the stairs, moving quickly to the lantern room. If he was there, I’d find him and bring him home.

He wasn’t there. I looked down at the bones on the floor. Angrily, I scooped them up and threw them out the window.

Whatever secrets the community of Lòn Haven was hiding were long past being brought to light, and I swore then that I’d no longer stand for anything based in fear or hearsay. No matter how much it terrified me, or left me friendless.