The Scent Keeper(10)

My father got down the machine. He opened the lid, exposed the holes.

“Now,” he said, and I threw the paper in the fire. As the smoke curled off its edges and the heat traveled into its core, the fragrance emerged—a bursting, juicy sweetness of flowers, a rich and humid warmth. My father depressed the button on the machine, and waited anxiously as the new paper came out of the slot. He shook it, like always, held it at arm’s length until the smoke had cleared. He opened windows, let in the fresh air. The cabin came back to itself. Finally he brought the paper to his nose and breathed in.

I watched, hope turning sour as his face fell.

“No,” he said, handing the paper to me. I inhaled, began my dive into the flowery fragrance, but then, mingled in, came the smell of tobacco. Cedar smoke. Last night’s dinner. My own sweat.

“It’s not right,” my father said.

I started to ask him what was wrong with a scent that had me in it, but I realized that even if he had an answer, I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear it.

After that, the machine stayed on the shelf.





THE BEACH


My father put the empty bottles back in their drawers, where they sat waiting—for what, I had no idea. I spent as much time outside as possible. I wanted to be away from the claustrophobia of the cabin.

The one place I didn’t go was the lagoon. I’d promised my father back when Cleo had first arrived, and promises were broken at great risk—that was the cautionary rule of every fairy tale, I knew.

But as week followed week, I began to question that pact. My father was falling into himself. He hardly left the cabin, and I had to remind him that the garden and the chickens needed tending. Autumn was upon us—we needed to gather and dry the fish, clams, and seaweed that would get us through the winter. Those things were at the beach, but my father showed no inclination to go himself.

“Foragers feast, Papa,” I said one morning, holding out a basket.

He said nothing. Then, slowly, he shook his head. He wouldn’t leave the bottles. I could see that now.

That was when I decided—if he wasn’t going to take care of us, I would. I pulled the basket close and set out, whistling for Cleo, who came immediately to my side. When I got to the fork in the path, out of sight from the cabin, I headed toward the lagoon.

It was a fine day, the scent of the dirt and trees around me just starting to mellow after a summer of rampant growth. The berries were plentiful, and I could have gathered them, but my sights were set on the beach. I ignored the nervous buzzing in my ears, the way my nose seemed to be working overtime. We needed food, I told myself. I was going to its main source. There was nothing more or less to it than that.

Still, I paused when we reached the border between trees and sand. The lagoon was full and big, the blue above it cloudless. The open expanse felt exposed, a place where even the sky could see what I was doing. For a moment I hesitated, started to turn around. Cleo had no such compunctions, however, and raced out onto the sand.

“Cleo,” I called. “Come back!”

But Cleo didn’t listen, caught up in the joy of sand and water and space to run. The beach was her favorite place on the island and she was never there as much as she wanted to be. She danced about, her small feet leaving tiny cloven marks on the wet sand, her back legs kicking high in the air. Beyond her, the water danced in the sunlight, a mirror of her happiness. The channel was full and frothing; the drawbridge was up.

Nothing to be afraid of, I thought. My father worried too much. I stepped out onto the sand, let it slip between my toes. We’d had a week of hazy cloud cover, and that endless blue above me turned hesitation into euphoria. I broke off a knobby bit of sea asparagus, and crunched it between my teeth. My favorite boulder had been warmed by the sun, and I lay down on top of it, feeling its friendly solidity against my back. I closed my eyes and let the sunshine play across my lids. There was plenty of seaweed on the beach, I told myself; I could gather food in a little while.

I don’t know how much later it was when the sound woke me, deep and growling. I jolted up and looked around. Everything was the same except the channel, which was flat and calm. I had never seen it like that before. All I could do was stare. The sound grew closer, rumbling up the channel.

“Cleo!” I called, and this time she came. We scrambled up into the woods just as a boat entered the lagoon.

I had seen boats from my perch on the bluff. From a distance, they had looked like birds skimming over the water, friendly even, but the noise of this thing up close was huge. The smell of it filled the air, thick and slick, wiping out the scents of salt and sand. From my hiding place, I could see a man at the front of the boat.

A pirate, I thought, and my skin went cold.

The boat roared across the lagoon, the noise stopping as it reached the shallows. The trees around me shivered in the sudden silence. The man stood straight, seeming to listen, too. I watched him from behind my tree, even as I willed myself to be invisible. He was wiry and small, with tanned skin and white hair that stuck out from under a bright red cap. When I concentrated, I could smell his sweat, different from my father’s, and the scent of something like bread dough.

The man jumped over the side of the boat into the water, grabbed a rope off the front, and slogged over to one of the larger rocks. He tied the boat up with easy efficiency, and then patted the top of the rock’s craggy surface. He didn’t seem like a pirate, at least not the ones I’d read about.