The Scent Keeper(14)

I wasn’t him, however.

I got out one of the empty bottles. I put my nose in the opening, but there was nothing there, just a quiet blankness. It was waiting.

For me, I thought.

I put the scent-paper inside my stolen bottle and took out the small wooden box that held my father’s supply of wax. I wished there was red, but I found only green. I melted a bit, watching the drops fall onto the rim around the stopper, sealing it tight. I put the bottle in my jacket pocket, replaced the machine carefully in the pantry, and then I slipped out the cabin door, closing it behind me.

It was freezing outside after the warmth of the cabin. I followed the trail until I found the start of Cleo’s and my path to the bluff. It was easier to spot now, and as I followed the familiar route through the salal bushes, I missed Cleo with a pain so sharp I thought a branch had stuck me in the side. I stopped.

Maybe I shouldn’t do this, I thought, but I was sick with grief, sick of grief.

I kept going until I reached the edge of the bluff. I stood there, the wind cold on my face, the water far below. I reached into my jacket pocket and felt the smooth glass against my fingers. I drew my arm back and threw the bottle out into that awful, exhilarating expanse. I counted one, two, three, four and then I heard the splash.

“I am here,” I said to the sky that would never answer, to the people I couldn’t see. “I am here.”



* * *



I did the same thing the next day. And the next and the next. I knew I shouldn’t be using the machine at all, let alone so often, but I didn’t care. I didn’t want to be cautious anymore.

Each scent-paper I made, each bottle I sent out into the water, felt like release. A tiny lessening of pressure. Maybe I had been right—maybe the machine did take something from the person who used it. But by the next morning, the feelings would be built back up again, and I would wait anxiously until my father left. Until I could use the machine and feel myself falling into my own palm.

Then came the day when I opened the lid and pushed the button and nothing came out. The machine clicked and whirred, clicked and whirred. No paper. Just an endless, frustrated inhalation through the holes.

Was it possible to use up magic? The machine kept going, breathing in as if it would suck up the whole island.

Panicked, I closed the lid with a snap. The sound died.

What would my father do if he found out? He hadn’t used the machine since our failed attempt to make a copy of one of the scent-papers, but if he changed his mind, if he tried to use it, he would know what I had done.

I quickly wrapped up the machine in the long, gray piece of fabric and put it back on the shelf, making sure it was exactly where I had found it. Then I closed the door of the pantry, tight.





THE BOTTLE


Everything was leaving. The paper in the machine, the food in the pantry, my father’s mind. One day, he would set out all our stores of food on the table. The next, he would take down the remaining bottles from the drawers, arranging them in rows, counting each one before carefully putting them back. He no longer burned the faded scents. He clung to them as if they themselves were sustenance. I watched him, wondering if I was the only one who saw the way the balance was tipping.

“Papa,” I said. “We need to get help.”

“We have to keep them safe” was all he said, and now I knew for sure that he meant the scent-papers.

But what about me? I wondered. What about keeping me safe? Whatever was outside our island, it couldn’t be as bad as the certainty of starvation. The mermaids had never brought us boxes in the winter. My father had always said it was too cold for them to have a party. Now I understood that it had to do with storms and the inability of boats to make it through the channel. There would be no help before spring. If we wanted rescue, we would need to make it come to us, but my father was unwilling to draw any attention to our island. Not as long as the bottles existed.

Every day I would go to the bluff and look out at the bigger world. Winter blew down the strait, making the water froth. The islands in the distance were inky black, without a trace of other people. I knew I couldn’t rely on luck to save us.

At night I lay in my loft bed, thinking. The whispers of the scent-papers in the drawers were almost completely gone, their stories quieted. Perhaps my father was wrong, and they did not want to be saved.

But perhaps they could still save us.



* * *



I waited a few days until my father finally left the cabin and wandered off toward the woods. As soon as he was out of sight, I set to work. I slung a foraging bag over my shoulder and climbed the ladder high up among the drawers. It felt perilous up there, the air heavier and hotter. My palms were slippery against the rungs. I had a plan, but for a moment I still wasn’t sure what I was doing.

As I was reaching out toward the top-most bottle I looked down, and suddenly I saw our world, spread out below me like the open pages of a book. The loft my father had built for me, with the quilt made from squares of clothes I had worn over the years. The woodstove where my father had taught me to cook. The plank table where he’d taught me how to write. Our shelves of books. The chair where we had read them. The baskets we’d made on winter evenings, weaving together strands of cedar bark by the fire.

It was our life—a full and breathing thing. Not a memory, caught in a bottle. I knew then that I would do whatever it took to save it.