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  To Noel, Isabelle, and Caledonia, for the little bits and pieces I borrowed.

  And to Susan, who taught me what it means to be a sister.

  Numb

  NUMB IS THAT FEELING YOU GET when you forget your mittens because it is late spring so the mittens are all put away, and the wind howls like a flock of banshees and the air is wet with spray and you have to take a note to your da at the bad end of the docks. You can’t put your hands in your pockets because you have to push your baby sister in the pram. And your other sister doesn’t help because, well, she just doesn’t. And you have to take a note in the first place because your mum said to and besides, no one ever answers a phone at the bad end of the docks. That feeling in your fingers, the very tips, where it’s cold, then hot, then nothing. That’s numb.

  Numb is also the feeling you get when you come home and your mum’s gone and then your da has to tell you that he doesn’t know when she’s coming back. And if he knows why she left or where she went, he doesn’t tell you because there just aren’t that many words left anymore.

  That’s what numb feels like.

  Letter in a Book

  MUM HAD BEEN GONE for two months when I found the letter.

  I don’t know why I didn’t notice the old book there before, sticking out of my bookshelf like a tall, thin soldier among its shorter, thicker companions. But there it was. So I pulled it out.

  A Child’s Book of Selkies—my mum’s old folklore collection—was stuffed right between Matilda and The Yellow Fairy Book. I hadn’t seen it in years. The cover was worn and frail, probably from all the times I’d asked Mum to read it to me, back when I believed in fairy stories. Back when I believed in magic and happily-ever-afters. But somewhere around the time Ione came along, the book had disappeared. I always figured Ione had shredded it up to make doll clothes, or buried it in the yard, pretending it was treasure, or maybe even eaten a page or two. Not that my eight-year-old sister would eat a book now, but as a baby, she ate a lot of paper.

  Carefully, so the cover wouldn’t crumble away, I opened it.

  * * *

  A Child’s Book of Selkies

  A COLLECTION OF FOLKLORE FROM THE ISLES

  Lady Evangeline McFie

  1885

  * * *

  Framing the title page was a border of intertwined seals, as well as long ropes of seaweed, and a sprinkling of pearls and shells. It looked incredibly old-fashioned and I remembered how much I loved it. I had named each of the seals around the edges, fifteen of them, but I couldn’t even remember one of their names now.

  And then there was the smell. Salt, seaweed, musty old paper. The scent reminded me of Mum, except for the musty part. I closed it gently and, not wanting to put it back on the shelf yet, carried it with me as I tidied the house. Someone had to pick up, since Da left his things everywhere—socks that were on the floor and never found the hamper, and waterfalls of blankets that trailed down the side of his unmade bed.

  I was making his bed when the letter fell out of the book. The tight, scrolling, curved writing could only belong to my mum. My stomach clenched, like some invisible fist had just squeezed and twisted it. Mum.

  I let the treasured, fragile A Child’s Book of Selkies fall to the floor.

  To my darling Cordie,

  I know you will find this, sooner or later, my reader girl. You couldn’t stay away from this book when you were a tot. I wish I were brave enough to hand this note to you in person, but I have to do it this way. Someday you will understand.

  The first thing you must know is that I love your father with the same love that stars have for the night or that trees have for the rich soil that nourishes their roots. Had I been a star or a tree, I’d not be writing this letter, for I would still be there with your father.

  And with you.

  But I am not made of stardust nor sturdy bark. And sometimes one is not as strong as one wishes to be. And so I have to go. I am not certain how long I will be gone, but I will try to come back to you as soon as I can.

  While I am away, take care of your da. Don’t let him work too hard. Don’t spend the money in the sugar jar too quickly. Use what you need, but try to make it last. And keep the Dreaming Lass seaworthy. Don’t let Ione and Neevy forget the taste of salt spray on their tongues.

  And please, Cordie, do not worry about me. Watch over your sisters. Keep them safe.

  “Whatcha got there?” Ione asked, trying to grab the letter from my hand as she barged into my parents’ room. Since school had let out for the summer, Ione was forever on my heels. There were no friends’ houses I could send her to, since Ione refused to step outside the door for very long. She was convinced Mum would pop back home the instant she left. Besides, neither of us had many friends anymore. Kids are afraid when something bad happens to you, like it is contagious or something. As if the fact that my mum had gone would make every mum in town disappear.

  I didn’t have much time for friends, anyway.

  I held the letter up high so Ione couldn’t reach. Not that I really needed to hide the letter from her. She couldn’t read near as well as me. She claimed that words, when written close and small, ran together in her mind like they were dancing or playing a game upon the page.

  Mum knew this. That’s why she wrote the words so close and small, I think.

  “Come on! Let me take a peek!” Ione begged, still trying to grab it. “Is it from a boy? You’re too young to have a boyfriend, Cordie. Wait until Da hears about this!” Ione danced about the room with her usual grace. Everything Ione did was graceful, as if an invisible breeze held her up and controlled her moves. As if she were part of the air. “Cordie’s got a boyfriend! Cordie’s got a boyfriend!” she sang.

  Even her teasing voice was pleasant, floating across our cottage on fairy wings. I wanted to slug her. But instead, I remained calm. It was best, when Ione got herself all wound up, to bring her back down to earth in a gentle way. Otherwise, she’d be singing songs about me and imaginary boys for the rest of the day.

  “I don’t have a boyfriend. Eleven-year-olds don’t have boyfriends,” I said simply, even though I was almost twelve. “It’s just a … a note from the landlord. The rent will be due soon. Da will need to remember this time,” I lied. Though the part about remembering to pay wasn’t a lie. Since Mum left, Da had forgotten many things. I didn’t want to think about the fact that we probably didn’t have any money for the rent this month at all.

  “Oh.” Ione stopped her dancing. “Well, that’s not very interesting, is it?”

  “No, I’m afraid it isn’t,” I agreed. “Now, go and do something quiet before you wake the wee beast.” I hoped she didn’t see my hand shake as I folded the letter and put it in my pocket.

  “Remember when she took long naps? Babies shouldn’t be allowed to stop taking long naps. Hey, what’s that old book on the floor?”

  And
as if she were psychic, our baby sister roused with a pterodactyl-like cry from her tiny room down the tinier hallway. I gave Ione the it’s your turn look. She huffed off as I picked up the old book. The faded seal smiled at me from the cover.

  For the first time in a long time, when I thought of Mum, I smiled.

  And that’s what hope feels like.

  Da

  “WHERE ARE MY GIRLS?” Da called when he got home an hour later. “Where are the Sullivan sisters?”

  He took Neevy from my arms, gave each of us a hug, and snuggled our cheeks with his stubbly ones. He was always scruffy by the end of the day. Mum once said that if he put his mind to it, he could grow a beard by sundown. The sharp tang of the resin he used on the boats he repaired enveloped us all.

  “Phew,” Ione said, holding her nose. I didn’t mind the smell.

  Da hoisted Neevy in the air in front of his face and took a whiff. “Speaking of phew,” he said, passing the baby off to Ione.

  “I made your favorite for dinner,” I said.

  “Everything you make is my favorite, Cordie,” Da said. “It’s better than—” But he didn’t finish. We all used to joke about Mum’s cooking before she left, even Mum herself. She made excellent shrimp-and-pesto pasta, and a lovely blackberry cobbler from the berries we picked outside our window, but the rest of her meals were not very tasty. A pained look crossed Da’s face for an instant, then he lifted the lid of the pot on the stove.

  “Mmm. Potato soup.” He sniffed a big sniff, then lowered the lid and looked at me squarely. “Thank you, my dear.”

  We ate to the sound of spoons hitting bowls, and slurps, but no words.

  After supper, I set Ione to washing up and I looked after little Neevy.

  That was the saddest part of Mum leaving. Neevy was only ten months old now. After two months of Mum being gone, I bet Neevy didn’t even remember her. At least Ione and I could still picture Mum in our minds, with her deep black hair that looked almost blue in the twilight, and her eyes, dark and large like onyx.

  Ione has the look of Mum, hair and eyes and all. I have the eyes, too, but my hair is a dull copper, like Da’s. As for Neevy, it’s too early to tell, her head still being bald as an egg. Mum’s boss at the hair salon, Maura, said not to worry until her first birthday, which was still a couple months off. But if no hair had appeared by then, well, that’d mean bad luck. Poor Neevy’s bad luck came early, I guess, not having a mum around to watch over her and coax her little hairs to grow.

  From the kitchen, I could hear the difference between Ione’s splashing in the suds and Da’s methodical scrubbing. We had a deal, Da and I. Whenever Ione washed the dishes, one of us would check and rewash what needed it. Ione never managed to scrub all the bits of food out of the bowls, especially if it was potato soup. And if the potato soup dried on the bowl, it would take more than the wire brushes Da used on his boats to pry it off. I waited for him to start whistling some old sailing tune he’d heard from the men at the dock, until I remembered he didn’t whistle much anymore. I looked at Neevy, lying on her tum, kicking her legs and moving across the floor as if she were swimming on the carpet. She’d be fine for a minute. I went into the kitchen.

  “Da?” I said, fingering Mum’s letter in my pocket.

  “Hmm?” He had finished with the bowls and was now carefully rinsing the goggles that protected his eyes from flying splinters and airborne fiberglass at work. Most of the men washed theirs at the docks, but Da always wanted to hurry home.

  I searched for the words, but then I realized that I didn’t know which ones I wanted. Should I share the letter with him?

  I was quiet for a little too long.

  “Cordie, is this about your mum?” He had turned off the water and was facing me now.

  I nodded.

  “You miss her, don’t you?”

  I nodded again.

  “I miss her, too.” That’s what he always said when I tried to talk about her. I miss her, too.

  And that was all.

  I felt hotness in the back of my eyes. Don’t cry, Cordie. It will just make Da feel worse. I blinked away the tears and then he was hugging me.

  “Let’s not talk about her right now, Cordie. I know it hurts too much.”

  I let myself cry only for a moment and I think Da was crying, too. Then I sniffed a big sniff. I tried to wipe the wetness of my tears from Da’s shirt, but then realized it was already wet from the washing. I looked up at him, waiting for him to meet my eyes and tell me that it would be all right. But he didn’t. He just went to that silent place inside of himself, and then he cleared his throat, turned to the sink, and finished his work.

  “Good night, Cordie,” he said when I finally left the kitchen.

  Da was like a biscuit that had fallen to the floor and crumbled.

  It would not be easy to put him back together.

  Isle of Dreams

  DA SAID WE COULD WATCH a show on television before bedtime, but we didn’t really want to. That was something we used to do, all of us, together. We’d curl up on the couch and eat scrambled-egg sandwiches for dinner and watch nature shows about Tasmanian devils, endangered wolves, or migrating whale pods. Our favorites were always the ones about the sea. Otherwise, Mum and Da didn’t like us watching much TV, not when there were books to read inside and mud pies to make outside. Back then, watching TV had been a treat. But tonight, as with every other night since Mum had been gone, neither Ione nor I had much desire to lay even one finger on the remote. It just felt wrong.

  In our room that night, after Ione fell asleep, I crawled under the covers of my bed and switched on my flashlight. I read the letter over and over until my eyes felt dry and burning. I read until my stomach hurt from flopping around so much. One minute I’d find myself happy, thinking about her and hoping she’d be back soon—hadn’t she said she’d try to come back? And the next minute I’d be mad, furious actually, that she had left in the first place. She said she had a reason, but really, what reason would ever be good enough to leave us? Eventually, I fell asleep with the letter squashed in my hand, dreaming of the last time Mum and I were out on our tiny motorboat, the Dreaming Lass.

  Ione had been there, too. And Neevy. Mum had her strapped to the front of her in one of those little baby harnesses. The sky was swirling with low clouds, and old Archibald Doyle, with his white strings of hair dancing around his wrinkly head, had stood on the beach that morning, arms crossed, glaring.

  “You think you’ll see something out in that, do you?” he asked, motioning to where the clouds kissed the waves, with no actual sky in between.

  “Stay out of my business, Mr. Doyle. I know what I am doing,” Mum had cried over the top of the wind. I remember how Mr. Doyle shook his head in disgust and turned away from us, heading up the beach.

  And then we were speeding along and the little motorboat was pitching. My stomach was lurching, as usual. Even in my dream, I felt the urge to throw up.

  “Oh, Cordie, the sea is not so bad,” Mum had said to me, taking the hand that wasn’t steering the boat to smooth my hair from my damp face.

  “I’m okay when it’s flat, but when it rolls like this, I feel it in my guts.”

  “Why is your face so gray, Cordie?” Ione asked.

  We bounced along the choppy waves until Mum cut the motor and said, “There. If you look there. Can you see it? Can you see the shimmer of it?”

  We shook our heads. The mist was thickening even more. And the waves were getting higher. But then maybe, just over the tip of the foam, I saw a faint glimpse of … something.

  “We must navigate in between those two huge rocks,” Mum was saying, pointing to two dark forms in the otherwise white distance. “The black ones. They are ragged and dangerous. Many an experienced sailor has unwittingly thrust his boat upon their jagged edges.” Leave it to Mum to make everything an adventure. “After we pass through, we can see it better, but we’ll have to be careful.”

  “See what? Where are we going?
” Ione’s voice echoed in the wind as a patch of fog enveloped us, thick and cottony. “I can’t see anything.”

  “Why, the magic island of the selkies, of course.” Mum had used her teasing voice. The fog was too thick to make out her expression.

  “Oooooh,” Ione and I said together. “The selkies.”

  “Don’t laugh,” Mum said, but she was laughing, too.

  “I thought you didn’t like talking about the selkies,” I said.

  “I don’t like the way people in this town talk about them, the way they exploit the legend, and that’s a different thing altogether,” said Mum. The fog moved in clumps between us, surrounding us like a worn-out blanket.

  “Aren’t they just pretend, Mum?” Ione asked. “Are there really such things as selkies?”

  Mum turned toward me. “What do you think, Cordie?” she asked. “You know the legends.”

  You couldn’t live in a place called Selkie Bay and not know the legends. Half of the businesses on the main street had something to do with selkies. “Yes,” I said. “I know them.”

  “Well, what do you think? Do you believe that shape-shifting selkies live on a secret island with rocky shores where they hide their magical seal coats?”

  “I dunno,” I said too quickly.

  “Ah, well, then I don’t know, either.”

  “I do!” Ione cried. “I believe in them!”

  “Then let’s go find that island!” Mum cried. She revved the motor and we were racing again, but the mist still twirled around us and I felt like I was spinning, spinning like a top.

  After a few minutes, Mum looked around and sighed. “Oh well, can’t see much of anything. Another day then. When I was a girl, I used to love that island—”

  But she didn’t finish her sentence because I had leaned over the side of the Dreaming Lass, and was now tossing my breakfast to the waves.