Between Sea and Sky Read online

  “And then what?” I prompt, my pulse quickening.

  I can hear voices out on the main platform. Dad’s back with Sora. There’s the sound of pans. They must be starting dinner.

  Nat looks anxiously towards the metallic clatter.

  “Where are they?” Clover says, her voice high and excited. “Can we see the caterpillars?”

  “You need to be quiet,” I say to Clover, glowering at her. But I turn straight back to Nat. “And then what?” I repeat urgently.

  Nat carries on in a whisper. “They started hanging upside down from the lids of the jars I’d put them in. They wove themselves a kind of casing, because suddenly they weren’t caterpillars. They’re chrysalises now. Or cocoons. I found that out on the computers at school.” He looks proud of himself.

  “You have computers?” Clover says, impressed.

  “They’re in that box, aren’t they? Your jars of cocoons?” I say, talking over her. “The box under your bed?”

  Nat looks nervous, and glances again towards the platform. “How did you know?”

  I shrug. “You made it pretty obvious. The way you were holding it, I knew it was important. And now you want to put your stolen creatures in our mum’s greenhouse?”

  Nat nods. “If we can fix the panels. Ready for the next change.”

  “Butterflies!” Clover says, her eyes widening beguilingly.

  “Won’t your mum notice butterflies?” I ask.

  Nat shrugs. “She’s not noticed anything so far. Grownups don’t always, do they? And now she’s so intent on your oysters and seaweed, and figuring all that out.” He stops and frowns. “Though actually she has always been interested in plants. When she finds out about this place—”

  “And when your butterflies start flying around,” I say, cutting in mid sentence.

  “Pearl’s right,” Clover chips in. “Even our dad would notice butterflies.”

  “Maybe. Maybe you’re right,” Nat says, his forehead rippling. “If they start flying around, like they’re meant to, I guess they’d notice that. But by then it’d be too late. They’d already have changed, and anyway, Mum likes butterflies. She has a picture of them in our living room at home.” He pauses. “So if they really are butterflies, Mum will understand.”

  “What, because she has a butterfly picture in your apartment? Even if your mum is that stupid, Clover and I don’t want to be involved in stolen pollinators. We don’t want them on our farm,” I pronounce.

  “Pearl!” Clover gasps, mortified.

  “We don’t, Clover. We’re breaking enough rules here. You break the rules by even existing!”

  Clover winces like I struck her.

  “Don’t worry,” Nat says to her, looking at me strangely. “We’ll be careful. The chrysalises are tiny, I promise. I’ll show you. If you see them, you’ll understand why I couldn’t just leave them to shrivel up and die on my windowsill.”

  “Let him, Pearl. Please! I never saw a chrysalis before, or a caterpillar. You could put them in your ledger. Please!” Clover’s sea-blue eyes are wide as they go. If they were the sea, the water would all spill out.

  “If we get caught—” I start.

  “We won’t, will we?” Clover says. “Not out here! We might as well be at the end of the world!”

  “So much is at stake,” I say. “This place…” You’re at stake, I think, but Clover’s expression melts me – her big eyes, her downturned lips.

  “Haven’t I been wanting something new for ages now, Pearl? This could be what we’ve been wishing for,” she says.

  “A wishing wouldn’t come from the land,” I grunt, glaring at Nat again.

  “All the finds came from the land sometime! All your dolls. Your clay pipes. Your precious sea glass. It’s all from the land once!” Clover says indignantly

  Clover’s voice tugs at my heart. She hasn’t been this passionate about anything lately, except school.

  “OK,” I say grudgingly, softening. “Get them then,” I say to Nat. “Go and get your precious chrysalises.”

  There are dead, shrivelled leaves at the bottom of the jars Nat brings out of the box. The creatures look dead too. Like folded-up bits of paper with slight spines in strange webs. Some hang down from the jar lids. Some lie curled up among the leaves.

  “Oh!” Clover says, not hiding her disappointment. “Are they … alive?”

  “Yes,” Nat says defensively. “They probably didn’t like the boat journey. But I had to bring them, didn’t I?” His eyes search out mine.

  “Couldn’t one of your ‘mates’ have taken them?” I say abrasively.

  “No,” he says flatly.

  “Why not?” I fire back, feeling strange and uncomfortable. The creatures – if they are creatures – aren’t like anything I ever saw before. They’re as dry as dust. If they came from the land, maybe they brought the land’s poison with them. Maybe that’s why they’re not moving.

  Nat shakes his head. “They just couldn’t. Reasons.” He takes a dandelion leaf to scoop up one of the peculiar forms, and places it gently on a green nettle plant on the floor of the greenhouse. “You don’t know what it’s like in the compound,” he says, his eyes still on the creature. “The rules. Even if they are for our own good. Everything you do, you have to think about the rules.”

  There’s a dull anger to his words.

  I imagine life in the compound – in the grey grid of interior spaces, with a library that only has pamphlets. I think of a kitchen table with yellow dandelion flowers and purple thistles, but nothing else there alive. Despite everything, I feel sorry for him. We have the seagulls around us all the time, and the cormorants, and the fish and porpoises every time we jump into the sea.

  “You did the right thing, bringing them here,” Clover says, peering into the box.

  Nat nods gratefully. “This is the stage after the caterpillar, the last one before they turn into a butterfly.”

  “How do you know?” I ask.

  Nat shifts a little. A smile flickers high up on his cheekbones. “My mate, Tally. There was this book she used to read to her baby brother—”

  “Brother?” Clover gasps, sucking in a stream of air. “You’re not allowed!”

  Nat’s face falls. “No. You’re not. The baby, Barn, was going to be taken inland when he was born, except Tally’s mum died…” He pauses. He doesn’t think he can talk about dead mothers. “Anyway, her dad thought they might be able to keep the baby. Because they were a threeperson family again, like you are. You’d think that was fair, wouldn’t you?”

  “And could they?” I ask, scrutinizing his face, desperate to know the answer. “Could they keep him?”

  “No,” Nat says, his eyes firmly on the chrysalises. “The decision took ages. But no, they couldn’t keep him.

  Clover looks horrified. “So Barn was sent away? Just a baby?”

  Nat swallows. “Barnaby. He was two by then. They promised he’d be looked after. You know, by the Communal Families, inland.” He makes his face hard, like there aren’t tears misting up his eyes. “They raise surplus kids. Make sure they acquire the skills to do their shifts, when they’re older.”

  “The Communal Families! Do you think that’s where I’ll be sent?” Clover wails.

  “If you insist on a school place they will!” I say. Trust Clover to make someone else’s story about herself.

  I turn back to Nat. “So that’s why you think these creatures are butterflies? Because of a baby book?”

  Nat shakes his head indignantly. “Not just from that. We found out what we could at school, on the computers. Only they weren’t that much use,” Nat says. “Not really. There were no pictures. I asked my mum too.”

  “You said your mum doesn’t know about them!” I exclaim.

  Nat shrugs. “She doesn’t. But it was easy to ask her, because of the picture. The Sakura painting.”

  Clover and I both look lost.

  “It’s Japanese. My grandmother grew up in Japan. The cherry
trees blossomed every spring and they called it the Sakura. She used to tell Mum about it, when Mum was little. Butterflies flocked to the blossom like it was candyfloss.”

  Clover hangs her head dramatically. “Spun sugar. Pearl and I haven’t ever tasted it.”

  Nat laughs. “Well, I only did once. I was about seven. A travelling circus came from one of the northern districts. Years ago now. Nothing like that ever happens any more. It was soon after the circus that Ezra stopped bothering. He gave up on us all.” Nat sighs angrily and looks through the transparent panels to the sky. “The cherry blossom in Mum’s picture looks a bit like the clouds,” he says. “Except it’s pink. And there are blue and yellow butterflies all over it.”

  “I wonder what colour your butterflies will be.” Clover peers over Nat’s jars longingly and picks out one of the chrysalises from the bottom of one. The creature shakes alarmingly. Clover gasps and drops it.

  “Look at that!” Nat says, rescuing the strange little package of life, relief swelling in his face, and pride too. “They don’t like being touched!” He puts it down on our nettle plants.

  Clover beams. “They really are alive! They’re alive, Pearl! Actual butterfly babies!”

  “You better be careful,” I say, fixing Nat with a hard stare. “You and your mum might think this is your science lab, but it’s our home.”

  Nat smiles. “I know. That’s why you two have got to help me fix up this glasshouse. So we’ve got a place to hide them.”

  Dad’s at the stove, bent over a steaming pot of mussel soup. We don’t normally bother with proper mealtimes, but yesterday he said we had to make an effort on their first night, even if we didn’t want visitors. “We don’t want them thinking you’re not being looked after,” he muttered, not meeting our eyes.

  Clover made ship’s biscuits, only she cheated and used some of our precious store of butter to make them soft.

  I picked samphire earlier at the shoreline. Mostly because it’s my favourite, and because it takes all of two minutes to cook. It doesn’t need anything extra. And because it’s one of the best things I could show them.

  Sora’s perched on the edge of our frayed shabby sofa. She’s already told us they’re not used to seafood, but she’s trying to be nice about it anyway. “It’s smelling good. I’m excited. It’ll be something different,” she says for the tenth time.

  Nat’s at the kitchen table playing with the dominoes Dad made, when he still used to do things like that. It was Dad who got me started on the mermaids, showing me how to carve a fish tails out of the pieces of driftwood we collect on the flats. To remake the old dolls as something new. Something better suited to the sea.

  If Nat and Sora weren’t here I’d be starting on the new doll Clover found. She’s sitting on the shelf above my hammock. Empty eyes, waiting. I’ve named her Miranda after a book of paintings in the prison library. The caption said Miranda was banished to an island when she was three to live with her father. She had wild red hair. I wonder if the doll had any hair once.

  Nat tiles the dominoes on top of our table methodically. It annoys me, seeing the wooden blocks in his hands.

  “I’ve told you, Nat, haven’t I? Your grandmother grew up eating seafood,” Sora is saying, in that excited voice I’d hoped the boat trip with Dad might dampen. “She was always sad she couldn’t give it to me when I was a little girl. The seas were in such a state. She’d be pleased to see us here now, about to tuck into a seafood feast.”

  Nat doesn’t look interested in the grandmother he never met. His eyes are on the dominoes. Instead of dots, Dad carved fish. One fish, two fish, three fish. Cod, bass, sole, mackerel, whiting. Nat’s putting them together into a shoal and Clover’s beside him, watching, as if he’s performing alchemy.

  Dad swears loudly in the kitchen, and there’s a hissing sound as boiling water sloshes over the edge of the pan into the flame.

  “Dad!” Clover chastises, embarrassed.

  “It’s this damn foot,” he says, lifting up his right foot and standing on one leg like a gull.

  “What happened?” I ask, rushing into the kitchen.

  “Argh, it’s nothing. I got it caught in the winch head, pulling up one of the lines.” His face contorts with pain.

  “When?” I ask, my blood racing ever so slightly faster. “How did your foot get near the winch head?”

  “It wasn’t working,” Dad says. “I was kicking it into action.”

  Sora looks over, concerned. “I didn’t realize it was serious or I would have made you rest it. Sit down, Atticus. Let me take over dinner.”

  “That winch works fine. You’ve just got to ease the line in right,” I say, talking over Sora.

  “It’s easy you saying that. You refused to come, didn’t you?” Dad says. “It wouldn’t have happened if you’d been there to help.”

  Sora looks surprised at Dad’s sudden flare of anger. My face reddens. Dad’s right: I should have gone with them. I only stayed to make sure Nat didn’t tease Clover. And because I didn’t see why we should be helping Sora anyway. Why should we make things easy for her? She could be a spy, not a scientist, for all we know.

  “Don’t blame Pearl,” Clover blurts out to Dad from the kitchen table. “That line’s easy. If you ever did it any more, you’d know.”

  Sora looks between us, perturbed at the fizzing tension. I watch her make eye contact with Nat, who’s still at the table, turning over the dominoes silently.

  “It’s nothing,” Dad says gruffly, then gives another stream of curses as he tries to put his foot down and stumbles. Shame washes over me. He’s already on his third bottle of beer. I take the wooden soup ladle from his hand.

  “I’ll do it,” I say frostily. “Go and put your foot up, like she said.”

  “Perhaps I can help?” Sora asks awkwardly, edging into the small galley kitchen. “Pearl?”

  “You’d overcook it,” I say, not looking at her. I take the lid off the saucepan and a cloud of steam blows up near Sora’s face.

  “Pearl!” Clover admonishes.

  “She said they don’t know about seafood! We don’t want the mussels tough, do we?”

  Sora smiles diplomatically. “I’ll get out of your way then, Pearl. If you’re sure.”

  “Set the table, Clover!” I yell. “Those dominoes are in the way.”

  Dad made mussel soup because it’s simple. Mussels don’t need much else to taste good. Still, Nat’s face falls when I slam a bowl down in front of him and cloudy liquid spills over the side.

  “They’re in shells,” Nat says, peering into the bowl. Sora’s looking just as unsure despite her supposed seafood heritage.

  “Yeah, well, obviously you don’t eat the shells,” I say scornfully.

  “Watch me,” Clover says. Nat’s jaw hangs open, as Clover noisily sucks out the flesh from a mussel and throws the shell into a bowl at the centre of the table.

  She giggles at his reaction. “It’s food of the gods, I promise. The sea gods anyway.”

  Sora gingerly starts to eat and takes care to make appropriate ‘ooohs’ and ‘yums’, even though it’s obvious she’s forcing herself. Nat nibbles at one of Clover’s biscuits, like even flour and water out here are too weird for him to stomach.

  “I saw your porpoises, girls,” Sora says. “I had no idea we had them in the bay. What an amazing discovery! Sea mammals back in Blackwater Bay!”

  “They’re not ours,” I say brusquely.

  “They’re our friends, though,” Clover says immediately. “So they are sort of ours.” Then she blushes and looks at Nat. “Well, not real friends obviously. Not like your Tally.”

  Sora beams. “I’m so happy you’ve all been getting to know each other. Nat was very miserable about leaving his friends behind. It’s wonderful he has the two of you. Do you think Nat and I will get to know the porpoises too? I’d love to find out more about them.”

  I shake my head fiercely. “They won’t like strangers.”

  Clover
ignores me and starts rattling off the names of the porpoises, describing every little thing about them, and everything she does for them, like she’s the only one they ever come for.

  “Nat wants to repair Mum’s greenhouse,” I interrupt.

  Nat stiffens opposite me.

  “Pearl!” Clover says warily, jabbing me with her foot under the table.

  “That’s what you both said,” I say. “Mum’s greenhouse.” I turn to Dad for backup. Out of the corner of my eye I see Nat staring at me strangely.

  Dad barely looks up. “Sure,” he says. Mussel soup dribbles into his beard. I sink back into my chair, deflated. Clover breathes a noticeable sigh of relief.

  “A greenhouse?” Sora asks keenly. “For plants? Oh, I’d love to take a look. What did your mum use it for?”

  I glower. First marine mammals in the bay, now a greenhouse. If I’m not careful, Sora will never go back to land.

  “Mum,” Nat groans. “Can’t you leave this one thing to me? I need some independence! This could be my project while I’m here.”

  Sora smiles easily. “If you insist! I’m sure I can trust these girls to keep you in line. I’ll leave you to your repairs and I’ll look forward to seeing it when it’s all fixed. I’d love to discover what can grow out here.” She turns to me. “Your dad mentioned your sea ledger, Pearl. I was wondering if you would mind showing it to me?”

  I gasp. It’s like a kick to the stomach. How can Dad have told Sora about the ledger? My ledger? All the secrets the bay keeps. “The ledger’s not for looking at. It’s just sightings, that’s all.”

  “Precisely!” Sora says. “A record. That’s why I think it could be useful. Scientists need records. You need to be able to measure things, so you can spot patterns and see changes.”

  “It’s not even accurate,” I lie. “Some of the sightings weren’t even definite.”

  “I’d still love to see it,” Sora says.

  “Why’s our farm so interesting to you?” Clover asks, her head to one side.

  Sora smiles at Clover, and I go back to my soup, glad to have her eyes off me. “Truth is, we need more food sources to rely on, especially in the bay,” Sora says. “I’m excited about what your shellfish and seaweed could offer us. If we could scale things up, increase yields, we could feed more people.”