Page 15

EDDIE

F or a bunch of hostile, standoffish people, the Dauntless Islanders sure knew how to throw a party.

It was exactly my sort of thing—well, that wasn’t true.

If there had been a D&D campaign going on in a corner, it would have been exactly my sort of thing.

But it was very close to perfection. Hot, carb-heavy food, lots of alcohol, and people with musical instruments who didn’t play anything that was written after the turn of the century.

The turn of the last century. I had fallen into some kind of alternative universe where people unironically sang from the Roud Folk Song Index, and I loved it.

If I squinted and made everything go fuzzy so that I couldn’t see that people were wearing jeans and jumpers, I could pretend that I was back in the nineteenth century.

Although I didn’t actually need to squint—I just needed a few more rums.

I wasn’t completely at ease here, knowing that the person who’d tried to kill me was probably somewhere in this crowd, but so were a whole lot of people who hadn’t tried to kill me, right?

The rum also helped with that logical deduction.

Anyway, Joe was always right within yelling distance, and he was the king of the island, and I was under his protection.

Casting myself as the damsel in distress and Joe as the chivalrous knight in this scenario also didn’t put me completely at ease—I preferred to explore fantasy scenarios with more pirates and lighthouse keepers and zero damsels—but, again, the rum helped.

It was magic like that, and one of the kids I was talking to—a skinny girl of about ten, with flyaway blonde hair—kept making sure my glass was full.

“Do you have a car?” an older kid asked. This one was maybe fourteen or fifteen, and looking at me so avidly that I knew the answer to my question would make or break our burgeoning friendship.

“No,” I said, and his face fell. “But only because I live in the city and I take buses and trains everywhere.”

“Trains,” he said, his eyes widening in what might have been panic. “I’m going to school in Sydney next year.”

I looked around, but the girl had taken my rum to get a refill. I lowered my voice. “Do you want me to tell you how to buy train tickets?”

He looked relieved and nodded, so I talked him through the process of buying an Opal card.

I remembered what it was like to be a teenager.

What it felt like to be dropped into a new group of people, as though that wasn’t the most excruciating thing ever, and be expected to just manage.

I remembered how little it took to earn other kids’ contempt and mockery, to cement a reputation that seemed like it would follow me forever.

But at least I’d never had to deal with the culture shock of going from Dauntless Island to Sydney.

These kids didn’t even have mobile phones.

Their first few weeks in Sydney were going to be like landing on an alien planet.

Except they weren’t some advanced species with humming flying saucers and shiny silver onesies—they were the cavemen banging rocks together and screaming in panic at the sight of fire.

I’d probably got my metaphors a bit muddled there, but?—

“Rum,” the girl said, shoving the cup back in my hand.

But rum .

The rum was really, really good.

The nervous boy asked me more questions about living in the city, and the girl kept my back teeth swimming in alcohol, and eventually Joe found his way back to my side and watched me with an almost-smile as I swayed to the music.

Or just swayed. I bumped him with my hip a few times, and he didn’t move away.

“I think Eddie’s had enough to drink for now,” he said to the girl when she brought me another rum. “In fact, I think Eddie needs some fresh air.”

Fresh air was a great idea. It turned out to be a fantastic idea, because there was a tiny graveyard right outside the side door of the church.

“You know these will still be here in the daylight,” Joe told me as I knelt on a grave and tried to read the cracked headstone with my fingertips. “You’re getting your pants dirty—Jesus, do you want me to get a torch?”

“I think this one says Josiah,” I said excitedly, tracing the weather worn letters.

“It says Emily,” he said. “Emily Dinsmore. Beloved of God. Died 1843.”

“You have amazing eyesight.”

“I can’t read it in the bloody dark. I just know what it says.”

I was struck by a sudden thought. “Is Henry Jessup buried here?”

Joe didn’t answer.

“He should be, right? If he died on the island? But he’s not, is he?”

“The church wasn’t built until the English came in the 1880’s,” Joe said.

“Even the oldest graves here were dug somewhere else first and moved to the churchyard later. Henry Jessup’s wouldn’t be the only one from that first generation that’s missing because of that.

And there are more than a few headstones that are too smashed up to read.

It’s not proof he didn’t die on the island. ”

“No,” I agreed, tracing the curve of the top of Emily Dinsmore’s headstone. “But it fits.”

Joe didn’t say anything.

“There’s a whole shorthand with headstones and graveyard statues, did you know? The Victorians were super into it, in that way that only the Victorians could be about death. A broken column meant a life cut short. Angels are to guide the dead person’s soul into heaven. Beehives are?—”

He snorted. “Beehives?”

“Beehives symbolise abundance in the Promised Land,” I said. “You know, the land of milk and honey.”

“Why do they have beehives and not cows then?”

“Cows would be cute,” I said. “They really missed the boat when it came to cows, didn’t they? Stupid Victorians. They used a lot of lambs, but that was mostly for babies and little kids. That’s not cute though, that’s sad. Oh. Now I’m sad.”

“You’re not sad.” He sat down beside me on Emily Dinsmore’s grave. “You’re just drunk.”

“That makes sense.” I exhaled heavily. “Can I be a bit sad for all the dead Victorian children though?”

He rubbed my back. “If you want.”

“This is nice here.” Out in the graveyard, it wasn’t as loud as inside. I could still hear the music and singing, but it was nice sitting in the dark and listening instead of being in the middle of it all. “Do you think Emily cares that we’re sitting on her grave?”

“I think Emily stopped caring about anything almost two hundred years ago.” He froze, and then his hand dropped from my back.

“What on earth are you doing out here, Red Joe?”

I held onto the ground as I turned my head to find Mavis looking down at us. She had a mug in one hand, and a piece of pie in the other one.

“There’s pie ?” I asked. “How did I miss the pie?”

It was too dark to tell how narrow her eyes were, but I imagined snake-slits. With demonic red lights behind them.

“Mavis,” Joe said.

“What did I say about digging around in dead men’s graves, Red Joe?” she asked. “I said nothing good will come of it, you mark my words.”

“You did,” he agreed.

“We’re not digging,” I pointed out. “We’re sitting. Also, this is a lady’s grave.”

Mavis took a bite of her pie. “I was talking generally , Mr. Hawthorne. I can see you’re not actually digging.”

“It’s amazing how people here can make my surname sound like an insult,” I said. “Have you seen The Matrix ? Where Agent Smith says ‘Mist errrrrr Anderson.’ That’s the vibe I’m getting. Even if George Hawthorne was a tyrant—which he probably wasn’t—that’s got nothing to do with me.”

“Don’t let John Coldwell hear you say that,” Mavis replied with the gleeful tone of a woman who wanted to watch the world burn. Or at least wanted to watch me get clobbered over the head again. “He might finish you off next time.”

“We don’t know that it was John,” Joe said, always the voice of reason.

“I’ll bet it was,” I said.

“Eddie,” Joe said with a sigh.

“What? Mavis asked. “He might be a Hawthorne, but that doesn’t mean he’s an idiot.”

“Mavis gets me,” I said. “Is there pie inside?”

“Not for the likes of you,” she said.

“I knew she was going to say that!” I exclaimed. “You get me, Mavis. You get me.”

“Probably time we headed back, I think.” Joe climbed to his feed and dusted the dirt off the arse of his pants. He held a hand down for me and hauled me to my feet. “Come on, you.”

I blinked to try to clear my very blurry vision—it didn’t help—and looked around as we stepped back inside the church.

There was a lot more space in here now. The food and drink up on the altar and first row of pews was mostly gone, and people were starting to drift away in dribs and drabs, hanging at the front door just long enough to finish their conversations and slip away into the night.

Little kids dozed in their parents’ arms. Bigger kids hid yawns behind their hands.

A burst of laughter went up as someone missed a step on the way out.

“Mind how you go, Buzzy Pete!” a woman said, and a man called back something indistinct but jovial in tone.

Joe steered me out the front door of the church, and we wandered over to the statue of Josiah Nesmith by the harbour wall. I swayed along with the waves hitting the wall, and Joe held onto the back of my jacket even though we were nowhere near the edge.

“It’s so nice here,” I said, blinking at him. “You should have taxis though. Why aren’t there any taxis?”

“Most people don’t have far to go,” Joe said.

“Only to the main street or the few cottages behind it. There are a few that live further out. Round Robbie Hooper and Yellow Sarah live on the eastern tip of the island, and Young Harry Barnes has a shack up on the edge of Mayfair Bay. At least we don’t have as far to walk as them. ”

“But we have to walk uphill, Joe!”

He laughed softly. “Yeah, there is that.”

Things clinked, and I realised that at some point he’d collected his casserole dish and empty flagons.