Page 18

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Just think, Madeleine had been disappointed only a few minutes ago.

More than disappointed.

Closer to crushed. With only a few words, Jonathan had knocked down her hopes that he could provide the answers she needed.

She’d been telling herself for years to prepare for that possibility.

After all, what could he have seen from such a distance, in the dark?

She’d known that. She’d even told herself there were no guarantees that he’d be here at all when she returned.

Hope had kept her in a stranglehold, though.

He was the only human link she had to that night, and he’d had plenty of his own questions at the time.

Part of her had always hoped he’d seek answers too and would have them ready for her when she arrived.

But Jonathan had no answers, only sympathy.

That was one avenue closed to Madeleine.

The others were all in shadow and seemed strewn with rocks.

For a second, after he’d told her he couldn’t help, her chest had caved in.

Then, H?ra’s hand.

Now, Madeleine sat in the passenger seat of a two-seater, four-wheeled utility vehicle called a “Gator” that rumbled and bumped over uneven ground.

She bounced in the seat while H?ra drove across the fields with cheerful abandon.

H?ra’s dark ponytail flew behind her in the wind, and her cheeks were reddened in the fresh air.

At least the fields in daytime didn’t look anything like the darksome plain of Madeleine’s dream.

The sun was indeed coming out today.

Beneath its light, patches of grass flashed in different colors: neatly segmented squares of green and yellow.

She asked H?ra, raising her voice over the motor, “Why are some of those grass squares green and some yellow?”

“From moving the sheep from field to field during the summer months,” H?ra called back.

“So we can cut silage.”

“What’s silage?”

“Grass for the winter. We ferment and store it. It doesn’t smell nice, but it’s worse when we spread the slurry. We don’t hang the washing outside then.”

“Slurry?” Madeleine asked, with a feeling she already knew.

“It’s mostly shite,” H?ra confirmed.

Then she glanced at Madeleine with a frown.

“That’s how the farmhands speak. Would you prefer I spoke otherwise?”

“Uh—” The Gator bounced into a large dip in the ground.

“I’d prefer if you kept your eyes on the road!”

“There’s nothing to hit,” H?ra said reassuringly, although she looked forward again.

“See? The sheep are farther up ahead. And we’re not really on a road.”

“That’s what I mean.” Madeleine set her jaw against another bump.

“You could knock the axle clean off if you’re not careful. Or fall out.” The Gator didn’t have seat belts, just metal hip restraints that didn’t feel very protective right now.

H?ra’s mouth pursed, and she looked thoughtful.

“Are you concerned for my safety?”

That was an odd question from a woman obsessed with the dangers of a beach.

“Of course I don’t want you to fall. Especially with me in the passenger seat.”

H?ra’s eyes widened.

Then she took her foot off the accelerator, and the Gator slowed down.

Before Madeleine could exhale in relief, H?ra said, “I wouldn’t let you come to harm. We’ll slow down.”

Madeleine’s right hand—the one H?ra had taken in her own minutes ago—tingled.

So did the rest of her skin.

She managed, “Thanks.”

“Of course. What do you think of the farm?”

Madeleine looked around at the rolling fields, dotted with sheep and, separately, cattle.

It resembled the other farms she’d seen while island-hopping.

Indeed, most of Orkney seemed, to her untrained eyes, to be pasture.

Jorsay had definitely been the odd island out in that regard the last time she was here.

“It’s beautiful, especially on a sunny day. Jonathan started it five years ago?”

“Jonathan and I started it,” H?ra corrected.

Madeleine winced. “Oh, of course. Sorry. I just meant…”

H?ra’s lips twitched into a little smile, although she kept her eyes straight ahead.

“That Jonathan masterminded this whole enterprise and his bastard’s just along for the ride?”

Her hands clutched the hip restraint even harder.

The metal dug into her palms, as if grounding her from the embarrassment.

“I’d never have said that!”

“No. But would you have meant it?” Now H?ra cast her a shrewd glance.

Oh…darn it. Madeleine sighed.

“I guess that’s what I was thinking, in less colorful language.”

“‘Colorful’? Oh, I see what you mean.” H?ra guided the Gator into two well-worn tire tracks in the grass.

“You’d be wrong. I gave Jonathan the money for the farm.”

That was certainly unexpected.

Madeleine would have to revise, yet again, her opinion of H?ra.

“Because he…took you in?”

There was a pause.

H?ra looked ahead, as if mapping out her answer, which meant it wouldn’t be straightforward.

Madeleine had taught enough high schoolers to recognize someone searching for an explanation.

She didn’t think H?ra was lying about funding the farm.

That said, it obviously wasn’t so simple.

“Yes and no,” H?ra said.

“I gave Jonathan the money before I moved here. It was part of an arrangement between us. A year later, I came to him, and he bought the land. We started the farm together.”

There was more to the story.

So much more. To her astonishment, Madeleine found herself ravenous for it.

Why? When Harry Duggan had tried to gossip yesterday, she hadn’t been able to escape fast enough.

The carrot H?ra dangled in front of her, however, was impossible not to grasp at.

She could ask, couldn’t she?

They were talking about it, weren’t they?

H?ra could tell her if she didn’t want to talk about it.

She seemed blunt enough for that.

“You mentioned other family,” Madeleine said.

“Where do you come from originally, if not Orkney?”

Again, H?ra hesitated.

Then she said, “My family were nomadic. I’m not really ‘from’ anywhere.”

“Nomadic? Are you Romani?” The Roma encountered plenty of prejudice, which might explain H?ra’s reluctance to go into more detail.

It also might explain her accent, which was subtly different from Jonathan’s and other native islanders’.

H?ra’s accent was lower, sharper .

It sounded like the rhythms of the sea.

“No,” H?ra said, putting paid to that theory.

When no more information seemed forthcoming, Madeleine said, “It must have been a challenge to settle down here.”

“You have no idea,” H?ra said dryly.

“I grew up roaming with my h…family, and now I rarely leave the farm.” Before Madeleine could ask about that, she added, “And you? Did you grow up in your convent?”

“Goodness, no.” Outsiders had such strange ideas about nuns.

“I was born in New Orleans. I didn’t join the Daughters of Grace until after I graduated college. Most orders require postulants to be at least eighteen, preferably a little older.”

“New Orleans,” H?ra said slowly, as if testing the words.

“A city in the United States.”

A famous one, yes.

Madeleine had never met anyone who hadn’t heard of it.

H?ra sounded uncertain, though.

What had her education been like?

If her family had been nomadic, as she’d said, maybe she’d bounced from school to school.

Or maybe she’d been homeschooled.

Or not schooled at all.

It might also explain why she was so…

shaky when it came to the social graces.

Under those circumstances, where on earth had she found the money to start a farm?

Probably nothing H?ra would want to tell or Madeleine ought to know.

She seemed to be living a respectable life now.

Everyone deserved a second chance.

“New Orleans is pretty famous—or infamous—for being a party town,” she said.

“The motto is ‘Let the good times roll.’”

“A party?” Madeleine could have sworn H?ra’s ears pricked up.

“That sounds like fun.”

“It depends on your idea of fun. For me?—”

“Ah! Look!”

Without further warning, H?ra swerved the Gator off the path.

Madeleine yelped and grabbed the hip restraint tighter.

“Just a moment.” H?ra drove a little way over the grass before putting on the brakes.

Then she pointed at a small mound in the grass.

“See that?”

Madeleine, still catching her breath, squinted at the mound.

There didn’t seem to be anything special about it.

“What is it?”

“Some say a trow lives there.”

Madeleine vaguely remembered that word from researching the island before the school trip.

“Trow…that’s some kind of little monster, right?”

H?ra frowned.

“The word ‘monster’ isn’t called for, is it?”

She seemed genuinely offended.

Madeleine could think of nothing to say other than, “Oh. Sorry.”

“Many legends surround trows. They’re quite mysterious. Do you believe in mysterious things?”

Madeleine immediately thought of the mysteries of the rosary: the birth of Jesus, his resurrection, and so on.

It wasn’t what H?ra meant, but it was still about believing in what you didn’t understand.

When you got down to it, was a mythical creature all that different from…

What was she thinking?

Was an imaginary trow the same thing as the life of Christ?

Madeleine touched the crucifix on her breast, another kind of apology.

“I do. Mysteries are part of my faith.”

“Your faith?” H?ra turned off the motor.

In the absence of its rumble, the wind whispered through the grass and seabirds cried in the distance.

“Let’s talk about that.”

She leaned forward eagerly, closer into Madeleine’s space.

Now it was easier to see the color of her eyes.

In the morning light, there was no trace of the yellow tint Madeleine had seen the night before.

Today, H?ra’s eyes were a bright amber with gold flecks near the pupils.

And they were no less intense than they’d ever been.

“Talk about my faith?” Madeleine croaked, heart racing in a way that had nothing to do with H?ra’s awful driving.

“Yes. I’ve read your Bible, and I have a lot of questions. Since you’re a…well, you used to be a nun, I thought you could answer them.” Interest lit H?ra’s eyes.

“That’s what you believe in, isn’t it?”

Would every conversation with this woman end in Madeleine’s head spinning like a top?

“Yes, of course, although it’s much more complicated?—”

“Excellent!” H?ra slapped her thighs with her palms. They looked like firm, strong thighs.

“Let’s start with Genesis.”

“Most things do,” Madeleine said weakly.

“How was there light on the first day of creation, but God made the sun and stars later? And why are there two different passages of him creating animals? And if the first man and woman were the only people on Earth, then how did their children have children of their own? Did they only mate with each other?” H?ra quirked up an eyebrow.

“That leads to weak offspring, you know.”

At least these were questions Madeleine had encountered many times before, especially while teaching high school students.

“Some people take every word of Scripture literally, but I never advocated for that—nor did my order. Scripture is inerrant in spiritual truth, not scientific fact. We should see it as inspired by God, but written by men.”

H?ra blinked.

“No women?”

“Nope,” Madeleine said dryly.

“Although there are female saints and scholars. Honestly, Catholics don’t spend as much time on the Bible as you’d think.”

H?ra frowned.

“You don’t?”

“No. We’ve got the Catechism, the lives of the saints, Augustine’s Confessions , and so much?—”

“But the Bible’s all I’ve read!” H?ra flung herself back in the seat, looking as incredulous as Madeleine felt.

“You’re telling me there’s more ?”

It was so absurd, so out of left field, that Madeleine laughed.

“Yes, a lot more. It can answer some of those questions you’re asking.”

H?ra scowled.

“I don’t want other books to answer my questions. I want to ask you. It took me years to read that stupid thing.”

Now that was really rude.

Madeleine lifted her chin and kept her voice cool.

“Tell you what. I won’t call a trow a ‘monster’ if you don’t insult something sacred to me.”

H?ra pursed her lips and looked away.

The wind whipped at her ponytail, teasing loose, dark tendrils of hair around her pale face and sharp cheekbones.

“Very well. I’m sorry.”

Madeleine stared at her.

Madeleine shouldn’t stare at her.

Was she really sitting here talking about her faith when she couldn’t resist thoughts that ran so counter to it?

What right did she have to get on her high horse when last night, she’d dreamed about H?ra taking her in her arms and…

“It’s okay,” she whispered.

“I do have doubts from time to time.”

The low, shaky note in Madeleine’s voice brought H?ra out of the sulk she’d just fallen into.

To think she’d spent years making her way through that horribly long, strange book, only to learn it didn’t even matter that much!

But it was hard to sulk when Madeleine was biting her bottom lip.

Ordinarily, that would have occupied H?ra’s full attention, if not for the distress that accompanied the gesture.

It was time to say something kind and understanding.

“Of course you have doubts,” she said.

“Those stories don’t make any sense.”

“No, not about that,” Madeleine said, her voice still low.

She wasn’t making eye contact with H?ra anymore.

“I told you, they’re not all to be taken literally. Never mind. Let’s keep looking at the farm.”

They had all day to look at the farm, and it was harder to talk while driving.

It would be even harder while surrounded by animals and other farmhands.

H?ra said, “Soon. Tell me about your doubts.”

Madeleine’s brow creased.

“Why do you want to know about my doubts?”

Because I want to know everything about you .

“What we don’t believe matters as much as what we do. But it’s in the middle where things get interesting.” She’d known that all her life.

She’d always been one to question the traditions of the herd, and later, many things about human existence too.

“If we don’t doubt or question what we’ve been told, we don’t learn. Haven’t you found that’s true?”

Madeleine looked stunned at H?ra’s words, for some reason.

“The Catechism teaches the difference between voluntary and involuntary doubt. One is a sin, and the other?—”

“I didn’t ask what the Cat …thing teaches,” H?ra said impatiently.

“I asked what you think.” A dreadful thought occurred to her.

“Or don’t you question it? Do you just believe whatever it says?”

“I was taught its precepts when I was a little girl, and I dedicated my entire life to following them for fifteen years,” Madeleine said between her teeth.

“But then you left.” A question occurred to H?ra.

“Why did you join the Daughters of Grace in the first place?”

She’d never wondered that before.

Years ago, when she’d overheard Sister Madeleine talking to the girl Ava on the beach, Madeleine had spoken of her “calling” to the order as if it was a fact of her existence.

But now she’d left that same order, so that couldn’t be the case.

“That’s a personal question.” Madeleine had her hands clasped tightly in her lap.

“Especially given how, last night, you judged me for leaving it.”

“I said I’d apologize for that if you wanted me to,” H?ra reminded her.

“Do you?”

After a moment, Madeleine said, “That’d be nice, actually. Yes.”

“I’m sorry,” H?ra said promptly.

“I shouldn’t have done that. Now please tell me why you joined the Daughters of Grace.”

Madeleine looked at her without saying anything.

Then, suddenly, she shook her head and laughed.

Her smile flashed like whitecaps on a rough ocean.

She propped her elbow on the back of the seat and rested her head against it, her dark hair mussed from the wind.

“You’re something else,” she said, grinning.

Sweat broke out in H?ra’s palms and lower back.

Something else. Could Madeleine see H?ra wasn’t what she pretended to be?

“What do you mean?”

“You don’t even know me, and you’re asking me the most intimate questions about my life.”

That could have been a lot worse.

H?ra rejoined, “That’s how I’ll get to know you. How can I know you if we don’t talk about anything…intimate?”

Madeleine’s cheeks turned pink again.

Maybe it was because of the wind.

Her grin faded into a smaller, more quizzical smile.

“Why do you want to get to know me? I guess you don’t meet a lot of new people out here. Is it because I’m different? From somewhere far away?”

It wasn’t clear how to respond to that.

H?ra probably shouldn’t say, I want to know you because you pulled me out of the ocean and turned me into someone else, and somehow you’ve got to be the answer to everything, and when you belong to me, my life will make sense again .

“Would that be a bad reason?” she asked cautiously.

“Not really. You just come on a little strong, that’s all. What happened to asking someone about their favorite color?”

That seemed much less interesting, but if that was the path Madeleine wanted to walk, they’d walk it.

Maybe it would lead to wider roads.

“What’s your favorite color?”

“Green,” Madeleine said promptly.

She looked around at the green fields and grass.

“It’s the color of things waking up when winter’s over. It’s the color of life.”

Strange.

For H?ra, red was the color of life: the blood a creature lost when giving birth, or what prey spilled before it nourished the predator.

However, it made sense that Madeleine would have a different perspective.

“Green’s the color of your eyes, too,” H?ra said, then wished she hadn’t, because she hadn’t meant to, and Madeleine knew the color of her own eyes.

A useless observation.

Indeed, Madeleine didn’t seem to know how to respond to it.

In fact, she looked away, taking the color of her eyes with her.

H?ra cursed herself.

“Was that inappropriate?” she asked.

“What? No, of course not.” Madeleine cleared her throat.

“What’s your favorite color?”

H?ra had seen every color in the sea.

Anemones clothed in red and purple; iridescent fish; the stark black-and-white of orcas; the mottled hides of seals and selkies.

She couldn’t choose, although she had to say something to Madeleine.

Suddenly, she remembered the seventh day she’d spent on land after her exile.

It was sinking in that she wasn’t leaving any time soon, she had no idea when Sister Madeleine would return, and she had to adjust to a foreign way of life.

Despair had set in, and she’d left Jonathan’s cottage with no objective in mind.

Then she’d seen the rainbow.

Her father had told her about rainbows, but she’d never seen one in any of her trips to the surface.

Hadn’t known that something so lovely could arch between heavy gray clouds.

Other than Sister Madeleine, it had been the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen.

“I love all the colors,” she said softly.

“But especially when they’re together. Rainbows are best.”

For some reason, Madeleine looked delighted.

“Now there’s a great Bible story! Noah and the rainbow. God’s promise of renewal.”

“That was a sad story,” H?ra objected.

“Well, yes, it’s been argued that it was cruel to destroy most of humanity, but remember—don’t take it literally.”

That wasn’t the part H?ra found sad.

It had seemed a shame to get rid of all that lovely water that had covered the world.

“I don’t.”

Madeleine shifted in her seat, appearing uncomfortable.

That made sense—the padding wasn’t the best. “Since we’re asking…intimate questions, are you a Christian? What with reading the whole Bible and everything.”

“No,” H?ra said flatly.

“I read it because I had to.” Or so she’d thought.

She evidently should have been reading Madeleine’s—what did she call it?

That Catechism instead.

“Oh.” Madeleine winced.

“Your family made you? When you were growing up?”

H?ra nearly laughed as she imagined Beathag’s reaction to the Bible.

That was a telling question, though.

Maybe Madeleine’s family had made her read it.

“I think we’ve talked about my family enough for now. I’m glad to be rid of them, and that’s that. What about yours?”

A shadow passed over Madeleine’s bright eyes, and it had nothing to do with the fluffy white clouds overhead.

“That’s a sad story too. They’re gone.”

H?ra was about to ask, Gone where?

when she remembered that sometimes humans used that as a euphemism.

Maybe Madeleine was doing that.

“Do you mean they’re dead?” she asked, to clarify.

Madeleine laughed shortly, although H?ra hadn’t been joking.

“You’re blunt, too. That’s okay. Yes, they’re dead. My parents died in a car accident when I was sixteen, and my brother was fourteen. He…didn’t cope well. Overdosed when I was twenty-one.”

Overdosed .

That meant drugs. It showed up in the Orcadian occasionally, and Jonathan always said it was a pity.

H?ra wondered why Madeleine had joined the Daughters of Grace after the tragedy, instead of making another family with a mate and a child.

It seemed to be another way Madeleine and H?ra were similar, at least. “I’m sorry. That sounds hard.”

“It was. Is. I don’t talk about it often. They’re in a better place now, and we’ll see each other again someday.”

That wasn’t what H?ra’s species believed.

H?ra had been taught that when the Last Current took her, she’d feed other creatures in the ocean just as they’d fed her.

That had always been enough.

While it would be nice to see her father again, she had no desire to reunite with Beathag and Asgall after she’d finally gotten rid of them for good.

Plainly, Madeleine would take no comfort from that observation.

She held her lips in a thin line, as if she was trying to smile but couldn’t manage it.

She was sad again. H?ra had made her sad.

Just as in the kitchen, it was unbearable.

H?ra’s body leaned forward, pulled, helpless.

This time, she rested her hand on Madeleine’s forearm, atop her jacket sleeve.

Madeleine inhaled, softly.

H?ra wouldn’t say something she didn’t believe like, Yes, you’ll see them again.

There were enough lies between them already.

This time, she could say something true.

“Life is very hard,” she said.

“But there are pleasures too. We’ve got rainbows, haven’t we?”

Madeleine’s full mouth opened, but nothing came out.

Then she managed, “Rainbows, yes. Those are…great.”

The sadness had left her face.

Therefore, H?ra should let go of her.

She tried to. But her human hand didn’t want to relax.

In fact, it wanted to grip Madeleine harder.

Pull her closer. “I suppose we got pretty intimate,” she said hoarsely.

Madeleine looked into H?ra’s eyes.

Her own eyes were wide.

Her voice was barely audible when she replied, “We did.”

Her arm was rigid, stiff, in H?ra’s grip.

Like last night, she didn’t try to pull free, but she’d also told H?ra not to seize her.

And here H?ra was, doing it again.

Curse it. Could she not learn?

H?ra let go. “I apologize for grabbing you again.”

“Um.” Madeleine shook her head, looking as if she’d just woken up from sleep.

She touched her forearm where H?ra’s hand had just been.

“That’s okay. It was different. I know you were just trying to…” Her voice trailed off.

At least one of them knew what H?ra had been trying to do.

It was time to restart the tour before she did something even more inexplicable.

Her eyes lit on the trow mound.

Hopefully he had no idea what was happening just outside his home.

He’d laugh his little head off, and then H?ra would have to rip it from his shoulders and the farm would lose his blessing.

“Let’s go,” she said, and turned the key.

The motor rumbled to life.

“There’s plenty left to see.”