LITMIR.BIZ

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again, but a fire still smoked in the great hearth. The slate tiles were warm as skin. More warmth fell from the lozenge of window light, into which Sal’s feet just crept. A string of red glass beads threw a loop of light down, enchained the child’s neck and waist. Harper would be back soon and Sophie was still talking outside. Her visitor said little, but his voice implored her, and Sal could hear his words over the scarlet embers’ hiss.

      “I haven’t come to spy on you!”

      “No one accused you, Dominic.”

      “Then why are you so suspicious?”

      He was pacing about on the slabs, moving round Sophie, who would be sitting so still by now. Sal knew her well, how she would shrink back from a raised voice and make herself small and hard as a pebble. Sophie had a bit of that tough magic. And she wasn’t frightened, even if he seemed to be laying some kind of doom on her.

      “Come into the house, Dominic. Let’s talk there.”

      He said in a new, hesitant voice, “But Calypso, she’s asleep.”

      “It’s all right. Come in.”

      And the door opened, and in came Sophie with her brother’s hand in hers, and he seemed to have given up the idea of freaking Sophie out, at least for now. Sal nodded to him and got up to poke the fire. Calypso’s grey eyes flickered. Sal could see that Dominic felt awkward with her in the room. Let him. She wasn’t going anywhere.

      “Hi, Sal,” he said. “It’s been a while.”

      “Hello, pet. Are you staying?”

      He put his backpack on the big pine table. The weight of it was a kind of answer.

      “You’ve got a good place here,” he said. Sal saw him looking it over. Paternoster over the lintel, joss sticks, the glittering witch ball. “You’ve been weaving spells to keep the bad guys out.”

      “The sea is our moat,” said Sophie, smiling. “The cliffs are our castle walls. And Sweetholm is just what it says.”

      “Calypso looks content.”

      “She is. She’s very content. Sweetholm suits her.”

      “She’s got a kind of … sheen to her. I never noticed from the photos. Oh, Sophie—”

      “—Dominic!” said Sophie simultaneously. They both giggled, like children. There was something going on between them that Sal could only guess at.

      Dominic looked at her. “And you’ve given her this shelter, Sal. You’re a good friend.”

      “I try to be. But we’re not alone here. Didn’t Sophie explain?”

      “Oh, I realise it’s a colony. Where is everyone? Where’s Harper?”

      “Getting supplies from the Haven. You probably passed him.”

      Dominic hesitated. “I don’t think I—”

      “He’s twice the height he was. You wouldn’t recognise him.”

      “She’s right, Dominic,” exclaimed Sophie, “it’s been far too long.”

      At once they were talking. Sal watched them for a while, protective of Sophie, careful of herself. Dominic was the only one who could shut Sal out. Sophie did not even realise she was doing it. They had too much past to be able to go beyond it, a complicated family situation that Sal had more or less given up trying to understand. But sooner or later they would have to reach Sweetholm, and today. Sal pulled the blanket round her shoulders, lay back on the narrow bed, and slept.

      

      Calypso likes the sea air. It fills her eyes with light. It splays her webbed fingers and sends her clambering up the sandy grass, the last dune before the ocean. There she goes, the little selkie child.

      The first time she dived into the water, she cut it like a blade. It fell back and she danced on it. Sal felt Sophie beside her, taut with the fear and the excitement, terrified that Calypso would turn her face out to the horizon. She might swim to that horizon and the air would flit with birds, and the porpoises would nuzzle her belly. She would glide on and forget herself, and her legs, with their duck-footed clumsiness, would melt into one, and she’d shiver in a dazzle of far water and be gone.

      But it didn’t happen that way. When Sophie could stand it no longer, she called Calypso back.

      “Sing, Mummy, you have to sing to me!”

      Dutifully, Sophie sang: she sang a song Davy Jones had taught her, about a fisherman who was starving. He was so weak that he did not have the strength to pull his fish into the boat and he had to persuade it to jump in of its own good will. And when the fish did that, its belly opened and out poured a mass of golden coins, and the boat almost sank under the weight of all that gold.

      But Sophie’s boat did not sink: Calypso allowed herself to be reeled in on that thread of song, though as soon as her feet touched the beach she fell, as if she could not bear her own sudden weight …

      “I don’t know what you’re playing at, Sophie.”

      It was Dominic’s voice: exasperated, chiding. Waking suddenly, Sal leapt in. “She’s playing at being happy for the first time in her life. You should try it.”

      “Sal, please! I’m not here to make trouble. But on this island, of all places! To bring her, here!”

      “What’s wrong with it?”

      “A few years ago you’d have died rather than be seen in a place like this. Some millionaire playing at gurus and all of you crying ‘Shantih’ at his feet.”

      “From you, this is rich!” hooted Sophie.

      “But an island! After Joe, you should be going as far inland as possible.”

      Sophie grunted. “That would be running away.”

      “And Sweetholm is the thick of things?”

      “It suits us. You think we don’t deserve a break?”

      “Of course you do.” He came and sat beside her. “You can’t guess the seventy ways I worry about you both, Sophie. And whatever you did, you’d get me turning up probably, trying to show you different.”

      Sal put her arms round Sophie. “Haven’t you bullied her enough for now?”

      “It’s all right, Sal,” said Sophie. She looked from one to the other and shook her head. “Let’s show Dominic the house he has come to, at least.”

      When the footsteps had dwindled, Calypso sat herself up, back against the stone pedestal. She pulled the crocheted blanket from her legs. She saw nothing that displeased her: a satin glimmer of reflected fire, a loop of scattered window light over the soft fur. Her toes stretched, her feet and legs stretched out together. She was glad to be alone and out of the dream-maze. Had that been … had it been … Uncle Dominic? Had it? And had she been with him in a hospital, a hospital on wheels that made her remember frightening things? Or had that been just a dream?

      Calypso tucked her knees together and hooked her hands round about her shin. Other people, she had begun to learn, had dreams that stayed dreams. They were lucky, those people.

      Her dreams always came true.

       4 The Cursing Candle

      The first things to stir at Crusoe’s Castle next morning were Tansy’s toes, which had broken free of the covers and found the air too cold. Tansy opened her eyes and saw them waving at her from the far end of the blanket. She had been put in one of the attic rooms, with a slanted ceiling and a dormer window.

      She got up and tried out her view. From the open window she could hear the gulls wheeling, scavenging in the bins at the

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