Francesca Haig - The Map of Bones

I hit her, full in the face. I’d struck out at her once before, months ago, when she’d made a similarly disparaging comment about Kip. But that had been a chaotic grappling in the half dark. This was more precise: a single punch to the face. I didn’t know which of us was more surprised. Nonetheless, her instincts didn’t let her down: she ducked to the left, deflecting most of the blow, my fist grazing along her cheek and ear. Even so, my knuckle cracked against something hard – her cheekbone, or jawbone – and I heard myself yelp.

She didn’t strike back, just stood there, one hand raised to the side of her face.

‘You need to practise more,’ she said. She rubbed her cheek, opened her mouth wide to test the pain. A red mark was surfacing on her jaw. ‘And you’re still not following through enough.’

‘Shut up,’ I said.

‘Open and shut your fingers,’ she instructed, watching me as I winched my fist open and closed.

She took it and turned it over, methodically bending each finger. ‘It’s just bruised,’ she said, dropping my hand.

‘Don’t talk to me,’ I said. I shook my hand, half expecting to hear the rattle of bones knocked loose.

‘I’m glad to see you angry,’ she said, smiling. ‘Anything’s better than having you wandering around like a ghost.’

I thought of Leonard’s words to me. Girl, you’re hardly here.

‘Anyway, it’s not even me who you’re angry at,’ she said.

‘You don’t know what you’re talking about.’ I shouldered past her to follow Piper, who was nearly out of sight.

She called after me. ‘You’re angry at Kip. And it doesn’t even have anything to do with his past. You’re angry at him because he jumped, and left you behind.’

*

We walked in silence for hours. The peninsula that Piper led us to was really a string of islands, linked tenuously by a thin strip of land. The tide was already beginning to creep up the sides of the isthmuses, leaving just a narrow passage from one island to the next. In mid afternoon we set out across the final strip of stones, the last island ahead of us. It loomed tall, even now that the sea had claimed its lowest reaches. The tide was almost at its highest; the only way to reach the island was across a slim thread of rocks, already slippery with spray.

Piper was still ahead of us, already half way to the island. I turned back to face Zoe, who was just behind me.

‘When are you going to tell him about Kip?’

‘Keep moving,’ she said. ‘This path’ll be underwater in a few more minutes.’

I didn’t move.

‘When are you going to tell him?’ I said again. A wave splashed my leg, a shock of cold.

‘I figure you’ll do it yourself, soon enough,’ she said, pushing past me and clambering onwards on the slippery rock.

I should have been relieved. But now the secret was once again mine, so was the responsibility. I’d have to tell him myself. And to say it out loud again felt like an incantation: as if each time I uttered the words, I made Kip’s past more real.

Piper and Zoe had paused on the brink of the final island. Piper blocked the way, crouching at the point where the isthmus met the wooded slope.

When I tried to edge past him, he stood and yanked at my jumper, pulling me back. ‘Wait,’ he said.

‘What are you doing?’ I said, shaking him off.

‘Look,’ he said, crouching again and peering at the path. I bent to see what he was so intent on.

He pointed out the strand of wire stretched across the width of the path, six inches above the ground. ‘Stay down,’ he said. Zoe, beside him, squatted on her heels. He leaned forward and tugged the wire.

The arrow passed a foot above our heads and disappeared into the sea. Piper stood, grinning. Somewhere on the island ahead of us, a bell was clanging. I looked back to the water. The arrow had not even left a ripple. If we’d been standing, it would have gone straight through us.

‘She’ll know we’re coming, at least,’ said Zoe. ‘But she won’t be happy that you wasted an arrow.’

Piper bent and pulled the wire again. Twice slowly, twice quickly, and slowly twice more. Up the hill, the bell sounded out the rhythm.

Three more times, as we crossed the island, Piper or Zoe halted us so that we could step over trip wires. Another time, I felt the trap even before Zoe warned me to step off the path. When I bent to examine the ground, I could sense a kind of insubstantiality to it: a confusion between air and earth. Crouching, I saw the layer of long willow twigs woven together and covered with leaves.

‘There’s a six-foot drop under there,’ Piper said. ‘Sharpened stakes planted at the bottom, too. Sally made Zoe and me dig it, when we were teenagers. Was a bitch of a job.’ He set off ahead of me. ‘Come on.’

It took us nearly an hour to cross the island, making our way up the forested slope and avoiding the traps. Eventually we ran out of land. The island had climbed to a peak at its southern edge, where a cliff dropped away to the sea in front of us. There was nothing beyond but the waves and the unlikely angles of the submerged city.

‘There,’ said Piper, pointing through the final trees. ‘Sally’s place.’

I could see nothing but the trees, their pale trunks blotched with brown like an old man’s hands. Then I saw the door. It was low, and half-concealed by the boulders that clustered at the cliff’s edge. It stood impossibly close to the end of the bluff – it looked like a doorway into nothingness, and was so faded and battered by the coastal winds that the wood was bleached to the same shade as the salt-parched grasses around it. It had been built to take advantage of the cover of the boulders, so that at least half of the building must have hung out over the edge of the cliff itself.

Zoe whistled, the same rhythm that Piper had sounded on the warning bell: two slow notes, two quick, and two slow.

The woman who opened the door was the oldest person I’d ever seen. Her hair was sparse enough that I could see the curve of scalp beneath it. Around her neck, the skin was draped like a cowl. Even her nose looked tired, drooping at the tip like melted candle wax. I was fairly sure that her forehead bore no brand, but it was hard to tell: age had branded her now, her forehead cragged with wrinkles. The loose flesh of her eyelids hung so low over her eyes that I imagined they must disappear altogether when she smiled.

But she wasn’t smiling now. She was looking at us.

‘I hoped you wouldn’t come,’ she said.

‘Nice to see you too,’ said Zoe.

‘I knew you wouldn’t come unless you were desperate,’ the woman said. She came forward, a lurch in her step. Both legs were twisted, the joints gnarled and fused. She embraced Zoe first, and then Piper. Zoe closed her eyes when Sally held her. I tried to picture Zoe and Piper as they must have been when, ten years old and on the run, they first came to Sally. I wondered how much the old woman had seen them change. The world was a flint on which they had been sharpened.

‘This is the seer?’ Sally said.

‘This is Cass,’ said Piper.

‘I haven’t stayed safe all these years by bringing strangers into my home,’ she said.

She had to balance her speech with her breathing, so the words came slowly. Sometimes she paused between each syllable, the noisy breaths taking their time. Each breath a sigh.

‘You can trust me,’ I said.

She stared at me again. ‘We’ll see.’

We followed her inside the house. When she shut the door behind us, the whole building shook. I thought again of the cliff underneath us, and the sea clawing at the rocks.

‘Relax,’ said Piper. I hadn’t even realised that I was clutching the doorframe. ‘This place has been here for decades. It’s not going down the cliff tonight.’