“I c-couldn’t open up that piece of my heart. I’m sorry. I knew you would find out soon enough in the port.”
All the resentment I’d harbored toward her for her lies and overprotectiveness dissolved the moment I heard her shuddering sobs.
“Mom?”
“Yes?”
“I understand, and I love you.”
I handed the phone to Granddad, who nodded and then raised it to his ear.
I stifled a sob of my own as I stepped into the adjacent living room and sank onto the couch. Hearing Mom’s voice and her finally speaking of my father sent the weight of everything crashing down on me. I was no longer the sheltered, lost girl who had boarded that plane, rolling her eyes at her overbearing mother. I was a creature of the deep now; I was no longer innocent, but I was no longer lost, either.
“Do you want to see some pictures of them?”
I started at the sound, wiping the tears from beneath my eyes.
Granddad was in the doorway, holding a dusty book.
“May I?” He gestured to the couch, and I hastily moved over. “This was your gran’s. There might be some photos of your pa in there.” He laid the book, which I now realized was an album, on my lap, groaning as he eased himself down beside me.
My hands trembled as I opened it, revealing pictures of my grandparents’ wedding. Turning another page showed my grandmother with Louisa on their travels. They stood at the pyramids of Egypt, both smiling from ear to ear. Then, they visited Stonehenge and Machu Picchu.
After that, my mother was born, and my grandmother cradled her in her arms, walking along the shoreline as she grew from an infant to a toddler. A pang shot through my chest. My grandmother’s eyes held that same faraway sorrow I’d seen in the pictures I found in the attic.
As I flicked further through the album, my mother developed into a young woman, and there, near the end of the book, I saw him: Rory Balfour. My father.
By this point, the photos were colored, and I recognized his red hair and kind green eyes from the paper I’d found. He was wearing a sweater that looked like it had seen better days, and a group of kids surrounded him.
“He used to teach the wee lads to fish.” Granddad nodded at the picture, and I saw that my father was holding a net.
“The kids loved his lessons. Sometimes, they would wait at his door before the sun rose.”
I turned the page and found my mother, sweaty-faced and disheveled, cradling me in what must have been Islay Hospital. She smiled at the camera, my father’s arm around her, his gaze fixed on me.
I ran my finger over the photograph of the three of us, and my heart clenched. Seven months from that moment, my father would drown.
“Do you think Mom will ever be able to let go of Dad’s death?”
Granddad sighed. “Your ma and pa had one of those rare loves—completely daft about each other. That kind of love never truly leaves you... But with time, the weight of it gets easier to carry.”
I traced my finger along another photograph: my mother looking at my father with a smile I’d not seen before. She looked carefree and radiant.
She had never remarried and never loved like that again.
4
Morgana
For the next two days, Aranare moved our magic sessions to the beach, where sand, already so close to dust, meant I couldn’t cause too much damage. He’d given me one job: turn a shell to dust—without obliterating everything around it.
I had not yet succeeded. Either the shell remained untouched, or the sand around me turned ashen as the magic ripped out of me in wild, uncontrolled bursts. I fought the rising terror at my erratic powers and the mounting frustration that came with every failed attempt.
The beach was bitterly cold. Brooding clouds sagged over midnight waves while a frigid wind lashed along the coast. I would layer jeans, a hoodie, and my grandmother’s fur coat, but by the end of the day, my nose would still be pink and dripping.
Despite the cold, Aranare remained patient. Each time I incinerated a new target and the sand around it, he simply sighed and fetched another shell, placing them before me like a fresh challenge. After two tedious days of staring at shells, my eyes stung and my head throbbed with the effort.
The sun was dipping toward a dark horizon, and my fingers were numb and cold. I hadn’t exploded everything around me for the last three hours, but I also hadn’t managed to so much as shift a single shell.
