Charley had rarely been on boats before – there’d been no practical reason to, and it obviously wasn’t her idea of a good time. If she’d wanted to get between the islands she’d fly. Otherwise, it had only been when her parents or school made her, always a thoroughly miserable experience, and those years were behind her now. But now, though her heart was pumping fast with anticipation, she felt less uncomfortable than she’d feared.

  The bay around Inver Aora was vast and wide which meant they were soon out into open waters. The wind wasn’t up too heavy and thus even though it was a small boat the journey was relatively smooth.

  “There are a few... well you could barely call them islands, but rocky outcrops northeast of here around where the shelf drops off,” Lawson said. “I’m going to head for them unless you have any objections.”

  “Charley will tell you if you’re heading in the wrong direction,” Thalassa said. She passed Charley some tablets in a metallic sleeve. “You probably don’t even know if you get seasick – regular seasick, not anything magical – so take one of these, and another if you feel you need it. They taste disgusting but we can’t afford to have you incapacitated.”

  The pills did taste disgusting, but that was the least of Charley’s concerns. Somehow, though, she did feel as if she would know if they were on the wrong track. For over an hour she said nothing, just sitting with the wind in her hair and the salt crusting on her skin, heading far out to sea, watching the land becoming smaller behind her, feeling the rocking of the boat. The winds became stronger and the water choppier, but she found it didn’t bother her too much. Thalassa was standing dramatically at the rear of the boat, reaching out towards the albatrosses who circled her head astonishingly close.

  Gordon chuckled. “Great fucking birds. Wouldn’t want those shitting on my car windscreen.”

  Thalassa, of course, ignored him, and Gordon pointed out other birds that approached – the giant petrel (a bird that looked to Charley like it must be some relation to a dodo), the narrow-winged sooty shearwater – and told her about the sort of 19th Century whaling station that Inver Aora had started out as. If his intention was to distract her, Charley found it was more or less working – she was still anxious and uncomfortable, and her head was thumping, but she was holding things together far more than she would have expected.

  A while later, something started to feel a little off. “I think you need to go a bit more northerly?” Charley suggested.

  “Aye aye,” replied Lawson, adjusting the boat’s heading. “Does that look about right to you, Charley?”

  Charley listened to her gut, something she was becoming better and better at doing. “I think so,” she said. “I mean, it feels right.”

  Thalassa lowered her arms and the birds flew away.

  “Spare pair of binoculars in that compartment there,” Lawson said, pointing. “You want to get those. Keep looking. Don’t let your mind get too used to what it sees otherwise it will just end up skimming over things.”

  Charley retrieved the binoculars and scanned the horizon with them.

  None of them talked about what they were looking for. In the best case, it would be a dehydrated Melissa on a big rock. But they knew there was something… not entirely natural about her disappearance, and what they could end up finding… well, it went well into the impossible.

  Soon Charley spotted rocks in the distance – they were dark as the sea was dark, but she could tell them most easily by the way the water splashed white against them. She pointed them out to Lawson, shuddering at the idea of her sister out here for over a week. Sometimes she caught a flicker, but when she moved the binoculars back it was only a wave or a bird, or her own hair flowing in front of her face – a good deal had made it loose from her ponytail at this stage of the operation.

  “Gonna get a bit closer and then we can go back and forth if it’s round here.”

  “Thanks,” said Charley. She felt sick, like something heavy had landed in her stomach. It wasn’t sea sickness. This was the hour when they would either find Melissa safe and well or they would have nothing else left to try. There didn’t seem to be any middle ground.

  The islands were tiny, the largest among them no more than a few metres across, circled with jagged rocks. The water broke against them, spraying high into the air, while below treacherous foam swirled back and forth.

  Charley scanned them methodically through her binoculars, one at a time. The sun was harsh on her, and she’d had to put her sunglasses away so she could use the binoculars better. Her T-shirt was soaked and water was running down her face like tears. “She’s not there,” Charley whispered. “She’s not there.”

  Everything was lost. She couldn’t find Melissa and she couldn’t face going back.

  “Focus, child,” said Thalassa. Charley tried – she tried her best – but there wasn’t even a reason for it anymore and her brain was all over the place, swirling everything from the past week: Melissa’s disappearance, yes, but this whole town. Thalassa. True. Magic. Magic was real and she had magic. And the sea didn’t really make her ill, it just awakened her magic which was too much to process because she had other issues going on with her mind. There was the beach, and the rocks, there were packets of noodles in the holiday park kitchen, the teens that hung out by the river, the houses staggered up the hill on the other side.

  “What do you want me to focus ON?” she yelled above the noise of the waves and the idling engine. Dunedin. Her tiny room that barely fitted a bed – did her rent go out? Had the sour cream in the fridge expired and would anyone have thought to clean it out?

  “CHARLEY.”

  The boat was rocking and she was distressed and her mind all over the place, but somewhere in herself she found it, like a glowing thread she caught and clung to, reeling it in.

  “There,” she cried, pointing. There was another island, substantially bigger than the other tiny rocks in the group, and something – or someone, even – atop it.

  “How the hell did we miss that?” Lawson asked. “We must have gone right past it.” He pulled the boat around. Gordon rubbed his eyes and stared out towards the island. Charley raised the binoculars and turned the wheel to adjust the focus. A woman, stretched out on the rocks – not close enough to tell if it was Melissa, but surely it must be – with silvery strands all over her.

  But the boat wasn’t getting any closer. She turned to look at Lawson, who was wrestling with the wheel. “What’s wrong?”

  “I, uh, can’t seem to steer the boat in the right direction.”

  “Can you try increasing the power to get through the waves?” Gordon suggested.

  “Yeah, thanks for that. Tried that and everything else obvious. It’s not just the waves. Something is blocking me.”

  Charlie could somehow feel Melissa almost as much as she could see her. She remembered what Thalassa had said; Melissa only had weak magic, but the two of them had a connection. That it was up to Charley to save her.

  “It’s not working,” Lawson said, above the noise of the motor which was being pushed to its limits. “Do you want me to go around and try from a different angle?”

  “No,” Charley said, taking off her shoes then her jeans, shivering in underwear and a T-shirt. “Just stay here as best you can.” She blocked out the sounds of Gordon trying to call her back and Thalassa holding him off, and looked down into the ocean depths she’d hated all her life. Then she took a deep breath and plunged into the water.

  It was shockingly cold. She’d never swum in open seas like this before, but she had retained enough from childhood swimming lessons to keep herself afloat, and managed to strike out towards the island. She felt a barrier in the air and the water, a sort of thickening like she was swimming through oil, but Melissa was ahead of her and she pushed through it.

  “Watch out!” Lawson yelled behind her. Then Charley saw it, like a great dome rising out of the water in front of her, an undersea explosion, all in slow motion. The waves tossed her like a toy, and she barely managed to keep her head above water.

  It continued rising, water falling from it and then dripping down, until it was clear it wasn’t one dome but eight raised segments.

  Eight legs, thin and impossibly long, rising and rising now, a pale yellow-brown, a creature many times larger than the boat, and its body, what Charley supposed must have been its face, looking straight at her. There was something about it that felt like it wasn’t part of this world, something that reminded her of the entity that had come with the storm, but it was undeniably there, solid and threatening.

  Its great legs, easily twice Charley’s height to the knee, and then that again to the body, just brushed the water, skating on the surface. It pulled back, straddling the island, towering above the rocks, towering above Melissa. The waters began to calm. The creature leaned its body forwards as if inspecting Charley.

  She treaded water just in front of it. She was so close. She could see the silk draped over Melissa was filled with swirls and curves, reminding her of sigils Thalassa worked out on the beach. She looked exhausted and her cheeks hollow, and her eyes were closed, but her hair fanned out in a way that made her look angelic.

  Charley forced herself to look up. She could see the segments of the sea spider’s eyes, see its fangs above her. She didn’t mind admitting to herself that she was terrified.

  Incredibly, the spider spoke. “You came for her?” it asked, raising one leg until it pointed at Charley’s chin. Its voice was like nothing Charley had ever heard before, quivering at a frequency she felt like she shouldn’t be able to hear.

  “She’s my sister,” Charley replied, forcing confidence when actually she wanted to curl up in a ball and never look at that creepy, pointing leg again. “She needs to come back home!”

  “I honour the bargain,” the spider said.

  “What bargain? Please let her go. She belongs with me.”

  “So young,” the spider chittered, every word vibrating. “Even the young must keep the bargains.”

  “What do you want from us?” Charley yelled. She was shivering in the cold and all her muscles felt exhausted just from keeping afloat.

  “You want everything moving. Back and forth, back and forth. I protected what you sent, protect it still.”

  Charley stared at the spider. “So you don’t want to hurt her?”

  “Why hurt humans? Can’t eat you. Would only hurt if necessary to protect.”

  “When do the goods stop needing protection?” Thalassa yelled over the wind.

  “When they send for them! With the rings, they call for them, I transport them.”

  “But no-one knows how to use the rings anymore,” said Charley. “Please, she wasn’t sent here for protection, it was all a mistake! She’s my sister and she needs to come home now.”

  “I have to protect her.”

  The vibrations of the spider’s voice were ringing in Charley’s ears. “Look, Gordon has a ring, show them, Gordon. See, she’s ours, and we’re here to claim her.”

  “If you have the ring, then summon her.”

  “I just told you! Argh.” Charley tried to focus, tried to calm herself down. Her sister was right there. She was almost tempted to try to fight this giant sea spider for her, but that was the way people got killed. Killed and made into memes. And a quick look back at Thalassa confirmed there was no magical way out.

  “Look, you say you want to protect her but she’s not in good shape. She’s all pale and so thin.”

  “Thin for a human. Not for one of us. Humans are weak.”

  “Humans are not designed for the sea. If you entrust her into my care I will take her where her needs can be met. Where it is the right temperature for her and she has fresh water and the food she can eat.”

  The spider paused and swung its body forwards on its legs to be close to Charley. “Do you lie?”

  “No. No, I swear it. There’s nothing I want more than to protect my sister.”

  “If you wanted to hurt her you would say the same.”

  “I would, but look. You can see the state she’s in now. Please. Is there a way I can prove to you I’m not lying?”

  A single strand of silk drifted down towards her from the spider. Instinctively, Charley caught hold of it, leaning her head against it.

  “We catch thoughts with this. Maybe one of yours will be satisfying. Show me how you protect her.”

  Magic, thought, memory. The boundaries between the three were not clearly defined, and Charley was searching through all of them. It was easy to find times Melissa had looked after her, protected her, and taken care of her, and so hard to find the opposite. God, she’d been a difficult child, didn’t understand why Melissa still wanted anything to do with her.

  “Charley, stop it.” Thalassa’s voice pierced the air. “Don’t get into that pattern. You need to find the right sort of thoughts.”

  They came, slowly and awkwardly. Charley, making brownies for Melissa’s birthday. Charley, spinning extra on the flat cleaning wheel when Melissa was busy with revision. Charley, bringing home supplies from work when Melissa was ill. Charley, telling her jokes when she was exhausted from studying. Charley…

  Eventually, she heard the words: “released, released to your protection”, and she fell back utterly drained.

  The spider leapt into motion, all its legs working together in some terrifying choreography as it skittered away across the sea impossibly fast, dancing off past the horizon.

  “What,” said Charley, “the fuck. Was that?”

  But even as she said it she was clambering onto the island while the silk that had been restraining her sister melted into nothing. Melissa lay there with a scattering of empty bottles and wrappers around her, wet and pallid but alive. She was half-waking now, her eyes flickering, and behind her Charley could hear the engine of the boat approaching.

  “I’m here, Melissa,” she said, taking her sister’s hand. “We’re going home.”

  Chapter eleven

  Back in Dunedin, everything went by in a haze. Melissa was in hospital for a couple of days – as a patient for a change – for what she described dismissively as fluids and rest. Privately, one of the nurses took Charley aside and said it was a wonder she’d survived, that she was in such good shape given what she’d been through.

  As soon as her sister was discharged, Charley picked up extra work shifts, to return favours and because she was basically out of money. Their mother was hovering around the flat taking care of Melissa, and as there was no real way to save her sister from it, Charley was just glad to be out of her way. She told the few friends she happened to see that things had been so stressful that she’d rather not talk about it, but she really appreciated the support they’d shown her. She was hoping that made sense to them, because the truth certainly wouldn’t, and the other truth was that she was simply exhausted. She slept much of the time and felt dazed even when awake, replaying video games she knew well and didn’t have to think through too carefully.

  Something was changing in her, something she didn’t know how to explain. She felt like she was at a crossroads and suspected either she would go back to Inver Aora forever or she would never see it again, and right now, at this point in time, both of those choices seemed utterly unbearable.

  Within a week, Melissa was already looking much better – she got a haircut, and her cheeks were filling out. She filled in the details for Charley, lying on the sofa while Charley sat on the floor below, throwing a rice-filled frog toy from hand to hand.

  “It was such a silly thing,” Melissa said. “I went back to look for the ring, and then just as I found it someone charged in with an emergency, a car crash I think, so several people all at once, all with likely fractures, and it was all hands on deck. And then… I don’t even know how, I forgot until I was at home, and I was just answering a few emails before bed, and I found it in my pocket, couldn’t believe I’d forgotten. And I was really panicked about it, about to text my supervisor and then, bam, I was on an island in the middle of the ocean.”

  “With a giant spider,” Charley added.

  “Holy shit that thing. I thought I was hallucinating. Going to be nicer to the regular-sized ones, they don’t seem so scary now. But… y’know, the first few days, I was just sitting on the island. And after a while these things… these things kept appearing. Like a chocolate bar when I was hungry. A bottle of water when I was thirsty. I suppose I was summoning them with the ring. But it seemed very strange.”

  “Well, I’m glad you did. Water especially.”

  “And it was only later the spider put all the weird silk over me. I think it might have helped in some way, not just keeping me restrained. I mean, it wasn’t like there was anywhere I could go! I don’t remember much after that.” She sat up and stretched. “Do you fancy a walk, just down the street to get coffee? I think it will do me good.”

  Charley forced her feet into her still-laced-up shoes. Things seemed both very normal and very abnormal all at once. They got their drinks and sat on a bench round the corner.

  “So, uh, Thalassa suggested I see a doctor,” Charley said, at last, sipping her iced tea even though November in Dunedin was still not the weather for it. Tentatively, she told Melissa about the psych appointment and Thalassa’s hypothesis, and about the forms needing to be completed by someone who knew her as a child.

  “Huh,” said Melissa, squinting at Charley. “You know, that would make a lot of sense. I don’t know much about it, though.”

  “It’s okay, this psych dude is the professional. It’s more questions like, when Charley was a child, were they in trouble for daydreaming a lot?”

  “Well, that’s easy...” Melissa said. “Sorry.”

  Charley forced a smile. “It’s true, though. Hey, what are you going to do about missing your exams? Will you still be able to qualify?”

  “Yeahhhh, I’m still hoping for some sort of dispensation that will allow me to take them without repeating the year. It’s a bit difficult when I can’t explain what happened, but the police are calling it a situation beyond my control which they’re still investigating, which actually helps, believe it or not. So fingers crossed. But either way, I’ll get there in the end.”

 

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