The bag was, as it turned out, full of rocks. They were more blue than grey, and well-rounded by the sea. Charley picked one out. It seemed to hum in her hand, warm to the touch. Thalassa took the picture of Melissa and put it in the middle of one of the sigils, muttering something under her breath that Charley couldn’t hear. Oddly, despite the coastal winds and the crashing waves just beyond them, the picture didn’t blow away, just fluttered there slightly, Melissa’s face in the middle of this godforsaken coastline. When she was finally found, Charley reckoned Melissa would find this funny.

  “Rock goes in the middle of that one, then get out,” Thalassa instructed. Charley stepped gingerly forward, into the wind, wondering if this was all ridiculous. She felt almost like she was being pranked. Still, she was here now. There was a small circle in the centre of the sigil and she crouched down and placed the stone in there.

  Then everything lit up, rushing round the sigil, glowing golden. Charley stood and turned round in wonder. Everything seemed so much bigger, so much clearer than before; the river mouth, the houses clinging to the hillside, and the sea, the wide-open sea...

  “Get out now, Charley.”

  The voice seemed to come from far away. Everything was glowing and beautiful and wonderous, there were so many more layers to everything than Charley had ever realised – the crash of the waves seems to have different notes to it, the squawk of a seagull overhead its own kind of music, complete and beautiful. Charley felt like she could understand the universe, all the world’s waters, deeply connected.

  The glow shot up into flames, higher than Charley’s head. She thought to herself she should be scared, but she wasn’t. She walked over to the edge and looked at the flames. They didn’t feel hot. Through them, she could see the world outside, a little distorted but still there.

  “Get out. Get out now.”

  Charley couldn’t explain, then or later, how she knew she could walk through the flames, but she did so and ended up untouched. Either they were a cooler temperature than real fire, or she was resistant, but either way, she barely felt them. And then she was on the beach, just an ordinary-looking beach, and then the water came rushing in, not as one tide but as purposeful channels, widening each mark of the sigil and filling it with water. She sat down backwards, her hands propping her up on the damp sand. Thalassa stood between the circles, her loose clothes billowing in the wind, her staff held firm.

  Charley found herself shaking. She’d known, of course, that something was going on with Thalassa, something that couldn’t quite be explained. But she’d expected, like, tarot cards, or psychic readings. Not grand, showy, absolutely unambiguous magic.

  She grasped her legs with her hands to try to keep them still, her heart rate pounding. So magic was real after all.

  No one from Inver Aora seemed to be watching. Had Thalassa somehow cast a spell to stop them from seeing, or were they just so used to weird magic happening nearby that it didn’t even register for them?

  Then the water rushed out as quickly as it had come in, leaving everything looking surprisingly normal. The sand felt damp and uncomfortable, and the air smelled of seaweed on the edge of rotting. Charley scrambled to her feet, realising she felt sore. The poster fluttered through the air and caught on a gust of wind, and Thalassa, seemingly without effort, reached up and caught it. She looked at it, as if for the first time, and nodded as if she found the contents interesting. Then she shoved it into a pocket and walked over to the stone, which she picked up and hurled into the sea with much more strength than Charley would have thought she’d be able to muster. She yelled something as she did, but Charley couldn’t make out any of the words against the increasing roar of the sea.

  “You’re very lucky you didn’t ruin it all with your silly disobedience,” Thalassa said, walking past Charley and up to the road. Her expression was more thoughtful than angry. “Grab the bag and head back.”

  She made me bring the whole bag when we were just using one stone, Charley thought, her face burning with shame as well as anger as she made her way up the stairs. Thalassa turned and looked at her momentarily, but said nothing. Charley wasn't even sure how to tell if she was reading her mind. But she supposed she had to be careful irrespective. She was curious about Thalassa and wanted to know more about what she did, but her goal was to find her sister. She had to keep her distance.

  Thalassa held the poster in her hand.

  “Let’s look at this over some lunch, shall we,” she said, her voice softer than it had been but still with an edge of annoyance about Charley’s behaviour. “You’ll want to charge your phone as well.”

  Charley frowned – she was sure she’d charged it overnight but when she pulled it out of her pocket it was dead. Thankfully she had a cable with her and Thalassa found her a USB-to-wall converter.

  When Thalassa brought the food out, Charley suddenly realised she was hungry. The whole thing, impossibly, had taken several hours. She gratefully accepted the vegetable soup and crusty bread she was offered, the plate of Tim Tams laid out for afterwards. It was odd, she supposed, to think of a witch or magician or whatever Thalassa was going to the supermarket and buying Tim Tams, but she lived in the real world, even if this settlement didn’t always feel like it.

  As Charley mopped up soup with bread, Thalassa spread out the poster. Charley leaned to look carefully at it. There was Melissa, but the image was distorted – her hair was messier, her face pale, her eyes exhausted. Charley gasped, realising that this wasn’t just the effect of water damage to the paper – this was a picture of Melissa as she was now. Wherever she was.

  “So she’s alive?” Charley asked.

  “Looks that way to me,” was Thalassa’s response. She could at least try to sound interested.

  But Charley let herself relax, just a little bit. Melissa was alive and they were making progress in finding her.

  Along the edges of the paper were unfamiliar glyphs – Charley thought they might be Viking runes, or maybe sigils like Thalassa had used on the beach. Either way, they were totally opaque to her. All the words that had been on the paper were gone. It had been completely transformed.

  “They’re just a system of symbols,” explained Thalassa. “They’re not from anything else, they’re a form I’ve created and have pushed meaning into over the years. I’m going to need a bit of time to interpret them. But there’s something about finding what others cannot here, and this bit is about fear...” She outlined the symbols with her finger as she spoke.

  “Us finding her?” Charley asked. “Or Melissa found something?”

  “As I said, I need time to interpret. It’s going to be a long night for me, long and tedious, so be thankful.”

  “Yes. Yes of course. I am.”

  “I’ll see you here at eight-thirty.”

  Charley wanted to ask why Thalassa had included her in the ritual. It didn’t make sense for it to be as simple as needing her to carry bags of rocks, and it didn’t seem like the magic required Charley’s presence, or anyone but Thalassa’s, really. But this was not the time for asking questions. This was the time for not poking the bear, and giving Thalassa space to work what Charley hoped would be a miracle. She was allowing herself to hope her sister would be found safe.

  Back in her cabin, Charley looked up ADHD on her phone. It was, she learned, divided into three types. As she read the symptoms of the second she felt like something plummeted, very suddenly, inside her chest and down to her stomach. It was like reading not just a portrait of herself, but a list of all the things she’d tried so hard not to be, that she’d tried to disguise. She felt her cheeks burning. She knew it was just a list about no one in particular, but she felt like it was written by someone who knew her way better than she was comfortable with anyone doing.

  Sighing, she put on her shoes, reminded herself to lock the door after her, and headed out. Almost to the entrance of the holiday park and she realised she had not, in fact, locked the door and she stopped, wanting to cry or scream. How? How was she always like this? She had literally thought about remembering to lock the door just before she failed to do it. This could be an ADHD sign, but it felt more like a personal failing than a disorder.

  The door locked – and actually locked, this time – Charley walked down to the sea, even though the nausea was starting to grow again and every muscle ached. They had gotten so close to doing something, and now she just had to wait. It just wasn’t in her bones to do nothing, to be patient, and yet she had to force herself to be.

  Charley looked at the waves. She didn’t understand why the sea had such a strong effect on her – she wasn’t scared of water or drowning, had always been fine beside a river. Someone had suggested it was a form of agoraphobia, that it was the vastness and emptiness of the ocean that set her off, and while it was the most sensible theory she’d come across in a heap of not-very-sensible ones, it still didn’t feel quite right. The whole thing seemed deeper and more automatic, more physiological than psychological.

  The sigils Thalassa had drawn on the beach had disappeared, disappeared more thoroughly than an incoming tide should have managed. She supposed it wasn’t worth wondering how. All she knew was that magic was real, and not in a vague sense that could be explained by just being somewhat more attuned to the world, but actual, dramatic, against the laws of physics magic.

  Which also meant she really had given up seven years of her life.

  The sand was mostly smooth, sometimes with little ridges pushed up by the water, compacted damp. Perhaps in summer this had a different feel, but now, even with early summer just around the corner, it felt wild and hostile. She pushed herself to stay. Pushed herself to listen to the rhythm of the waves. But there was so much there, it seemed so loud inside her head that she quickly became overwhelmed and nauseous, and her head hurt.

  The ocean simply wasn’t the place for her, even on a quiet day. And yet she forced herself to stay a little this time, as if she could make sense of it, as if she could understand something about the desperately weird situation her whole life had been plunged into. But deep down, she suspected that was far too much to hope for.

  Once she’d looked at a map and found the places furthest from the sea, dreamed about starting a new life in Cairo or Moscow or Chicago. You could still do that, she told herself. You’re still young. You’ve only failed a bit of your life, not the whole thing.

  Soon, she hoped, she’d be able to run away, even if only as far as back to Dunedin, which had a port but you could easily stay away from that side of it. Her sister would be safe, and she’d be away from her parents, and even if she failed out of polytech, even if she ended up working retail forever, she’d never ever have to go back to the sea again.

  Charley turned back and clambered over the rocks to the road. The settlement was quiet. She looked up at the headland, the run-down tower silhouetted against the sky in the dying light. An old lighthouse, perhaps, rendered useless in these days of radar and satellite navigation. It was hard to tell from here, but the seed of curiosity had been planted and she walked down the river and across the bridge to the foot of the headland.

  She found the path up through the bush without too much trouble, letting the torch on her phone guide her.

  The tower came in and out of view as she made her way up the winding path. She heard the scrabble of small animals in the dusk, the call of a ruru, other birdsong she couldn’t identify. The hill was steep but the path reasonably defined, and she pushed on, letting her mind wander.

  She didn’t notice she wasn’t alone until the other woman almost bumped into her. She blinked, forcing herself to stop. It was True, the local woman she’d met on the bridge. She kept walking, turning to one side to edge past Charley but otherwise barely acknowledging her presence.

  Charley swallowed.

  “Hi. Uh.”

  True spun round on one foot.

  “Yes?” she replied sharply. “You need something?”

  “No, I, uh. I just came for a walk. I didn’t mean to bother you.”

  “Okay. Well. How about you take your walks alone and I’ll do the same.”

  True turned away and strode quickly down the path and disappeared into the bush before Charley could think what to do or say.

  Chapter three

  Charley woke up feeling ill. The nausea was back, and it was as if something was grinding in her head. She kept replaying True’s annoyance with her, her cheeks burning with embarrassment. Somehow she managed to shower, pull on jeans – she’d need to do laundry tonight – and a thin hoodie, run a brush through her hair, and make it up the hill 15 minutes late. Shit. Thalassa wouldn’t be happy.

  The glass doors to the dining room were standing open. There was no sign of Thalassa but a cup of the murky grey-green tea was waiting for her. Charley drank it gratefully, trying to ignore the taste, not questioning how Thalassa knew she’d needed it. Her head started to clear almost immediately.

  “We’ll be starting at nine,” Thalassa called out from another room. “Amuse yourself until then.”

  “I thought you said...”

  “Got you here on time, though didn’t it.” Charley waited for the barbs, the amazing what you can do if you try, but none followed. The comment was of sheer practicality, not of triumph. She fiddled with a spare hair tie while she waited. It wasn’t the first time someone had used precisely that tactic on Charley, but it was normally about teaching her a lesson, of proving something. Not just a simple matter of being able to start on time. The room smelled of aromatic wood, and when Charley looked around a little more, she saw signs that Thalassa had been working on what she supposed was some kind of ritual last night. There were small saucers, for want of a better word, laid out in what seemed to be a pattern, and some of them contained ashes or little heaps of sugar or salt. Salt made entirely more sense.

  Charley looked at her phone. Her parents were about to fly to Dunedin and wanted to know where she was. Did they now have two daughters missing, they asked; was she looking for attention or had she really decided to take a holiday in a time of crisis? Charley posted one reply: I’m looking for Melissa, and then she turned her phone off. Her heart rate sped up. She couldn’t believe she’d actually done it – she’d never cut them off like that before.

  Thalassa appeared in the doorway carrying papers and a handful of small stones, some looking like smaller versions of the ones Charley had had to carry down to the beach – and then back up again. But no use dwelling on that now. Thalassa sat down opposite, and Charley listened to what she had to say.

  “Here’s what I’m confident we know about your sister. It’s connected to the sea. We know she’s still alive – or at least she was yesterday, and there’s nothing to suggest imminent danger. And she’s not able to return home on her own. Whether that means she’s being held against her will or she’s trapped somewhere, or even that she’s lost or has memory issues, I can’t tell you, but she hasn’t chosen to take a break because of exam stress, I’ll give you that.”

  “Thanks,” Charley said. “It, uh. It means a lot to know that she’s still safe.”

  “There’s an ambiguous symbol. It could mean protecting or guarding. It suggests that someone – and you understand that when I say someone I don’t necessarily mean a human – might be with her, but if they’re protecting her from something, or if they’re standing guard to stop her escaping, I can’t say right now.”

  Charley nodded numbly. She knew any information was good to have, but she didn’t quite know what to make of the last bit. Not necessarily human. What could that mean?

  She wanted to message her parents to say Melissa was safe, or at least alive, but decided against it. It was selfish, but as soon as they knew she was onto something they would descend all guns blazing, and she couldn’t imagine that going well, knew that it might end up sabotaging their best hope. And that’s if they even believed her – it wasn’t like she exactly had proof. No. Her phone stayed in her pocket. They could resolve all this when Melissa was found – hopefully – or at least they’d be so pleased to see Melissa that they’d forget their latest issues with Charley.

  She could hope.

  Never mind. She did need to keep them updated on anything major as they searched for Melissa but that wasn’t going to last forever. Once they found Melissa – and Charley was still talking as if finding her was a certainty, because it was – then the decision was hers again. She might not be successful by their metrics, but she was an adult, an adult who hadn’t accepted money from them in a long time. She could set boundaries of her own, and if they didn’t stick to them then it was their loss, not hers.

  At least that was theoretically the case. She wasn’t sure how well she’d be able to hold up in practice.

  Thalassa pointed at another piece of paper. “And these three symbols here, she’s surrounded by water, and she’s there because of her work.”

  “Work like at the hospital?”

  “That would be my guess. Though I suppose it could expand to any labour expended, even housework, but yes, the hospital is most likely.”

  “And by surrounded by water, would that be a boat? Or could it mean an island?”

  “It could,” Thalassa said, her tone half mysterious and half resigned. “And then there’s this circle. I really shouldn’t have used a circle at all when I set up this system. Because circles can mean anything. Eternity. Connections. Symmetry. The snake that eats its own tail. The letter O. The number zero. I tried to get a clearer read on it, but it came to nothing. The only thing that came up was the number eight. So I was thinking maybe pieces of eight...”

  “Like the parrots say?”

  “Yes. The Spanish dollar, the first international currency in some ways. You know, a circle like a coin. I doubt it’s literal, I wouldn’t expect any Spanish dollars around here – they had their heyday hundreds of years ago. But it might mean finances. You say your sister wasn’t in any financial trouble?”

  Charley shook her head. “I mean she was a student, she was broke, but we all are. Our parents were paying her rent, so she was better off than some. She didn’t gamble or anything like that.”

 

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