Mist upon the Marsh: The Story of Nessa and Cassie (21 page)

Chapter XXIII:

The Bellman’s C
ove

A
longside the dark rivers that ran down, down to the sea, so the black Pontiac raced as well, melding as a small shadow into the infinite expanses of those flowing waters – that flowed down, down to the sea. There came a moment when the trees on either side fell away, and the sky became only a single, wide ocean; and only a little after that, Nessa guided the vehicle into the customary position of the pickup truck, when she brought it to this particular place; and a second ocean appeared before them. If one were to look quickly enough, it seemed as if the sea from above had fallen to transpose itself into a ready-made crater of appropriate size, there below.

They sat quietly for a moment. The sound of the sea entered stealthily through the open windows, and assailed the ears in a concurrently violent and gentle fashion.

Without a word, Nessa stepped out into the gravel; and heard the sound of Cassie’s door swing open, then shut. She started towards the concrete barrier, which separated the gravel lot from the beginning of the sand; passed through a wide break; and directed her footsteps towards the Bellman’s Cove. Usually, she did not much notice the large white rocks set up around it – but after jumping over them on this particular occasion, she looked back, and saw Cassie eyeing them doubtfully. So she doubled back; offered her a hand; and drew her up, and over.

Always she kept the key to the lighthouse door in her pocket. Presently she removed it, unlocked the door, and beckoned Cassie after her up the dark and spiralling metal staircase. Their footsteps resounded in every direction, and filled their ears so that the ocean itself could scarcely be heard. After having passed through the narrow doorway to the Keeper’s Room, Nessa took up Cassie’s hand, and led her to stand before the Southernmost pane of glass, which constituted the view of the most turbulent section of the shore. For some miles stretching outward, there were great black rocks peeking their jagged heads up through the surf, creating a vast amount of mad, frothing water. It swirled and swilled in wide circles, moving steadily nearer to the shore; till finally it broke upon the sand, and began again on its course to the deeps.

Nessa looked towards Cassie. Her eyes were fixed upon the waves, and only the fine outline of her profile could be seen. The moon shone silver on her dark hair, and brought to it an enchanting star-shine. This shine fell down to her skin, to make of it a perfect and unblemished whiteness; white as the beautiful caps of the waves, but calmer, and less fierce. It neither swirled nor swilled round sharp rocks, and so remained still in its place – but when she turned her face to Nessa, the shine fell down into her eyes, to make of their blueness a pair of spinning silver discs.

“Are you going to tell me?” she asked quietly.

Nessa looked back to the waves; and her thoughts, in that moment, were every bit as furious. They raced round on a circular track, round and round and round, till they became so very inflamed with the intensity of their speed, that she could hardly stand to touch them.

“You once said to me, Cassie – that there were things you wanted to tell me. ‘Great big things,’ you said. But you didn’t know what they would make me think of you. All you knew – all you knew was that you needed me to know, that you weren’t who I thought you were.”

“I’ll give you credit for one thing,” said Cassie. “That was very nearly word for word.”

“Those are understandable things to say,” Nessa went on. “In every case – on some level – they are always true. But in mine . . .”

She paused for a moment of cowardice; and leant forward to press her forehead against the glass.

“In yours?” persisted Cassie.

“In mine,” whispered Nessa, “those thing are much more – literal. Those things that you don’t know, are a much bigger part of me than any small secrets I may have; any shameful thing that one person would want to hide from another. Do you see?”

“I don’t, Nessa. You’re going to have to try a little harder than that.”

“I don’t know how to say it. It doesn’t – it doesn’t have –”

She looked down to the shore; then up at the silver moon.

“Come down with me,” she said.

And down they went – back down two hundred steps, and back out into the salty, rushing air, which they had only just left behind. But Cassie did not complain.

Nessa walked down to the edge of the shore, and pressed forward inch by inch, till the tips of her shoes were licked by the last, and thinnest, layer of the final wave. In packs they rolled towards the sand; but they afterwards separated one by one, to advance singly upon the shore.

Small amount of comfort though they brought to her, she turned her back on the waves, and looked to Cassie. She reached under her shirt, and grasped the Turin; hefted its weight in her hand, before having decided without a doubt (or rather – without any doubts considerable enough to hinder her decision) that she would remove it. She slipped it over her neck; looked down upon it, and saw that it glinted in the silver light from above; then handed it to Cassie.

Cassie examined it for a long moment. “What is this?” she asked.

“I wear it,” said Nessa, “when I leave home. To prevent accidents.”

Cassie looked up, bewildered. “Accidents?”

“Just watch.”

Nessa closed her eyes. She took a deep breath; and as she exhaled, felt herself lose height; felt her hands shifting, and then pressing upon the sand. She opened her eyes, and looked up.

She had expected surprise; had expected shock, incomprehension; perhaps even fear. But Cassie’s face was smooth as it had been; smooth and still as it had been, as she looked out upon the waves. It was as if she looked now on nothing stranger than those waves, nothing that belonged less to the picture that had unfolded before her. She smiled, and a shining tear slipped down from the corner of her eye, to make a thin track down the moonlit pallor of her cheek.

She stepped forward, and set herself down on the sand beside Nessa. She leant over, wrapped her arm for a moment round Nessa’s neck, and placed a gentle kiss upon her head.

Each looked for a little into the other’s eyes; but then turned again towards the sea, and sat for a long while in quiet awe of its splendour.

~

After a time that neither much tried to keep account of, Nessa rose up from the sand, and gestured to the lighthouse. But when Cassie had gained her feet, she rushed forward, and tipped her over. She fell down onto Nessa’s back; and Nessa tore immediately across the sand, down the small stretch of shore; leapt in a great arc over the circle of stones; and bolted through the lighthouse door, and then up the winding steps, in a matter of seconds.

In the Keeper’s Room, she came to an abrupt halt, and deposited Cassie gently onto the mattress beside the Western pane. While Cassie was still laughing, she changed her shape, and caught up a blanket from the corner of the mattress, to wrap round herself. Then she dropped down beside Cassie.

When the laughter had dissipated, there began a long silence, filled with the shadows of all sorts of verbal necessities – so very crowded, in fact, that Nessa could barely see between them for the want of space.

When she looked down, she saw that Cassie held still the Turin in her hand. She reached for it, and replaced it round her neck.

“Why do you wear it?” asked Cassie.

“Just as I said,” answered Nessa, turning her eyes Southward. “To prevent accidents.”

“Yes – but what does that
mean?”

“Can’t you guess?”

Cassie stared for a moment at the Turin, shining as if having captured a small bit of the moon within itself, and drawn it down forever into its core. “I suppose I can,” she said.

“Does it frighten you?”

“No.”

“Perhaps you should think a bit more on that, before you answer.”

“I don’t need to.”

“Why?”

“I trust you.”

Nessa would have suggested, for her to think on
that –
for even longer a time than the first question. Yet the extraordinary amount of happiness that those three small words brought her, was quite enough to keep her from suggesting any such thing. Why should she make any attempt to ruin three such very perfect words?

“Well, then,” said Cassie. “Now that you’ve shown me this – I really don’t think that there’s room for any more secrets at all. What do you think?”

Nessa was not sure what she thought. So she was silent.

“You’ve told me nothing at all about yourself,” said Cassie. “Last time, when I tried to ask you, you gave me nothing. Don’t you think that, maybe now, you can give me a little more?”

“Such as what?” asked Nessa, with her eyes fixed still on the great pane of glass. She saw naught outside it, naught inside it. Just the glass itself. It was like a wall of nothingness, hovering there in the air – touched by nothing, supported by nothing. The illusion spread slowly across the room, till it seemed as if quite everything had fallen away; and Nessa felt as if she herself had become no more than was that pane of glass. All those panes of glass! They floated in a circle, there above the rocky ground of the cove. There was no lighthouse. There was nothing.

In light of this new void, there of course could be no mattress; and Nessa felt that she was hanging there in the air, without a brace, without strings. She looked wildly all about, searching for something, anything at all that she could transform into a buttress. All she needed do was hold out her hand, and grab onto it – and she would have no more fear of falling. But suddenly she looked down, and though there still was nothing, nothing standing between her and the ground, she knew that she would not fall. Her body; the air; all was still, and the distance which existed in the space of such a fall, did not decrease at all. So she closed her eyes, and took a very deep breath; then shot her hand out, and felt it collide with something of substance.

As she exhaled, she opened her eyes. There were the walls of glass, standing just as ever. But now the floor, the ceiling, the entire lighthouse had returned. She looked down, and saw the mattress there beneath her. She looked at her hand, and saw that it was twined with Cassie’s.

“A simple question, then,” said Cassie.

“All right,” said Nessa.

“Tell me about your family.”

Nessa groaned. “I thought you said simple?”

“Oh, no,” said Cassie, squeezing her hand. “You’re not worming out of this one. Start talking.”

Nessa was quiet for a short time; and was performing that familiar exercise, wherein one formulates and organises one’s thoughts inside one’s own head, before assuming the audacity to speak them aloud.

“Well,” she said finally, “I suppose you could say that I have a large family. Really, there are only my mother and father, and my brother; but eight others live in our house.” She paused, and frowned; and imagined two heads, fixed on stakes. “But
fourteen
others, in addition to those, are staying with us presently.” She looked nervously at Cassie. “I needn’t tell you all of their names – do I?”

“No. But a little more explanation would be nice.”

“There are, as I said, the four that are myself and my own family; and then eight more, who are not directly related to us, but who have been placed into our house. Placement is for life.”

“And they’re all – like you?” asked Cassie.

“Yes.”

“By the way you speak, it sounds like there are more. How many, exactly?”

“Only two hundred. Not so many as there once were. We are all that live in this country; but there are many, many more, in other places.”

“But your own two hundred – where do they live?”

“There are five houses, including my own. Then there is Mindren. It is an underground fortress; and more dwell there, than in all the houses combined – including the royal family.”

“The
royal
family?”

Nessa sighed, and put her hands to her face. “Oh, oh – I shouldn’t be telling you any of this.”

“If you’re worried I’ll tell someone else,” said Cassie, “I honestly don’t know why you’d bother. I don’t even
like
people. Why would I tell them something like this?”

“That’s not it,” said Nessa. “If my family ever learnt – if they ever found out that I had told
anyone,
there’s really no telling what would happen to me.”

The first sign of doubt flickered across Cassie’s face; and Nessa could see that she understood. It was clear, as well, that she would ask no more. And yet Nessa continued to speak.

“We are called the Endai,” she said. “It means simply, the ‘shape-shifters.’ We are the morc’tanen – the wolf-people. Our King – the leader of our two hundred – is named Morachi.”

“You have a
King?”

Nessa nodded. “Morachi, like some others of our race, believes that we were the
first
race. But I don’t see how it matters, whether we or the humans came first. My ancestors conversed with Adam and Eve – and with their children. But there was no writing, then, amongst the humans. By the time
that
happened, people were so numerous, no one took any notice of
us.
We showed them nothing of our wolfen forms. To this day, it is absolutely forbidden, to change our shapes in the sight of the humans.”