Beauséjour 2: Invited

[evilbeej]

Installment #2.


"Did he die?" asked Peter, squinting at the girl and wiping his salty, sandy hands off on his shorts. He shifted his weight to brush more sand off the back of one leg with his other foot.

"No," said the girl, looking out at the water. She pushed her long, tangly hair away from her face and then looked back at him, scrunching her face against the brightness. He could see her face better now, too. She had freckles. She didn't look all that strange, after all. Still pretty, though. "He stopped talking to me. What's your name? Mine's Anna."

"Peter," he answered automatically. Something made him look over his shoulder, then, just to check on Emily. She was still zonked out, one hand trailing in the sand next to her-- it looked like she'd dropped half a can of soda pop, or knocked it over or something. The wind blew his hair into his face when he looked back that way, though, and some of the sand was getting kicked up, blowing grit into his eyes. So he turned back to Anna and stuck his hands in his pockets. "Where are you staying?" She had to be on holiday, too, she didn't really talk like anybody in the grocery store or gas station, or the people who owned the estate. And she didn't talk like Peter and Emily, either.

"Around," Anna said dismissively, waving a skinny hand in the air. "Do you still want to build sandcastles? 'Cause if you do, I'll help you. If you don't, I can show you how to get to the castle in the hill."

One of Peter's hands curled reflexively around the guitar pick in his pocket. "Don't you mean on the hill? Aren't castles usually on hills?"

"I guess." At best, the girl's answer was dubious. Maybe a little condescending, but trying not to be obvious about it. Her starry eyes flickered away from Peter, fixing on Emily, behind him. "Is that your sister? You look kind of the same. Do you know if she likes mermaids?"

"...what?"

"Mermaids," said Anna patiently. "You know, half girl, half fish? Live in the ocean? Never mind." She started past Peter, toward Emily.

"Hey--" Peter started, pulling his hands out of his pockets quickly, reaching to catch at her arm. He tried to hide something desperate in his voice. "Hey, don't bother her, she's sleeping." She's only just starting to not be crazy. "How do you get to the castle in the hill?"

Anna's smile for Peter was bright, shining like the moon. "I can't tell you, but I can show you. Come on, it's not far." She reached across to take his hands off her arm with the free one, then took both of those hands in hers and squeezed them. "There's a cavern underneath it where the mermaids and selkies come and visit. It opens into the sea, and the light is all green and dim and beautiful. And in the balconies overhead--"

The words were painting pictures in Peter's mind, and he wanted to see more of them. He knew he should wake Emily up and tell her, only-- he didn't want this strange girl, this Anna, confusing her about what was real and what wasn't. He knew he should stop Anna and tell his grandmother he'd met another kid, that they were going to go exploring the shore and the little caves close by, because that had to be what Anna meant, caves and tidal pools and imagination. But he didn't think Anna would wait. And she might take Emily instead. And Emily, it might hurt her. This was supposed to be a vacation. So he let Anna pull him along, heading further down the beach, and he returned her smiles with bright-eyed trepidation that was nevertheless game.

"--there's gold and mother-of-pearl and colored-paper lanterns, keeping everything that's under the hill bright. And when you come out the other side, it's another country!"

"America?" Peter volunteered hesitantly.

"No, silly," laughed Anna in breathless excitement, dropping one of his hands so she could pull him along beside her, walking faster, then half-running. "Beauséjour! It's my home. I'm the Queen there!"

"Oh are you from, um-- Montréal?" The wet sand, and the sand that had stuck to the splashed-on parts of him, was beginning to shed off Peter's legs and shorts and hands, and the salt was making his skin feel funny. That and the sun. He hadn't put any sunblock on, because he didn't think he'd be out long. As they ran, he glanced behind them again, and they must have gone around a curve because he couldn't see Emily anymore.

"I'm from the Isles," said the girl vaguely, slowing down, peering at the rocks. The gentle slope from the part of the beach Nana could see from the cottage had turned, at this part of the shoreline, into a short cliff. They were standing at the bottom of it, and there was a stand of trees at the top, roots exposed to the storms and the sun alike. The roots gripped the rocky face like they were keeping it in place, not the other way 'round, and curved and twisted on each other around a cleft in the rock, just wide enough for children to fit through. "Here, it's here, the doorway into the hill. Come on. I'll go first, and you hold fast to the hem of my dress, and it'll open up very big on the other side of the entrance. You'll see!"

It was a hot and uncomfortable prospect, and it was dark in the cleft, and there were probably spiders, and Peter was getting less and less enthused about the prospect of following this crazy girl, even for a good game. It'd been so long since he could play, it'd been so long since he'd had an imaginary place to go to that wasn't haunted by things he never wanted to see again and things he wished he could have stopped-- but there were reasons for that. He was just having a difficult time remembering all of them, and was only left with the discomfort, the feeling that he was leaving something undone.

There was a blast of cool, clean air from the cleft, as soon as he was within a foot of it. Cool, clean underground air, with the salt smell of the sea still omnipresent, and the scent of flowers that tasted like sugar on his tongue. Like picking clover blossoms and biting the insides, like a Honeycrisp apple, like wildflowers and chamomile tea. It was inviting. It would be nice to be out of the sun, just for a few minutes. And Anna looked a little bit like someone he could almost remember, and--

"Okay," said Peter, crouching down, starting to follow Anna in. He took hold of her hem, just like she told him to, and he crawled into the cleft in the rock that was surrounded by the roots of trees.

A crazy-colored hard plastic guitar pick stood out like a bright piece of candy on the beach near Emily, but by the time she woke up, the tide had already taken it away.