In the bow, Penny imagined that this was a group excursion and stood up to jump out onto the beach.
“Sit down,” the Old Man said to her.
The Old Man, too, Catta thought.
Penny looked at Catta, perplexed, while James stood ominously behind her. Cyrus turned to Jim Hillsinger, who looked at his watch.
“Three seventeen P.M. Mark,” Hillsinger said.
“Where are you going?” Penny said.
Catta climbed onto the foredeck and reached for the railing. He didn’t say anything; he couldn’t help her now.
James put his hand on Penny’s shoulder to keep her from standing up, but she smacked it away. Then James put both hands on her shoulders.
Catta threw his shoes onto the beach, swung over the railing, and lowered himself into the cold shallow water.
“Let’s go,” his father said behind him.
“Too shallow for the motor here,” Cyrus said. “We need a push back.”
“Catta!” his father called.
Catta sat down on the beach and put on his shoes. He tied them slowly.
“James!” the Old Man said. “Get down and push us off.”
James had been waiting for just that command. He jumped down and leaned his shoulder against the bow and slowly pushed the hull away from the beach. Cyrus lowered the outboard and then put the throttle into reverse. The boat shot backward, which pitched James over into the sea. Penny stood up.
“Wait,” she said as the outboard started. “Catta’s still there.”
Catta turned, but he could not make out his father’s expression. James was struggling to pull himself up onto the bow, where there was no ladder; his hand slipped and he fell back down.
“Stay there,” Cyrus said, and he brought the boat around so that James, panting and soaked, could climb up the stern.
“Don’t you see Catta?” Penny shouted again, now running back to the stern and pointing. Cyrus opened up the throttle and the boat shot forward, and then Catta could no longer hear what any of them said. Penny was screaming and the Old Man raised his arm to make some response, and then before long the Heron disappeared behind the trees of another headland.
31
As Lila and Isa walked home from the fairy houses, Sheila came out of the garden especially to meet them, or so it seemed to Lila. In the past, this girl, Cyrus’s niece, had told Isa lovely things about what lambs ate or how to tell if a horse was asleep. She told them just yesterday about a nest of thrushes in the New House eaves. And yet, Lila did not at all intend to be friendly. Diana was a fabulist and a gossip, but it was still just possible that this girl had recklessly exposed Catta to—something. But what, exactly?
“Sheila!” Isa said. “We made a fairy house so big that squirrels and beetles can live in it, too!”
“Oooh,” Sheila said, handing Isa a branch of rosemary from her pocket, “they’ll like that. No one ever thinks of the squirrels.”
That’s true, Lila thought. We do forget the squirrels.
Lila smiled. On the spot, she chose to forgive Sheila for all of her womanly indiscretions, if that was what they were. This girl did not have any guile in her at all, and if anything she was too gentle for her own good. It might even show good judgment for Catta to have stirrings for such a plain girl who nevertheless thought of the squirrels.
“There were three lambs born in the barn,” Sheila said.
Isa already knew this—Lila had told her—but Isa’s appetite for hearing about the births was inexhaustible, and each time she heard it she was just as excited as the very first time.
Sheila knelt in the road and told Isa about the birth of the third little lamb, which she said was even now being nursed by Betsy the Border collie. Isa had shrieked, and Lila laughed out loud.
“But what’s his name?” Isa said sharply, although Lila had already told her at least fifty times.
Neither her mother nor Sheila could know the importance of this question. Neither of them could know that Isa suspected that things without names have hidden powers, which could be either good or evil, though never both. She stood there in the road, looking up at Sheila, hoping that this strange and wonderful lamb-dog still had a name because, if he did not, then she might have to be afraid of him.
“His name is Colt,” Sheila said.
“That’s a horse’s name!” Isa shouted.
“It’s a perfect name,” Lila said. “May we visit him tomorrow?’
Lila thought a formal appointment was more solemn, more in keeping with the dignity of the event—three lambs! And all born just a hundred yards away, while they were here, on the island, and one of them nursed by a dog! Isa was in raptures. When such a wonderful thing happens, Lila thought, one must do something more than just walk over to the barn and peer into a box. One must make a plan. Happily, it also gave Isa something to look forward to that did not involve complex questions about the fairies.
32
Catta sat on the Baffin beach without moving. This must be a joke, he thought, or a drill. The Heron would turn around and come back for him. He watched the far edge of the headland and willed the boat to reappear. The pebbles in his hand were heavy. He had no matches, and fire was prohibited on the archipelago due to the drought. He had no food or water. Time had effectively stopped.
Cormorants were out over the ocean, but not those he had seen earlier. He picked up a small rock and tossed it into the water: he could easily have hit the boat’s windshield, even after they had pushed back from the beach. He should have brought his emergency kit on the boat, the foil packet full of important things that he kept hidden in the Cottage basement. Why would he ever get on a boat without it?
Then Catta remembered the eagles—maybe he could find the eagles’ nest that Edward Peck had seen. The nest must be big, he thought, and right on the tree line if it could be seen from the water. They said it was on the Seven side, so he started to walk that way. And then he stopped: there was no nest, he thought. There are no eagles. It had all been a trick to get him onto the boat with no explanation or argument. How had he not seen it? And yet, why would they bother? Here were three grown men conspiring—and for what? If any one of his father or the Old Man or Cyrus had said to go anywhere and do anything, he would have done it. He would not even have hesitated.