Isle of Man

CHAPTER 20

My Sacrifice



Junior’s whining wakes me.

I get up and open the door to let him out. He races down the hall, probably to go outside and pee. It’s early, the window in my room touched with gray. I wash my face in the basin and run my wet fingers through my hair. Then I step into the cold privy to do my own morning business.

I stop at Jimmy’s door and peek in, but he hasn’t been to bed. Downstairs it doesn’t look like anyone else made it to bed either. People lie passed out everywhere—beanbags, chairs, couches. The main door is open, and a cold draft blows through the hall. Riley must be passed out somewhere himself.

I step outside and close the door behind me.

The cold morning air bites my lungs and stings my cheeks, waking me with a quick shiver. There’s a fog socked in over the water. A black crow pecks at the grass. Noticing movement at the water’s edge, I cross the terrace for a better look. As I cut through the fog toward the seawall, the wooden frame of the shark crane comes into view.

“You’re up early.”

I whip around to see Bree sitting on the steps behind me. “You scared me,” I say, clutching my chest. “I didn’t see you there.”

She holds out her canteen. I take it and sit down beside her and swig warm tea, laced with a bite of something bitter.

“Who died?” I ask, handing her canteen back and nodding toward the crane.

“Nobody’s died yet,” she says.

“What do you mean ‘yet’?”

“They’re getting ready for the oblation.”

“The what?”

“The sacrifice,” she says. “You know, from the games.”

The way she says it, with a sad look in her hazel eyes, fills me with sudden horror over what she means. Is that why she’s out here so early sipping spiked tea?

“Don’t tell me they sacrifice the loser to the sharks,” I say, my voice filled with terror for her.

“No,” she says, shaking her head.

I sigh with relief.

“Good”

“They sacrifice the winner.”

“What?”

“The winner gets to join Clan MacFinn on the skull rack.”

“Please say you’re playing some kind of sick game.”

She looks at me.

“You didn’t know?”

“No, I didn’t know.”

“Does Jimmy know?” she asks.

“Of course not,” I say, still thinking this must be a joke. “This is ridiculous. Nobody’s sacrificing anyone.”

Bree’s face goes white and she shakes her head.

“It isn’t a joke,” she says. “They’ll sacrifice him at noon.”

“I don’t believe it.”

“That doesn’t mean it isn’t true,” she replies.

“You wanted to win yourself,” I say, determined to out her for pulling my leg. “Why would you do that?”

“Yes,” she says. “I wanted to be the sacrifice. It’s an honor to protect the island. We dream of it growing up. How do you not know this? I though you said you came from Ayre?”

As I realize she’s not kidding, my pulse quickens, and it’s suddenly hard to breathe.

“We’ve got to stop it.”

“You can’t stop it,” she says. “Nobody can. The winner has to go willingly. If he doesn’t they feed him to the sharks anyway, but without any honors. Then the runner-up gets to go. That’d be me, but I don’t want to win that way.”

A loud clanking draws my attention to the crane where the men work in the fog, attaching the crossbeam to the murder machine. I leap to my feet.

“Where’s Jimmy?”

“Shh ... ,” Bree holds a finger to her lips and nods toward the men. “Keep it down. Jimmy will be in bed with Finn until they bring him down.”

“What do you mean: ‘in bed with Finn’? What’s this, some kind of sick sex thing on top of killing him? You people are royally screwed up here.”

Bree shushes me again.

“Calm down now. It doesn’t have anything to do with sex. Lying next to the young champion is supposed to keep Lord Finn young. Something about the purity of youthful body heat. But that hardly matters. Are you serious that Jimmy doesn’t know what he was playing for?”

My mind races away from me, searching for solutions. Create a distraction. Escape. Maybe we can fight our way free. Then I remember the men hunting that stag. How skilled they were at the chase, how easy it was for them to rope it.

“There has to be a way to stop it, Bree.”

She shakes her head.

“I’ve never seen it stopped before.”

“Come on, Bree,” I plead with her. “Please think. There has to be a way. There has to be.”

She stares at the crane and the workmen there moving like ghosts in the fog.

“There is a story they tell sometimes,” she says, after a pause. “A popular player arrived late, his father had been dying or something. Anyway, he challenged the winner by claiming to be the more worthy sacrifice. They let them have a match to decide. But only because he had a red sash from being a finalist the year before.”

“You have a red sash,” I say, pointing to the sash still tied at her waist.

“Yes, but I’ve already lost to Jimmy,” she says.

“I haven’t.”

“You mean you want to ...”

Sound seems to fade away until all I can hear is my own heartbeat. I take a deep breath. I feel as though I’m hovering above, watching myself standing on the edge of an irreversible decision. I feel curiously detached. The sun rises behind the castle, sending ladders of golden light angling through the fog, and we seem to be floating on the very light itself. My course is clear. My future certain.

“That’s what I’ll do.”

“You mean challenge Jimmy?”

“Yes.”

“But if you win, they’ll sacrifice you.”

“I know it. But I owe him. How much time do we have?”

“Maybe four hours,” she says, looking at the rising sun.

I grab Bree by the shoulders.

“Listen, I need you to coach me quick. Teach me everything you taught Jimmy. Teach me everything you didn’t. Then I need to get in there and challenge this before Jimmy realizes what’s happening.”

Three and half hours later, I storm into the castle, dripping with sweat and feeling more alive and more determined than I ever have before. I push through the mob of people gathered in the great hall, wave off Riley’s good morning, and force my way to the front of the crowd just as Finn is walking Jimmy downstairs, still half asleep and wearing that ridiculous coat.

“I challenge the winner!” I shout.

The people nearest me fall silent. Finn stops on the stairs.

I say it again: “I’m challenging the winner.”

A wave of whispers passes through the crowd, silencing their chatter until all I can hear is my own labored breathing.

“You don’t have a bye,” Finn says.

“Yes, I do.”

I wave the red sash.

“Where did you get that?” he asks.

“Bree gave it to me.”

“Well, then,” he says, “it isn’t yours to use.”

“Nothing in the rules says I can’t.”

I’m just making stuff up now, but a murmur runs through the crowd and some people nod.

“And, besides,” I add, sensing hesitation on Finn’s face, “I’m the more worthy for the ritual. I should have played, but I was locked in my room, if you remember.”

Jimmy stands next to Finn. looking down on me, his gray eyes burning with anger. I can’t blame him for hating me. He doesn’t even know where they were taking him yet. From his point of view, I must be a jealous prick.

Finn shakes his head.

“Sorry, kid. You can’t use someone else’s bye. You’re too late besides.”

“If you’re sure you have the best, what are you afraid of?”

“You can’t possibly think—”

“I wanna play him,” Jimmy says, cutting Finn short.

Another murmur of excitement runs like a wave across the crowd. Jimmy stands frozen on the stairs, glaring at me. Finn looks between us, his mind working behind his blue eyes. Then he shrugs.

“Fine, then. Let’s have ourselves a little match.”

I can feel Jimmy’s contempt as he brushes past me.

The crowd pours into the courtyard and swarms to the bleachers. Jimmy wriggles out of his fur coat and hands it to Finn, then he throws me a look that cuts to the bone as he descends the ladder into the court. I strip off my shirt and toss it to the ground. I catch sight of Bree in the crowd but find no comfort in her expression. I climb down to the court, watching as the ladder is hauled up, trapping me here with my choice.

Jimmy spits on the ground.

“Ya jus’ couldn’t stand to see me be more popular than you’s, could ya?”

I want to grab him and shake him, tell him everything that I know. But I can’t. If he learns what’s really on the line, he’ll fight even harder to beat me—sacrificing himself to save me, just as I’m sacrificing myself to save him. I know he would.

I hear the ball hit the court. and the next thing I know it’s in Jimmy’s hand. He lines up to serve, keeping his eyes locked on mine as he aces the ball right past me. I’m still hearing the ring of its crack against the front wall when he snatches up the dead ball and prepares to serve again. Pay attention, Aubrey, I tell myself. Remember what Bree said: watch his hand and anticipate where the ball will go; don’t watch the ball itself.

His second serve is less fierce. and I manage to smack the ball with my palm and send it back to the front wall, but Jimmy catches it before the bounce and taps a soft return, forcing me to run forward to reach it. Too late.

“Two serving zero.”

I notice Jimmy’s serving with his left hand, his right one red and raw. Try and return it to his right, I tell myself. But he aces it past me.

“Three serving zero.”

Then another kill shot.

“Four serving zero.”

And another.

“Five, zero.”

On his sixth serve, I manage to get behind the ball and send it back, bouncing low toward his right. Jimmy stretches, but misses. Finally, my chance to serve.

“Zero serving five.”

I bounce the ball in front of me and level a monster swipe at it. I miss the ball entirely. The crowd laughs. Jimmy shakes his head and smirks as he scoops up the ball.

“Five, zero.”

I return his serve, finally seeming to get the hang of it a little, and we volley for several shots until Jimmy beats me. The next volley is longer still, but by the time I win back the serve, it’s eight to zero. The thought of Jimmy being clamped into that iron mask and lowered to the sharks makes my blood boil. I funnel my panic into a laser beam focus with only one goal—winning. I try to forget about what happens after. I send a serve to Jimmy’s right, acing it past him. I’m not sure who’s more surprised by it, him or me. I keep the serve for several points, winning the next four volleys, but losing the serve to him on the fifth. Now it’s my five to his eight as he sets up a serve.

My body is getting loose.

My mind is getting focused.

Soon, I’m not thinking about anything, not even winning. I’m just alive in the moment, anticipating the ball and guiding it to the wall in ways that make Jimmy run the court. We spend nearly an hour fighting out long volleys, trading off points, trading off serves. I notice Jimmy is resting longer between his serves. And he’s limping more than ever, favoring his right leg and the old wound in his thigh from that day in the cove. I can still see the wide scar from my rough stitch job.

I remember swimming him to shore and dragging him into that cave and worrying sick that he was going to die on me. Who could have known we’d end up here? Halfway around the world, fighting over who will be sacrificed by trying to best one another at handball. Jimmy’s serve blazes past my ear, and I run after it, scooping it off the rear wall, but my shot falls short.

Focus, I tell myself. Focus.

“Twelve serving ten,” Finn calls from above.

If Jimmy scores three more points, it’s over. He’s shark meat, and I’m doomed to live a thousand years without my best friend. I can’t stand the thought of it.

I return his serve, and we volley back and forth, our breath heavy, our hands slapping the ball, the ball cracking loudly off the concrete wall. Then Jimmy hits a high ball, and I leap off the court to return it. But something happens while I’m suspended above him. Everything seems to slow down. Or maybe it just seems like slow motion because my mind speeds up, calculating a million possibilities in a fraction of a second. I see the ball in midair, I see my arm cocked to smack it. I see Jimmy beneath me, his right leg stretched out as he tries to move out of my way. Then I do something that would make me sick with guilt on any other day. I change the direction of my swing and drive the ball into Jimmy’s thigh, aiming for the center of the white scar. The ball connects with an audible thud, and Jimmy falls to ground shrieking and holding his leg.

The crowd gasps and leans over the court to see if Jimmy’s okay. He pulls it together, pushing himself up off the ground. It’s his serve now, and he limps over to collect the ball, carrying it back while looking down. When he lines up to serve, he looks at me and breaks my heart. His eyes are gray pools of light, his brow pinched with confusion. He looks at me like he doesn’t recognize me at all. As if I remind him of someone he used to know, but he just can’t place who.

“Thirteen serving ten,” calls Finn.

Jimmy serves, but the energy is gone out of his game. We volley a few turns but he seems to hardly try, limping after the ball without enthusiasm. I can’t tell whether it’s because of heartache over what I appear to have become, or the pain in his leg, but he no longer seems to care. I want to grab him and hug him and apologize. I grab the ball instead and line up a serve.

The next five points are the easiest and hardest points of the game. Every time Finn calls down the score, I’m one point closer to saving Jimmy’s life. Every time Finn calls down the score, I’m one point closer to losing my own.

“Game point serving twelve.”

The crowd is quiet. Nobody cheering me, nobody enjoying the game. I suck it up and wipe away a tear with the back of my hand. Then I serve the final ball. Jimmy makes a show of going for it, but the moment it’s passed, he drops his head and walks to the ladder and climbs from the court. The crowd parts to let him through. They stare down at me—judging me, loathing me, shaming me. Maybe they should.

“I didn’t have a choice!” I shout.

Nobody listens. Several of the rough men from our hunt climb down the ladder and grab me. They carry me to the ledge and hand me up to others waiting to take me away.

“You don’t understand. I didn’t have a choice!”

My instinct is to struggle, to fight for my life and run. But I remember Bree telling me that the champion has to go willingly to his sacrifice or they kill him and the runner up. Which means they’ll kill Jimmy if I fight. I relax and let them take me.

Someone ties my hands behind my back. Then someone else ties my ankles together. Now any chance of escaping my fate is gone for good. As I’m picked up and carried toward the seawall and the waiting crane, I don’t see any sign of Jimmy. Oh, well. It’s better that he doesn’t know until it’s over.

I do catch a quick glimpse of Bree, but I immediately wish I hadn’t because the horror of what’s about to happen to me is clearly reflected on her face.