Page 108 of Bonetide

I drink my coffee and stare out at the bay, at the drowned wives hidden beneath the water, at the looming castle where the monster resides, but the feeling of normalness, that falseness, doesn’t hold for long. It’s not like the salt; it holds nothing back. I have to do something, and I have to do something today, because if I sit at this table any longer I’m going to lose what’s left of my mind.

I finish my coffee and get my neglected phone. There are two texts from Maddie. The first from yesterday morning: checking in love, you’ve gone weirdly quiet. The second from late last night, when Maddie’s evening would have been my middle of the night: Iris if I don’t hear from you by tomorrow, I’m calling.

I look at the texts.

I think about all the shit I could text back—the way she’d laugh at the truth, then realize that I’ve gone crazy and need psychiatric help. Then she’d get on the next plane, Andrew in tow, and come get me to bring me back to the States.

Was that really such a bad idea?

Isn’t leaving this place exactly what I should do?

But it’s not what Mhairi suggested, and it’s not what Effie wanted for me. She wouldn’t have left me the cottage otherwise. She chose me for reasons I don’t fully understand, but I think at least one of those reasons is really important. Is it an Iris Galloway Saves the World kind of responsibility? God, I hope not. But I do think things would be worse for the people around town if I wasn’t here.

I type back to Maddie: Hey, sorry, day got away from me. All okay. Call you later. Promise.

Now, what the fuck am I going to do about this situation?

To be fair, last night I had gone looking for something to read about the each-uisge so I dug my Kindle out from my backpack—turns out I had never taken it out of my bag since I got here. But it had given me a small spinning circle, then a black screen, and then a tiny battery icon flashing for thirty seconds before it died entirely. I had plugged it into the charger and gone to bed.

I head to the bedroom and pick up the Kindle, thinking it should be fully charged by now. I tap the screen and it does the spinning circle of death and the black screen again and then it dies. Again.

The Kindle has chosen the worst possible day to lie down and give up.

I look at it for a long beat, cursing the machine and myself for not updating it for the last ten years, then I go back to my phone. I’ll just read the ebooks from the mobile app. But when I start looking for the right books online, all I find are anthologies of Celtic Tales and children’s books. The few I really want aren’t available for a US-based account.

Fine, then.

Seems the universe wants to do this old-fashioned way.

I’m going to the library.

I get dressed, grab my shit, and open the front door.

I pause on the doorstep and look at the salt line before stepping over it.

I can only hope it holds while I’m gone. Last thing I want is to come home and find a fucking horse in my kitchen.

The nearest library is in Lochcarron, forty-five minutes south, and the drive is the kind that should do me good, all pastoral and scenic, the road following the loch, the morning sun catching on the heather, the long curves through bracken. But instead, the drive is the kind of drive where I keep checking the rearview, and the verges, and the gaps in the trees, because every white shape between trunks could be a horse.

(It’s always a sheep.)

By the time I get to Lochcarron, my shoulders have been at my ears for forty-five minutes, and my hands have created grooves in the wheel.

The library is in a converted village hall, small, low, with two big windows and a sign that says it’s closed. I’m about to despair, when I then see a small handwritten note that says I’m at the post office I’ll be five minutes.

I wait on the doorstep with my hands in the pockets of Effie’s wax jacket, the wind off the loch in my hair. After about three minutes, a small woman of approximately seventy in a navy quilted coat walks briskly down the road. She gives me a friendly nod, unlocks the library, and tells me she’s Anna welcoming me in out of the cold.

I almost say if it’s this cold at the end of August, what’s it going to be like in the fall? I refrain because I’m no longer sure I’ll be here then. I’m not sure of anything anymore; let alone how the known universe works.

The library smells of old books and damp coats and the kerosene heater that she has just turned on. There are books on shelves around three sides of the room, and a long wooden table with reading lamps in the middle.

Then I notice the small section at the back labeled LOCAL INTEREST with a hand-printed card, complete with a thistle and smiley face.

I head right on over and scan the spines.

Highland Folklore and Tradition, by someone called Briggs, 1976. The Water-Beings of Scotland, by McKay, 1992. Songs and Tales of the West Coast, by Mary MacLeod, 1958. A thicker hardback called The Fairy Faith in Celtic Countries, the spine cracked, the cover faded.

I take all four to the table.