In the early morning I walk down the rows. The three burned stumps send out thin strands of smoke even though they are now nothing but piles of ash.
I wonder how late Bo stayed up, watching the last of the embers turn black. I wonder if he slept at all. I walk to his cottage and stand facing the door. I lift my fist, about to knock, when the door swings open, and I suck in a startled breath.
“Hey,” he says reflexively.
“Hi... sorry. I was just about to knock,” I stammer. “I came to say... good morning.” A dumb explanation. I’m not even sure why I’ve come.
His eyebrows screw into a confused line, but his lips form an easy half grin. He’s wearing a plain white shirt and jeans that sag low over his hips, and his hair is pressed to one side like he’s just woken up. “I was coming out to check on the trees,” he says. “Make sure they didn’t reignite in the last couple hours.”
“They’re only smoldering,” I tell him. “I was just up there.”
He nods then extends his arm to open the door wider. “You want to come inside? I can make coffee.”
I step past him, feeling the warmth of the cottage fold over me.
Otis and Olga are already inside, curled up on the couch as if this was their new home. As if they now belonged to Bo. There is no fire, but the windows are all open, a warm breeze purring through the cottage. The weather has shifted, turned mild and buoyant—the air blowing in from the sea stirs up the dust motes and scares away the ghosts. Every day that he’s here on the island, in the cottage, I can feel the space changing, becoming brighter.
Bo stands in the kitchen, his back to me, and turns on the faucet in the sink, filling the coffeepot with water. He’s tan after a week outside under the sun. And the muscles in his shoulders flex beneath the thin cotton of his shirt.
“How do you like your coffee?” he asks, turning around to face me, and I quickly flick my eyes away so he doesn’t catch me staring.
“Black is fine.”
“Good... because I don’t have anything else.” I wonder if he bought coffee grounds in town before I invited him out to the island. Brought it with him in his backpack? Since I doubt there was coffee here when he moved in.
A stack of books sits on the low table in front of the couch and more books are lined up on the floor, all pulled from the shelves. I pick up a book resting on the arm of the couch.Encyclopedia: Celtic Myths and Fables Vol. 2.
“What are all these?” I ask.
Bo dries his hands on a kitchen towel then walks into the living room. Otis wakes up and begins rubbing a paw over one ear.
“All the books in here are about legends and folklore,” he answers.
I run a finger over a row of books on the bookshelf beside the fireplace. The spines are printed with titles likeNative American Legends of the Northwest,How to Break an Unwanted Curse, andWitches and Warlocks: A Guide to Understanding. They are all like this—a library of books on topics of the unnatural, the mystical, similar to what’s happening in Sparrow. Collected by someone and stored in the cottage...but who?
“You didn’t know?” Bo asks. Coffee begins streaming into the glass pot behind him, the warm roasted scent filling the room.
I shake my head.No, I didn’t know these were in here. I had no idea.I sink down onto the couch, touching the page of a book left open on one of the cushions. “Why are you reading them?” I ask, closing the book with athudthen setting it on the coffee table.
“I don’t know. Because they’re here, I guess.”
Olga hops down from the couch and coils herself around Bo’s leg, purring up at him, and he bends down to scratch gently behind her ear. “And what about the Swan sisters—do you believe in them now?” I ask.
“Not exactly. But I also don’t believe people drown themselves for no reason.”
“Then why are they drowning?”
“I’m not sure.”
My foot taps against the floor, my heart thuds inside my rib cage—a scratching at my thoughts.So many books. All these books. Placed here—hidden in here.“And what about the singing from the harbor—how do you explain that?”
“I can’t,” he answers. “But it doesn’t mean it won’t eventually be explained. Have you seen those rocks in Death Valley that move across the desert floor on their own? For years people didn’t understand how it happened. Some of the rocks weighed over six hundred pounds, and they left trails in the sand as if they were being pushed. People thought it might be UFOs or some other bizarre cosmic event. But researchers finally discovered it’s just ice. The desert floor freezes, and then strong winds slide these massive boulders across the sand. Maybe the Swan sisters’ legend is like this. The singing and the drownings just haven’t been explained yet. But there’s some perfectly logical reason why it happens.”
The coffeepot has stopped sputtering behind him, but he makes no move to walk back into the small kitchen.
“Ice?” I repeat, looking at him like I’ve never heard anything so absurd in my life.
“I’m just saying that maybe someday they’ll discover that none of this has anything to do with three sisters who were killed two hundred years ago.”
