The Lightkeeper's Daughter by Iain Lawrence

Author:Iain Lawrence
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction
ISBN: 9780307433930
Publisher: Random House Children's Books
Published: 2007-12-18T05:00:00+00:00

chapter ten

IT’S NOT A BIG TIDE POOL. IT’S SMALLER THAN a child’s wading toy. In its shallow water Hannah sees a sculpin dart from weed to rock, a shore crab glide the other way. The bottom of the pool is covered with small, empty shells, more thickly toward the end where Tatiana holds her hands below the surface.

Murray puts a palm on Tat’s shoulder; one of her pigtails brushes his wrist. He bends down until his face is level with hers. He says, “Show them, Tatty.”

She doesn’t move. Her hands are cupped together, fattened by refractions.

“Come on, Tatty. Open your hands. Do it for Grandpa.”

Murray’s fingers flex. “Come on, Tat. Please?”

And slowly, like a clamshell, Tatiana’s hands fall open.

Hannah has never before seen these animals that are gathered in the creases between Tatiana’s fingers, among the ridges that line her small, bent palms. They’re tiny things with oversized arms, with claws like a crab’s and thin, tapering bodies almost in coils. They don’t move; they shelter there.

Squid says, “What are those?”

“Look,” says Murray.

Hannah can see it now. But it seems impossible. They’re so fragile. All those empty shells in the pool. “Hermit crabs?” she asks.

“Yes,” sighs Murray.

And Squid’s face turns as pale as the sand. “See, Mom,” she says. “It’s starting.”

“Shhh,” says Hannah.

No shells of their own, these little crabs have been living in the cases of dead periwinkles. The sprinkle of empty shells was their armor, their homes. But here they have cast them off, and crawled—so naked and vulnerable— into the safety of Tat’s small hands.

“It was just one at first,” says Murray. “And then a second, a third. They climbed up over her fingers, over her wrists. They all came, through the water and across the sand.”

And she holds them like jewels.

To Hannah it’s almost like magic. It’s something that Alastair might have done.

He would lie for hours, absolutely still, with a bit of gristle in his fingers. He would be a rock, like a piece of the island, unmindful of the rain or the wind, just for the chance to feed a gull.

And then he would describe in the greatest detail, with the emotion of a preacher, the touch of this wild animal.

“Its feathers were layered,” he said one day. He stood in the kitchen, his legs shaking with excitement, crossed close together. “There was a line of white and a line of black and each one was just perfect.” His fingers twitched in tiny gestures. “Just perfect, perfect feathers.”

When he was twelve, he went after the auklets. He sat for nine straight hours by the mouth of a burrow before Murray brought him away. “Alastair,” he said. “Maybe they don’t want to be seen.”

“Maybe not,” said Alastair. “But I think I want what I want more than they do.”

For three days he sat there, from the moment his chores were finished until just after dawn.

“I think Alastair’s gone off the deep end,” said Squid. She wouldn’t have the patience for that. She’d have to be staked to the ground to stay in one place for nine hours straight.

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