The Girl With Glass Feet (15 page)

‘They chopped it into slivers, but they still couldn’t find its lights.’

‘… Is that so?’

‘It’s a local specimen. Drawn at dissection. These jellyfish glow… But you know about that, of course.’

Midas nodded. He knew all about the wintering invertebrates that swarmed the coves in December, catching the sun in their bloated bodies and setting it a-sparkle in an electric light show. Even so, even though they could glean every ingot from light and turn it into a glimmer of pink or a flare of yellow, he had a thing about them that kept him away from the spectacle.

‘When I first came to St Hauda’s Land, part of my work was to study them. I had seen smaller jellyfish in my father’s kitchen in Osaka, little white creatures like puffball mushrooms that he’d cut into strips to batter. But the species that comes to St Hauda’s Land is entirely different. Entirely.’

‘What exactly is your work?’

Henry blushed.

‘You’re a biologist?’

‘I have a certain level of… insight that keeps me in funds. The jellyfish, for example, were thought to gravitate towards the islands to breed, until my research showed they excrete light when they die.’

The idea of it took a moment to sink in, but then Midas was excited, turning back to the framed photos he’d picked out earlier.

‘Then… St Hauda’s Land is a sort of elephant graveyard for jellyfish?’

‘They dissolve and leave only a shimmer.’

‘So these lights in the water…’

‘The deceased and the dying of the shoal at night. The matter
of their bodies breaks down, dissolves and releases light. Each particle becomes like stardust, until all that’s left are these vapours slowly dimming into the sea.’

Midas pointed to a glowing ring of dandelion yellow in one of the pictures. ‘This one must have been enormous.’

‘The size of a rowing boat. And I’ve seen bigger. I had, in my naïvety, originally intended to swim with them to take their photograph. But of course their poison can be lethal. Not as lethal as some species, but quite potent in a concentrated area. It can make a person limp for… Ah, but you know all this.’

‘My mother was stung by a jelly.’

Henry shifted from foot to foot. ‘Here,’ he said after an awkward pause. He opened a drawer and took out a photograph album. He flicked through more and more pictures of the jellyfish alight. Then he came to some shots of a pebble beach. Among the mottled stones were shoals of washed up, shiny fish.

‘They’re not dead,’ said Henry, ‘or at least not until they suffocate in the air. They’re paralysed by the jellyfish, then washed-up like driftwood.’

They stood side by side, drinking the green tea Henry had made and looking at the photos for some minutes, until Midas, so easily lost in the image, again remembered his mother’s limp. He realized how uncomfortably close Henry stood to him.

The issue of his mother was floating between them as unfathomably as one of those jellyfish. He watched a blue-winged insect of some sort drift along the underside of the ceiling and touch down out of sight behind a stack of journals with curling covers.

His tea was cooling quickly in its diminutive cup. ‘Does the name Ida Maclaird mean anything to you? Blonde girl? Very… monochrome? Very, um, you know… pretty? She bought you a drink in Gurmton.’

Henry suddenly looked alarmed. ‘She’s not here, is she?’

‘Yes. She’s come to St Hauda’s Land looking for your help.’

Henry’s eyes were wide, the streaks in his irises sharpening into copper daggers. ‘She told you?’

‘Told me what?’

‘What did she say?’

‘She’s… unwell.’

Henry frowned. He chewed the fronds of his moustache. ‘Unwell? That’s it?’

‘Yes.’

‘She’s come to see me about that? She didn’t tell you anything about… secret things?’

‘Well… yes. Something deeply secret, yes.’

Midas watched Henry’s fingers. There was peat under their nails. Henry wiped his forehead, blurted, ‘Please excuse me, Mr Crook,’ then hurried out of sight. Midas heard him hammering up the stairs. Frogs droned outside. He turned his teacup in his hands, leaves orbiting at the bottom of the china.

Henry had to go upstairs to get a moment’s perspective. He sat on his bed and pulled the blanket up over his shoulders, wrapping himself in it like a child. The Crook boy’s heritage was hard enough to bear, but this mention of Ida Maclaird… what did she want? She had to have come back about the moth-winged cattle. The bog was supposed to keep him safe from this kind of prying. He had swapped society for the simple life he had painstakingly constructed here. That of the entomologist: he who cups a cricket in his hands in a field, feels it sidle about looking for escape, then sets it free, to bounce bewildered through the long grass. That was to say, he didn’t want the cricket to knock on his door looking for an explanation for its experience. Yet… Yet… At one time in his life he had wanted more than this detachment from the things he had a hand in. He had an acute
memory of lying on his back in the bog one night last summer, just days after his encounter with Ida. The marsh gases had risen all day in the heat until they mingled with the atmosphere, marbling the blue sky with bottle-glass greens and browns. He would have admired the effect in awe had he not reached sideways, without thinking, to take Evaline’s hand. He had grabbed a dry handful of toad, which beat its legs against his forearm until it squeezed free. He was the only human being for miles. Swamp gurgled into every distance, coughing up newborn flies. It had taken hours to get over his loneliness.

Henry reluctantly relaid the blanket on his bed and took deep, steadying breaths. Ida… She knew about the moth-winged cattle, and all he could think was that she had come here to threaten them. He looked at the brass lantern on his desk and stifled a cry when he saw its door hanging open and its insides empty.

Midas had decided to look again at the photos of jellyfish burning out in the sapphire ocean, but before he had a chance he was distracted by the blue-winged insect he’d seen land behind the stack of books. It whirred up through the air and drifted past his face. He blinked hard, snapped his head around to follow it, hands instinctively pawing for his camera.

It was a little cow, its fur blowing slightly in the breeze made by its whirring wings. Its hoofed legs hung relaxed beneath a plump stomach and a dozy-eyed head.

He wrenched open his satchel and swung out his camera. The movement made the creature jerk away and fly higher, so Midas froze with the camera at his face. It drifted down to one of the paper lanterns, within which candle flames trembled. Midas took its photo silhouetted against the paper shade. The cow landed beside the lantern and fanned its wings, showing pearly-white markings on their insides.

A dismayed shout from the doorway.

Henry staggered into the room, gaping at Midas’s camera.

‘Y-you,’ he spluttered, ‘must give me the film. It must be destroyed.’

‘There is no film,’ said Midas, warily clinging to his camera. ‘It’s a digital.’

‘Then delete it.’

He shook his head.

Henry squared his narrow shoulders, unpractised at intimidation. Midas, slowly, as if handling a bomb, put away his camera and zipped it tight in his satchel. The cow kneeled down on the counter and licked her muzzle.

‘Please.’

‘You have to help Ida.’

Henry nodded. ‘What does she want from me?’

‘I’m not sure. You have to see her. She thinks you know something about what’s happening to her.’

‘What is happening to her?’

Midas patted his satchel. ‘I’ll keep this secret, if you keep what I’m about to tell you secret too. You don’t even tell Ida it was me who told you.’

‘Y-you didn’t know about the moth-winged cattle? She’s not come because of them?’

The cow closed her eyes, her swollen flanks rising and falling with every heavy breath.

‘She’s come because her feet are turning into glass.’

Henry leant back against the door frame.

‘You keep it secret,’ said Midas, ‘you promise.’

Henry nodded dismissively. ‘How else would I keep it? Can we delete the photo now?’

‘All right.’ He looked at it for a second, glowing on the screen. It wasn’t a great photo anyway. He deleted it.

‘Okay, Midas. Ah… it’s hard to know where to start.’

‘Start wherever you like.’

‘You’ve been to the mainland?’

‘Yes.’

‘How many times?’

‘Five or six.’

Henry nodded cautiously. ‘Maybe you noticed something different. When you returned to St Hauda’s Land. A taste on the air. A mannerism the birds have. A peculiar snowfall, making almost mathematical patterns. A white animal that’s not an albino.’

Midas shook his head. ‘I suppose it’s normal to me.’

‘Yes, yes it probably is.’ Henry sighed. ‘For the most part, people are either born here and are used to these things, or they move away. There aren’t many people who
come
here.’

‘You came here.’

‘Ye-es. But I had an ear to the ground. I heard a story about a certain animal who could turn a thing white with one look from its eyes. After I saw it I… had already found reasons to stay. But I digress, because you want to know about Ida.’ He gazed out of the window at the sepia landscape of meres and muddy pools. He looked worn out, as if a hard day had passed since Midas stepped through the door. ‘You had better come with me. I have something to show you in the bog.’

Soon the boots and waterproof trousers he lent Midas were glossy with slime. They tramped over endless marshland where soil was spotted with snow. Frosted mud squelched as it split underfoot. Slugs watched from the shade with stalk-eyes and secret expressions. At one point they saw a heron with a shaggy beard catching a fish, but it took off as they drew near and flew away with heavy wing-beats into the clouded sky. Midas waited nervously whenever Henry stopped to check his compass or
consult the landmarks of the marsh: this rock with a crown of spikes, this log in the form of a stegosaur.

Then he found the spot. He explained how he’d marked it previously by tying a neon-yellow band to a nearby shrub. Now he recognized it by the dirtied label. ‘This is the place,’ he said, pointing a shaking finger at the inky pool before him.

‘Okay. What… what am I looking for?’