Chapter 24 of 26·6 min read·Before dawn, across one unscheduled crossing
The Far Side of the Water
Rachel kept her hand on the terminal door. The powder line ran under it, pale against the wet sill, and beyond the glass a lamp swung above the water without any boat beneath it.
“We can keep this shut,” she said. “But we can’t leave her here with that voice.”
The attendant still held her keys. The marine radio sat dark on the counter, its power lead coiled beside it. Above us, the PA speaker gave a dry click.
My voice came through. “Last crossing. Inis Brann.”
The attendant took a step back from the counter. She had been careful with everything since we arrived: the keys, the radio, the questions she was willing to ask. Now she looked at the speaker as if she could make it behave by waiting for the next instruction.
Rachel turned to me. “If we stay, it keeps using the terminal.”
“I think so.”
“And if we go?”
I had no measurement that could answer her. The ferry had no schedule, the harbor had no visible vessel, and the PA had spoken through disconnected power. I could list those facts. They didn’t add up to a safe choice.
Rachel opened the door.
The powder line stayed intact. She didn’t step over it. She reached outside and pulled the door wide enough for Declan to come in. He entered with his shoulders hunched, eyes on the harbor. The van’s headlights still lit the car park behind him. Between them, the second pair of lamps had moved closer to the slipway.
“I heard him,” Declan said. “From the van radio.”
“What did it say?” Rachel asked.
“My name. Then yours.” He rubbed his palm on his trousers. “I shut it off. It kept going.”
The speaker above us clicked. “Declan Sloane. Route open.”
He flinched at the exactness of the words. Rachel took his keys from his hand and set them on the counter, well away from the marine radio.
“Come with us,” she said.
Declan looked at the door and the powder line. “On that?”
“I’m not leaving you here to answer it.”
She didn’t say the ferry was safe. I was glad she didn’t. The word would have made it harder to trust her.
The attendant went behind the counter and opened a narrow drawer. She pulled out a hand torch and a folded harbor chart, then placed both on the ledge. “The slipway runs straight down. Keep to the lit side. There’s a chain at the lower landing.”
“Will you come?” Rachel asked.
Next
Mark, Rachel, and Declan must learn what Inis Brann is prepared to receive before the new destination finishes appearing.
The woman glanced at the speaker. “I can’t leave the terminal unattended.”
“That’s what it wants you to think,” I said.
She looked at me, then at the door she had unlocked for us. “I’ll stay behind the ward. You need the chart more than I do.” She pushed it toward Rachel. “The old pier is marked in pencil.”
Rachel took the chart. The pencil line ended at a small square beyond the main harbor, with INIS BRANN written beside it. The paper smelled of damp cardboard. Someone had folded it along that route so often the crease had softened.
She made the decision without looking to me again. “We go together. No one answers anything. If one of us hears a voice, say what it is and keep moving.”
The attendant unlocked the outer door and held it open. Rachel stepped over the powder. Declan followed her. I paused at the sill, watching the line beneath the door. It had kept the terminal separate from whatever stood outside for as long as we’d been there. The PA continued to work from within the building. The ward had not stopped it reaching us; it had only given us a place to stand while we made our choice.
I crossed.
The slipway descended in wet concrete ramps. The harbor lamp kept swinging, though there was no wind at ground level. Down by the water, the ferry waited with its bow against the lower landing. It was a short, square passenger boat, paint peeling from its sides, cabin windows lit with a weak yellow glow. No name appeared on the hull. I heard no engine, no ticking from a cooling motor, no wash against the pilings. The water touched the concrete and drew back with a small, ordinary slap.
Declan took the torch from Rachel and pointed it at the waterline. “There’s no wake.”
The light picked out a rope running from the boat to the chain at the landing. The rope lay taut. Its fibers were dry.
“Don’t pull it,” Rachel said.
“I wasn’t going to.”
At the end of the slipway, the harbor chart’s old pier branched away from the lit ramp. A narrow strip of powder covered its entrance. There was no door or fence, only the line, placed across the concrete with the same careful hand as at the terminal.
The ferry was moored beyond it.
I put my recorder in my pocket and left it switched off. Its little screen could tell me nothing I trusted, and I didn’t want to add another speaker to the crossing. Rachel held the ticket, folded in half, with my name hidden inside. She hadn’t thrown it away. She hadn’t given it back to me either.
She looked from the powder to the ferry. “We cross here, or go back up.”
I wanted to tell her the boat had appeared for me. That the ticket had my name and status, and the destination had been chosen before we got there. I could feel the old urge to make the call on behalf of everyone, to turn fear into a route and call the route a plan.
“Your choice,” I said. “I’ll go where you do.”
Rachel’s thumb pressed along the ticket’s crease. “Then we take the boat. If this place is already a junction, staying won’t undo that.” She stepped over the powder.
Declan followed. I went last.
The gangplank was lowered, though there was no one aboard to lower it. The deck flexed under Rachel’s weight. A low vibration came through the soles of my shoes. Four pulses, then three, followed by a pause. I counted them once and stopped. The rhythm moved through the planks, not the air.
The cabin door stood open. Inside, a row of vinyl seats faced forward. A fare box sat beside the wheel, its red display dark. On the front seat lay three narrow tickets. One read MARK ALDER. Another read RACHEL ALDER. The third had DECLAN SLOANE printed across it.
No status had been printed on those. I couldn’t tell whether that was a reprieve or an unfinished line.
Rachel took the tickets. “We don’t use these.”
She tucked them into the chart rather than leaving them on the seat. Declan stayed by the open cabin door, watching the terminal. The attendant stood at the top of the slipway, inside the spill of the sodium lamp. She raised one hand. It looked like a goodbye, though she might only have been telling us she was still there.
The ferry moved away from the landing.
No engine started. The rope slackened and slid into the water, then came up through it dry. The terminal lights drew apart behind us. The shoreline remained visible for a while, each lamp clear in the fog. Then the harbor signal clicked through a sequence I knew from the terminal board: one short tone, a pause, four short tones, three.
The sound came from the ferry’s cabin speaker. I turned toward it. The power display remained dark.
My voice said, “Inis Brann.”
Rachel sat beside me, her shoulder against mine. She didn’t ask whether it was really me. Declan gripped the rail in front of the seats and watched the water pass beneath the hull. It moved at a steady walking pace, though the far shore never seemed closer.
I had taken the ticket from the terminal because I thought a printed name could be evidence. On the chart, the three tickets were already dampening the paper beneath them. The ink on mine had begun to run, leaving the letters legible but blurred at the edges.
The far shore appeared without any approach. A low pier stood ahead, its lamps spaced at regular intervals. There was a small shelter at the end, its door marked with a pale line across the threshold. Behind it, a white board displayed a list of ferry times. Every line was blank except the one at the bottom.
04:17 — RECEIVING.
The boat touched the pier. The impact was soft enough that I felt it more than heard it. No one had come to meet us. On the shelter door, the powder line had been renewed recently; a few grains had fallen onto the wet boards.
Rachel stood first. She took the chart and the tickets, then waited for Declan and me to join her.
On the board, beneath RECEIVING, a fresh line began to appear. The first letters formed the name of a place I didn’t know.
Rachel looked at the shelter door. “We find out what this junction is before we touch anything.”
I followed her off the boat. Behind us, the ferry stayed at the pier with its cabin lights on.