Cunning

On a rocky stretch of coast, far from the tourist homes and trendy cafes, a young woman sat in the damp sand and thought about drowning. She used to collect stories about sirens, those enchanting masters of seduction and cunning who would lure sailors to their death on the coasts of islands. She lived by the sea, too, and used to climb out of bed after reading these stories and stare at the inky blackness that lay beyond the rows of houses.

While her school friends daydreamed about pirates and tempest storms— swashbuckling with swords of driftwood and old fishing poles—Jenna imagined sleek bodies twisting above the surf at the reef’s end, slick and dark creatures with scales as sharp as razors.

She had outgrown those stories as well as those friends. They came back to her now as her mind transformed the darkness of deep water into grotesque limbs and shadowed faces.

The sky was overcast, clouds heavy with the threat of rain. Behind her, the shutters of the closed coffee kiosk rattled in their frames. It only opened in the height of summer, the three months of tourist overflow from bigger towns further up the coast just worth the cost of the lease.

Out to sea, a cresting wave seemed to hang, suspended in time and space, before her eyes. As it crashed and dispersed across the choppy surface, an object carried in its motion came into view. Jenna squinted amongst the seafoam and rolling waves as the object rolled closer. It rose and sunk, jostled about by the volatile sea. She stood slowly; her eyes still fixed on what appeared to be a battered, old boat. The surf bore it closer to shore. Her curiosity carried her forward, bare feet sinking into the wet sand closer and closer to the water’s edge.

“Jenna?” A voice broke her trance, and she halted in her tracks. She was in the surf, her jeans soaked almost to the knee. She didn’t turn, but she recognised the voice. Niall Ballard, one of her old friends. The one who’d sacrificed all the imaginary pirate treasure they ever found to rescue her from evil sea witches and buccaneers. “What on earth are you doing?” he asked her now.

She reached a hand back to beckon him closer, her gaze still resolutely tracing the path of the vessel. She didn’t look to see whether or not he hesitated, but a moment later he stood beside her in the frigid sea.

“Is that a dinghy?” he asked. While her dominant feeling was curiosity, his words were heavy with concern. “Shit! I think that’s Jim Sampson’s boat.”

At the panic in his voice, Jenna finally turned to look at him.

“Crazy Jim?” she asked, remembering the way the old man seemed to lurk around the boatsheds, or stand at the shoreline clutching a notebook. He was always scribbling in that book, and most people around town had come to their own conclusions about what he was doing. Most of those assumptions relied on the belief that he had grown delusional in his old age, or as a result of isolation. He’d been living alone on the farthest reach of the peninsular for almost two decades since the death of his wife.

Niall shot her a look of disapproval.

“He’s not crazy,” he said softly. “Just a bit…fanatical.”

Jenna raised a brow questioningly.

“Help me with this?” he asked, striding further into the surf towards the boat.

Jenna held back a sigh and waded after him. The water was at her hips when Niall reached the dinghy, his hands curling around the rim of the boat. He stumbled, the momentum of the driving sea forcing the vessel toward them. He grimaced as it made impact with his shoulder, but manged to regain his grip. Jenna grabbed a hold on the other side, the weathered edges rough beneath her hands.

She was panting with exertion by the time they managed to drag the boat ashore, warm despite the chill of the water, her clothes sodden against her skin.

Niall dropped to his knees in the wet sand, peering into the boat. Several inches of water still sloshed around its base. From beneath the benches, he pulled a neatly folded life vest, a small esky, a rusted tin box, and a first aid kit.

“Natasha Butler,” he murmured, his forefinger tracing the engraving on the back of the tin box. “Jim’s wife.”

He looked at Jenna across the vessel.

“This is his boat.”

Jenna met his worried gaze. “Maybe it came unmoored?” she suggested, but doubt sat heavy in her stomach.

“Maybe,” Niall said. His fingers pried at the box. The metal had warped, a result of years of being subjected to the elements. With a bit of force, it sprung open in his hands. Inside sat an antique compass, a small rock, and a black notebook wrapped in two layers of plastic sandwich bags.

“What is all that?” Jenna leaned over the boat for a better look. Niall had pulled the notebook from the bags and was flipping through it.

“Notes, ramblings. Theories, I think?” He squinted at the aged pages. “There are different handwritings here.”

He held it out to show her and turned a few pages.

“Coordinates.” Jenna noticed. “Those last pages are coordinates.”

She sat back in the sand, shivering now that the warmth of action had faded.

“Butler,” she whispered, the name tugging on something in her memory.

A cold wash of realisation rushed through her, and her eyes snapped to Niall’s. “The Amphitrite.”

Niall cocked his head to the side. “I thought that was a story to keep us all from sailing around the peninsula.”

Jenna nodded slowly. “So did I. My Grandad always says the Butlers were crazy. They swore it was their legacy. That their ancestor swam to shore generations ago from the wreck of the Amphitrite.”

He laughed incredulously. “You think it could be true?”

“Not necessarily,” she shot back, “but maybe Jim believed that it was.”

He sobered instantly at the thought. “At this time of year…”

He flipped to the last pages of the book. His face paled at what he read.

“He did go out,” Niall muttered. “Over a week ago.”

He looked up at her again. “These coordinates, they’re around the point. They must be practically between the reef plates.”

Jenna looked out at the savage sea, at the clouds hanging heavy with the threat of rain.

“That’s suicide,” she whispered. “The swells are too high. And the rips around the peninsula…In a boat this small.”

Niall looked sick. He placed the notebook down.

“We should call the police,” he said softly.

Jenna reached over and gave his wrist a gentle squeeze. As she leaned over, a sliver of sunlight escaped the cloud cover, and glinted gold off something in the small box. She frowned. It wasn’t reflecting off the compass. It was the small, unassuming rock that had been stowed away beside it.

“Niall,” she breathed. He followed her gaze down, his eyes widening in awe.

* * *

Manipulation was one of those things that Niall had always failed to sense until it had happened. He remembered being nine years old, placing the pinkest shells and smoothest bits of sea glass in Jenna’s hands, because she had smiled at him with her full lips and dimpled cheeks.

Apparently, he thought wryly, ten years had changed nothing.

He looked across the hall. She was smiling now, talking animatedly to the museum’s curator. She wore a deep red dress, fitted over her hips and then flaring out at the knees. It gave the illusion of a blood-red mermaid tail, glinting wickedly in the overhead lights. Her dark hair was piled elegantly atop her head.

The lie they were living looked good on her.

She met his eye across the room and gave a small wave, before leaning closer to the man beside her and speaking a few words. He gave a short nod of leave before approaching a group of people close by. Jenna fixed her gaze back on Niall and made her way fluidly across the floor toward him.

She stopped close by his side, her fingers falling to rest lightly upon his arm.

“Are you okay?” she murmured, her gaze dancing about the room. They stood among a standard of historians, academics and politicians that made Niall sweat beneath the stiff collar of his suit.

“This isn’t right.”

She turned and leaned in, as though whispering something intimate. Her breath was warm on his neck. “Stop being so dramatic, Ni,” she all but purred, “and try to smile.”

He gulped, her proximity as intoxicating to him as ever. He opened his mouth to respond, but she held an adorned finger to his lips.

“This is simple,” she continued. “We took the money. We take the scholarships. We get out of that ghost town.”

She gestured around the room. “This is where we belong now.”

He looked down into her eyes, and remembered the way they stared back at him across that boat. The words she’d spoken. There’s no one left, Niall. Her hand on his. We wait for summer, for the swells to calm and the sky to clear. His fingers running over an encased, but unmistakeable, edge of gold. We’ll report this boat, now. Exactly as we found it, but this box will be empty. That inch of sun retreating back behind the clouds. If it’s there we’ll find it, Niall. Together. Her lips on his as they stood on the beach, watching the police car pull up above the dunes. Three inconspicuous items tucked away in their pockets. A kiss to seal away the truth.

What is truth worth, she’d asked him later, when there’s no one left who it mattered to?

The truth had been worth less than the twenty thousand dollars they’d each been offered by the Museum Trust. Less than the offers of scholarships to various universities, to pursue their keen passions in local history and maritime archaeology. Less than the heady pride of local celebrity when their names graced the front page of a national newspaper. And the truth would be too late for Jim Sampson—whose body was eventually found grey and bloated in the shallows of a fishing island kilometres out to sea—or for the Butler family who’d died years ago with Natasha.

He’d lost his voice for truth, he realised now, surrounded by the glamour of his unearned success. It was too late. So, he forced a dazzling smile and took Jenna’s hand on his arm.

“Dance with me?”

She returned his smile sweetly.

Moonlight reflected off the harbour water out the floor to ceiling windows, and the marble floor had an odd green tinge to it. He had the distinct recollection of being pushed beneath a crashing wave, and hanging, suspended, for a brief moment in time, in a swirling, hazy mass of water, unsure which direction was up.

He felt that way now, his new shoes slick on the marble, turning languid circles about the room with her in his arms, as though he couldn’t so much as take a breath without drowning. He remembered the weight of water, the taste of salt on his lips, and the muted light that existed deep beneath the waves. His gaze caught on Jenna’s blood-red lips, the dimple of her smile, just for him.

At least it’d be a beautiful way to go.