Katrine: No. Okay. Fine. Here’s what she told me when I woke up on the island: Anyone who sees us will die. They’ll turn into a seabird and batter themself to death against the rocks. Sometimes when Idryss talked about it back then, she’d say, “Any man who sees us,” and sometimes she’d say, “Anyone who wishes us harm.” She wasn’t always specific.
Martre: And you believed her.
Katrine: Of course I didn’t believe her. But then a few days later, a ship broke against the cliffs, and I saw. One of the sailors approached us and he turned into a gull.
Martre: And you didn’t—
Katrine: No, I didn’t question her after that. Would you? After seeing something like that, would you ask questions? Don’t answer that. I don’t want your answer.
Rowan: After Dane and Artur didn’t come back from the forest, we were down to eight. Then Albert and Bruce went out looking for them, and Bruce came back and told us that we were seven. His story about what had happened didn’t sound too plausible. But then again, a sea devil coming out of a clear blue day and dropping us into the water doesn’t sound too plausible either, does it? The point is, nobody believed Bruce when he said that Albert turned into— Oh, this is going to sound like it’s in poor taste. I’m not making a joke, though, I’m just saying what Bruce told us happened. I’m not trying to be disrespectful.
Martre: It’s okay. Go ahead.
Rowan: Well. Bruce said that Albert turned into... into an albatross. He said that Albert peeked around the trunk of a huge tree and gasped and then his skin folded in on itself and he became a bird. Bruce said Albert took off and flew away, and then he was gone. Knowing what I know now, I think it’s for the best that Bruce didn’t try to follow him.
Back then, though, I didn’t know what I know now, so of course I didn’t believe Bruce! None of us did. We all thought he was in shock, still exhausted from the shipwreck—it was extra hard on him because the ship went down on the first day of his monthly blood and he’d had to swim through all that cramping. We all thought it was just that, or that maybe he ate a bad mussel out of the batch Gregoire had hauled up out of the water—I don’t know, we were grasping at straws a little, but nobody could believe that Albert turned into a bird. So we sent Bruce back out with Pete and Alfonse to seeif they could find Albert, or Albert’s body, at least.
That’s how we became five.
Katrine: I think by the time seven of them were dead, the message was clear enough. Just like it said on the signs: don’t leave the cove.
Martre: That must have been difficult.
Katrine: Of course it was. But after each one, Idryss told us: This is why you can’t let them near you. Every single one of them wants to hurt you. This is why we have to stay together, always. So I thought... well. They should have stayed in the cove.
Martre: Who did they see?
Katrine: You mean how did they die? Oh, don’t look so embarrassed. If you’re going to ask a question like that, you might as well own it.
All of us are full of dark curiosities, raging urges, grim and unwholesome desires. To pretend to shame is simply to abandon the self in favor of the pleasure and comfort of others.Embrace yourself, Martre. Embrace yourself as though no one else ever will.
Rowan: Oh, yeah, Katrine talks like that when she’s stressed. I think it comforts her to feel like she’s delivering an ominous prophecy. I think it’s pretty cute. Don’t tell her I said that, though, she gets mad when I call her cute. Anyway, aren’t you supposed to not tell us what the other says? Isn’t that how this works?
Martre: I won’t tell. I’m great at keeping secrets. You were saying?
Rowan: Right, well. We took a vote that night. Half of us wanted to go hunting. I think Gregoire and Pete had something going on between them before Pete went missing. Gregoire was half-mad with grief, wanted revenge on whatever had taken Pete away. Thaddeus just wanted to find something and hurt it.
Poor Bruce wasn’t talking anymore by then, but it was obvious that he didn’t want to go back into the forest. And then there was Hester. I remember being surprised that she wanted to stay in the cove. She said she thought it was too dangerous to go looking for the thing that had taken so many of us. She kept talking about a giant wild pig, even though nobody had said anything about a giant wild pig and there was literallyno evidenceof a giant wild pig anywhere. I don’t know what that was about.
Katrine: Oh, yeah, the giant wild pig. Big sweetheart. Mostly keeps to herself. I think she used to be a princess, or maybe a merchant’s daughter? I’m not really sure, you’d know better than me. It’s hard to get clear answers out of a giant wild pig. Why do you ask?
Rowan: I was the tiebreaker. They all left it up to me to decide whether we’d stay in the cove or go and hunt down whatever was killing us. I didn’t want to go hunting—I thought it would be smarter to stay in the cove, probably—but I also didn’t want to argue with anyone, so I said I’d sleep on it. I told them it’d be better to hunt by daylight anyway, when we could see what we were after.
When I woke up, Gregoire and Thaddeus were gone.
Katrine: Idryss said it was Greta’s fault for not staying hidden. I remember because Greta and Odette were crying a lot that week.
Rowan: It was just me and Bruce and Hester left. And then Hester wandered off into the woods.
Katrine: I know now why Idryss always wanted us to stay together all the time when there were sailors on the island. But back then, I thought it was for protection, you know? Safety. I really believed that, until the moment I didn’t.
Martre: Hester.
Katrine: Yeah, Hester. She moved quieter than any of them ever had before. She was right on top of us before we realized she was there. I don’t understand how. We were all awake, we were all keeping an eye out. Well, Idryss was yelling at Odette for not keeping abettereye out. Maybe that’s why none of us heard her coming until she called out to us, introduced herself as a Sister Seafarer. She must have assumed that we were shipwrecked too.
Martre: She wouldn’t have been wrong about that.
Katrine: Well. You know what I mean. And then, before any of us could say anything, Hester was gone.
