Ink and Ice, Erin McRae [primary phonics .txt] 📗

not up to their standards, they would certainly not hesitate in making those feelings known. Their acceptance of Zack was a strong stamp of approval. I wonder if Zack knows that, Aaron mused

***.

“Do you want to take a walk?” Aaron asked Zack once they’d finished dinner and the two of them had cleaned the kitchen.

Zack looked dubious. “How cold is it out there?”

“Colder than it was when the sun was up.”

“You’re not natural,” Zack complained, but he headed for the closet for his coat anyway.

Aaron said nothing. It wasn’t the sort of sentence it was worth getting prickly about, not when they were both queer and living lives that could most generously be described as odd. But if his sister had heard it... that would have been one way to have a conversation about the mythology of this place.

Aaron knew he wasn’t obligated to bring up the children’s stories that were only extremely local knowledge—even the year rounders on the bigger islands didn’t necessarily know them, not if they didn’t regularly deal with the lake’s furthest, smallest outpost. But those that did didn’t trade on them. Aaron always thought that was notable, that the seals weren’t featured on kitschy t-shirts and souvenir shot glasses. It was why he took Ari seriously—at least some of the time and against his better judgement. If the stories weren’t true, wouldn’t people be freer with them?

Zack sucked in a sharp breath as they stepped outside again, but Aaron drew in a more leisurely lungful, relishing the way the cold stung this throat and made his eyes water. The night sky was clear, and the stars spilled above them, making the world around them glow faintly. Aaron led the way down to the shore.

"What's that sound?" Zack asked, suddenly tensing beside him.

"Which?" Aaron stopped walking and cocked his head to listen. The wind blew through the trees. Somewhere, a dog whined, protesting perhaps a late-night walk. Probably on one of the Bass islands. Sound travelled oddly in the still night air.

Zack stopped, too. "The...." His voice trailed off. "I don't know how to describe it. Clapping? Something snapping."

"Ohhhhhhhhh.” Aaron hadn’t even been aware of it until Zack pointed it out. In winter the sound was as familiar to him as his own heartbeat. But now that he was, he had a problem. Because there were two different answers he could give Zack, one sensible and practical, one much less so. That one that was a critical part of Aaron’s own sense of self, but it might frighten Zack off for good.

You invited him here, Aaron reminded himself. Because you wanted him to know you, as you exist here. Tell him.

Still, Zack at least deserved some kind of choice in the matter. Aaron started walking again. “Do you want the creepy answer or the real answer?”

Zack fell into step beside him. “Why would I want the creepy answer?"

Aaron smiled into the dark. "Because I offered you a creepy answer, and you're a journalist and that should interest you."

"I just want to know if I should be alarmed by it,” Zack said cautiously.

Aaron shook his head. "You shouldn't." Probably.

"Okay. Fine,” Zack said. “But tell me the real answer first."

Aaron nodded. "So. Water expands when it freezes. And we're surrounded by it. There isn't always room for all the ice. So it breaks and buckles on the lake.”

“That makes sense,” Zack said, but Aaron wasn’t done.

Ice was a part of the life of the island, as much as it ever was at TCI, just in a different way. “It pushes up against people's wooden docks,” he went on. “It gets in the eaves and the pipes and the drains of the people who aren't here year-round. They hire some of us sometimes, to go check on their houses on the other islands. A lot of us won't do it. We're not lackeys to the summer people. They can pay to fix their damage from not knowing this place.” He wasn’t used to speaking to people other than his family about that; no one else understood. Because you don’t let anyone else know, he thought.

"Okay,’ Zack said slowly. “That is, actually, almost a little creepy.” He didn’t sound bothered by the prospect, though. More intrigued. “What's the actual creepy answer?"

Aaron drew a steadying breath of the sharp, cold air. "Seals."

Zack stopped walking again to turn toward Aaron. "Excuse me?"

"The animals? Like my ringtone?" Aaron tried to imitate the sound to make the point, like a dog barking through a wheezing inhale.

Zack flinched. "That was creepy."

"I warned you!”

"But seals are ocean animals?" Zack asked.

"Yes. Well, mostly,” Aaron said. “But that's why it's creepy. There's a legend up here, about a lost colony of them. They swam in via the Saint Lawrence, before it was called that, and got stuck. Some of them, when they realized they couldn’t make their way back to the sea, moved onto the land...for good. Not just to rest or sun but to grow tall and walk and become people."

"But not all of them?"

"No. Not all of them” Aaron said softly. “They’re calling for us to return to the water, so we can go back once again and find the sea."

"Us?" Zack asked.

"Us," Aaron confirmed. "My family has been here for years. Generations. I'm not sure we even know since when. One story goes that we got the land as a prize after the war.”

“The column... 1812?”

“That’s the one. There was no one living out here. They’ve done digs... found some hunting and fishing camps but otherwise, nothing. The indigenous people didn’t want it. Neither did us more recent arrivals. Everyone more or less agreed it was good for the occasional bit of hunting and not much more. So I guess it was the cheapest thing anyone could think of. I mean if you’re gonna reward people for service in a war you lost, why not dump them in the middle of a lake?”

"But you don't even know if that's true?"

Aaron shrugged. "There's no paperwork, and