Free The Watery Part of the World by Michael Parker

him to regain those papers and set about restoring her father’s rightful place in this world.
    â€œYou’ll listen to me now. We’ll settle this in a day if you listen to me.”
    He told her a man owed him a favor and this man owned a cart and had tamed one of the wild island ponies to draw this cart. He told her he’d make one trip when he was sure Daniels was off island and that he would fetch only a cartful and that after theirreturn, she had to promise him never to go near the compound again.
    An easier vow she’d never taken, as what need would she have of ever returning? If all went as planned, she would soon be reunited with her father.
    W HEN THEY REACHED the compound it appeared even more deserted than the first time. No smoke rose from chimneys. A day gray and listless. Only an occasional breeze to rise from the surrounding sea oats a rustle like the dry cough of a croupy child. She sat in the cart while Whaley got out and, armed with a length of board and a thick piece of meat he’d procured from God knows where, searched for the dog. He whistled. He sneaked around the edges of the raised houses, stooping to look beneath the crawl spaces. At one point when he was out of sight, she thought she heard him call out a name.
    He was gone a good while. When he came back to the cart, he said, “Locked him in a shed.”
    They went to work. When the cart was three-quarters full, she told Whaley she needed to excuse herself. Without a word he pointed to an outhouse on the far perimeter of the compound and returned to loading.
    In the outhouse she held her nose and waited a few minutes, in case he was watching. Then she opened the door a sliver, saw that he was hard at work, oblivious. She circled around to Daniels’s house, stole quickly up the back stairs. The house waswell designed to catch the breeze, though its features were bizarrely incongruent. Much of it had been reassembled from the staterooms of shipwrecks. The dark paneling smelled still of sea grass, fish and brine, and rather deliciously of meat, fried, and something vaguely garlicky. She passed a kitchen, several bedrooms, and finally, at the front of the house, a large parlor. Crude chairs grouped around a massive fireplace. Above the fireplace hung her portrait.
    The sight of her face—years younger, so fresh and untainted by the travails to come, the humiliation and unfairness that was, at least, her life, if not the general nature of things—startled her so deeply that she forgot entirely her mission. No longer did her father’s papers even exist. For all she thought of them they could have been spread out, a carpet, beneath her feet. The portrait had saved her life. Had it not the power to turn a murdering thief fearful of the vengeance of God? Had Daniels not sworn up and down the island that the girl in the portrait—her younger, innocent, hopeful self—had spoken to him as she had spoken to her? If he revered it enough to hang in his parlor, surely he’d want it back badly enough to allow her to be reunited with her father.
    Her wounded leg ached as she carried the portrait down the dark hallway. She was careful not to look at the woman in the painting for fear that life in Daniels’s den had turned her, that she might, with only her eyes, bring Theo to harm. She slung it under her arm and, when she was down the back stairs, lurched across the courtyard toward the cart.
    She did not see Whaley until well after she heard the hiss of the dog and then a silence as the dog came hurtling through the unnaturally dense and still air. She managed to toss the portrait out of the way rather than use it to protect herself, for it seemed to her that she’d used up all her chances, that the choice she made was final and fateful. She closed her eyes to the attack and when she opened them Whaley stood over her, though the dog was still on her. A blurry second and she realized: he had figured out her