Free The Lightkeeper's Daughter by Iain Lawrence Page A

I
don’t pray very much and I don’t think of you at Christmas but
I’m frightened, God, and if you can do this I’ll believe in you
then. Please, please fix my eyes and let me look at all the wonderful things you made. I beg you for this please, God. Amen.
    February 14.
Squid seems restless. She’s surly and snappy but
I don’t know why. She threw a paintbrush at me and called me
a freak. Paint in my hair.
    She remembers that day. They were painting a fuel tank, and he kept moving the paint out of her reach, shifting the pail, leaving white rings interlocked in a line down the pad. They were talking about ravens. All that morning the birds had been soaring along the cliff, riding a wind that rose up the rock and carried them high in an instant. Wings held open, they did barrel rolls and loops.
    “They’re showing off,” said Alastair. “They’re trying to see which one’s the best.”
    “Yeah, because the best one gets the girl,” she said. “All they’re doing is mating.”
    “No, it isn’t that.” He moved the pot and dipped his brush. He squinted as he painted.
    “Sure,” she said. “They can’t conk each other on the head, so they fly around a bit.”
    She gazed at the sky. The ravens moved as fast as darts, soaring on the rising wind. “I wish I could do that,” she said. “What a waste that only birds can fly.”
    “Just paint,” he said. “Okay?”
    “Don’t you think it’s a waste, Alastair?”
    “No,” he said, with a sigh. “Now let’s get this done.”
    “But they’re just machines. Little flying machines. They don’t think about it. They just do it; they’re birds.”
    She reached for the pail, but it was gone again. Alastair was staring at her. He said, “Do you mean that?”
    “Yes, Alastair dear. They’re birds. They really are.”
    “But you said they don’t think. What do you mean they don’t think?”
    “What’s to think about if you’re a bird?” She watched him dip his brush again and spread another swath over paint that was already thick and sparkling white. The tank was painted every spring and every fall, according to Murray’s schedule. “You fly, you eat, you poop a lot.”
    “Oh no,” he said. “No. You fly up as high as you can, just to see what things look like from there. You go hurtling down and you think, I’ll loop the loop when I get to the bottom. I’ll do a roll and a spin, and I’ll do it better than anyone else. You figure out where the clams are and how to break the shells. And when the sun goes down you think about tomorrow and all the things you’ll do in the morning.”
    She laughed. “You sound like Dad.”
    “Paint!” he told her.
    “Yes,
sir
!” she said. “Forget the dumb birds.”
    “They’re not dumb,” he said. “Ravens are smart. They’ve got the same IQ as a dog.”
    “As if you would know,” she snorted.
    “I do know.” He slapped his brush against the steel. “I’ve read it in books. Lots of books.”
    “How many were written by birds?”
    “That’s stupid,” he said.
    “
You’re
stupid.” She turned to face him. “Your head’s full of all these weird ideas, and when you get off this island what’s going to happen then? Everyone’s going to think you’re a freak.”
    He turned his head as though she’d slapped him. His cheek was crimson, his pointed chin poking at his shirt.
    “And you know what?” she cried. “You already are. You’re a freak, Alastair.”
    He didn’t look up; he didn’t speak. He dabbed at the tank, and the paint dribbled down like tears.
    “You’ve never kissed a girl; you’ve never ridden in an elevator. You’ve never played a baseball game and never watched TV. And in all your life you’ve never been more than thirty miles from home.”
    He answered in a childish voice. “What you say is what you are,” he said. And she hit him with the brush.
    She threw it hard; it went spinning from her hand. It spun in a blur, the red of the handle and the white of