It’s a terrible fate, to be sure, but with a little luck—and a knack for sleeping during the day—a fellow could live a good many years, maybe even a whole lifetime, before he fell prey to the kiss of darkness. He’d have the chance to make some memories, at least.
Have a life. An intact family.
It’s a shame that all the boys here have been torn away from part of theirs.
My mum died not long after I was born, so I have no idea what mother-love feels like. But it still hurt to watch the mothers of the other boys standing on the dock with tear-streaked faces as our ship left the harbor, bound for a place where they couldn’t follow.
Not in the beginning, at least.
We came to the island not simply for protection from the Night Witch’s spell, but to grow from boys into men. The priests and professors both agreed that transformation would be impossible with mothers and sisters around, fussing and fretting and coddling us. Besides, women were weak, they said. They might not survive the journey, let alone the grueling task of building an isolated island outpost from the ground up.
I haven’t spent enough time around women to know if that’s true. Growing up, my father and I lived in a small cottage half hidden in the forest and kept to ourselves. It was easier to conceal our eccentric lifestyle than to explain it to the people of our village.
They would have wondered how Father could be so certain that staying awake through the night offered protection from the Night Witch’s curse. From there it could have been a short journey from curiosity to condemnation to a bonfire in the town square.
Most people don’t approve of priests working magic. Da had to be careful as he planned our escape. He only approached families who had more open-minded views on the supernatural, who were willing to violate religious and social rules in the name of protecting their heirs.
That’s another reason the girls were left behind. This migration wasn’t merely grueling, it was also expensive. Even affluent families were only willing to pay passage for the boys who would carry on the family name, not girls who would be perfectly safe at home and married off someday in any event.
When our ship left Portsmouth, bound for warm Italian seas, I was a scrap of a boy with a sunken chest and peeling lips that had never gotten anywhere near a girl’s. Now, my seventeenth birthday has come and gone, and I’ve put on weight and muscle. I’ve grown a solid pair of shoulders and stopped squeaking when I talk. I would give up a lot for a chance to look upon a girl’s face, smell the perfume in her hair, spin her round the dance floor…maybe steal a kiss or two.
Father talks about bringing girls to the island after we complete our studies and year of spiritual contemplation—we boys will need wives if we’re to make Amaria a permanent settlement—but I don’t trust that it’s more than talk.
Father’s a priest, after all. He took his holy vows after my mother died giving birth to me, and any man who can go nearly eighteen years without a kiss isn’t likely to be overly concerned with the kissing needs of others.
And even if he’s not talking out his backside, graduation is still another eighteen months away.
Another entire year and a half.
Might as well be a thousand. An eternity.
I’ll die if I have to wait until I’m nineteen to see a girl again. Or if I finally meet one and do something unforgivably rude or repulsive without knowing better until it’s too late. After years of talking to no one but each other and a handful of priests and professors, how are we supposed to know what to do in polite company?
The girls will run screaming into the ocean…
And that—cross my heart—is the exact thought running through my head as it happens.
When the wind shifts and a great white albatross with charcoal wing tips glides toward the island. When the bird soars past the invisible wards and sapphire lightning flashes on the horizon, turning the sky a blue not found in nature. There’s a popping sound like the crack of a musket and where I thought I’d seen a bird, there’s suddenly a girl in its place.
A girl, with skin whiter than marble and hair longer than my arm, wearing not a stitch of clothing.
Not. A. Stitch.
In the second that passes between her appearance and plummet into the sea, I notice the setting sun has turned her hair the purple of a bad bruise and her lips are parted in surprise.
But mostly I notice that she’s naked.
I can’t help it. I’ve never seen a girl naked. I haven’t seen many boys naked—aside from myself and my bunkmates on the ship, Francis and Neil. I didn’t go to boarding school like the rest of the boys here. I’ve never lived in a dorm and here we wear bathing clothes to swim in the ocean during the summer.