Sea Hearts Read Online Free PDF

turned to the blaze of the lamp, feeling all creased and unwilling. Mam stood there too, with a boy, quite a big boy. Ambler Cartney it was, I realised as Dad carried the lamp in. Ambler was the kind of strong, handsome boy I had learned to steer well clear of if I wanted peace.
    ‘Ambler here has a bit of something for you,’ said Dad.
    I drew awkwardly up in the bed, feeling like nothing so much as a seal hauling herself into a corner of rock. I squinted at them, blocking the lamplight’s glare with one hand. ‘A bit of what ?’
    ‘It’s toffees,’ said Ambler watchfully. ‘They’re from Cordlin. They are quite old.’ He held out a package to me, wrapped in bright patterned paper, a faded gold ribbon around.
    ‘Toffees.’ I took them, and regarded them in my lap.
    ‘What do you say?’ Mam said sharply.
    I held the smooth parcel, fingered the worn ribbon. ‘I say, what are toffees for, at this time?’ Ambler stood between Mam and Dad quite straightly, leaning back and examining me as if he’d never quite seen me before — which perhaps he hadn’t, at that. ‘And from you, who’s never so much as spoken to me before?’
    ‘Oh, they’re not from me,’ said Ambler cheerfully.
    ‘They’re from his great-grandmother,’ said Dad.
    ‘Of all people,’ murmured Mam.
    ‘Who’s too infirm herself to bring them,’ finished Dad. ‘Being such a great age.’
    ‘She says to tell you,’ said Ambler, ‘that you should go about crossed.’
    ‘Crossed?’
    ‘To protect you from seal-love, she says. Theirs of you, and you of them.’
    ‘What do you mean, crossed?’
    ‘Crossed is with crosses tied on you, front and back.’ He drew a big X on his chest, and sketched one on his back with a thumb.
    ‘Tied of what?’
    He shrugged. ‘Bands, she says, crossed bands. Whatever bands are made of. Anyway, that’s what she said; I’m just telling you. She’s as old as Rollrock, Gran-Nan, and she knows an awful lot.’
    ‘I seem to have heard of this.’ Dad nodded. ‘This crossing. I’m sure I remember some old ones, men and women, who wore those crossings over their clothes.’
    ‘I’m sure I’ve never heard anything of the like,’ said Mam, her face made frightening by a shaft of lamplight. ‘What has Misskaella’s illness to do with these seals? And is everyone out there gossiping about my daughter?’ she said to Ambler. ‘And having opinions?’
    ‘Oh no,’ he said. ‘It’s only Gran-Nan has this bee in her bonnet. Dad and Mam have sent me up so’s she will stop her nagging at them, bless her. She’s worked herself right up, I tell you, full of fear and nonsense.’
    I looked at his calm bright face. How different other families were, the shape of them, the things they presumed, the children that grew up in them.
    ‘Well, I thank you,’ finally I said. ‘Go about crossed. I will remember that.’ I held onto the toffee-box, and like everything else in the room, and beyond it the house, and beyond that the town, it seemed to be part of a very odd dream. I was grateful for its hardness and heaviness, its decorative surface; I held to these in the uproaring-inaudible storm.
    ‘Grand,’ said Ambler. ‘I’ve done what I was told, then.’
    The parcel’s shine and detail disappeared as the lamp withdrew, Dad thanking Ambler all the way out and sending respectful good wishes to his grandmam.
    Mam stayed, a stiff-standing shadow above me. ‘Did you really do all this?’ she said low and venomously.
    In among all the noise, I clawed in vain for her meaning. ‘All what?’
    She threw out a hand and I flinched away, but she only meant to point towards the front lane. ‘Bring these… creatures . Have you that power?’ Yellow light slanted and swung on the hallway wall; Dad must be holding the lamp high to show Ambler his way among the seals. ‘And bring us the attention ,’ she went on, even more incensed, ‘of Doris Cartney and such old blitherers? Sending up her grandson? For