Breathing Underwater by Julia Green

‘Try it, Freya! Like a springy mattress.’
    It is. I close my eyes in the sun. My head’s full of the buzzing of honeybees, and the sweet smell of the heather flowers.
    â€˜Are they your bees, Gramps?’
    â€˜Yes,’ he says. ‘Don’t you recognise them?’
    I open my eyes. He’s grinning, teasing me.
    â€˜Of course,’ I say. ‘Those stripy vests they’re wearing. I’d know them anywhere.’
    When I sit up, Gramps and Evie are lying at an angle to each other. Evie rests her head on Gramps’ broad chest. They’re breathing deeply, rhythmically, as if they’re asleep. I wander back up to the stone, and the cairn just a bit further along the peaty path. I can see right over the island from here to Broad Sound beyond, the deep channel of water between here and Main Island. A small sailing dinghy’s tacking up the middle, leaving a faint trail on the surface of the sea. I watch it make its way up the Sound and out into the open sea till it’s just a white dot on the horizon. Sea and sky are almost the exact same blue. A faint line marks where sky meets water. The longer I look, the more they merge until it’s impossible to say which is which. It could be Joe, sailing out like that, into the blue, if things had been different. And suddenly, clear as the sound of the bees in the purple heather, I hear Joe’s voice.
    â€˜ It’s all right now. ’
    I spin round. No one’s there. I look, and strain to listen. My heart’s racing again. Wind blows through the low heather bushes. Further off, a gull squawks.
    There’s really no one there. I must have imagined it, conjured the voice up from thinking so much about him. Even so . . .
    â€˜Ready to go back, Freya?’ Evie calls from below. ‘Or you can stay a bit longer. Just keep an eye on the tide.’
    I skid down the track to join them. ‘It’s OK. I’ll come now, with you.’
    We push back down the hill through the bracken. The roots give off a sweet earthy scent where our feet bruise them.
    That voice – Joe – has unnerved me. I have the peculiar feeling of being on some edge, in danger of slipping away altogether. I need to do something – say something – just to anchor me back to earth.
    â€˜Isn’t that old well somewhere near here?’ I ask. ‘The Bronze Age one.’
    â€˜It’s much further along, nearer Beady Pool,’ Evie says. ‘We can have a look for it if you like. It’s quite difficult to find among the long grass.’
    Gramps used to tell us stories about the islanders long ago throwing gifts into the well – coins, jewellery – and making wishes. They’d wish for a ship to be sent on to the rocks, so they’d get all the pickings from the shipwreck. ‘Gruesome lot,’ Gramps would say. ‘But that’s island life for you. Needs must.’
    We haven’t been here for a long time. We find it eventually, hidden by long grass and bracken near the cliff above Beady Pool. It smells peaty and damp. The air’s cold, as if the sun never reaches it.
    â€˜Careful,’ Evie says. ‘It’s deep, you know.’
    It’s too dark to see anything. I shuffle forward and grip on to the stone lip so I can look right down.
    â€˜Please don’t,’ Evie says.
    Gramps hands me a pebble from his pocket, to chuck in so we can hear how far down it goes before it hits water. We did it before, years ago, when Joe and I were little – made wishes of our own.
    I lean over, let it drop. My head spins. I wait and wait.
    â€˜It’s dried up,’ I say.
    â€˜Or you just missed the splash,’ Evie says. ‘Come on, then.’
    She and Gramps start walking. I fish in my pocket for something else to throw in: a tiny yellow cowrie shell, a safety pin, a five-pence coin. I slip them in, and with each I make a wish.
    Let Mum and Dad be OK.
    Let me be happy