The night was thick enough to be tasted. Fog seeped through every chink in the Squid and Teapot’s old timbers, softening edges and dulling sound, as though the world was wearing carpet slippers. Pyralia Skant sat alone in her room, her fingers resting lightly on the green eel-skin cover of ‘The Shivering Chronicle’, the private journal of Father Ambrose Honeywell.

Strangely, the book felt old; far older than Honeywell’s scribblings. It was as though an unfathomably ancient mind, lurking in the shadows of time, had shaped the pages and rendered them older than language itself. And now, in Pyralia’s hands, the book quickened, alive and shimmering with an unmistakable aura of sentience. She instinctively knew that it did not like to be touched. That much she had learned that on the first night, when Reggie Upton had placed it into her keeping, and she felt it shudder beneath her palm. Only now did it yield to her touch, tamed and broken, like one resigned to its fate.

Pyralia listened as the inn murmured in its sleep. Floorboards shifted, bottles clinked softly in their racks, and the wind prowled the chimney like a lost soul, unsure of its welcome. Pyralia read by lamplight, though it seemed that the words themselves produced a faint phosphorescence, the muted glow of deep-sea creatures that have no apperception of the sun.

Skakka is not a god, the book insisted, but a balance. A fulcrum. That brief instant of perfection between falling and rising.

She mouthed the words as if testing their flavour. “Balance,” she murmured, “not peace. Stillness, not death, but fashioning a return to symmetry.”

Her mind wandered, as it often did, to the island itself; to its tides of madness and mischief, its casual relationship with time. Hopeless was not balanced. It was an open wound in the world. That was why it needed her.

The reduction began on the second night. She stripped the text like bark from a tree. Folklore, ritual, supplication was removed. She excoriated  all that was sentimental and unnecessary, casting the ink into a shallow bowl of saltwater, and turning it the colour of old pewter.

By the fourth night, the eel-skin binding had paled to ivory, and the writing rearranged itself when she looked away. Whole pages went blank, their meaning absorbed by whatever occupied the space behind her eyes.

Sometimes she caught her reflection in the window. Her hair was loose, her face lit by the lamp’s glow. She looked almost translucent, as if she, too, were being refined. Reduced.

“Equilibrium,” she said aloud, to the silence. “To balance the island, something must yield.”

The air thickened. The lamp guttered. For an instant she felt every heartbeat on Hopeless, every sleeping mind, every anxious spirit, every ghostly whisper. She felt them sway as one, like a pendulum hesitating at the top of its arc.

Then it passed.

At dawn, she placed the eel-skin book aside. It was no longer heavy, nor eager to speak. She had wrung its meaning dry, distilled it into a single phrase written on a sliver of vellum:

‘When the world forgets which way is forward, I shall remind it to rest’.

Outside, the fog had gone entirely still. Even the gulls had fallen silent, as though something sacred and unspeakable had paused to take breath.

Pyralia smiled – faintly, almost tenderly – and whispered to no one in particular,

“It is done.”

After that, there was nothing. The kind of nothing that makes you doubt you’ve done anything at all.

But Hopeless had its own way of answering.

In the foggy darkness, the tide receded too far, dragging the seaweed flat and leaving behind fish who blinked in mild confusion at finding themselves still alive on the dry sand. A crab scuttled in a slow circle, as if uncertain which way the world now turned.

In the marshes, the will-o’-the-wisps flickered uneasily, their usual mischief dulled. For one moment, no longer than a sigh, every light on the island, natural or otherwise, pulsed in quiet unison, as though the whole place had drawn a single deep breath and was deciding whether to release it.

In the churchyard, the weathered angel atop the oldest grave tilted her head half an inch, the first movement in two centuries. The fog, too, behaved strangely; it didn’t move so much as listen.

No one saw it. Not Pyralia, not Philomena, not even Winston Oldspot, the Night-Soil Man, who prided himself on noticing everything while others slept. But deep beneath the island, far below the wet bones and tunnels to the Underland, something ancient flexed, like a sleeper turning over, reminded briefly of its dreams.

And high above, the gulls rose screaming into a sky that had gone the colour of a bruise.

There are few sounds as unsettling as silence on the island of Hopeless, yet, on the night of our tale, it felt as if the sea had forgotten how to breathe. Pyralia Skant stood on the strand, her fingers tracing invisible sigils in the air. Each movement was a neat little erasure, like rubbing out old ink on parchment. A palimpsest in reverse, I suppose. Pyralia was, as ever, unmaking.

When the fog thickened for no discernible reason, everything about it screamed that this was not the ordinary kind of fog that shrouded Hopeless on a daily basis. This was more sinister; it had a sentience that Pyralia instinctively knew to be observing her. Seconds later, out of that fog emerged the tall, lean figure of a man who walked with a slow and deliberate grace that suggested he was in no hurry to arrive.

“Pyralia. Pyralia Skant?”

Pyralia slowly turned; her eyes narrowed. 

“You’ve undone enough, Pyralia. It’s time to call a halt,” he said. His voice was quiet but oddly resonant, and reminded her of a bell being struck underwater.

“And you, I imagine, presume to stop me?”

“No. You need to stop yourself.” 

He tilted his head slightly, studying her with something that might have been pity. 

“Don’t you remember me?”

“Skakka” she whispered to herself, tasting the syllables on her tongue as something both alien and familiar. It was an old word, reaching out from the days when the Men of the North shared secrets with the sea.

“This island aches for equilibrium,” he said. “It is my duty to answer.”

His coat brushed the shingle and his eyes caught what little light there was. For an instant Pyralia thought she saw her own reflection there. And then he was gone, leaving nothing but the faint smell of salt and the lingering feeling of judgement.

For some minutes Pyralia stood stock still, as motionless as the rocks surrounding her.

“Ah, Skakka, I remember you now. There will be battles to come, no doubt,” she muttered into the breeze. “And I, for one, have no intention of giving in without a fight.”

 Conventional wisdom tells us that it is only death and taxes that are inevitable. Hopeless, of course, turns this on its head. On the island taxes are non-existent, and death can sometimes be negotiable. What is inevitable, however, is that trusted friends will confide in each other. This is why Pyralia, for whom the concept of friendship was a novelty, told Philomena about Skakka, and Philomena later related the story to Rhys, Reggie and Tenzin. In The Squid and Teapot, news of a stranger arriving on Hopeless was unremarkable; when that stranger’s presence disturbed the usually implacable Pyralia Skant, however, something was decidedly amiss. 

Reggie Upton had rummaged in the attics of The Squid countless times, fascinated by the bric-a-brac and dusty old books that others had found superfluous to their needs. It was during a recent spate of particularly inclement weather, rendering him house-bound, that it occurred to Reggie he could be usefully employed tidying things up and conferring some degree of order to the hundreds of books scattered around. And so he set out, with military precision, to organise the various volumes into separate piles for easy reference – history, fiction, geography, alchemy etc. On the face of it, this was not a complicated, or particularly interesting task, until, a few days following news of Pyralia’s visitor, he found a handwritten tome, bound in a greenish shade of eel skin. It was a book so begrimed with dust that it seemed to be upholstered in the stuff.

Gingerly he peered inside the cover. The title page, once coaxed into view with a careful puff, read:

‘The Shivering Chronicle, Being a Record of Certain Occurrences Unsuited to the Pulpit.

Compiled by Father Ambrose Honeywell.’

Reggie turned over the page. 

‘I, Ambrose Honeywell, have undertaken what no prudent servant of Christ should: to sanctify the fog.

By candle and crucifix I gathered it, drop by ghostly drop, from the air itself, and it condensed upon the brass cross of St. Ursula, which wept steadily all through the night. I named the result Aqua Nebularis Sancta, the Sacred Cloud Water, and blessed it with trembling hands.

My intent was simple: to cast this holy distillation upon the sea, and thereby quiet whatever stirreth beneath.

I approached the tide, and into it I flung the holy water, God forgive me! The fog shuddered. Not parted, not fled, but recoiled like a living thing. The drops struck the waves and hissed. Then a shape arose, vast and thin, its face divided cleanly down the middle. One side was weeping, the other smiling.

“Balance,” it said, though no sound was made. “Balance and unbalance. I am both these things, priest. I am Skakka.”

I remember little after that, save the taste of salt and dust in equal measure, and a sense that something within me now is forever drawn toward the sea, as a needle is to the lodestone.’

Reggie, who had long since lost any sensible sense of caution, carried the book downstairs. As he descended, the lamps in the stairwell flared briefly, casting twin shadows of him, one to each side, as though the house couldn’t quite decide where he belonged.

In the snuggery Pyralia Skant had been deep in thought. This had been rudely interrupted by an angry bluebottle, which Pyralia quietly proceeded to unmake.

Reggie, barely able to conceal his excitement, burst into the room and placed the book on the table before her.   

“I found this upstairs,” he said. “It crossed my mind that you might appreciate a spot of bedtime blasphemy.”

Pyralia brushed the cover clean with a fingertip; the air quivered. “Ah,” she said softly. “Honeywell. He was one of the few who nearly understood.”

Reggie raised an eyebrow. “Understood what?”

“That balance is not necessarily peace,” she murmured, eyes unfocused. “It is tension held politely.”

The room grew still. Even Drury, snoozing by the hearth, ceased rattling his vertebrae.

Pyralia turned a page and stopped. The illustration showed a tall, spectral figure bestriding the surf. One half of him was dark, the other luminous, and a set of scales dangled where a heart ought to be.

“Skakka,” she whispered, her voice reverent and wary at once. “So many years have passed. I had almost forgotten him.”

Reggie looked puzzled.

“You’ve encountered this Skakka chap before?”

Pyralia smiled, almost wistfully.

“Oh yes… aeons ago, when Atlantis disappeared beneath the waves. He interferes when the world lists too far.”

Reggie peered at the page. 

“Well, if this is the blighter, he looks more like an accusation of guilt, if you ask me.”

Pyralia smiled thinly. “That’s precisely what he is.”

Then, as if to punctuate the moment, a bell sounded outside. It was not from the church, but from somewhere deep within the fog. Three notes only, uncertain in their harmony, as if testing which world they belonged to.

Pyralia closed the book. “And he’s back,” she said. 

To be continued…

---

Authors note:  According to the Cleasby & Vigfusson Old Norse to English dictionary, skakka means “to balance” and is used in phrases like skakka með e-m or skakka milli þeirra, which translate to “to interfere between fighters” or “to interfere between two combatants so as to decide the matter.” This suggests a sense of mediating or bringing equilibrium between opposing forces.

It was a morning of suspicious tranquillity.

The sky hung pale and featureless over the island of Hopeless. It was a sky so bland that it looked almost embarrassed to exist. The wind didn’t moan. The sea didn’t belch up relics. The fog was abnormally thin, as most of it had elected to stay politely offshore, like a guest who knew better than to arrive early.

Philomena Bucket stared through the kitchen window of The Squid and Teapot, teacup in hand.

“Something’s not right,” she murmured.

Reggie Upton stroked his moustache and regarded the day with suspicion.

“This is dashed rum,” he muttered.

“It’s actually nettle tea,” replied Philomena in slightly hurt tones.

“No, m’dear,” explained Reggie. “I meant the day… there’s something dashed rum about the way it is not doing anything. It brings to mind a particularly sticky incident in Poona, back in ninety-three…

Unfortunately, before Reggie had the chance to regale Philomena with some possibly risqué reminiscence of the Raj, Granny Bucket appeared. She seemed slightly more transparent than usual.

“Child,” she said gravely, “I sense a disturbance in the island’s… um… lack of disturbance.”

“My thoughts exactly,” agreed Reggie, who had long since become used to Granny’s unannounced manifestations. 

Before anyone could theorise further, Pyralia Skant wandered into the inn, looking unaccountably smug, which, in fairness, was not particularly unusual, though today she wore the look of someone who had just put a recalcitrant universe in order and was rather pleased about it.

“Ah,” she said, stretching as if emerging from a long nap. “You noticed.”

“Noticed what, exactly?” asked Granny, with spectral hands on hips. “That the island appears to have taken leave of its senses?”

“Oh no,” said Pyralia. “Quite the opposite. I’ve simply paused things. A little housecleaning, you might say.”

Philomena blinked. “You’ve done what?”

“I have temporarily unmade the chaos.” Pyralia smiled serenely. “I thought you could use a day off. No hauntings – present company excepted of course.” She gave Granny a withering look.

“There will be no unexpected horrors, no peculiar seafood incidents. Just one spotless, uneventful day.”

Reggie looked alarmed. “But… won’t the island notice?”

“It’s trying not to,” said Pyralia. “I told it to take deep breaths and count to infinity.”

Outside, Septimus Washwell caught a fish with the proper number of eyes. Mrs Beaten posted a ‘Polite Notice’ on her front door that remained obediently affixed. Even Drury, usually incapable of restraint, was playing fetch with an honest-to-goodness stick instead of a misplaced femur.

The islanders, however, were not at ease. Reverend Davies distributed pamphlets entitled ‘Is Calm the New Sin?’ Neville Moore was seen outside his mausoleum-like cottage at Ghastly Green, shaking his head in wonder at the unnaturally placid behaviour of his pet raven, Lenore, and Doc Willoughby briefly considered patenting boredom as a curative tonic.

By late afternoon, Hopeless had grown fretful. The fog arrived on time but declined to whisper. The spoons stayed unmolested in the cutlery drawer. Somewhere, a whistling kettle boiled without shattering the windows. 

Philomena turned to Pyralia. “This feels unnatural.”

“My dear,” said Pyralia, “natural is a matter of habit. You’ve simply become accustomed to calamity.”

“Perhaps,” said Philomena, “but we like a certain amount of calamity. It gives the place character.”

“Character,” said Pyralia with a sigh, “is no more than a euphemism for mess.” She snapped her fingers, and time itself gave a small, weary hiccup. “Very well. Tomorrow, you may have your bedlam back.”

Granny Bucket gave a cynical cackle.

“Of course they can have the usual chaos back tomorrow,” she said. “The truth is that you can’t control it for any more than a day, can you? You’re arm-wrestling with an island, girl, and you’re not going to win.”

For the briefest of moments Pyralia looked sheepish, then, composing herself said,

“Of course I can control it. I’m just not choosing to. These things have to be done a little at a time.”

And so the island of Hopeless passed the remainder of the evening in oppressive serenity. In The Squid and Teapot the fire crackled politely. The ghosts haunting the flushing privy were silent. Nothing screamed, hatched, or cursed anyone by name.

When morning came, of course, Hopeless had returned to normal. The fog returned with a vengeance, spoonwalkers scuttled along on pilfered cutlery and Mirielle D’Illay made rude remarks about Reggie Upton in particular and the English in general. 

Pyralia, standing in the gathering fog, smiled to herself.

“Yes, Granny Bucket was absolutely right,” she said to Drury, confident that he could keep a confidence, and that Philomena’s ghostly ancestor was nowhere within earshot. “I can’t control the island… not yet at any rate. But I’m getting there.”

With that, she looked down at her latest choice of workwear. The stiletto heels and white lab coat had now been discarded in favour of garments more in keeping with the environment.

“But getting there in wellington boots was never part of the plan,” she said, miserably.

The fog lay upon Hopeless that morning like a particularly damp quilt, muffling the cries of gulls and whatever else had been bothered to wake up. It was in this soupy gloom that Pyralia Skant strode down the lane, her sensible boots squelching with a sound that was only slightly resentful. She had never imagined herself to be the sort of woman who wore wellingtons.

Despite this, since Philomena Bucket had suggested that her attempt to “unmake” the island might require a change of wardrobe, Pyralia had discovered, to her own private alarm, that she quite  enjoyed it. The boots were just the beginning. A cardigan had followed, then a long velvet coat. There had even been a certain amount of twirling.

She’d told herself it was no more than symbolic dressing, a subtle ruse to fool the island into allowing itself to be changed, but Drury the skeletal hound, who had the unerring nose of a gossip columnist, knew better.

Reggie Upton, meanwhile, had recently developed the peculiar habit of appearing wherever Pyralia happened to be. A moustache of distinction and a sense of gallantry were poor disguises for his fondness, but he maintained them with military precision. He told himself he was merely “keeping an eye on developments.” Philomena, watching from The Squid and Teapot, translated this as Reggie being somewhat smitten, the poor fool.

It was on one such evening that Pyralia emerged in a newly acquired hat. As hats go, it was certainly impressive, being wide-brimmed, black, and decidedly brooding, causing Reggie to very nearly walk into a lamppost.

“Dashed fine-looking woman,” he muttered into his moustache, with all the subtlety of a cannonball.

Pyralia arched an eyebrow. “Reggie?”

“Pyralia,” he replied gallantly. “Splendid hat. Very, ah… authoritative.”

“It’s a hat,” she said, though she didn’t quite manage to sound disapproving.

The fog, opportunistic creature that it was, chose that precise moment to shiver with sound. A thin, wavering melody drifted from the harbour. It resembled a waltz played badly by something that remembered music rather than knew it.

Reggie stiffened. “Good lord. Is someone strangling a walrus?”

Pyralia tilted her head, listening. “No. That’s the accordion.”

The accordion had arrived on the island a fortnight earlier, in the wreck of an otherwise empty lifeboat that had washed up on the rocks. Nobody had claimed it. Nobody had played it. Nobody, in their right mind, would have kept it around. Hopeless, however, being not especially crowded with right minds, had decided to let it sit near the harbour.

At night it wept. At first softly, then insistently. Always in waltz time.

Philomena claimed it was unnerving the regulars. Drury had tried barking at it, but skeletal hounds carry limited authority with musical instruments.

Reggie straightened his lapels. “We can’t just leave a lady in distress…”

“It’s an accordion, Reggie.”

“Well, yes, but a crying one. Dashed unsporting not to investigate.”

Pyralia, despite herself, felt a flicker of intrigue. It was precisely the kind of nonsense the island liked to drop in one’s path. 

“Fine,” she said. “But if it tries anything, I’m banishing it to a peat bog.”

“Splendid,” said Reggie, who rather liked the idea of facing danger beside a woman in such an impressive hat.

The lifeboat had seen better days. It was slick with seaweed and glistened in the moonlight. The accordion sat on one of the remaining seats like a sulky oracle, its mother-of-pearl keys glinting faintly. Without being touched, it gave a low, mournful sigh and began to play a waltz: slow, deliberate, heartbreakingly polite.

Reggie approached it like a man who once fought tigers and was now trying very hard not to admit to being unnerved by a squeezebox.

“That,” he whispered, “is most irregular.”

“And this,” Pyralia replied, “is Hopeless.”

They crouched beside the thing. Pyralia rapped the casing lightly. The accordion let out something between a sob and an harrumph. A folded scrap of paper peeked out from a seam in its frame.

She plucked it free, sniffed it (she always did that), and read aloud:

“Dance with me or I will never stop.”

Reggie paled slightly. “You don’t suppose…?”

“I very much do.”

Moments later, to his mingled horror and delight, Reggie Upton found himself waltzing beneath a foggy moon with Pyralia Skant. She moved with unexpected grace; the accordion hummed along as though sighing in relief. The melody filled the harbour, wrapping itself around them like ghosts in a haunted ballroom.

When they stopped, the music stilled too. For the first time since it had been found, the accordion lay quiet.

Reggie cleared his throat.

“Well then,” he wondered aloud, “whose ghost have we just danced with?”

Pyralia examined the parchment again. Ink bled through the page, newly revealed in the moonlight:

“You remembered the steps. I can rest now.

L . Argilière,   Accordionist of the Moulin Rouge, Paris.”

“Argilière?”  Reggie blinked. “Didn’t one of Les Demoiselles mention that a chap called Argillière had disappeared when their ship floundered on the rocks?”

“The very same,” Pyralia said.

The accordion gave one last tremulous breath. A wisp of light rose from its keys, courteous and a little tragic, and drifted upward into the fog. The night fell still.

Reggie smoothed his moustache, as if arranging his composure along with his hair. 

“Dashed romantic, really,” he said.

Pyralia adjusted her hat with the cool precision of a woman aware she has just exorcised a ghost by means of interpretive dance. “I suppose it is.”

Reggie hesitated. “You, ah… you wouldn’t say no to another waltz sometime?”

She glanced at him, the faintest smile flickering beneath the brim of her hat.

“Only if it involves practical footwear,” she said.

“I do believe that I’ve got a pair of co-respondent shoes lurking somewhere in the bottom of my travelling trunk,” replied Reggie, with a twinkle in his eye. 

“Why am I not surprised?” said Pyralia, dryly. “Of course you have.”

And somewhere in the distance, faint as the echo of applause long past, the accordion gave one last contented hiccup.

It was a blustery morning on Hopeless, the sort of day when even the fog seemed to be having second thoughts about hanging around. It wasn’t the wind, however, that rattled the windows of The Squid and Teapot; it was Pyralia Skant throwing open the inn’s heavy front door in what can only be described as a theatrical manner. She was returning from her morning inspection of the island, which mainly entailed checking to see if Screaming Point had decided to move away from under the lighthouse which, until recently, she had called home. As always, Pyralia’s familiar white lab coat flapped around her calves like an impatient flag, and her stilettos made a sound not unlike that made by a petulant woodpecker as she crossed the floorboards.

Philomena Bucket, behind the bar, raised a polite eyebrow. She had long since grown used to the curious wardrobe choices of her fellow islanders, but there are limits to what even the most hospitable woman can watch without comment.

“Pyralia,” she said, with the gentle firmness one reserves for people about to do something inadvisable with a ferret and a pair of trousers. “Why do you always wear that lab coat?”

Pyralia blinked, slightly taken aback, as though being asked why she continued breathing. “Because,” she said, in her clipped, methodical way, “I am a scientist. One must always look the part.”

Philomena’s gaze slid downwards to the black patent stilettos, which were utterly inappropriate for the island’s terrain. 

“You do know,” she began in that mild, lethal tone familiar to anyone who’s ever crossed Philomena Bucket, “that you are the only person in living or dead memory who wears stiletto heels on Hopeless?”

Pyralia straightened, as if preparing to defend the honour of the entire footwear industry. “I like stilettos,” she declared. “They are elegant. They say, ‘I am a woman of precision and pointy things.’”

Drury the skeletal hound, lying under a table, gave a small clack of bone against the floorboards that could have been a canine chuckle.

Philomena leaned on the counter, the way wise women do when preparing to drop a conversational anvil. “Well, my dear, if you truly intend to unmake Hopeless,” she made a vague gesture at the ceiling, as if Hopeless might be listening in, “then perhaps you might start by changing your own style.”

“Style?” Pyralia repeated, as though it were an obscure form of quantum physics.

“It’s like this,” said Philomena, with the particular relish of a woman about to deliver devastating common sense, “you can’t possibly expect Hopeless to take orders from someone wearing spiky shoes. I long ago discovered that the island responds to symbolic magic. Fog respects boots. Mud respects wellies. Screaming Point fears only the quiet tread of knitted wool. If you want to change the outside, then sometimes the inside – or at least the wardrobe – must shift too.”

Pyralia frowned. “I don’t do symbolic magic. I do experiments.”

Philomena gave her a knowing smile. “And yet you have worked wonders in improving The Squid’s dinner menu without making any apparent effort. That’s magical enough for me.”

This, Pyralia had to admit, was difficult to argue with.

The following day, the regulars of The Squid and Teapot bore silent, reverent witness to a vision none would ever forget.

Pyralia Skant, architect of reality’s unraveling, was wearing a chunky wool cardigan the colour of overcooked peas, and a pair of practical rubber wellington boots. Her lab coat, however, remained. It hung defiantly open at the front, daring anyone to question its authority. 

She clomped determinedly through the mud, every step squelching with the tragic dignity of a woman betrayed by her footwear.

“Very good,” Philomena called approvingly from the steps. “The island likes a bit of sincerity. You’ll have it eating out of your hand in no time.”

Drury, trotting happily beside Pyralia, gave a small wag of his tailbone.

“I feel ridiculous,” Pyralia muttered.

“That’s how you know it’s working,” Philomena replied.

And, as if to prove her point, a patch of the omnipresent fog shuddered slightly. It was just the smallest of ripples, as though the island itself was having a think.

Later that evening, Pyralia came back inside with her boots covered in sludge. She was wearing a faintly triumphant expression. “Something has moved,” she announced.

Philomena smiled serenely and poured her a cup of tea. “I told you so. Never underestimate the power of sensible shoes.”

And so, the atemporal Pyralia Skant, scientist, reality-tinkerer, enthusiast of both lab coats and stilettos, had learned a valuable lesson: sometimes, in order to change the world, you must first change yourself.

Drury, for his part, approved heartily of the new look. The boots were far easier to chew.

The snuggery of The Squid and Teapot was hushed, save for the faint crackle of the hearth. The hour was late, the kind of late where even the fog seemed to have given up making any sort of effort. Upstairs, Caitlin and Oswald slept the untroubled sleep of children who had not yet learned to be afraid of the island. Drury sprawled bonily in the corner, one leg twitching now and then as if in a dream of spoonwalkers desperate to be pursued.

Philomena poured a little more hot water into the teapot and glanced at her companion. Pyralia Skant sat motionless, eyes fixed on the fire as though the flames were telling her something secret. She had been like that for a long time. Too long, Philomena thought, for anyone entirely ordinary.

“You never seem to get tired,” Philomena said softly, easing herself into the chair opposite.

Pyralia gave a small smile. “That is because I do not belong to time in quite the way you do.”

Philomena frowned. “That sounds pretty much like immortality to me.”

“Immortality is the wrong word,” Pyralia said, shaking her head. “Immortality is endless living. What I have is different. I am not preserved against decay like a relic, nor worn away by the passing years, as you are. Think of time as a river. I stand apart from the current, and step in and out as I choose.”

“So why did you choose to come to Hopeless?”

Pyralia’s gaze sharpened. “Who said that coming here was a matter of choice? If you’re asking me why I’m on the island, it’s because it was made wrong. It’s twisted and knotted up upon itself. The fog, the nightmare creatures, the shifting coastlines… none of it is natural. It is a wound that keeps refusing to close.”

At last, unable to keep her thoughts to herself, Philomena said quietly:

“And that’s what you meant by unmaking the island.”

Pyralia’s lips curved into a faint smile, not unkind, but heavy with knowledge. “Ah. So you have guessed.”

“You as good as told me the other night,” said Philomena. “This place, it eats away at people. I know that, and I don’t deny that it’s wrong. Yes, the island is as twisted as a corkscrew. But if you unmake Hopeless, what happens to those bound to it? The ghosts? The shades? The poor old restless souls? And Drury…” she lowered her voice, though the dog’s skull was cocked as if listening. “What happens to him?”

For the first time, Pyralia turned from the fire to look at her. In the lamplight she seemed both impossibly old and strangely young, as though age could not pin her down.

“You think me cruel,” she said softly. “But what I do is not destruction. It is unpicking. A gradual loosening of knots that should never have been tied. Hopeless was never meant to bear so much misery, so much sorrow. It is a scar upon the fabric of the world.”

“Don’t you see, that scar is a part of us?”  Philomena insisted. “You wouldn’t pull the stitches out of a healed wound, in case the blood started flowing again.”

Pyralia tilted her head, considering. “True enough. But Hopeless is like a splinter that has been left too long, and has festered. One day the whole body will sicken.”

Philomena’s hands tightened on her teacup. “And the ghosts? Where do they go, if you unmake the island that holds them?”

Pyralia’s expression softened. “Don’t fear for the ghosts. They are only here because the island has managed to tangle life and death together. Unpicked, they will not vanish in pain. They will be free to move on to where they were meant to go.”

Philomena glanced at Drury, who appeared to stir at the sound of his name not being mentioned. “And him?”

Pyralia’s smile deepened, sad but fond. “Ah, Drury. He is different. A creature of the island, yes, but also stubbornly his own. I cannot unmake loyalty, or the mischief that has worn itself into a kind of love. If the day comes, he will endure it, just as you will.”

Philomena said nothing for a while. She listened to the fire crackle, to Drury’s clattering bones as he rolled onto his back. She felt the cold press of the fog against the windowpanes.

At last she sighed. “You speak as though you have forever.”

“I do,” Pyralia replied, with a tone that was neither boast nor lament, but simple fact. “Or at least, enough of forever to wait, and watch, and loosen the stitches one by one.”

Philomena gave a little shiver. “And what am I in all this?”

“You,” said Pyralia, rising from her seat, “are proof that the island does not have the last word. You and your children. Even Drury.” She laid a hand briefly on Philomena’s shoulder. “Do not mistake unmaking for ending. It is not the same. The ghosts will have peace. The living will have light. And Hopeless will remember it was once whole.”

Roger the rooster crowed outside in his sleep, a muffled, oddly reassuring sound.

Philomena gazed into the flames, turning Pyralia’s words over in her mind. Were they a promise? A threat? Or simply the sort of riddle that comes from someone who stands outside of time?

Pyralia had returned her gaze to the hearth, face unreadable. The light flickered across her features, too ancient and too young all at once.

Philomena sipped her tea, though it had long since gone cold. She thought of the children upstairs, of Drury’s rattling loyalty, of the restless dead who still clung to the island’s shores. Would Pyralia’s “unmaking” free them, or undo them altogether?

The fire popped sharply, sending up a shower of sparks dancing up the chimney. For a heartbeat, Philomena had the unnerving impression that the island itself had pricked up its ears and was listening.

She drew her shawl tighter and whispered to herself, “and what if Hopeless refuses to be unmade?”

If Pyralia heard, she gave no sign. But somewhere out in the fog, something shifted and sighed, as though the island was quietly taking  note.

A week had passed since the rooster and his adoring harem of hens had arrived on Hopeless. Pyralia Skant had hinted that this small flock of domesticated fowl might be special, though so far they had behaved in exactly the way one might expect of chickens. They scratched at the earth, indulged in petty squabbles, and deposited the occasional egg in some inaccessible corner.

As for the rooster, he spent his days strutting importantly around the yard, occasionally attempting a rough sort of romance upon his companions. When five-year-old Caitlin overheard an off-colour remark from Reggie Upton upon this very subject, she reached the not-unreasonable conclusion that the rooster’s name must be Roger. And so Roger he became.

It was just past midnight when Roger crowed. Not the cheery herald of dawn, but a deep, rasping sound that seemed to rattle the shutters of The Squid and Teapot.

Philomena sat bolt upright in bed. From childhood she had learned that roosters do not crow in the middle of the night without good reason. She hurried into the passage and met Tenzin coming from the children’s room, Oswald half-asleep in his arms, Caitlin wide awake and grinning.

“Roger says it means something is coming,” Caitlin whispered, as though reporting on a secret pact between herself and the bird.

By morning the story had already run the length of the island: the cock had crowed at midnight. According to long-established pub-lore (which, in truth, had been invented on the spur of the moment), this foretold the arrival of a stranger.

And so it proved. Just before noon, a boat appeared out of the fog. Its single occupant was a gaunt woman in a tattered dress, her eyes sharp as fish-hooks. She claimed to have been blown off course, though no one believed it. No one ever “just arrived” at Hopeless.

The rooster met her on the quay. He crowed once, then strutted in circles around her, feathers bristling, eyes glittering with something far older than any barnyard fowl ought to possess. The woman hissed like a cat and backed away, muttering in a language that tasted of salt and brine.

“That’s no fisherwoman,” Pyralia said grimly, suddenly at Philomena’s shoulder. “The rooster knows her. She’s one of the Sluagh, the Soul Hunters. She is looking for shelter, and as many souls as she can carry.”

Philomena’s blood ran cold. She had heard of the Sluagh, but always believed they were no more than tales to keep unruly children in order. 

As Roger advanced once more, the woman shrieked and flung herself back into the sea, vanishing into the fog with scarcely a ripple. Roger crowed again, this time with a note of triumph.

By supper, the tale had already grown. Some swore he had spat fire; others claimed his hens rose in a glowing circle to drive the intruder away. Whatever the details, all agreed on one thing: Roger had saved them.

Even Drury, usually disdainful, gave a grudging clack of bone and sniffed about the bird in what might almost have been respect.

That night, long after the children were asleep, Philomena sat by the fire with Pyralia, while Roger perched outside on the windowsill, silhouetted against the misty moon.

“You knew, didn’t you?” Philomena said quietly.

Pyralia didn’t answer at once. She was watching Roger with a look half-respect, half-apprehension. At length she said, “Of course… and young Caitlin knew what she was asking for when she wanted a rooster. Guardian spirits take odd shapes. He may strut and crow like any common cock, but he is no barnyard bird. Not anymore.”

Roger hopped from the sill, ruffled his feathers, and with a low, satisfied cluck, tucked his head beneath a wing. His hens gathered close, shifting in their sleep with the faint rustle of silk.

Philomena shivered, though the fire was warm. She remembered Pyralia’s vow to change the island and begin what she called ‘The Unmaking’. And she wondered whether Hopeless itself had just accepted its new sentinel.

The following morning, Philomena was jolted awake not by Roger’s crowing, but by a furious commotion in the yard. She threw on her shawl and hurried outside.

There was Drury, clattering and snapping in high dudgeon, trying to herd Roger away from the inn door. The rooster, feathers puffed to twice his size, strutted defiantly, his hens massed behind him like a feathery chorus of supporters.

“Honestly,” Philomena muttered, rubbing her eyes.

Drury gave a contemptuous clack of his jawbones, as if to say Guardian spirit was my job first. Roger answered with a triumphant crow that echoed off the cliffs.

Caitlin, peering from the doorway, clapped her hands in delight. “Ooh, they’re having a competition! Shall we keep score?”

“Absolutely not,” said Philomena, although she suspected that, one way or another, the island itself would.

By breakfast, peace had been restored, after a fashion. Roger perched proudly on the taproom sill, while Drury sprawled sulkily by the hearth. Neither would admit defeat, but both kept a wary eye on the other.

“Two guardians,” Tenzin said cheerfully, pouring porridge. “On Hopeless, one can never be too careful.”

Roger crowed his agreement. Drury responded with a bone-rattling sneeze. And so the uneasy alliance began.

Although not often mentioned in these tales, you will doubtless remember Tenzin, the young Buddhist monk who left Tibet beneath a yeti’s armpit and emerged on Hopeless through one of Mr. Squash’s mysterious portals. Since settling at The Squid and Teapot he had been unfailingly eager to help with any task that needed doing. Unfortunately, years of chanting, meditating, and spinning prayer wheels had left him supremely unqualified for the daily business of running even so eccentric an inn as one on Hopeless.

Philomena, recognising this, decided he would be better employed looking after her adopted children, Caitlin and little Oswald. His English was excellent and, after all, he was scarcely out of childhood himself. Apart from the chanting and wheel-twirling, he must surely have some idea of what youngsters required.

Tenzin warmed quickly to his new post, keeping the children happily occupied by day. At night, when they were tucked into bed, he came into his own. Drawing on a treasury of Tibetan folktales, he aimed to send them into sleep filled with magical dreams. That was the theory, at least.

Philomena, who had always enjoyed a good story, sometimes lingered outside their door to eavesdrop.

“Once upon a time,” Tenzin began one evening, “high in the mountains there lived a kind young girl named Langa Langchung. She had a father and sisters, but one dreadful night a hungry demon came prowling. It devoured them all in a single gulp, and only Langa escaped, weeping into the cold dark.”

“That’s what happened to Primrose Nibley’s daddy,” said Caitlin, matter-of-factly. Philomena shook her head sadly; life on Hopeless was often as terrifying as any fairy story.

“Alone and frightened,” Tenzin continued, “she wandered into the forest. But she was not without friends. A faithful dog came and licked away her tears.”

“Like Drury?” asked Oswald.

“Um… sort of,” said Tenzin diplomatically. The children had never seen a living dog, and although Drury did his best, licking away tears was not among his accomplishments.

“Even the wild birds whispered, ‘We will help you,’” he went on. “And then, from nowhere, a rooster crowed and perched upon her shoulder.”

“What’s a rooster?” asked Caitlin.

“It’s a large, colourful bird,” Tenzin explained. “Bigger than a raven and as fierce as… as Granny Bucket’s ghost when she’s on the warpath.”

Philomena smiled in the shadows.

“The demon was not finished,” Tenzin said. “It wanted Langa too. But each time it chased her, the rooster flapped and crowed so loudly that the spirits of the mountains awoke. The dog barked at its heels, the birds swooped and pecked, until at last the monster stumbled into a ravine and was swallowed by the earth itself.

Safe again, Langa returned home with her animal friends. The rooster, who had crowed bravely through every danger, became her guardian spirit. To this day, the people of the valley say that roosters crow at dawn to chase away darkness and monsters, and to remind us that light always returns. So the girl, the dog, and the rooster lived together in peace, unafraid of the night.”

“We’ve already got a dog,” Caitlin said, counting on her fingers. “And there are lots of birds. Can we have a rooster too, Tenzin? He could be our guardian spirit.”

“Oh, please,” said Oswald, who had already forgotten what a rooster was, but it sounded promising.

Tenzin hesitated. Even if one could get a rooster onto Hopeless, which seemed doubtful, the chances of him surviving for any length of time would be slim, whether he had Granny Bucket’s spirit or no. Tenzin fell back on the ancient refuge of grown-ups everywhere.

“We’ll see.”

—

The next morning Philomena and Pyralia Skant were revising The Squid and Teapot’s menu. Pyralia, since taking up residence, had steadily improved the bill of fare, introducing delicacies from who-knew-where. No one asked too closely.

“What are the chances of us having a rooster?” Philomena suddenly asked.

“To eat?” Pyralia looked appalled. “That’s not really my line…”

“No, no,” Philomena interrupted. “The children would like one as a pet.”

“A pet rooster?” Pyralia frowned. “Unusual. But… yes, I suppose so.”

“Caitlin thinks it could be a guardian spirit,” Philomena laughed.

Pyralia stiffened, eyes suddenly bright. “Why yes. That would work. But you won’t eat him, will you?” she asked sharply.

“Of course not!” Philomena protested.

“Or his wives?”

“Wives?”

“You may take a few eggs, but to eat the hens themselves would be most unfortunate.”

“You mean chickens? Here? How on earth would we keep them safe?” Philomena asked.

“They’ll be safe,” Pyralia said simply. And by her tone, Philomena knew it was true.

—

A few mornings later the island awoke to a sound almost no one had heard before: the insistent crowing of a rooster.

“It’s our guardian spirit!” Caitlin cried, delighted.

“Yes,” said Philomena, watching the proud bird strut with his little harem behind him. “And I think we may even have boiled eggs for breakfast.”

Pyralia Skant’s decision to take up residency at the Squid and Teapot had not gone unnoticed. Everyone on Hopeless was aware that the infamous area of headland, commonly known as Screaming Point, had migrated to the lighthouse peninsula, so it came as no surprise that the mysterious Doctor Skant would need somewhere slightly more peaceful to rest her head. To many her presence on the island still raised eyebrows. The familiar sight of her white lab coat and stiletto heels never ceased to be a novelty, but somehow now, by staying at the inn, she had become public property. By the second evening, half the regulars had sidled into the snug to get a good look at her. The other half pretended not to.

Norbert Gannicox, self-styled scholar of Hopeless oddities, leaned across the table and whispered to Bartholomew Middlestreet,

“She looks a bit stormy, don’t you think? As if she’s about to summon thunderclouds.”

Bartholomew nodded solemnly. “It’s probably best not to mention the lighthouse,” he said in hushed tones. “She’s touchy. Someone said ‘lantern’ earlier and she nearly brained them with a tankard.”

At the next table, Mirielle D’Illay gave a Gallic shrug and sniffed loudly.

“Mon dieu, imagine abandoning a perfectly good lighthouse. In France we stick to our homes. We’d stay if they were on fire, flooded, or even full of mad screaming Englishmen.”

Her long suffering, though devoted, husband, Septimus Washwell, looked up from his pint of Old Colonel and grinned mischievously. “We could always swap with her, Mirielle. She’d probably be delighted to live in the Dance Studio.”

Mirielle made a sound like a deflating accordion and was suddenly engrossed in studying the menu. It had certainly improved lately. Not French cuisine of course, but better than wall-to-wall Starry Grabby Pie.

Philomena, meanwhile, was quietly pleased to have Pyralia living in the inn. There was something admirable in the woman’s brisk refusal to be cowed by a geological tantrum.

“You’ll do,” Philomena had said over breakfast. “You don’t flinch at screaming cliffs, and besides, for the first time in living memory The Squid and Teapot has cottage pie, broccoli bake, rice pudding and rhubarb crumble on the menu.”

“Comfort food,” Pyralia smiled. “And if anywhere needs a bit more in the way of comfort, Hopeless certainly does. Rhys might even get to trust me, who knows? They say that the way to a man’s heart, and all that…”

“I’m sure he trusts you,” said Philomena, crossing her fingers under the table. Rhys had been reticent about Pyralia delivering all this bounty from goodness knows where. 

“You know the legends…” he had said to her. 

Rhys didn’t need to finish his sentence. Throughout her childhood Philomena had heard the tales of mortals being ensnared by eating Faerie food.

“She’s not Faerie,” said Philomena defensively. “Believe me, I’d have known in a minute.”

“Then what is she?” asked Rhys, “for sure as eggs are eggs, she’s not mortal.”

“I don’t know,” Philomena admitted, “but we should be thankful. For the first time since the arrival of the founding families, Hopeless is eating well. And it’s down to Pyralia… and I like her.”

Drury seemed to agree; he had developed the habit of lurking outside her door and dropping the odd morsel of flotsam or jetsam in greeting. Pyralia, unused to such devotion, began assembling the gifts in a neat row along her windowsill.

As time passed, the novelty of Pyralia’s presence wore off. She was folded into the inn’s routine: taking her evening absinthe in the snug, giving brusque advice to anyone fool enough to ask it, and occasionally marching down to Screaming  Point to shout obscenities at it.

“It’s like having a houseguest who’s brought her own thunderstorm,” Reggie Upton remarked, smoothing down his moustache. “But she dashed well gingers the place up, I must say.”

Over the previous hundred years or so, The Squid and Teapot had seen stranger boarders: men who never took their hats off, women who spoke only in riddles, sailors who dissolved entirely into brine after a fortnight. Pyralia Skant, in comparison, was reassuringly human. Or at least, she appeared to be. 

And so Screaming Point lost its best tenant, and the Squid and Teapot gained one more eccentric regular.

The inn itself seemed rather pleased about this. Its rafters creaked more warmly, the beer kept its head a little longer, and even the cutlery (though somewhat depleted, thanks to spoonwalkers) could be said to clink together with a certain degree of satisfaction.

The Squid and Teapot had taken Doctor Skant to its heart.

Screaming Point has always been one of Hopeless’s more trying (not to say bloody annoying) features. Most aspects of the island offer a vague sort of comfort, or at least predictability. You can always rely on the tar pits bubbling on schedule, spoonwalkers pilfering cutlery with a sort of professional courtesy, and even the odd poltergeist only occasionally rearranging one’s furniture. Screaming Point, however, is an entirely different sort of nuisance.

It doesn’t just scream, though that is bad enough, being a sound somewhere between a banshee giving birth and a foghorn with indigestion, but it has the irritating habit of wandering about. One can almost believe that the headland entertains ideas above its station, lifting up its skirts of shingle and trudging about the island as if looking for better company.

Doctor Pyralia Skant awoke one raw morning to discover that her lighthouse, her pride, her magical workshop, her fortress, and when she remembered to light the lamp, her beacon, now stood atop of Screaming Point, and the screaming began at dawn. It was like being shaken awake by a sackful of dying bagpipes.

“Really,” Pyralia muttered, stuffing two cloves of pickled garlic into her ears (the only remedy she’d discovered thus far, though it left her smelling like an angry delicatessen). “This will not do.”

She staggered out onto the gallery and glared down at the land itself, which gave a particularly smug wail in reply. The shingles shuddered with self-satisfaction.

The problem was not just the noise. When Screaming Point shifted, it dragged all manner of geographical features with it. The once-reliable horizon now appeared to dip sideways. The sea, never the politest neighbour, slopped in odd directions. A family of limpets had come unmoored from their rock and were shuffling about indignantly in a tin bucket by her door.

After three sleepless nights, and hurling no fewer than fourteen items of kitchenware at the cliff with no discernible effect, Pyralia gave up. She stuffed her belongings into a trunk, locked the lighthouse door, and marched along to the Squid and Teapot.

At the inn, Rhys Cranham was trying to convince Drury, the skeletal hound, that sleeping on the cellar steps while barrels were being shifted was not a good idea. One can only conclude that Rhys was not well enough to attend school on the day  that the proverb containing the words  ‘Old Dogs’ and ‘New Tricks’ was taught.

Philomena Bucket looked up from her morning cup of nettle tea to see an harassed looking Pyralia Skant come clattering in. Her white lab coat was flapping angrily around her calves, and she trailed an embarrassing twist of bladder-wrack, which had caught around the heel of one of her trademark stiletto shoes.

“I require a room,” she declared, dropping her trunk, which seemed to emit a muffled oath. 

“For reasons beyond my comprehension this wretched island seems to have grown tired of the geography it was blessed with, and decided to deposit some of its less desirable bits under the lighthouse, and the damned thing keeps screaming.”  

“Ah, that would be Screaming Point,” said Rhys, wondering where the smell of garlic was coming from. “It  hasn’t  been on the move for ages. Don’t worry, it doesn’t scream all the time.”

“No, I’ve learned that,” said Pyralia, bitterly. “It usually waits until I’m asleep, or engrossed in some particularly difficult problem.”

“I can only think you’ve done something to attract its attention,” said Rhys, unhelpfully.

“Nonsense!” exclaimed Pyralia, then added, “How long does it normally hang around before it gets bored?”

Rhys pondered for a moment, then said,

“A week, a month, a year…? Twenty years if it’s really taken a shine to the area.”

Pyralia’s face dropped.

“Oh, it’s taken a shine alright,” she said. “It’s not only screaming, it has started singing to the lighthouse, would you believe? The worst of it is that the masonry has started to hum along. I caught the stairwell whistling last night.”

“That’s awkward,” said Rhys, as though discussing the weather.

Drury wagged his bony old tail, clearly approving of the situation.

“Well, you’re more than welcome to stay,” Philomena said, avoiding Rhys’s disapproving  glare. “Though you may find our walls no quieter at the moment. Lady Margaret’s been shrieking in the privy lately. Apparently there is some unwritten expectation that headless ghosts will shriek from time to time, and she’s scheduled hers for the next three weeks. She’s always been a stickler for the rules.” 

“Oh let her shriek,” Pyralia sighed. “Anything is better than a headland trying to sing harmony with my lighthouse.”

And so she moved in, taking a small room overlooking the Atlantic, or it would have, was it not for the heavy sea mist which obscured everything except an even heavier sea mist following in its wake.

“Life isn’t going to be the same with Pyralia living here indefinitely,” said Rhys, later that day. “But if nothing else, it will please Reggie, the old goat that he is. He’s trimmed his moustache and ironed his regimental tie twice today already, all the time muttering ‘Dashed fine looking woman’ to himself.”

Pyralia sat in the snuggery of the Squid and Teapot, sipping her absinthe and basking in the comparative peace, while Drury laid his skull on her stiletto shod feet, and Philomena cheerfully explained the local menu.

“I can’t live on Starry-Grabby Pie, darling,” Pyralia said, after a short silence. “I’ve said often enough  that the diet on this island is lacking one or two essentials… such as flavour and nutritional value, for instance. No… things are definitely going to have to change in the kitchen, Philomena.”

“I can only work with what we have,” said Philomena, a hint of irritation in her voice.

“I know that, and you come close to working miracles with those ingredients,” said Pyralia, patting the other woman’s wrist. “But I’m here now…”

“And what difference will that make?” asked Philomena, suddenly confused. 

“Because darling,” said Pyralia, with a grin and a slightly worrying glint in her eye, “I really can work miracles…”