There’s a lightness about Ondine as we drive away from Ballaig that I didn’t expect. When she and Elena hug goodbye, they both look relieved, as though Ondine’s escaping a terrible fate in the nick of time. She’s quiet until we leave the village, and then she starts laughing.

“Nervous laughter,” she says, shooting me a sideways look. “None of this is funny. I mean, I’m beginning to think we’re both living through the same dream.”

“The one where we travel through portals together.”

“Yeah, and I talk to my long-dead ancestor and you squish screaming worm-creatures.”

“Portal-travelling worm-drones.”

“Whose mission is to report my whereabouts to their overlord.”

And then we’re both laughing, at the craziness of what’s happening to us. “I really need Robbo to explain all of this to me,” I say, being serious, but Ondine laughs even harder.

“Exactly – Robbo from Skye has all the answers.” After a minute, she adds, “Maybe Robbo has some answers for me, too. Like why Jenny called me a seer. And what the hell I’m supposed to be able to do to help her, when the time comes.”

As she winds the car deftly around twisted bends and corners of the peninsula, Ondine tells me what I’ve been waiting to know about her. She tells me about when she first came to Ballaig, and what happened with Jenny’s journal. I know now that she ran from the truth of what Jenny did in the village all those years ago and, even though she still doesn’t know why, she knows that Jenny acted with compassion.

“Do you think Jenny will tell you why through the journal?” I ask.

“Maybe. Or maybe she’ll wait until we’re together on Hallowtide again.”

We’re quiet for a few minutes, and then Ondine asks, “In all of the interview data, has anyone ever talked about something that could be a portal?”

My brain ticks over all of the data I’ve read over and over again, searching for anything that could be interpreted as a portal, but I draw a complete blank. “No – not like the portal we travelled through. Either someone has witnessed a shape-shifter – although usually it’s in hindsight that they know that – or someone has disappeared without a trace and instinct tells them it was a water beast abduction. What about you?”

Ondine’s research involves the pain-staking collection of data related to natural phenomena at the time of the reported abduction: basic weather conditions, storms or other disruptions prior to or following the abduction, any strange animal behaviour reported at the time.

“Anything to do with disruptions in the water are horizontal effects. You know, ripples that can’t be easily explained by changes in the wind in an otherwise empty loch, a change in colour or temperature, as seen from the shore. But our experience was of a vertical portal. We didn’t go underwater at all.”

She’s right. It seems so obvious, but I hadn’t thought of this until right now. “We need to go back to the data and look for evidence of abductions that might have happened another way.”

She nods and doesn’t say anything for a minute. “There’s also the chance that the portals are how the dead – and how those who communicate with them – travel from the living world to in-between places. I mean, we have to consider that possibility. You’re being very cool about this, but the truth is that Jenny should by rights be a speck of dust in the sky, and yet we have both seen her, and talked to her.”

I think about what I know about sentinels of the seas. Or sentinel, more accurately – one lone sentinel, exiled to Alba for failing to prevent the almost-abduction of a living, breathing person. How do I fit into that legacy, given that so far I have guarded Ondine when she travelled through space-time? And what of the fact that I have no wings?

Ondine says, “Talking to Pendle and Sidris should help. They can probably tell us a thing or two about portals.”

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*

Six hours later, we’re able to test that theory. As we pull up to the house on Skye, we see Max’s car parked there and Dr. Sidris’s dog, Davis, is sitting patiently on the doorstep, like he has been waiting for us. He trots over to us as Ondine and I get out of the car, and Dr. Pendle appears at the front door, followed a minute later by Dr. Sidris.

“The plot thickens,” are the first words Ondine utters to them. “There’s much more to the story since we last spoke.”

“Then I think we need tea and whisky,” Dr. Sidris says with a contented smile. “And perhaps some blankets. We shouldn’t waste a clear night like this one, when the moon is full.”

I’m glad that it’s just the four of us – and Davis – outside. Our MFIT colleagues are either hard at work or sleeping, which is fortunate, because I’m still not ready to talk about what I am.

Ondine, on the other hand, clearly is. She repeats the story of her first experience in Ballaig, right up to what happened to us on Hallowtide, with the leperby.

“Jenny and Elena don’t think you are in danger here?” Dr. Pendle asks, his face etched with worry.

She shakes her head. “Just at either end of the portal.” Rolling her eyes, she adds, “Now there are words I never thought I’d say.”

“And Thom, perhaps we need to reassess the purpose of your powers?”

Before I can speak, Dr. Sidris says, “Are you suggesting, Alasdair, that Thom is a portal sentinel?”

“Have you ever heard of such a thing?” I ask, my voice little more than a whisper.

“I can’t say that we have,” Dr. Pendle replies, after a quick glance at Dr. Sidris. “Your powers were either responding to the proximal risks to Ondine, or you have a very specific capacity for protecting those who travel through portals.”

A heavy weight settles in my stomach as I realize that, if my powers are solely portal-related, I won’t even have a chance at rescuing Rufus from The Wash.

As though sensing my mood, Ondine asks, “The only way to test that theory would be to have Thom attempt a rescue from the depths, or locate another portal and have someone else try to travel through it?”

“Using the information we have this very second, that seems true. Both have their risks.”

“And locating another portal isn’t as simple as going out to buy a pint of milk,” Dr. Sidris adds, with a mischievous smile.

“Not on our own, but we’re fortunate in being able to call on expert help.”

“Robbo,” the four of us say at the same time.

Dr. Pendle tells me that Robbo has agreed to travel south, here to our base, to meet me and observe me in action, to use his words. He says he’ll contact Robbo at first light, and ask him to make the journey.

“And then he wants you to travel with him to his croft on the far westerly point of the island, for instruction there,” Dr. Pendle says.

“Wait a second,” Ondine says. “Thom is supposed to leave here – leave us ­– and go with a stranger he knows nothing about, where anything could happen?”

“He is known to us,” Dr. Sidris says. “He will show Thom the ways.”

“The ways of what?” Ondine asks, indignantly.

“He will want to know everything you know from your readings in the archive,” Dr. Pendle says to me. “He will observe you closely, and then he will guide you in harnessing and using your powers.”

I tell them all I need some time by myself, and I walk to the loch, the moonlight and the soft grey fingers of dawn’s light illuminating the way. The water ripples quietly, but otherwise there is no sound. I flick the fingers of my left hand, and the rippling becomes louder, like knuckles rapping on metal. I lower my fingers and the quiet rippling returns. I flick the fingers of both hands, and the sound intensifies, like hundreds of cats’ paws running back and forth across a tin roof.

Eyes closed, I concentrate on visualizing what lies beneath the surface of the water. I see tendrils of floating plant matter and a few small, thin fish swimming lazily. I scan lower down, concentrating so intensely a small grunt escapes from my throat. The water is so dark here that I see nothing. With all of the effort I can muster I try to clear my perspective, looking for anything I can identify in the darkness.

I feel it with my hands, rather than see it – the wreck of a small fishing boat, resting almost bow-to-stern up against a coral reef. I rub my hands along its sides, which are jagged where the boat collided with the reef, pulling away large chunks of wood, and soft where the wood is intact, smoothed over by the motion of the waves over decades, perhaps centuries.

Turning both hands inwards, palms facing each other, I curve my fingers inwards, as though I’m gripping both sides of the boat. It refuses to budge from its resting place, stubbornly maintaining its position wedged up against the coral reef. The weight of the wreck is too much for me, I think – a young boy was one thing, but this is a challenge I can’t hope to win. The force of my effort shifts my centre of gravity, and I go down on one knee. My hands burn with an energy that surges from my core, and then I feel it: the wreck is rising.

The sound of the waves against the shore take on the ferocity of an orchestra of giants as my hands pull the boat up through the dark water. With one final, mighty heave, I hear it break the waves, and I pull it towards the shore, spinning it as I pull so that the bow is pointing seawards.

Only then do I open my eyes, and see the ghostly hull of the fishing boat in its new place, on the white sands of Loch Dunvegan.