A Sea Change

Epilogue

Cuthberton, Northumberland, July 2001

Trains no longer ran to the tiny seacoast village of Cuthberton; there was a bus that came through, once a day northbound and once southbound. There was nothing there to attract tourists: no amusement park, or beach, or excursion boats. The fishing trade had pretty much died. The climate was too uncertain and amenities too few to attract people wanting holiday or retirement homes. Most of the residents of Cuthberton commuted to other places to work, or were skilled craftspeople who attracted customers from outside the village.

Cuthberton’s chief attractions were a small but very good brewery, a six-bed Youth Hostel, which provided shelter in summer for the many walkers going up and down the coast; an acoustically perfect, Edwardian-era town hall, much sought after by choral groups and brass bands all over the district for amateur concerts and contests—and the Barnes Garage. Boat owners and motorcyclists from miles around came to Cuthberton to let Sam Barnes work his magic with their engines. His shop on the seafront road and his haulout dock in the little harbour were always busy.

The young man trudging up the seafront road had not come on the bus; it was too late in the day. Nor was he a hiker; he wore shabby, ill-fitting street clothes and carried an elderly dufflebag rather than a backpack. He was very young, hardly out of his teens, but the grim, closed look in his eyes spoke of adult worries rather than childhood fears. As he approached the garage he pulled a grubby, much-folded scrap of paper out of his pocket and consulted the addresses on the buildings.

It was a gorgeous day. Seagulls wheeled and mewed overhead; between the buildings, one could catch a sparkling glimpse of the sea, and hear it crashing against the seawall.

The young man’s steps grew slower; finally he came to a stop in front of the garage, checked his paper again, and stood staring, biting his lip. He gazed at the ornately hand-painted sign over the door: “S. Barnes, Engine Repair.”

A number of motorcycles stood in the small yard in front of the shop, and a boat motor rested on blocks just inside the wide garage door. He walked slowly closer, edging carefully between the motorbikes, and stood irresolutely, looking in.

A very old lady seated on a purring motor scooter just inside the big door, her feet firmly braced on either side, was rummaging in her handbag and pulling out a worn coin purse. She extracted a couple of carefully folded notes and separated them, handing them one at a time to the mechanic. “Well, Sam, you do have a lovely way with machines; I’m sure I’ll be satisfied. Here you are; a very fair price too. As good as new, it sounds.”

“Thank you, Nan, me dear, but if you keep forgetting to add oil to your engine, it’s going to need more than this. You’ll be walking one of these days, I’m warning you.”

“Nonsense. You’ll keep me going, even if I am a forgetful old woman. Your way with this old bike is almost like magic.” She grinned unrepentantly at him and puttered out into the sunshine. The mechanic laughed as he watched her go, shoving the money in a pocket.

The mechanic was tall, and very thin. He wore grease-stained jeans and cotton shirt, and there was a handkerchief tied round his head, serving as sweatband. His hair was black, untouched by grey except for one startling lock of white hair just to the right of center, falling over his forehead. He had deep-set, pale eyes with crinkling laugh lines at the corners, prominent cheekbones, and an aquiline nose. Most people would have called him handsome, if it hadn’t been for the scar: starting beneath the patch of white hair, a deep, ugly scar ran diagonally downward, through his eyebrow and across his right cheek, all the way to his jawbone. His right eyelid drooped just a little, giving him a deceptively lazy, half-awake look.

He noticed the young man and gave him a smile as he stooped to pick up the toolbox on the floor. “Something I can do for you?” he began, when three very small, dark-haired children came barrelling up the street and into the shop, shrieking with laughter. They tackled the mechanic around the knees, giggling even more as he tried to calm them. The tall man finally grabbed the two nearest by the shoulders and squatted down to the children’s eye level, raising his voice to a near shout.

“One at a time! Girls, quiet! James, what are you three doing alone?  Where’s Remus? Where are the big boys?” He sighed, resignedly, and added,  “What have you done this time?”

The little group subsided a bit, grinning as they took turns gasping out their answers.

“Jonas and Frode.…” 

“You should have seen them.…”

“We have to hide.…” 

“RIGHT overboard!” 

“They’re going to kill us….”

“It’s them! Run!”

The children disappeared through a door in the rear of the shop just as two teenaged boys, dripping wet, stormed in the front. The shorter of the two, his black hair plastered against his cheek, spluttered out the tale.

“Those damn pups tried to drown us! Frode and I were going to sail out to see Alice, and we didn’t want them along. We told the pups to go back home, but they wouldn’t; they did one of their creepy three-at-once wishes, and capsized our boat! I know you adults are fond of those little monsters, Merlin knows why, but this time I swear I’ll kill ‘em!”

The mechanic listened sympathetically and handed each of the boys a shop towel. “Here; those are clean. Go on back to the house and get some dry clothes and a cup of tea, and then you can kill the pups if you have to, though I suspect their mothers will handle that little chore for you. Gwen and Harry should be home soon, and Andie’s out with Alice, I think. Where’s Remus, by the way? He was with the pups….”

“Here.” He’d come up into the garage quietly, a slight figure in jeans and soft white shirt with rolled up sleeves, grinning at the two boys and listening. “I don’t blame you lads for wanting some time on the water, without the pups, but you shouldn’t have told them so in quite those words. You know how they can be…. Have they shown up here, by the way?”

“They’ve gone back into the house. I’m almost finished for the day here; could you go in and keep the bloodshed to a minimum?  I had a customer, I think, if he hasn’t been scared off by now….” The mechanic looked vaguely around the yard, smiling with relief as he spotted the young man, apart from the group, waiting in the sun. He glanced back at Remus, and the two of them exchanged a look and a nod, almost but not quite casually.

“JonasandFrode?” The childish voice drew everyone’s attention as a small girl, obviously one of the “pups,” came through the rear door, a packet of biscuits in her hand. “We’re sorry—Here’s a biscuit… we saved you the chocolate ones. Would you make the tea for us, please? Was it really really cold?”

Jonas grinned at her as Frode, the taller boy, bent down and took a biscuit. “Mimi, dearest, YES it was cold! I should…. Next time you pups try a stunt like that I’ll… “ He scooped her up in his arms and lifted her, shaking his wet hair in her face, to her shrieks of pretended outrage. “See how cold it was? See? The next time, it’ll be you lot in the sea, and us on the bank laughing! Did you say tea? All right, I’ll make you tea.” The little dripping party trooped back through the door, Remus following, leaving the garage suddenly empty and quiet.

The young man, who had been sitting on his dufflebag, rose nervously and cleared his throat, his eyes almost making it up to the mechanic’s face. “I, um, had this address from a friend; are you Mr Barnes?”

The mechanic turned to the young man, and gave him an apologetic smile and a clear, piercing gaze. “Just ‘Sam’ will do. It’s not always like this, but it is often enough. Family, all home for summer holidays, you see. Hope you don’t mind a bit of chaos…. You’re a werewolf, I imagine? Looking for Sirius Black?”

The young man’s eyes did make it to the other man’s face then, alarmed and wary. “I didn’t say…. They said you’d know, but I—yes, I’m looking for Sirius Black. But….”

“Don’t worry, lad, you’re safe here. I’m Sirius Black, in addition to being Sam Barnes. You’re wanting to know if I can help you—Most likely I can. I’ve tried this spell eleven times in the past six years and it’s worked every time. Or, I think it has; some of the people don’t stay in touch. But I’m willing to try it with you.”

The young man bit his lip. “It might take me a bit of time before I can afford to…”

“I never charge a fee.”

“But—How can you…?”

Sam/Sirius grinned at the young man, motioning for him to sit down again. He turned to a small fridge against the wall, opened it and pulled out a couple of bottles. “Like something to drink? Hope you don’t mind lemonade. The lads who help out here are mad for it….” He twisted off the tops and offered one to the young man, then leaned easily against the door frame, half in and half out of the sunlight.

“Now, there are several reasons why I don’t want your money. First, werewolves so seldom have any; it would be stupid to try to get rich doing this.” The grin got wider, almost wolfish.

“Secondly, I’m never quite sure it’s going to work; it’s almost a different spell for every person.  I hate to charge for something that’s always in the experimental stages.” He took a long pull at the fizzy drink, made a slightly disgusted face, and allowed himself to slide down the wall until he was sitting cross-legged in the doorway, his back against the track. The young man sat still and clutched the lemonade bottle with both hands, hope and disbelief struggling in his expression as he listened.

“But… why do you do it then? If there’s nothing in it for you, why bother? Nobody else does….” The young man bit his lip, cutting off his own sentence. But the bitterness he’d nearly expressed remained in his eyes. He waited, silently.

Sirius went on as if the boy hadn’t spoken, but more softly. “Thirdly, it’s something I owe… well, you. And other werewolves. You saw that man who came in here with the kids, the one who supplied the voice of reason? He’s my best friend. I’ve known him since we were little. He was a werewolf…. It used to kill me, watching what happened to him every month—and it was not his fault. Just as it’s not yours. You know. Of course you know. Never his fault.” Sirius hesitated, and glanced speculatively at the young man, who nodded silently, willing him to go on. Sirius took a deep breath, as if preparing for a test of strength. Even more softly, he continued, his eyes fixed firmly on the lemonade bottle in his hand.

“If I live to be a thousand, I’ll never be as good a man as he is. Once, when we were kids, I used him—I didn’t think; I was incredibly stupid—I nearly caused him to kill someone, at the full moon. Inexcusable. But he forgave me. He’s been a better friend to me than I ever deserved—this is something I can do. And I seem to be good at it.”

He looked up again, into the younger man’s eyes. “Do you have any friends? It would help if you do.”

The young man snorted dismissively and looked away, out toward the road. “No. I can manage on my own, you know. I’ve not seen my family in five years. Don’t need  them. And… no. No friends.”  Sirius nodded, his eyes sad. Five years. This kid must have been fifteen or sixteen, at most, when he’d left home. Or been thrown out.

“Well, we’ll find a way to make it work. I was thinking of the Wolf, actually; it’ll want somebody. A Pack. Never mind; do you have a place to stay?”

“I’ll find a place. I just got here.”

“Any money?”

“That’s none of your business, if you don’t want to be paid….”

Sirius shook his head. “Sleeping rough around here is a damp, chilly business, and we’re used to unexpected company. There’s a spare bedroom back in the house. You can take your stuff through now, if you want.” He stood up, towering over the young man, and grinned once more at him. He motioned the young man inside, then flipped on a light switch before pulling on the rope hanging from the raised garage door to lower it.

“If you know anything about machinery, or want to learn, you can help out around here. I’ll pay you the same as I give the other lads.”

He took another drink from the bottle, made another face, and poured the rest of the contents into the sink at the back of the room. “How can they drink that stuff? Never mind, we’ll go in and I’ll find you a real cup of tea. Or would you rather have beer? You’re welcome to eat with us too; I’m cooking tonight so it’ll be good.”   He took the young man’s arm and led him through the door.