Prologue
Approximately forty miles off the south-west coast of Ireland.

How do you tell a community of conservative Irish that you plan to bring someone to their quaint little island who others consider a curse? You don’t, if you’re like me, you hope you have some good luck.
“We’ve had bad luck for ages,” said Hugo, yanking on the handle of the bait box, it refused to budge. “That thing keeps its distance.”
Quinn took a folding blade from a pocket on her wetsuit, wedged it under the lid and it opened with a loud pop. They recoiled with the stench. 

“Get it out there,” I said, watching the tip of its dorsal fin resurface between the foot-high waves.

Quinn reached towards the bait box, wincing with eyes closed. “Jesus, it’s off, Donnacha.”
“It’s supposed to smell bad, Ned’s advice. Will ye just do it,” I said.
Hugo held his nose, dunking an arm into the slimy water, and pulled out a fist of fish guts. He shoved them into his sister’s face. Quinn smirked without flinching, and he threw the innards into the ocean.
“Hugo,” I said irritably , seeing its shadow pass my view forty meters out and change course back the way it came.
“It isn’t interested in that bait either, it knows,” he said, moping back to get more bloody fish.
She pushed him aside. “Loser, let me.” 

The motion of the boat sent him into the bait box, and he sat in it flicking guts at her.
She gave him the middle finger.
“Stop messing, Quinn,” I said. “Get more bait into the water, Hugo.”
He got up grumbling.
The fin went under the surface. I took the shaft and put it to the open muzzle, my hands shook.
“Come on, uncle Donnacha, ye plank,” she said, taking a fish tail and flinging it over my head. “Why does it have to smell so bad?”
“It just does.” I found the groove and slid the spear into the trigger mechanism until I heard a click.
The pin popped up like Ned had shown me.
“Why ‘uncle’ all of a sudden?” he asked.
“Since we moved in with Cara it just feels right,” she said. “He’s not our real Dad.”
“Shush, love,” I said. My fingers fumbled trying to thread the monofilament through the loops of the speargun. I glanced up to see the fin scything sideways and then diving,
and I quickly threaded the line and attached it to the loop on the shaft. “Okay.”
They leaned on the edge of the boat, either side of me, and we waited for it to resurface.
“See, this one is smart,” she said. “It knows we’re hunting it.”
“Ned’s bait is shite,” said Hugo.
“He said the evening is the best time, you tend to go in the morning.” I searched the swells trying to anticipate where it would show. “It’ll be hungry now, smell the blood and come back.”

After a half hour of nothing, she sat down with her back to the water.
“This was a stupid idea,” she said, side-eyed. “Donnacha.”
“Ah, you might be right.” I knelt down and rested the speargun on the side of the boat.
Time crept on, achingly slow as the boat drifted from the blood-stained water. My arms ached holding the heavy lump of metal. There was no sign of it; no reward for our patience. The sun drifted behind ranks and legions of angel-white cumulus clouds that fused and blackened further out, making the Atlantic murky. Seagulls circled overhead and dived for the bait anytime Hugo let fire with another handful of guts, and they mocked my thoughts—as all flourishes of life seemed to nowadays. Quinn enjoy making me feel older than forty-one. The sun had come out from behind the clouds, and I noticed the boat was drifting in milky water. “Is that pollution?”
“Fucking capitalist,” he said, posing his chin in the air.

“Did you say that fella is a black albino?” she asked, dismissing him.

Hugo frowned. “What fella?”

“Donnacha,” she said, with a testing look. “Didn’t you say he was?”
I lifted my head. “Were you listening in on my conversation with Cara?”
“Are you going to bring him here?” She pinched the ends of her hair, squinting her eye. “It’s not a good idea.” She started humming her flat version of the Lonesome Boatman.
“He’s going to stay here for a while, yes.” 
I spotted movement fifty meters out and lifted the speargun. “Quiet, love.”
She continued humming a little more softly.
“Shut up, Quinn,” he said, zipping up his wetsuit.
The sun caught the top of waves, blinding me momentarily. As one rolled on, silky then distorted, I saw a V-shaped wake glistening on the top of the water. “It’s coming right at us,” I said as the tip of the fin slowly rose.
Quinn stood up and slipped on fish-guts, sending her backwards. I watched helplessly as she disappeared into the murkiness. “Hugo,” I said, diving to gab her; and
missing. “Help your sister.”
I leaned prone against the side of the boat and aimed the speargun at the fin with one hand. A flash of orange passed by my peripheral vision as the life-ring plonked into the ocean with a loud slap. Quinn resurfaced a few feet away from it, spluttering and screaming as the boat drifted away from her.
He reached out a hand. “Swim.”
I saw the toothy monster inside an illuminated wave as if encased in cerulean and turquoise glass. It was the width of a grossly obese man; its fin was as big as the sail of a training-dingy. “Jesus Christ, the thing is enormous. It’s a great wh…” Shivers ran up my spine.
Hugo shoved my shoulder. “Fire,” he said and edged onto the lip of the boat, stretching his leg over the water. “Grab my leg, Quinn.”
She flapped her arms until she reached his boot and clawed along his leg.

He held on and began to slip. “Donnacha,” he whimpered as he went.
My finger hovered over the trigger as came towards us: forty meters out; thirty, moving fast. I hesitated. If I missed I wouldn’t have time to reload, closer I’d have a better chance. A splash sounded and I saw the
two of them go into the drink as one and go under. Twenty meters out, its long body curved ominously as it submerged. I held my breath as it turned and sped towards them. I held my breath and squeezed. Nothing.

I lunged to the other side of the boat and
blindly reached a hand into a swell. They resurfaced together, a couple of meters out.
“Swim.” I aimed at the scattered shape hulking below.
“The safety, release the safety,” said Quinn,
front-crawling past her younger brother.
“Stop splashing,” I said. It was near, slowing.
“Stay still.”

I remembered Ned’s instructions and gently released the safety. It made a faint click.
Dead quiet now except for Quinn’s panicked breaths. “Don’t move…stay very still.” I closed one eye and took aim. “Let it pass.”

“Jesus,” she said with an almost inaudible squeak of usual huskiness.  “Shoot the fucking thing, Donnacha.”

Wind blew directly into my ears, as loud as a gale, drowning out the voice in my head that likes to gloat whenever I try anything that requires skill. I pulled the trigger. A loud thwack sounded as the mechanism released. A whooshing sound as the line ran through the loops high speed and the spear entered the water, puncturing the sharks rubbery skin. Immediately it darted away.
“Hurry, get back in the boat.” I reached out a hand to Hugo, who had kicked like an Olympian from the moment I fired.

Quinn threaded water, terrified and daring herself. He lunged out of the water like a Marlin, slipped onto his back and got up in one fluid motion. We watched her for a moment with confoundment and he leaned over the side.  ”Swim, grab my hand, Quinn.”

The spool got smaller as the shark went deeper. She laughed as he pulled her in, and the two of them fell onto their backs, flopping their legs down on the side of the boat.

“We almost… died,” he said, gasping to her as he assessed her.

She blew water streaming over her lips, puffing her cheeks. “What a buzz.” Her hands were clasped against her forehead, elbows wide. “Did ye kill it, Donnacha?”

“I barely scratched the fucker,” I said, looking back at the spool uncoiling. “I don’t think I hit it in a good spot.” I took
out my pocket knife and held it under the line.
He jolted up into a sitting position. “What are you doing?” He held my wrist. “You have it hooked. Reload the speargun. Wait until it comes up and get it again man.”
“It’s too big, this boat is too small. It’ll sink us.” I cut the line and slumped down with a disappointed sigh. “Shit.”
He sat on the opposite side. “We must have tried ten times with that thing.” He sighed. “It’s a survivor.”
“Are you sure it’s the same one?” I asked. “You didn’t mention it was prehistoric.”
“We’ve only seen it below the water.” He zipped open the chest flap on his wetsuit. “You don’t get many great whites this side of the Atlantic. I’m pretty sure it’s the same one. ”
“You had it,” she said, eyes as thin as catgut.
He glared at her. “Fair play Donnacha,” he said, sensitive to the depression I’d been in since Erin’s institutionalisation, quizzical towards Quinn’s strange calmness given what had occurred. “You injured it at least. Good job.”
She groaned. “Don’t give him a big head.”
He waved her away.

“Good man Hugo. There wasn’t much of a kick in that speargun,” I said.
“Hopefully it’ll bleed out,” he said.
“I’m not getting into that water again until I’m sure it’s dead,” she said, sitting up and squeezing out big streams of water from thick curls. “That’s the one what got Wann Murphy,” she said and got into the driver’s seat. “We should get a few boats together and hunt it.” She turned the boat around and took us into Monte Cristo Bay.

The bay was typically calm and there was a warm evening breeze. Straight ahead, the sky was a deep purple and stars were visible. I turned around on the middle seat, looking at
the dipping sun painting unique patterns of cloud and ocean into a kaleidoscope of oranges, pinks, and baby-blues as we
passed the small, uninhabited islands. “Maybe it did take Wann. I hadn’t entertained the idea until I saw it up close.”
Hugo peeled off the wetsuit. “So, you don’t think it was traffickers now?”
“I don’t know, Ned doesn’t seem to think so anymore.”
I held the speargun on my lap. “I want another go at that shark.”
“Aren’t you going to Dublin in the morning to get that lad?” she asked.

”What lad?” he asked, pressing on the bait-box, using his body-weight

to close the lid.
She looked back at us and rolled her eyes. “There are going to be a few issues about that,” she said. “When the other islanders find out he’s from Africa and… is he really an albino. An albino from Africa like.” She turned around and rested her elbow on the side of the boat. ”Jausus, that’s mad.”

“Jonah’s a Dub, and it’ll be grand,” I said, still unsure if I was doing the right thing but needing to do something to take my thoughts of Erin.
“I actually did a bit of reading up on African albinos,” she said. ”There’s lots of superstition surrounding them, and you know what people are like here.”

”It could stir a few pots,” he said, resting his chin on his sister’s head.

”More than a few,” she muttered.

As we passed the old wreck, with its rusting chimney stack, leaning but proudly aloft after thirteen years of the worst the Atlantic could batter it with, I saw two tiny figures marching, knees-to-chin through the swamps between the dunes and Clippers Hook. Red and yellow raincoats and wellies, no more than seven or eight. “Who are they?” I asked.
Hugo shrugged. “Never seen them before.”
“Do you know them, Quinn?” I asked.
She pushed the throttle to full and the engine roared.
“Nope.”
The boat shuddered violently as it hit the sandbank and beached, sending me forwards into a hunch, clinging to the side. “Jesus Christ, what did ye do that for?”
“Sorry,” she said, turning her head away.
The two boys stood staring at us and came down towards the shore.
She jumped off the boat and went to the back. “I felt like the engine was lagging. I, I need to look at it.”
Hugo hopped onto the beach and stood with his hands on hips, ruffling the salt from his golden brown curly hair, gazing at the two boys skipping his way.
I was disturbed by Quinn’s odd mood change as I joined him. “Are they from O’Dowd’s Point?”
“If I had to guess, I’d say yeah.”
I took stock of her behind us and waved at her to come over. She shook her head and ducked down behind the engine.

”She’s acting bizarre.”

”When does she not these days? How’s it going?” he said, as the two little munchkins looked us with screwed faces and piercing blue eyes. “Where are you from?”

The smaller boy in red pointed east.

“O’Dowd’s Point?” he asked.
They nodded in unison. “We were only catching tadpoles,” said the one in red.
The one in yellow kept his eyes fixed on me.
“I’m Donnacha, this is Hugo,” I said. “What’s your name?”
“I’m not supposed to talk to you,” said the red one.
I frowned at Hugo, chuckling to myself. “Me?”
“You’re the witch’s husband,” he said.
I stepped forward and Hugo grabbed my arm. “Leave it Donnacha, they’re only youngfellas.”
“Who told you to say that?” I said, bending until I could see the freckles on their pug noses.
“Witches, witches, witches,” they chanted.
Hugo laughed.
“Tell whoever told you to say that they’re…fucking bastards”
“Jaysus, Donnacha, relax.”
“Hugo, it’s this kind of thing that made Erin…”
“Are you off your head? They’re kids.”
“I don’t care. Those fucking O’Dowdes…”
He chased them up the beach and into the woods, between the dunes and the town centre. They hid behind trees, looking back at me, mocking me with their goblin eyes; that restless O’Dowd stare, until their little shadows faded into the twilight.

END OF EXCERPT

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