FIFTEEN
Willa
The angle of the light was wrong when I woke up. The sunrise was supposed to come through my window direct. It should have warmed my face, then my neck, then made me too hot to stay in bed anymore.
Instead, a single streak of light played above me. It danced, and reflected off a mirror I didn’t own. I jerked up and stared. The room wasn’t mine, but it was familiar. A lacy canopy draped the bed—the kind I always asked for when I was little. Glass witch balls in green hung by the window. I’d begged for those at a street fair once.
An oar hung on another wall. It gleamed, perfectly polished. Below that, pictures of the sea. At dawn. At dusk. With a storm on the horizon. In the clear after a squall. And then, the Jenn-a-Lo sailing away, outlined by fireworks. A younger version of me leaned on the rail, elbow to bony elbow with Levi.
The memory of water crashed over me. Frigid cold, it stole my breath. The salt blood of it filled my nose, the room. I was dry drowning, so I threw myself at the window. The glass reflected my ghost self. My lip was split, my eye blacked. I had to touch my forehead to confirm the goose egg there.
Wrenching the curtains open, I shrank at the blinding burn. Then, as the sensitivity faded, I made out shapes. The water, the ground, too far below. My throat seized and my lungs, too. I recognized the view. I stood at the top of the lighthouse. Across the water, my village.
Even from so far away, I saw the destruction in the harbor. Boats piled on top of boats; masts like matchsticks, snapped and scattered. The sun shone too bright. It mocked the washed-out wharf; it mocked me.
A slow throb started in my head. It beat in time to my pulse as I turned from the window. Those swells had swallowed my father’s boat. They’d beaten at Broken Tooth, littered the shore. How many of us were ruined?
I pushed the window open and grimaced. Dead fish and algae, seagrasses in the sun—it was a terrible smell. It would take weeks to fade.
Cold, rank air coated too much of my skin. Looking down, I realized my jeans and sweatshirt were gone. I wore a guy’s shirt in the palest green that could still be called green, and panties. My panties, thank God. But my insides soured.
Grey’s hands had been on me when I was passed out. He’d looked at me, undressed me! My head hurt when I tried to piece the night together. But all that came back was the wave. A tower of glimmering black and then nothing.
Throwing a blanket around my shoulders, I turned expectantly. There should have been stairs, but there weren’t. Spinning around again, I waited for the magic to happen. How crazy, screwed up, straight-up damaged was that, expecting magic.
Nothing happened, and my pulse raced. I brought my heel down hard. The witch balls quivered on their ribbons. I stomped on the floor. If that didn’t reveal the stairs, maybe it would get that freak Grey’s attention.
A small part of me wondered if I really wanted it. Maybe throwing myself out of the tower would have been a better escape. Terns swooped against the flawless sky. Shrill cries echoed against the lighthouse. If only I could follow the birds. Fly away home. Fear spilled out of me.
“Grey!” I shouted. My voice broke. “Let me out!”
He didn’t answer. I tried again, a few times. Too many times. Until my throat felt raw, and the sounds I made were barely recognizable. He wasn’t answering. I’d have to rescue myself. Free myself. There would be blood spilled before I settled down to be his Rapunzel.
Stripping the bed, I laid the linens out. All of them—the sheets and the coverlets, the duvet, and even the dust ruffle. Dropping to my knees, I tied the corner of one to the next. My bowknots were good and strong. I wasn’t that far off the ground. It worked in movies, although that didn’t mean much.
I secured one end of my rope to the bed. Just as I hefted the rest to the window, the room shifted behind me. Two footsteps sounded on a spiral staircase. China rattled on a tray, and Grey looked seriously confused.
“I brought breakfast,” he said, and turned away from me.
“Where are my clothes?”
The question seemed to embarrass him. He didn’t blush. There wasn’t that much color in him. Sliding the tray onto the bed, he gestured at a stand-up chest. “I’m sure they’re dry now.”
Edging around him, I opened the door. I yanked my jeans off a hanger. They rasped when I put them on, but they were warm and soft. Cedar sweetened my sweatshirt, surrounding me as I pulled it over my head. I didn’t bother to take off the foreign shirt. I could get rid of it at home.
Eyes on the ceiling, Grey started, “You seem perturbed—”
“Don’t.”
I pulled my shoes over bare feet and snatched my coat. The hangers swung on the bar, whispering as they rubbed together. Little echoes filled the armoire, ripples in the air. Freeing my hair from my collar, I backed toward stairs that finally existed. Grey left the tray on the bed and turned to follow me.
“I don’t understand what I’ve done wrong. You almost drowned; I pulled you from the water.”
His weight made the spiral staircase tremble, and I didn’t know where it was going anyway. So far as I saw, rooms came and went in the lighthouse. They only existed when he wanted them to. I was relieved when the next landing was the library.
Desperation in his voice, Grey reached for me. “What have I done to offend you?”
“Nothing,” I told him. “No, wait, you said let’s be honest.”
“Please.”
The rough iron rails bit into my palms as I hurried down stairs that never seemed to end. I was almost out of breath. The music-box room should have been ten steps down, but I kept spiraling with no end. “You pulled me out, great, thanks. But you stripped me. You locked me in that room. What’s wrong with you?”
“That’s the worst possible interpretation. You can’t afford me the benefit of the doubt?”
I threw a look over my shoulder. He was serious. He was actually ticked that I didn’t appreciate all his creeping when I was unconscious. A shudder raced through me. “What’s the good spin on locking me in your tower?”
“The truth,” Grey said stiffly, “is that I put you in my bed but the lighthouse decided to provide you with your own chamber.”
“It’s a building! It doesn’t decide anything!”
“Doesn’t it?”
He reached past me and pushed open the door. A door—it wasn’t there a second ago. And it didn’t open onto the music- box room. Instead, the wind rushed in, bitter with death. The beacon hummed, spinning without light. I was back at the top of the lighthouse.
The dull ache in my head turned sharp. I stepped onto the lantern gallery because I didn’t have anywhere else to go. Outside seemed better. I could breathe there. I could back away from him. Iron rattled with my steps. I pressed the heel of my hand to my temple. “Let me out.”
Grey drifted past me. He was smart enough to keep his hands to himself. Though his shadowy eyes pinned me, he moved away. Wrapping his hands on the guardrail, he stared at the sea. Didn’t even look over once. The wind tried to snatch his voice, but I heard him all the same.
“It stuns me that you think I have any control over this whatsoever.”
“You’re telling me you don’t?”
He looked like a storm coming in. He threw his hands up, flashes of lightning, his voice thunder. “It’s cursed. I’m cursed, this place is cursed. Don’t you know an illusion when you see one? You woke up in the room you desired, dressed the way you imagined.”
My mouth gaped. “That wasn’t my imagination.”
“I swear to you, it was.” He turned to me finally. His hands flew, dangerously constrained against his chest. But they trembled; he was furious. “You’re not flesh to me, Willa. I see the life in you that I could collect, but nothing more. You’re a ghost. You’re a lie.”
I probably was all those things. And I was afraid. I glanced at the rocky shore below. I didn’t have my sheet rope now. No matter how many physics classes I missed, I still understood terminal deceleration. It was too far down. I’d never survive. Nobody could survive.
Grey set his jaw and looked away. “Just want to leave and you can. Only one of us is bound here.”
“Yeah?” I spread out my arms. “I’m still here. And I can think of about a million places I’d rather be.”
“You must not want to be there very badly.”
If I’d known him, if we’d grown up together, I might have decked him. Instead, I threw out my arms and said, “Wishful thinking on your part.”
Instead of answering, Grey’s expression darkened, and he looked back to the sea. He was made of marble. Chill pale, with grey veins that pretended he had a pulse. I bet if I touched him, his hands would be stone. His mouth would be ice.
This frozen creature stepped onto the rail. The wind plucked at his hair. It was mist and nothing more. Wild, foggy tendrils that flowed around his head, then pulled straight.
Grey jumped.
He didn’t say a word. He didn’t even look back. Over the side, he plummeted without a scream. There was screaming, though: mine. It tore from my throat. I threw myself against the rail, raw with terror.
Clinging to iron so cold, it bit, I leaned over. I was fast. I saw him hit the ground. Exploding into ribbons of haze, he disappeared. No body. No blood. Nothing left of him.
“As you see,” he said behind me. “Only one of us is bound here.”
My skin crawled. I whipped around, and there was Grey. Whole. Still cold and pale and frightening. But fine as could be, like he’d never jumped at all.
Frigid wind blasted off the water. It pushed me back, and I saw the stairs. I shoved past Grey. My heart was jelly, quivering instead of beating. I almost fell, but I didn’t slow down. Taking the stairs two at a time, I ran. Like if I hurried, the lighthouse would have to let me go.
I needed to be outside. I wanted to go home.
My footsteps echoed in my head. In my ears. If I did fall, I wondered if I would ever stop. The spiral could have gone on infinitely. My body would tear apart. Smaller and smaller pieces, until nothing but blood and atoms stained the steps.
Tinny, discordant notes jangled around me. Music boxes trembled. A soaring wall of them, delicate brass and silver fixtures shivering, strangely alive. Light glinted on them; it was too bright. I caught glimpses of my face, bent by spiked wheels and shimmering gears. A thousand fun-house mirrors, all playing their own eerie songs. So many sharp edges.
I ran past them and crashed through the door.
Pushing through, I clapped a hand over my mouth. By force alone, I strangled a laugh or a sob. Maybe both. Because when I passed through, I didn’t find myself standing on the stone cliff of Jackson’s Rock.
I was at home.
I stood on my own front step, staring at the front door my mother liked to paint a new color every spring. I reached for the knob and yelped when it turned on its own.
Daddy stared at me, uncomfortable in a suit. His face looked like putty, the color off and the shape of it just a little wrong. Lips parting, he smoothed a hand over his head. Then, without softness, he demanded, “What happened to you?”
My body wouldn’t let me admit any of it. Losing the Jenn-a-Lo felt just as imaginary as the Grey Man.
Since I didn’t answer, Daddy rolled his eyes at me and went back inside. He called to my mother, “She’s back!”
I was. I was home. And I had a court date.
FIFTEEN
Grey
She thinks I’m a monster.
It was evident in her eyes and her accusations. Though I have my own motives, I can’t think of a thing I’ve done to deserve that kind of reception. I’ve been kind; I’ve been gentlemanly. I’ve told her the truth all along—most of it, enough of it.
It makes me wonder what kind of world really runs on the other side of the sea. There have always been passions and madness. Murders and cruelty and all manner of evil in the world. I’m not so naive; I was a fool for Susannah, but not unworldly. Things were no better when I walked free; I could argue they were worse.
But Willa thinks I’m a monster. As if I would take advantage of her in all her helplessness. As if I could be so ungallant—I’m not made that way. I’ll tell her what I want from her, very clearly.
I’ve promised not to lie, because she shouldn’t swallow everything with bitterness when she takes this post. A thousand years or a thousand souls, it’s an eternity to suffer alone with your regrets.
I wonder if I shouldn’t have collected her last night. Given up on the possibility that she would take my place here. I can’t seduce her. I can’t sweeten her with words. My music boxes frighten her.
I frighten her.
It must have been so much easier for Susannah. She tilted her pretty eyes, and I fell. I imagined I loved her before a single word passed between us. She was nothing more than a figure on a cliff. Her mystery lit my blood; all the rest I’d invented. I’d done all the work. By the time I found my way to her shore, she but had to wait for me to say the words. I volunteered them! Of course I would die for her. Kill and steal and lie for her.
How easily I gave up my heart, my freedom. My flesh.
Willa won’t be so easily persuaded. I worry she won’t be persuaded at all. Other sins can be rectified; if I had been short with her, or angry, or inconstant. Those could have been cured with apologies. But fear is base. Innate. It’s impossible to convince people they aren’t afraid.
But—and isn’t there always a but—she’s the one who thought of me. Who came to me. Who broke through the barriers and landed on my island. She’s the one. She has to be the one. I know that she’s wounded, but this morning above all proved she will not surrender.
Wonders and magic don’t entice her. The eerie beauty I wear on account of this curse does nothing to delight her. I can’t beat against her; she is no shore to be softened by persistence. Tricks will buy me nothing with her. I think, to win her and my freedom, that I have just one course.
I’ll have to understand her.