TWENTY-THREE
Willa
When I finally set the mist free, I collapse. What’s strange is, though my knees clang against the gallery floor, I don’t really feel it. There’s an echo that almost feels like pain, but I’m too tired to examine it. Time is different here. I hope I smothered Broken Tooth long enough.
I think it’s night, but I’m not sure about that, either. Rising, I find the staircase waiting for me. All I want is sleep, or rest, or whatever. I have a lot to learn about being the Grey Lady. As much as Grey thinks he told me, there’s a metric buttload to still figure out.
The one thing I do remember is that I get a present at breakfast. That I get to wish for what I want to fill my plate. The staircase rattles, then opens into my bedroom. It’s exactly the same as before. White net canopy, green witch balls in the window . . . pictures of my family on the wall. Of the Jenn-a-Lo. Of my used-to-bes.
Straightening the picture of me and Levi on the boat, I make my present wish. Breakfast can be whatever. Pancakes and sausage and home fries, I guess. But when I wake up, I want proof that my father, my family, is okay. I want to know that I did the right thing. A little proof that it was a good trade, my forever for my father’s present.
I lie on the bed, my feet still on the floor. I don’t feel my heart beating. I breathe, but I think that’s only because I want to. When I stop, my chest doesn’t fill up. I don’t get hot. Or panicked. My throat doesn’t tighten, and I’m not struggling to inhale.
This is real. I really did it.
I close my eyes. I do not dream.
When I woke, morning sunlight streamed through the window.
My witch balls were gone. My pictures. All the little things that made that room mine. I lay on the floor and shivered. The wood was rough and old. Chewing up my elbows, it groaned when I pushed myself to my feet.
A splinter slipped into my palm, and I cursed. It was a small, bright pain. Kinda weird, all things considered. Kinda raw. As I headed for the door, I wrapped my arms around myself.
I wasn’t sure what was going on, because Grey never said the lighthouse looked like this to him. Dilapidated and broke down. Mold on the walls. Spiders in the corners. My back was killing me, and my mouth tasted like somebody camped in it.
I didn’t need a mirror to know my hair was a janked-up mess and my clothes were wrinkled from sleeping in them. That was the one thing about Grey that always fascinated me. How perfect he looked all the time. I thought maybe I was doing this wrong. Maybe it was like making jewelry. I could follow along, but it was obvious I wasn’t a natural at it.
The stairs scared me. Rusted, the frame gaped away from the wall. Old bolts scraped in the holes, sending a dusting of plaster snow to filter to the floor. The planks that made up the steps—the ones that were still there—looked eaten up. Termites or time or something. I couldn’t believe it, because this was supposed to be all me. All my wishes and dreams.
A falling-down deathtrap? That was what the lighthouse decided I wanted? I wondered if there was a union I could talk to. A Monster and Faery Local 223, where I could complain about the condition of my haunt.
I laughed, and it echoed. Like the place was empty, that kind of echoing. And I slowly made my way downstairs, where the kitchen should have been. Or the music-box room. Or whatever room ought to be there at that particular minute. But there was nothing. Just an empty lighthouse.
Old gauges and pipes clung to the wood pillars, rust tears streaking beneath them. Broken windows let a constant, cold stream of air inside. That wind whispered, going around and around, echoing all the way to the top. Again, that echo, hollow and evacuated.
When I tipped my head back, the stairs stayed put. They spiraled up. Even when I turned my back to them and stole a look from the corner of my eye, they were there. Creeping to the door, I reached for the knob, then hesitated.
It didn’t seem fair that Grey got everything he wanted and I got a tore-up lighthouse that looked its age. None of it seemed fair, actually. That he got stuck here because he was a fool for love. That I’d be stuck here for trying to save my family.
Not that superstition had to do with fair. Legends, either. That was the point, really, of all those once-upon-a-time stories—to warn us. To save us from quirk and whim and random chance. Happenstance. To protect us from things beyond our control.
It was bad luck to let a woman or a pig onboard; you’d sink a boat if you set the deck hatch upside down. Eat a stranger’s food, spend half the year in the underworld. A poison apple means you sleep forever.
Twisting the knob, I threw the door open and saw a whole new Jackson’s Rock. Into the forest, I shivered at the cold—but only the cold. Everything smelled fresh—the balsam firs and jack pines sweetened every step. As I walked the clearing path, I heard just what I would have expected to. Birdsong. Leaves rustling as squirrels and raccoons traipsed through.
At the peak, I stopped. Above me, clear blue sky stretched above the naked, nearly winter trees. Below me, just down the western side of the island, I made out a blueberry barren. That would be something, come summertime.
Walking again, I picked up a few of the tiny shells that littered the path. They cut my thumb and jingled in my pocket. When I broke through to the other side, the sun shone like new gold. It capped the stony shore, gleaming across its expanse.
The terns we always thought lived on the island were there, their nests anyway. A couple of petrels stretched twig-thin legs and skimmed across the water. When they landed, they waddled a few steps across the cobble beach and looked my way. Their masked faces showed no surprise or concern.
Before, Jackson’s Rock had been a dark, dead place. Now it lived. Approaching the water, I wondered if I would shear apart if I stepped into it, the way Grey described. What were my limits now? How much of this world was mine to have, and how much of it could I only watch?
Wading out, I found the water so cold, it burned. My skin tightened and ached. It spread to my scalp; it made my ears ring. I kept going deeper, until I had to swim. Until I had to catch my breath.
Had to.
The blast of a horn startled me. Splashing back toward shore, I threw my hair out of my face as a Coast Guard cutter streamed closer. A loudspeaker came on—usually a sound a lobsterman didn’t care to hear. But the woman’s voice that crackled over it was beautiful.
“Stay right there. We’re coming to get you.”
TWENTY-THREE
Charlie
After two days cocooned in my inn, I had to get some air.
Surrounded by electricity, lit by a moving-picture box, I gorged myself on visions of the world as it had become. I sat beneath hot running water that never seemed to fade. The rhythm of motorcars and people coming and going lulled me to sleep.
But I’d been asleep a hundred years. I’d had enough of it. The realization that I had no one left pained me more in skin than in mist. It was an agonizing solitude. And a hundred dollars didn’t last nearly so long as it might have done once.
My only thought was to catch a boat headed for Boston. There, I could search for the remains of my life interrupted.
Packing my meager belongings took but a moment. Then I let myself out and smiled at the sun and the sky, at lungs that took real breaths. To be sure, bittersweetness ruled each moment. But I was alive again, and sometimes life was suffering.
Turning myself to the shore, I hurried on my errand. It seemed entirely improbable, as I walked through the morning sunlight, that the first face I saw was Willa’s. Nevertheless, it was so. Not a memory of it, nor a replica. No hallucination or wishful thinking.
It was she, standing on the wharf with a blanket wrapped round her shoulders.
Some sort of uniformed officer put a hand on her back and guided her to the pavement. A deep-plucked emotion stirred in me, a bewildering concoction of both fear and longing. Past her, in the distance, the lighthouse cut a fine silhouette against a clear sky.
There was nothing there anymore.
If I said that I simply knew it to be true, it would be a lie. There were signs—I could gaze at Jackson’s Rock and had no inclination to look away. Once shrouded by mists, the island was clear and bright. Birds flew over it. Waters flowed to it. There was nothing there anymore.
Rubbing at the ache in my chest, I turned to watch Willa. I’d been made flesh with her sacrifice. Humiliating, indeed, that she’d denied me until the end. But as I followed her with my gaze, I blushed. Shame, for my madness. My desperation. For failing to realize that every curse has a breaking point.
True love’s kiss, or the tears of an innocent. Neither applied, in my estimation. Folding my hands behind my back, I watched as a woman leapt from a motorized horse cart. A man slid from the other side, and he was familiar indeed.
Silvery hair, but shot with red, I’d seen him sleeping in that very horse cart, his shotgun at hand. Willa crashed into him, burying her face against his chest. His hands wavered uneasily, then finally fell on her back. The woman closed the circle around her.
Reaching for a nearby bench, I had to sit down.
This was Willa’s family.
The one left gaping with her brother’s death, the one that drove her to beg at my feet to become the Grey Lady. In a hundred years, I hadn’t felt the pain of a knot in my throat. Nor the sudden burn of tears that somehow also occluded a good, deep breath.
It was never the kiss or the tears that broke the curse. It was the pure heart behind them. A pure heart I’d never had. A selfless longing I’d never felt.
Even at that moment, watching Willa’s reunion , I had not a bit of selflessness in me. I wanted her to raise her head so I could meet her eyes, and she, mine. She was the only soul left in the world who knew me.
But she never looked back.