SIX
Willa
Bailey put the thought in my head. That’s what I told myself, putting my stern to the Rock.
A thin finger stirred in my brain, making my head ache. The pain pulsed along with the engine. It got worse when I tried to pin down what I’d seen.
A bright streak for the black eyes, a low, thrumming thunder for the full curve of the lips. It was a strange, beautiful face, haloed by silver hair, cloaked in fog. Thinking about it made my head hurt so bad, my stomach turned.
I’d never been seasick, and I wasn’t gonna start. Playing back the plots in the GPS, I turned the Jenn-a-Lo to our waters. It wasn’t long before I came up on our first buoy. Throttling the engine, I stepped on deck and reached for the gaff. As I leaned to pull the first trap, I hesitated.
It felt like somebody was watching me. Turning slowly, I looked at the open sea all around. The day was too clear, too perfect, to be hiding anyone. The Marine Patrol and the Coast Guard never tried too hard to hide. What was the point? By the time they caught you doing something, it’s not like you had anywhere to run.
“Knock it off and fish,” I told myself.
Hooking the first trawl, I dragged the wet line into the hauler and switched it on. A trap rose to the surface in a sparkling ring of bubbles. A skinny lobster clicked at me, lazy and halfhearted. Maybe it felt like it had to put on a show.
Pulling it free, I turned it over. Deep, dark green against my orange Kevlar gloves, it waved its swimmerets in surrender. No eggs clustered beneath the tail, no notch to mark it a breeding female either. The beast spanned the length of my metal ruler and then some. A keeper.
I tossed it into the live tank and scooped new bait into the bag. Tied that in the trap, then checked my position. Careful to cover my tracks, I dropped the trap exactly where Daddy had.
He’d never know I was on the water.
The school might call, but I’d missed plenty of days onshore. The rest of the fleet had followed the lobster out deep; I’d be out and back before they sailed in for the night. Best yet, there was no reason to question my money from the co-op. Lobster was richer than bloodworms, but I could parcel it out.
It was slow, hauling traps alone. Stopping at every single buoy, pulling and emptying. Baiting and dropping it over the rail, only then moving to the next. It was slow, and it was hard.
But my shoulders didn’t even burn. They sang. My whole body did, back to doing what it was made for. My clothes got wet, and my skin got gritty with salt, and it was heaven.
All around me, the ocean played. Waves kissed the side of the boat. Wind hummed strange melodies, and there were echoes on the water. Sounds I couldn’t place or follow back. Sometimes it was a groan; sometimes a sigh. It was life, the water alive.
I felt sorry for the mainlanders, the people who thought lobster came from Plexiglas tanks. The people who thought sea salt was a gourmet name for the same stuff they poured out of blue boxes.
Those people didn’t know what it was to stand on deck, surrounded by nothing but the elements. It felt complete; I felt holy—just me and the ocean that made up most of the world.
Before sunset, the sky darkened. A deeper shade of blue, it told me to turn back. Without a single cloud before me, I was tempted to go for one more. Maybe two more. Maybe finish the string.
But there were fishing hours, and I was in enough trouble. I needed to fill up again, on bait, on fuel. I needed to get my lobster to the co-op before they died. Fishing was complicated enough when you were supposed to be doing it. I had to be satisfied with ten traps, and a promise to do more soon.
I lied to myself a little when I plotted my way home. With the tide going out, the shoals on the west side of Jackson’s Rock would be dangerous. I had to go around the east side. Wasn’t my fault that’s where the cliffs turned to beach. Had nothing to do with me that the Grey Man lived there.
The headache came back, sharp but strangely sweet. It was a dizzy kind of ache. Alluring, I guess. So when I sailed past Jackson’s Rock, I slowed, but I didn’t stop. It was enough to look at the shore, really look at it. Funny thing was, I’d sailed past it a thousand times, but I couldn’t remember seeing it before.
It was a secret, the other side of that island. And I couldn’t help but feel like I was the only one who knew it.
Daddy wasn’t sleeping in the armchair in the living room, he was just pretending to. The cut over his brow wasn’t much of anything. He held his arm like it should have been in a sling, though.
Pity mixed with annoyance, that’s what I felt. He knew better than to hold on to the gaff, but he was still hurt, and he was my father.
And since he was acting, I decided to go along. Carefully, I closed the door, my fingers pressed to the edge to dull the sound. Then I stood on the inside welcome mat, still and holding my breath.
“Hm?” he mumbled, turning his head in my direction. Still pretending.
Pulling a wad of bills from my jeans pocket, I thumbed through them, then left half my cash in the ashtray Daddy used for his pocket change. I kept the rest for later. Then, as I headed for the stairs, I murmured, “It’s just me.”
“Mm-hm.” He turned his face toward the window again. The hospital let him keep a pair of slippers, it looked like. That explained why his toes curled in pink, fuzzy footies. He’d been known to wear cranberry plaid, but there was no way he’d picked those out.
“I’ve got homework,” I said.
“The school called.”
My insides sank. Grabbing the banister, I turned back. “Yeah?”
“They’re saying you’ve missed twelve days this year,” he said. There was a strange note in his voice, and finally, he looked at me. “Where you been?”
“Worm digging, mostly.”
Daddy and I weren’t talking people. We could work together a whole season and say maybe three things. But there was a difference between quiet and silence, and ever since Levi died, what hung between me and Daddy was silence. It had weight; it made me feel ashamed.
Shifting from one foot to the other, I waited a minute, then decided he was done talking. Hauling myself up the stairs two at a time, I almost reached the landing before he called me back.
“Take your money.”
“It’s extra,” I said.
“I don’t care if it’s fruit salad. It’s yours, so you keep it.” Daddy closed his eyes, back to a liar’s sleep.
Acid rolled in my stomach, washing lazily from one side to the other. The mortgage was just about due; the utilities, too. We’d never discussed the bills, and definitely not me paying them. There was slack, and I’d picked it up. It’s what we did; it was my house too.
Until then, nobody had questioned the money I left in the ashtray (though I think it was safe to say we all knew it wasn’t from Santa).
I rubbed my hands together. “I’m trying to do my part.”
His jaw tightened. It made the knot on his forehead stand up, showing off the cut there a little better. “You’ve done enough.”
How many ways did he mean that? I couldn’t tell, but it cut all the same. I stepped down but didn’t let go of the rail. Instead, I let words out, daring to challenge his decision, and worse, his pride. “We’re gonna need fuel oil this month. Mom says that’s five hundred right there.”
“Willa,” he warned.
“Daddy,” I replied.
“Don’t make me raise my voice.”
In flashes and strobes, I crossed the room. Then I was back on the stairs, shoving bills into my pockets. Everything between was a great blank. My head echoed with things I didn’t say. Like, Nobody makes you do anything, Daddy, and What’s your freaking problem, anyway? I didn’t like worm digging. I didn’t want to be the one paying the bills.
Storming upstairs, I wanted a hundred reckless, useless things at once. All the things I could have bought with my roll. A new cell phone, a box of Passion Flakies. Oreos and ice cream, and a bobblehead for Bailey’s truck. Some useful things too. A laptop. A used boat and the tools to start fixing her up.
That last one felt like cheating on my family; shame chewed at me. But then Dad raised his voice. I don’t think he was yelling at me. Just yelling, but I still heard him. It was still about me.
A newspaper flapped downstairs, and Dad shouted, “I can keep my own goddamned house.”
“Who said you couldn’t?” I yelled back.
“Shut up!”
My thin veneer of numb broke. Heat and emotion spilled together, and I caught the frame of the door to steady myself.
That man downstairs, that wasn’t my father. That was Bill Dixon, who boxed bare-knuckle and wouldn’t let you buy him a beer because he wanted whiskey instead.
The same Bill Dixon who’d decked his best friend to keep him from jumping into a winter sea; who took a punch from Mal Eldrich like it was a kiss. I’d never met that man. He’d been a legend, a ghost.
Right until then.
I closed my bedroom door and leaned against it. Not to cry, but to pack my heart away. Squeezing my feelings into beads, I pinned them together and let them roll out of sight. Let them stay in the dark, and be small, and easy to ignore. Then, like nothing happened, I peeled out of my salt-stiff clothes and checked my phone. Bailey’d texted around lunchtime, and I was just then getting it.
There’s a party on Garland Beach, you coming?
Yeah. Yeah, I was.
SIX
Grey
The things I see from my brilliant prison.
A curse is a curse—the trappings are beautiful. They have to be, to tempt the eye, to sway the heart. The gilt packages, the plates that fill with any delicacy I like, they’re the sugar in the poison. The way I look—the way Susannah looked—ethereal monsters. I’m a devil with an angel’s smile.
The one that’s been thinking of me—she saw me today. I barely saw her, but I stood on the cliff and I felt her come close. She hesitated; she saw through the magic for just a moment, and that moment was enough. I’m still imaginary to her, but I’m almost real. She had to disbelieve at first; I certainly did.
But I’m in her thoughts. And that’s what matters.
If she’s anything like me, if she’s anything like the others in this chain of unfortunate souls, her thoughts will grow. She’ll dream me, and wonder about me, and polish all her considerations until she has to come. Until she has to stand before me: to touch me, to know my face.
And my face is beautiful.
Her face is light. That’s what they all are, out there. That’s what I see when I watch this village, cursed but never realizing it.
When it’s especially clear, and until lately, I’ve made sure it’s always especially clear, I can see the houses. Ivory and cranberry and blueberry and brown—they dot the hills, a delectable harvest in every season. I see the churches and their proud steeples. I see doors opening. Windows closing.
But the people—they’re no more substantial than the orchestra that plays in my music boxes.
They’re points of light. In the day, only the brightest ones, the ones that sail past my lighthouse, are visible to me. But at night, oh. I don’t look at the sky anymore; I watch the shore. All those souls are constellations that move.
Tonight, they’ve clustered together on the shore. A bonfire glows. It spits embers into the air. I’m imagining it, but I think I can smell the smoke. The sweet sea and a wood fire, all washed by the gathering mist.
I have nothing to do with it. If it comes, it comes. I’m done reining the elements for them. Instead, I watch them swirl across the beach. Jealously; I admit that. There are so many of them. They’re a cloud of fireflies. The bright ones dazzle, but they don’t interest me.
The dim ones make me ache. With my cursed eyes, I see only their lives, the length of them, the strength of them. If they’re long for this world, they grow bright. Short for it, and they’re much dimmer. There’s a few on that beach who may as well be dead. Soon, they will be. I ask sweetly in my thoughts, Could you die on the water for me?
It doesn’t matter if they drown. If they have influenza. If they come to blows, if they fire their guns, if some freak accident takes them—so long as they fall on the waves illuminated by my lighthouse.
My reach stretches twenty miles on every side but the landward one. At the stony shoreline, they’re beyond my reach. So if they could slip into the water before they breathe their last, it would be lovely.
It’s the least they could do for me.
I’ve been a good steward for this town; better than most. I’ve been honorable. They’ve had a hundred years of my generosity, holding back the fog. So many good days for them. So many clear days. I’ve been patient. In all this time, I could have blinded hundreds of fishermen. Led them astray, helped their pretty little boats crash into rocks, hidden coming storms.
Many would have; I understand now that Susannah drowned as many as she could before she realized that time and mathematics would betray her.
So I’ve been a true gentleman. I’ve cleared their skies. Not once in these hundred years have I killed anyone. I collected souls, but only those that came by accident and happenstance.
When I need it, there’s a wall-length cupboard below the gallery. It’s lined with glass jars.
Yes, in all my faery-tale certainty that I was meant to redeem myself on this island, I failed to acknowledge two things.
First, my dominion over the mists, and second, the jar cupboard. Ten years dragged on until a rowboat sank in the harbor. The jars chimed; they demanded my attention.
I uncapped one, and that soul all but collected itself. A hum filled the room, as if it were satisfied. And I, too, felt the faintest measure of peace. A taste of hope, a realization that I could free myself from this curse without any reflection on my character at all.
After all, the seas are voracious. Sailors and swimmers disappeared into them all the time. Except not so many as I thought. Not so readily. Until this summer past, I collected only two more souls. This summer, I finally raised that total to four.
Four in a hundred years. Rarely do I use my arithmetic anymore, but I can figure that sum.
Twenty thousand, four hundred, ninety-six years.
Longer than the course of all written human history. Longer than the memory of mankind itself. Thus, the anatomy of a perfect curse. It seemed possible. It hinted that I might keep my soul and morals yet. Simply let nature have nature’s way and benefit from it.
But no—there aren’t so many tragedies beneath my light as it might seem.
If I were to sharpen my teeth and learn to relish the prospect of drowning the innocent, I must be honest. There aren’t enough of them in Broken Tooth. If I cull them all at once, their families will flee my shores. None would sail beneath my light.
Clever, clever curse. Twenty thousand, four hundred, ninety-six years.
It’s been but a hundred, and I’m already sick of silence. Of magic. Of presents. Of kindness and generosity and honor and myself. Clutching the rail, I consider throwing myself over it. It’s a childish thought, stupid drama for no audience at all, and worse, it won’t make the slightest bit of difference.
The lamp grinds behind me, spinning ceaselessly. Its heat stings—I’m here, I feel it. But my body doesn’t break its beam. I am insubstantial.
Those lights on the beach have no idea I’m watching them. Wanting them. Plotting against them. Ignorant, every one of them—they dance; they sway. They’re just far enough away that I can’t enjoy their music or eavesdrop on their conversations.
Right now, I hate them more than anything. And I’m glad, so glad, that she’s thinking about me.
It didn’t take long to change my mind. To do the things I swore I would never do. Just one hundred years—but what is that in the face of twenty thousand, four hundred, ninety-six?