You need to make it stop. You are losing the balance, and that way lies despair.
I understand, but I wonder—did I ever have balance? Or did I simply veer so close to her axis that the pull nullified everything else? I’m terrified. And yet I’m too weak to banish it all, to make Hector go away. I need a storm, not calories. I know this.
It is November 7. It has been 348 hours since the sinking of the St. Anne. My body knows this, too, feeling light and airy as dandelion fuzz. I need grounding, the way lightning hungers for a good, tall tree.
I’ve stood in the middle of the kitchen for over an hour, motionless, just considering these things. Finally, I loosen the stiff air about me and reach for one of Father’s cookbooks. Hector will be back soon, and the morsels of breakfast have since dissolved away into my blood. One book has a recipe for quick breads. It calls for flour, butter, and baking powder. Also salt. There is no flour left, but I crush the remaining crackers to use instead. I don’t bother to clean the bits of dust on the floor, instead letting my bare feet push them around, here and there.
I turn on the NOAA radio to keep me company.
Temperature dropping to forty degrees.
Waves of eight feet or more.
Forecasts are for ice-free areas.
No, that can’t be right. The NOAA voice is wrong. It’s not that cool, nor are the waves that large. I go to the window and splay my fingers against the glass, startled at the coldness of the glass. Between the branches of dead, lichen-covered birch trees, I see the waves of the lake. They are far larger than I sensed.
I’ve always been finely attuned to the air pressure and moisture, the vectors of wind and penetration of the judging sun. A radio can be fixed, instruments recalibrated. What do I do with myself if I am already becoming so broken?
Well. I can make other things, I think. It’s a practical thought, and I readjust my spine to this new sensation of practicality. I snap the radio off, turn away from the windows, and busy myself in the kitchen, taking the ingredients down. I’m wrist-deep in the sticky mixture when static begins to tug at the cut ends of my shorn hair. The chimney begins to moan, and raindrops patter the roof. Such wonderful, delicious music. My eyelids have closed, so I can listen with heavy intention.
My mind begins to swim. Deep within, my spine and long bones ache for the storm. My heart beats, and with every pulse, there is a yawning need.
My hands squeeze the dough, and it oozes between my clawed fingers. I scrunch my face, breathing long and hard, opening my eyes and concentrating. That’s right. I’m making biscuits, aren’t I? Hector will be hungry. I am hungry, too.
You need something else to feed you, Anda. Not wheat, nor butter.
“Shh,” I hiss.
I wish I could distance myself from her. I’m almost out the door when I stop. I’m making food for Hector, I remember, and shake my head. I grab a handful of sticky, needy dough. I try to drop it onto the cookie sheet when the wind whistles for me. It creeps under the eaves, through the cracks of the wall, and circles my ankles, coaxing me.
“Stop it,” I whimper.
I drop irregular handfuls of dough onto a metal sheet. Mechanically, I put the sheet of lumpy dough in the tiny kitchen stove, the insides glowing red as hell. My vision swims. I see blood, not the heating elements of the oven.
Before I can wipe my sticky hands on a kitchen towel, the tug inside my belly grows too insistent and irresistible. It’s a rope, tied to my spine and pulling hard. It would pull hard enough to rend me apart, I know.
Sustained winds of up to thirty knots.
Small craft should exercise caution.
The last storm was “large in size.” A rather bland way to put kinetic energy, wind speeds, rain, cubic kilometers, and vortices of current into one measure of size. Words never suffice for much anyway. This storm, however—it’s far larger than the last, in that I can feel the pull deep in my marrow.
It is November 7. It has been 349 hours since the sinking of the St. Anne.
“No,” I gasp.
Yes.
My hands twist the doorknob to exit the house before I know it. My feet fly across stone and pine needles. The water is so close, and the rain makes my skin burn with a fury. The shore coaxes as only it can. In a blink, I’m at the lake’s edge. The stones of the lake dig into the soft soles of my feet. I don’t ignore the pain. Instead, it makes me smile. The stones don’t hurt me; they’re crying out for having touched me.
The water is up to my knees when I see the white sailboat in my mind’s eye.
It’s no longer within sight of the Upper Peninsula. Everyone who touches the lake knows that the silhouette of Lake Superior resembles a wolf, and Isle Royale, its vengeful eye. The sailboat is in the throat of the wolf, about to be consumed. Through the splash of white water, I see the name on the boat.
The Jenny.
Thomas and Agatha are on board, panic showing as white rings their blue irises. The boat is named after their only daughter, safe in landlocked Colorado. They thought the storm would not come up so quickly; they were wrong. They thought it would be the last good day to sail before winter set in; they were correct.
It will be the last day they ever sail.
They are mine for the taking, if I’m willing to take them. My fingertips touch the lake water. To me, it is warm as new milk. Remotely, in my brain, I remember there was a boy. And that there is a stove turned on in a house somewhere, but I don’t care.
Nothing matters when death is calling for me.
It is November 7. It has been 350 hours since the sinking of the St. Anne.
It has been too long. The Jenny calls for me.
Good girl.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
HECTOR
I carry two fish back with me, shivering nonstop. Now my thighs and shoulders ache, too. I’m definitely sick, and it’s freaking me out how fast it’s coming on.
The rain starts pouring. This storm’s far more vicious than the last. The drops pelt my face over and over. My head has that blown-up, dizzy feeling. I haven’t had anything to eat or drink today. That was stupid.
When I get to her house, I’m so thankful to reach shelter. My hands are shaking when I drop the fish on her back step. I’m too tired to clean and scale them. I need to rest first. I’m going to just sink face-first into the couch for a few hours. Days, maybe.
As soon as I touch the door, I realize something’s wrong. It’s open again. The wind is smacking it repeatedly against the jamb, chattering a warning. I smell smoke. I step inside, and my hand touches something sticky on the doorknob.
I look at my fingertips. Ugh. What is this stuff? I sniff the gluey beige goo on my fingertips and smell a yeasty scent. It’s dough. But that’s not all. I look upward to where faint wisps of dark smoke spread across the ceiling.