Something’s burning.
“Anda? Anda!” I yell, barreling down the hallway toward the main room. Stinging smoke coils up to the kitchen ceiling from the oven. Coughing, I spin the oven dial to off and open the oven door. A cloudy black plume meets my face. Shrunken, burned lumps decorate a black cookie sheet. I run to the bedrooms, but they’re empty.
Oh shit. Where is she?
“Anda!” I yell hoarsely, the words feeling like sandpaper in my throat. I tear out the door and spin around wildly, looking for her. But I don’t see her anywhere. The treetops are bending and whipping back and forth and grit blows into my face. Maybe she just wandered off? Or maybe she went back to the lake.
No.
I forget about my exhaustion and run through the trees, heading for the water. You can see the lake through her kitchen window between the trees. The closer I get to the water, the colder the wind becomes. The clouds have darkened, fast. Sickening thunder rumbles everywhere. Sheets of rain fall near and far away, looking vaguely like the sweeping folds of a woman’s skirt. I’m soaked when I reach the water’s edge.
“Anda!” I yell, but the splashing is so noisy. The water’s surface is sharp with a million points from splattering raindrops. I see a white thing floating in the water. Something small, like the top of a blond head.
Oh my God.
She’s too far out for me to wade in and reach her. Remembering how hard it was to tug her to shore in my clothes, I yank my coat off, and then kick away my pants and boots. I run into the water. The icy temperature causes my body to revolt, making me hyperventilate. I dive in and swim hard toward the last place her head was bobbing on the waves.
My limbs immediately stiffen like lead from the blazing cold water. My head is buzzing from panic and faintness. I lift my face. The white thing in the water rises just at the surface. It is her. A foot or so away, I see the tops of her hands near the surface. Her body must be deeper, like her feet are pulling her down.
You might die doing this, an inner voice says to me. It’s so calm, so filled with common sense. But I ignore it, swimming harder.
I reach for her arm and grab it savagely, pulling her to me. Once again, her skin is scorching hot. It feels good inside my chilled palm. I need to grab her body and tug her to shore, but I’m underwater. There is nothing to anchor myself so I can pull, and my face goes underwater when a wave hits me square in the head. That old familiar panic hits my heart, and I kick in a frenzy to break the surface. I cough and sputter, gasping for air, and keep going. Anda’s face is only inches away. Her white-cropped hair sways in the turbid water. Her eyes are closed. She’s dead in the water. The most beautiful dead person I’ve never seen.
Really, Hector. Am I worth it? the voice says again.
Suddenly, her eyes open.
Alive eyes, seeing eyes. They bore right through me, like acid. In a way that tells me that I’m not supposed to witness this.
I would scream, but I can’t. The Anda I know, she’s not here anymore. A brutal tidal force pulls me ruthlessly away from her arms. She disappears in the greenish-black darkness of the water as I’m swept out toward the body of the lake. I need to breathe, but I don’t know which way is up. The burning in my chest grows into a vicious, hard knot. I remember learning about rip currents in science class. But I don’t remember what to do. Fight the current? Swim perpendicular? Ride it out and let it take you?
All I know is that Anda is underwater, and I can’t help her anymore. I came to the Isle to steal my life back, and I’m losing it. But I won’t, not without a fight. So I kick and kick, trying to find the surface, trying to exit the stranglehold of water that’s pushing me down, fast, away.
When my heart almost bursts in my chest, I realize my mistake.
This time, fighting was the wrong thing to do.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
ANDA
I know what death tastes like.
It’s sweet. Not like sugar, which coats the tongue with those cloying molecules—carbon, oxygen, hydrogen. No; death is not encoded in atoms or things you can touch. It’s bitter to some, like a tincture that must be taken in an inevitable dose. But to me, it’s an unearthly sweetness that I crave, that can’t be satiated with anything but the resolution of life.
I could have three deaths. I can almost taste them.
Thomas still clings to his boat, hoarsely screaming for his wife. There is so much water on board that the bilge pumps are useless. He cannot tell the difference between the lake and the rain anymore. It is all gray, the strange color between night and day, life and death, the places where I exist best.
The water has become one powerful thing, so overwhelming that he wonders why he ever thought it was a good idea to sail, when such a force lay simmering beneath the surface all along. He knew the history behind Lake Superior and me. He remembers only now the tales of the November storms so brutal, they’re called witches. I’ve fooled him with his own tenacity and confidence.
It’s a beautiful day, Aggie. C’mon. Just one last sail for the season.
His belly is full of lake water. He’s vomited twice and keeps swallowing it down with every relentless splash. He screams into the void for Agatha. He continues to fight.
I like them like this.
Agatha, in her life jacket, is sloshing on the waves, lost to him. Her gray hair is plastered to her skull. I can see her skull so easily now. Her flesh is but a thin covering on what will soon be at the bottom of the lake. She stopped screaming a few minutes ago. Despair has set in, and her tears add salt to the storm. Agatha carries more peace in her heart than Thomas, or younger sailors, who lust for more years of life. Her death will not satiate nearly as well. When life comes with more to lose, it means more when I take it. When hope has trickled away, they welcome the inevitable. It would be effortless to take them then. There would be no beauty in that.
Next November, I’ll listen for the bells tolling at the Mariner’s Church. Three more sonorous noises, added to those I’ve already taken from the St. Anne. The music is written. It’s waiting for me to play the tune.
I could tear the life jacket off with a sigh and let her sink to meet me. Thomas, I could pitch into the water with just a whisper.
And there is Hector.
He hasn’t a breath left. But he fights so hard against the unnatural riptide I’d created to pull him away from me. He let himself come to Isle Royale. Every night, he has come into my arms. He could have been at home.
Ah, but that was not a home. It was never safe. He hasn’t said this explicitly, but I know it. Because as terrible as I am, I am safer than what he had. What a sad truth. My conscience creaks at these thoughts. But he fed me. Didn’t he? He tasted my lips. He saw me. No one ever sees me with so little effort.
Ah, take him, Anda. I know how hungry you are.
I am. So ravenous. I reach my hands forward and feel the lake water in my blood.