When Bo finishes breakfast—so quickly that I know he must have been starving—we leave the warmth of the cottage and are submerged by the drizzling rain. The ash-gray sky presses down against us—a weight that is tangible. Water trickles through my hair.
We pass the small greenhouse where herbs and tomato plants and leafy greens were once tended and grown, the glass walls now tarnished and smudged so that you can no longer see inside. The island has taken back most of the structures, decaying walls and rot seeping up from below. Moss covers every surface: a weed that feeds off the constant moisture and cannot be contained. Rust and mildew. Slop and mud. Death has found its way into everything.
“The singing hasn’t stopped,” Bo says when we’re halfway to the lighthouse, our feet making hollow clomping sounds that echo against the wood walkway. But in the wind, the voices are still there, sliding lazily in with the sea air. It’s so familiar that I hardly discern it from the other sounds of the island.
“Not yet,” I agree. I don’t glance back at him. I don’t let his eyes find mine again.
We reach the lighthouse, and I pull open the metal door, corroded at the hinges. Once inside the entryway, it takes a moment for our eyes to adjust to the dim. The air is stark and smells of moisture-soaked wood and stone. A rounded staircase serpents its way up the interior of the lighthouse, and I point out to Bo where not to step as we ascend—many steps have rotted away or broken—and at times I pause to catch my breath.
“Have you ever been taken?” Bo asks when we’re almost to the top of the stairway.
“I wouldn’t know if I had,” I say between gasps for breath.
“Do you really believe that? If your body was inhabited by something else, you don’t think you’d know?”
I stop on a solid step and look back at him. “I think it’s easier for the mind to forget. To sink into the background.” He doesn’t seem satisfied, his jaw shifting to the left. “If it makes you feel better,” I say with a partial grin, “if a Swan sister is ever inside me, I’ll let you know if I can tell.”
He raises an eyebrow and his eyes smile back at me. I turn and continue up the stairway.
The wind rattles the walls the higher we climb, and when we finally reach the upper lantern room, a howling gust screams through cracks in the exterior.
“The first lighthouse keeper was a Frenchman,” I explain. “He named the island Lumiere. It was a lot more work to keep the lighthouse running back then—maintaining the lanterns and the prisms. Now it’s mostly automated.”
“How did you learn all this?”
“My dad,” I answer automatically. “He studied lighthouses after my parents bought the island.” I swallow hard then continue. “We need to check the glass and the bulb each day. And everything needs to be cleaned a couple times a week to keep the salty air from building up. It’s not hard. But during a storm or a thick fog, this lighthouse can save the lives of fishermen out at sea. So we have to keep it running.”
He nods, walking to the windows to look out over the island.
I eye him, tracing the outline of his shoulders, the curve of his assured stance. Arms at his sides. Who is he? What brought him here? Fog has rolled in over the island, creating a sheer veil of gray so that we can’t make out any features of the terrain below. After a few minutes of staring through the glass, he follows me back through the doorway and down the winding staircase.
Otis is sitting on the wood walkway outside, waiting with eyes blinking against the rain, and I pull the lighthouse door closed. Olga is several yards up the path, licking her orange-striped tail. They’re both used to the relentless downpour, their cat instincts to escape wet weather have gone dormant.
We walk up the path to the high center of the island, through the old orchard, where rows of Braeburn apple and spindly Anjou pear trees grow in wild, unruly directions. People used to say that fruit trees couldn’t grow in the sea air, but they’ve always thrived on Lumiere Island. An anomaly.
“What about the orchard?” Bo asks, pausing at the end of a row.
“What about it?”
“These trees haven’t been trimmed in years.” I squint at him and he reaches up to touch one of the bony, leafless branches, as if he can sense the tree’s history just by touching it. “They need to be limbed and the dead ones cut down.”
“How do you know?” I ask, shoving my hands into the pockets of my raincoat. They’ve started to go numb.
“I grew up on a farm,” he answers vaguely.
“My mom doesn’t really care about the trees,” I say.
“Someone cared about them once.” He releases the spindly branch from his fingers and it springs back into place. He’s right; someone did care about this orchard once. And there used to be more rows and a variety of hardy apples and pears. But not anymore. The trees are overgrown and windswept, only producing small, often bitter fruit. “They could live another hundred years if someone maintains them,” he says.
“You could really bring them back to life?”
“Sure, it will just take some work.”
I smile a little, scanning the rows of trees. I’ve always loved the orchard, but it’s been years since it’s seen a real bloom. Just like the rest of the island, it’s fallen into decay. But if the trees could be saved, maybe the whole island could too. “Okay,” I say. “Let’s do it.”
He smiles faintly, and our eyes meet for an instant.
I show Bo the other buildings on the island, and we circle around the perimeter. He’s careful not to walk too close to me, keeping his arm from brushing mine when we walk side by side, his steps deliberate and measured over the stony landscape. But his eyes flick over to me when he thinks I’m not looking. I swallow. I tighten my jaw. I look away.
When we reach the cliffs facing west, the ocean slamming against the shoreline in violent waves that spray water and foam against the rocks, he stops.
This close to the sea, the song of the sisters feels like a whisper in our ears. As if they were standing beside us, breath against our necks.
“How many people have died?” he asks.
“Excuse me?”
“During the months when the Swan sisters return?”
I cross my arms, the wind brushing the hair over my eyes. “They each drown one boy . . . usually.”
“Usually?”
“More or less. It depends.”
“On?”
I shrug, thinking about the summers when five or six boys were found tumbling with the waves against the shore. Sand in their hair. Salt water in their lungs. “How vengeful they’re feeling . . . I suppose.”
“How do they choose?”
“Choose what?”
“Who they’re going to kill?”
A breath sticks in my throat, trapped like a hook in a fish’s mouth. “Probably the same way they chose lovers when they were alive.”
“So they love the boys they drown?” I think maybe he’s being sarcastic, but when I tilt my gaze to look at him, his dark eyes and punctuated full lips have stiffened.
“No. I don’t know. I doubt it. It’s not about love.”
“Revenge, then?” he asks, echoing my words from last night.
“Revenge.”