Mistwalker (6 page)

By inches, Seth melted against me, and we ended up swaying. We were a slow pendulum, and listening to his reedy breath thawed some of my numb, cooled some of my anger. When he kissed my brow, my heart turned and I clung to him. The house would have been too quiet without him. My thoughts would have been too loud.

“You want me to stay?” he asked.

“Yeah, you can help with dinner.”

And he did; he knew where everything was. He also knew a little cinnamon in the pancake mix made it special. I knew the syrup would explode in the microwave if we left the cap on. We were solid, and certain—a team.

The window framed us, night glass reflecting us—and for a moment, I stared. We fit exactly. Always had. Everyone knew it. Like the moon changed shape, like the sun came up—the two of us were meant to be. In third grade, Bailey and Amber chased me across the playground, throwing dandelion heads and singing:

Tikki-tikki-tembo, Seth Ar-sham-bow

Kissing Willa Dixon, in her mama’s kitchen!

Gonna get married, gonna get married, boo!

They sang it until I cried, and Mrs. Graham sent them to time-out.

No idea why it upset me.

FOUR

Susannah wasn’t the first girl I loved. Nor the third nor the sixth. I was entirely indiscriminate with my affections. The pretty girls were the only benefit to following my father from Massachusetts to Maine, from Boston to Nova Scotia.

All else was torment, but always on the shore, lovely girls. Girls with exotic accents. With brown eyes, blue, and green. With parasols and gowns that draped them as if they were Grecian goddesses. They distracted me from the hardships of merchant life. In return, I treated them from the stores.

Tea from Boston, mostly. It made a good gift—it wasn’t expensive, it didn’t spoil. I trailed spiced leaves all along the shore, filling cups wherever I walked.

In the beginning, the very beginning, I thought perhaps this lighthouse was my penance. That here, I would learn to be selfless. To become a man, someone worthy of esteem. I was by beauty trapped and thus made a beast. It made sense that by beauty I would be set free.

How brilliantly I deceived myself. But, in my own defense, isn’t that
the conclusion bred into us by the Misters Grimm and M. Perrault? (Hr. Anderson seemed rather more occupied with eternal suffering and thus wasn’t a favorite of mine.)

I offered pretty prayers. I wished for a rosary and learned it. Then mala beads, then bells. I wished for a singing bowl and tried rather hard to learn to meditate. But I had nothing but the sea to surround me. Its whisper, constantly in my ears. I was the most shut away of monks, but I never found pleasure in it.

Always my downfall. Pleasure, the wanting of it. The pursuit of it. I ignored my true calling for a decade. Though I held the mists off, I thought,
This is my test. If I suffer it nobly, I’ll be rewarded. Another girl will come, I’ll be transformed. I’ve learned my lesson and stopped hating the ocean.

These are lies. Sometimes I repeat them. It makes the hours, one after the other, same as the last, same as the next, go by. And now, my reward is at hand. My release. My freedom, and though in those early days I swore I would be better, I swore I would never press a cursed kiss on anyone the way Susannah had pressed one on me—

I realized, I had meant it only halfway. Because there, on the shore, she’s thinking of me. If she’ll only come, I’ll press this curse on her without hesitation. I’ll do it with the truth. With revelation. She’ll see every sweet benefit, and it’s no concern to me if she discovers the disadvantages. By then, it will be much too late.

And besides. She’ll need that discovery to fuel the first ten years. After that, she’ll manage on her own.

FIVE

The next day, Seth waited for me on the main stairs.

Light filtered through the stained-glass window on the upper landing, blues and greens and golds that wavered like water. The colors played through Seth’s hair and reflected on his skin. He was built too rough and angular to call beautiful, but there was a reason girls craned out their car windows to get a look at him when we went to Bangor.

His smile bloomed when he saw me. Dumping his cracked paperback into his satchel, he hooked an arm around my waist and greeted me with a kiss. He pulled back, brushing his rough lips against my temple, and asked, “How’s Dad?”

“Feeling like a dumbass,” I said. “He says he wants to go back out as soon as he can.”

Without hesitation, he nodded. “I can miss school, no problem.”

He was so earnest. So damned earnest, thinking he was helping me. Like I was avoiding the boat on purpose. “I don’t want him to go out. How did he even get hurt last time? He wasn’t paying attention, and that’s dangerous.”

“I know, Willa. But he can’t stay ashore forever,” Seth said.

“Well, yeah.”

With another kiss against my temple, he said, “I could get Nick to pull the traps with me so Dad wouldn’t have to go.”

That was Seth’s best friend, a lumbering, shaggy guy who practically lived at Seth’s house. I liked Nick; everybody did. But his family was from Indiana, and he’d be hard-pressed to tell the difference between a lobster trap and a beehive.

So I was nastier than I meant to be when I asked, “Oh yeah? Does Nick even have a license?”

“It’s for one day.”

“That makes a big difference to the Marine Patrol.”

He stiffened a little, his hand going cold and heavy on my shoulder. Ducking beneath his arm, I walked a few steps ahead. I was afraid he’d spill into the hollow inside me. His hurt wouldn’t fill me up; it would drown me. “It’s all right. I’m gonna cut out for the flats; tell Bailey, all right?”

“You need a ride?”

His expression smoothed; watered light rippled across his face. A streak of green illuminated his eyes, then danced away to leave them dark. He meant it when he offered to drive me, but I shook my head anyway. I just wanted to get away, from him, from myself, I didn’t even know. From my life in all the after.

Seth lowered his voice. “I’m here, Willa.”

It should have made me happy that he could read me. That he knew me like that. But I didn’t want to give him credit for growing up with me. For being good; for being the one who knew where we were supposed to be going. It was easy to be angry with him,
at
him.

I said, “I’m fine. Tell Bailey.”

A couple of people wound past us, an embarrassing reminder that we weren’t having this nothing fight someplace dramatic and quiet. I guess it was good that people like us didn’t have to scream. Seth pressed his lips together, then waved a hand toward the door. The gesture said he’d tell Bailey; it invited me to go.

“Don’t you let Nick on my boat,” I replied, and let myself outside.

People talk about crisp autumn days, and maybe if I’d hiked into the woods, I might have enjoyed one. The colors had started to come in, copper ornament between firs and pines. Worn paths revealed bare stone beneath the soil and seeds, smooth from centuries of hikers.

But it wasn’t the woods for me. I walked home in a damp, clasping cold to get my worming gear. Then I followed the shore to one of the inlet flats.

The fog had thinned, but in places it lingered. It snaked across the grey mud, stirring around my ankles.

Late for low tide, I had to slog almost to the water to claim an untouched spot. The air smelled like fish and seaweed and the bloody waft of new-turned mud. I had my rake in hand, but instead of bending to get to work, I turned to consider Jackson’s Rock.

It looked like a cairn: a pile of granite boulders weathered to orange, capped with a thick head of jack pines. Mostly, it wore dark evergreens. Right at the point, though, a single, skeletal hemlock kept watch over the water.

Jutting above that, a sturdy, plaster white column cut the sky—our lighthouse. Even in daylight, it flashed a red light every nine seconds, calling souls and sailors home.

But there was no one there. The foghorn moaned when a computer told it to. The light pulsed by remote control. And my head ached when I tried to picture the east side of the island, the only place the cliffs collapsed to a shore. It was like Jackson’s Rock wanted to be forgotten.

I bent over to get to work, raking mud, wrestling worms into my bucket before they bit or escaped. My rake gasped through the mire, and the cold became a constant. Its own ache, one that usually scrubbed away thoughts and worries. But today, the lighthouse distracted me.

No, it was the fog.

Maybe it was both. They’d always been there, and I never thought about them. It woulda been like thinking about my own hip, or my middle toe. Some things were just
there.
Some things just
were.

Still, it seemed to me like I knew a hundred reasons why nobody went to Jackson’s Rock. No shoreline to land on. Couldn’t get a boat past the shoals anyway. It was a nature preserve for nesting peregrines. It was infested with bats; it was dangerous to breathe all their dried crap. It was haunted. It was dangerous. There was nobody in the lighthouse. There was
nobody
in the lighthouse.

A fine wire of pain pierced through my head, but it didn’t stop me from thinking it. From feeling it. Maybe knowing it:   

There was
somebody
in the lighthouse.

Cloudless skies came with morning and brought a sea barely rippled by the wind. I ate breakfast alone and dressed for school. Every time I caught a look outside, I hesitated. Our sugar maple had turned, half scarlet, half gold, and it seemed to sparkle in the pure light.

A transparent sunrise promised good weather all day, and I groaned when I stepped onto our porch. It was just cool enough to taste clean. No freeze in the wind to sneak into open collars or down the front of spray-soaked oil clothes.

The quiet pressed around me. Our fleet was nothing but shadows on the horizon, all set sail before first light.

I turned away. I had school. I told myself that like I really cared about it. Like it should grieve me to miss it.

Making my way toward the overlook hill, I felt the
Jenn-a-Lo
behind me. She didn’t care that I was banned from her deck. She needed the sea; she wanted to cut across the waves to our fishing grounds.

Halfway up the hill to school, I looked back. All along the asphalt roads, a twine of roofs made up our town. Strung like Christmas lights, they draped city limits from one end to the other. Pines swayed between them, and a white steeple signaled due east.

Just then, some of the little kids from town ran past. They held hands, a bright, giggling wall that swept me from the path. I stood in the soft, fallen needles, my back to the school. From that vantage, everything looked sharper, Broken Tooth revealed.

And I was right. The harbor
was
empty, mostly empty—the
Jenn-a-Lo
remained. She pulled at her slip, untouched and unworked. Beyond her, terns circled Jackson’s Rock, an endangered halo drawing attention to the lighthouse.

Something (some
one
) drifted across the island’s cliffwalk. A hook drew through my belly. I shielded my eyes to get a better look at the thing on the island. It glinted, like a piece of glass catching the sun. Drifting through the trees, it flashed once more, then faded.

There were reasonable explanations. Maybe somebody from the Coast Guard was out there, checking on the beacon. Could be Fisheries and Wildlife counting active nests and live birds.

Before I could puzzle it out, Denny Ouelette veered toward me. “What are you staring at, dummy?”

My throat snapped closed. Denny was related to Terry Coyne, by marriage, not blood. Still, standing that close to her made my nerves fire. Lawyers had told me not to talk about the case; common sense agreed. Better to keep my mouth shut. Things were tense enough.

“My gran has to sell her house on account of you,” Denny said. She was shorter than me, and made out of delicate parts. Tiny hands, doll mouth—she looked breakable. But we’d grown up together, and I knew better.

Out of reflex, and sincere, I said, “I’m sorry.”

Like a snake, Denny coiled. Her eyes narrowed, and I could see her calculating. Could she break my nose with one shot? Had I sounded snotty enough for her to get away with it?

Adrenaline buzzed through me; in a sick way, it almost felt like happiness. Already, I could taste blood; I savored the anticipation of the blow.

Her sums must have come up short, because the blow never came. Instead, she spat on the ground—near my shoes, but not on them. Then she pulled her hair from her coat and stalked up the hill to first class. Her perfume, sugar and light, lingered even after she disappeared inside.

My anticipation turned sour, and an ache started in my head. Somewhere on the top of the hill, Bailey waited for me. Seth, too. I could tell them about Denny. I could tell them anything. Then they’d stand too close and be too good.

A cool breeze threaded through my hair, bringing in the sea, washing it over me. I took one more step toward school, giving my feet the chance to make me behave. But they turned instead. Toward the harbor, toward Daddy’s boat and the ocean.

But I’m the one who took the step.   

It was a perfect day to be on the water, and there was only so much perfect to go around. I was desperate to go out, the sun bleaching my hair brighter and the wind chapping my lips. I wanted back all the things I’d lost, all the things that had slipped away.

I
wanted;
it wormed through me. It writhed under my skin.

It didn’t take long to walk to the harbor. Gliding over the warped wood of the dock, I felt my blood surge again. I was heat, inside and out. Herring gulls pierced the sky with their bodies and their cries. Jumping on deck, I didn’t bother to pull on my life vest. I went straight to the wheel; I steered straight out to sea.