by A. L. Tyler
“What's your name?” She asked, smiling at the random things he said.
His expression twisted into a smirk and he raised his eyebrows as he stared at her, shaking his head; this time, the smile came through his eyes instead of his mouth. Suddenly, his face contorted and he raised his arm defensively.
Ember frowned, wondering what she had done to displease her new friend. “What’s wrong?”
The stranger lowered his arm and smiled, though his nose was wrinkled in disgust. “Someone inside is cooking. That’s all.”
“Ember!”
She turned around to see her mother running toward her in long, graceful, gazelle-like strides, her bare feet crunching on the leaves. She reached Ember and scooped her up; Ember saw the kitchen knife in Gina’s hand. As Gina passed her daughter off to Nan, Ember turned in time to see Gina strike the knife one quick time across the stranger’s face. It made a sound like nails on a chalkboard, and the stranger reached up to grab at the dark, bleeding cut in shock.
Gina pointed the knife at his chest. “Stay away from her.”
“Why?” He replied with a hiss, pulling his hand away from his face. “I didn’t hurt her.”
“No.” Gina shook her head, once again raising the knife to gesture at his face. “You know why.”
In her grandmother's arms, Ember disappeared around the corner, clutching her gift ribbon in her hand. The next day, they put her on a plane to the contiguous states, where she went to a private boarding school and received a first-rate education. Ember didn't see the stranger again for many years afterward, and when she finally did, she didn't recognize him.
She only knew he was someone important to her—the first person to value her as a personal treasure and not a damaged item. She held on to the ribbon long after it had lost its childish charm, using it as a bookmark. She lost the ribbon when she forgot to pack the book she was reading for a trip she took when she was eighteen.
She was going back to Tulukaruk, intending to pay her last respects at Gina Gillespie’s funeral.
Chapter 1
“Keep the change!” Ember hollered over her shoulder.
The fisherman who had ferried her across the water was a small, shadowy man. The passage of time had frosted him around the edges: colorless hair on his head and coming out of his ears, white calluses on his hands. Sitting across the boat, he had ogled her relentlessly; he simpered at her with a straight grin and yellowed teeth. Ember had smiled politely, pulling her jacket tighter around her shoulders while angling to grab the fire extinguisher fixed under her seat, just in case she needed something heavy enough to use as a bludgeon.
The old fisherman didn’t scare her. She had dealt with much worse. Ember had never considered herself exceptionally attractive, but the creeps and degenerates of the world never seemed to have trouble noticing her. The man steering the boat was nothing compared to some of Stephen’s clientele.
She knew how to deal with men who looked at her the way the old fisherman did, and that she shouldn’t let him anywhere near her to help her off of the boat. When they were in the shallows, just as the boat stopped, Ember shot to her feet before he could get up to help her.
She threw her bag overboard, and then let out a long stream of profanities as she jumped into the waist-deep, icy water after it. The old man laughed, and the small craft that had carried her across the channel pulled away without looking back. Ember turned and sighed; the few words that she had exchanged with the old man had centered on his unwillingness to take her to the dock because “those island folk are odd.”
Staring at her soaked and freezing lower half, she wondered if he would have taken her the dry route via the dock if she had been even slightly more receptive of his advances.
Picking up her bag, she lumbered off-balance to the shoreline. Her gemstone-studded jeans were soaked and her shoes were ruined; they were the only good shoes she owned. Ember cursed again, and then continued ambling along the opening of the river with her knapsack precariously laid over her shoulder. The unstable gravel that composed the shore slithered under her wet shoe, her ankle twisted, and she collapsed flat on her back when her feet skated out from under her.
Sighing in defeat, Ember composed herself so that her throbbing leg and foot weren’t underneath her on the jagged, pebbly terrain. It was an ugly coastline compared to the ones she was used to seeing in South Carolina, and it smelled like fish.
It smelled like rotting tuna and old salad. It smelled like bass minus the “b”, as Stephen would have said; Ember rolled her eyes.
Stephen was crude, but he was right; as she stared at the charcoal grey sky, she knew that she shouldn’t have bothered coming back to Tulukaruk. This place was the one dream she squeezed so hard in her brain that she could feel it suffocating. It was losing all of the loveliness it had once held from her over-analysis.
Closing her watery, red eyes, she could see Stephen sitting on his leather sofa as she stood across the coffee table from him ten days ago, staring out the bay window at the thin line between the sky and the ocean. He was wearing blue plaid pajama bottoms and no shirt as he ate breakfast, because he liked showing off his tan, even when no one was there to see it.
“Why would you do that?” He asked, smearing cream cheese onto his bagel. He stared at her with a bleary, after-party hangover look in his eyes. “You said you didn’t know her. Did you ever even live there?”
She had never considered Tulukaruk her home. Most of what she knew about the island had been obsessively researched from what little she could find online. The rest had been painted in her daydreams, and little bits of what she could remember.
It was a small place—maybe thirty square miles of land, some of it under water, part way dissected by a small stream that trickled from a natural spring down to the bay area. It was volcanically active, like many places along the Ring of Fire, and surrounded on all sides by sometimes-frozen Gulf of Alaska water. The summers were foggy and the winters were stormy and harsh. Ember’s family had been the only one with small children crazy enough to reside there full time. Tulukaruk was close enough to land that the island was covered with a solid army of trees, and far enough away from the bay town that they were on their own when something unfortunate happened. The economy was all fishing, and the bulk of revenue was generated by supporting the transient fishermen and adventurous tourists. Most of the fishers left in the off season, when the weather came on heavy, before the nearby volcanoes would coat it all with a powdery film of black ash. That time of year, the island became introverted as the citizens settled down to survive until the means to put bread on the table returned.
“Yeah. I lived there.” Ember had mumbled back at Stephen through her own morning stupor, squinting at the line at the horizon. The ocean fascinated her. “Not for long, but it happened.”
It had been more than a few years. The first six of her life, followed by a short but significant summer when she was sixteen, Ember had lived on the island.
“So why are you going, again?” He asked, exasperated. He had crimson tendrils in his eyes, and shadowy circles beneath them. She didn’t usually like to cross him when he had that look, but she knew he was too tired to care. There were always other girls around, and Ember knew that she was replaceable. Even if Stephen like to whisper sweet things in her ear when they were alone, he was going to get bored eventually.
Boys lied and got bored, and Ember knew that she needed to make a graceful exit before he had a need to dispose of her. They were both perpetually hung-over, and Ember couldn’t remember the parties anymore. She had been bored for several months, and maybe a year, and possibly since the very beginning; perhaps that was what really compelled her to go back, but she hated goodbyes.
“I don’t know,” she muttered. “Because she was my mother, and maybe she left me something in the will.”
A mammoth, chilly plop of rain hit her forehead precisely, summoning her back to reality. She had the unsettling feeling that the island was acknow
ledging her. It knew that she was back, and why she had returned.
She was suddenly unsure why she had returned. This place wasn’t her home any more than Stephen’s condo had been. Perhaps it was the money and the will, but she didn’t think so. Perhaps it was the opportunity to make a scene by dragging herself to a funeral, embarrassing her sister where her mother was ultimately unable to come to her rescue—that had to be it. She hated the memories of Tulukaruk for haunting her, and she was putting those memories to bed before starting a new life somewhere expensive, dry, and trashy. Somewhere like Las Vegas, where hard-earned savings went to die for the sake of spectacle.
A rustle in the bushes startled Ember from her thoughts and she looked over sharply, but too late to see what it was. Her brain snapped to attention, and she realized that she had been drifting aimlessly somewhere in her mind. Ember knew there were bears, and surely other predators, on the island—she didn’t think something as large as a bear could have hidden so quickly.
Deciding that she would rather have the option to run if she needed to, she got back to her feet. She rose slowly and carefully, trying not to slip again, and started to walk. Her head was dizzy from the lack of sleep from all of the travel, and the slight, lingering hangover of a life with Stephen wasn’t helping.
Coming into town, Ember noticed that things hadn’t changed much. Granted, the last time she had been there when she was sixteen, she had really only seen it by moonlight. The days had been reserved for sleeping and hangovers.
Log cabin constructs and buildings with faded, peeling paint crammed the one main drag in town like sardines packed in a thin, straight line. It was the only area on the island that was paved, but there weren’t any cars. Everywhere that was worth going was within walking distance. There were a few rusted motorcycles and tractors, hidden in the alleyways, which the locals used for hauling heavier loads around. A handful of people owned smaller private boats to cross the channel to the bay, where the other town was just as isolated. Off in the bayside town on the mainland, they at least had a seaplane to get around, and one lone road leading off to somewhere.
The streets were empty, which didn’t register as unusual. There would be more people around when dark fell and the bar opened.
With little else to do, and hoping that the light buzz in her head would leave before she had to face her family, Ember stopped at the organic coffee business that sat in the middle of Main. The door clapped shut behind her as the brass bell over the entry clanged an announcement of her arrival. It was still the only place, besides the little general store and the bar, that sold food. Ember didn’t know why the store called itself organic. Everything bought and sold on the island was a freeze-dried or frozen import, except fish and non-perishables, so it all tasted like artificial preservatives and smelled like fish.
Ember’s shoes and pants were dripping a puddle on the scratched-up linoleum floor; little bits of dirt and crud that had stuck to her shoes floated in her miniature pond like dead goldfish.
Looking at the menu display, she was disappointed. Even since the coffee revolution that had brought whipped, frozen, and caramel creations into existence everywhere else, this place still only served coffee. The menu was so plain it might as well have been a joke.
“I’ll have a small coffee,” she said, putting money on the counter. It was more of a statement of fact than an order. The clerk, a younger woman with dark hair and a pallid complexion, glared at her without reason. Ember glared back at her with all the surliness she could muster. “Please,” she added with indifference.
Somehow, this seemed to clear the barista’s mind. “Ember?” Her lips spread into a cautious smile while her unblinking eyes remained fixed on Ember’s face.
The money was still on the counter and the coffee was nowhere in sight. Ember nodded and pushed the bills further in the barista’s direction, the wet cotton fibers of the bills clinging to her pruning fingers. It didn’t bother Ember that the stranger knew her name. Ember’s mother had lived on the island her whole life, and until she had disposed of Ember, she and Thalia had been the only children living there. They didn’t leave during the winter. Everyone knew them, or at least knew of them, and that their strong family resemblance was only growing stronger with age.
“Well…” She whispered smoothly, eyeing Ember like she was expecting her to say something about remembering her too. Then, sighing and shaking her head, she grabbed a paper cup off the stack and reached for a carafe. “I guess it’s true, what they say about you.”
Ember shook her head. “I’m sorry?”
The barista gave her another long, solemn stare. “You and your sister. The two of you haven’t changed one bit from each other.”
She set the carafe down unnecessarily hard as she held out the cup of coffee. There was an odd look in her expression—like she was angry, but pleased at the same time. She used her other hand to push the money back at Ember as she took the cup. “It’s on the house. Welcome back. And tell your sister I said ‘hi.’”
Ember stared at the coffee like it was going to bite her. Then she looked up to find the barista was still staring, her brownish-reddish eyes blazing as she crossed her arms. As she stared at her, Ember couldn’t help but feel challenged. She straightened up to make herself look taller, the vaguest sense of déjà vu nagging at her gut. Maybe during one of those long, cold, strung out nights, she had done something to this stranger.
“What’s your name?” Ember asked, taking a half step back.
“Delia.”
Ember didn’t know anyone named Delia.
Suddenly, the barista cocked one eyebrow and leaned forward just slightly. In that moment, Ember was struck by the very disturbing thought that Delia could kill her, and no one would ever know. No one was expecting her arrival, and Stephen wouldn’t miss her return for a month or longer. He might not ever miss her, depending on who he found to fill her place in the condo.
With Delia’s burning gaze and disquieting expression staring her down, Ember swallowed. If she went missing right in that moment, no one would know. No one would care; there wouldn’t even be a search. There probably wouldn’t even be fliers.
She was the soon-to-be ex-mistress of a drug dealer, and people like her went missing all the time. The world went on.
It wasn’t anything tangible, but the feeling was there…Ember imagined that she could feel the doors locking behind her and see the knife behind the counter. She could see her death on Delia’s face; one quick slice across her throat, blood everywhere, and Ember would be lying on the floor in the puddle her shoes had made, bleeding to death as her screams escaped out the hole in her neck instead of passing her silent lips. Delia would wrap her corpse in a garbage bag, mop up the mess, and wait for dark before going out to the water. She would use a knife to pop holes in the bag so that the gases from Ember’s rotting body wouldn’t make it float, and then weight it down with rocks before sinking it under the dock.
It was only her imagination, but still, Ember shifted from foot to foot, uneasy.
Delia was making a face. She was caught somewhere between a grimace and a smug smile, her lips so tight they looked like they were seizing as she smiled and yet seemed to be trying not to. Ember was horrified at the thought that Delia might have been imagining the same thing…and she was smiling.
“Um, okay…” Ember mumbled before making a beeline for the door. Normally, she was willing to fight when somebody tried to ruffle her feathers. She would have told Delia to not act like she knew her, because she didn’t, and then would have added a few choice words before grabbing her money and taking her business elsewhere. Or nowhere, as her options may have been on Tulukaruk. Maybe it was because she was cold and wet, or just in a sour mood being back on the island, but she didn’t want to fight with Delia.
There was an icy chill running down her spine as she sipped the coffee, and it had nothing to do with the actual frost developing from her dip in the ocean. She hoped the coffee wasn’t spiked w
ith something nasty. Ember sat down on a rough-hewn timber bench to steady herself. She wasn’t sure, but she was betting Delia and Thalia weren’t friends. Women got a certain look about themselves, something territorial, when they despised each other; Delia had that look.
Ember glanced up from her coffee to see the clerk from the antique shop across the way standing in the door and staring at her, with Delia standing next to him. Looking down the street, she could see that a group of townsfolk had also stopped to stare. Frowning, all she could think to do was raise a hand and wave, hoping they would take the hint and moved along.
They didn’t. A girl with red-blonde hair was openly gawking at her. None of them waved back, and sighing, Ember could see that Thalia had evidently made all of her friends for her since her last visit.
The rude redhead was walking towards her with her head cocked, as though she was confused by Ember’s presence. A split second later a man from the cluster of people, maybe in his early thirties with shaggy brown hair and large ears, started to follow her. He ran with a quick lope to grab her arm, and Ember jerked vicariously as he yanked the girl with such force that she lost her footing and turned back to him with an irritated expression.
The bench shuddered, and Ember looked over her shoulder to see who had sat down.
“Acton!” She didn’t know why, but her coffee was suddenly on the ground, and her arms were around his neck.
“Ember, Ember, Ember…” He said in a sweetly playful tone. “You’ve grown up on me.”
Ember pulled back, surprised by her own reaction as much as his words. Acton gave her a courtesy smile, but it was clear he wasn’t happy. He must have been walking outside for some time, because his skin was cold. Ember ran her fingers down both of his smooth cheeks, and she was surprised that he wasn’t growing a beard yet.
Frowning, she tried to count the years in her head; he had to be in his early twenties by now. She carefully looked him over, taking in every detail she had missed since her last dismissal from Tulukaruk. His dark hair was as messy as usual, complete with gritty bits of bark and pine, his hard features throwing into contrast the elegance in his posture. He was wearing the black suede jacket that Ember remembered from so many nights out at the bar.
