by Shea Ernshaw
But their hubris would eventually catch up to them.
The sisters might have portrayed themselves scandalously, wicked and witchy. But they never practiced magic in a way that justified their demise. They were not witches, in a historical sense, but they did have a gravity about them—a thing that pulled you in.
They moved with a graceful ease, as though they were trained ballerinas from the Académie Royale de Danse in France; their hair was a hue that wavered between caramel and carmine, depending on the sunlight; and their voices had the singsong of a whistling thrush, each word a fascination.
They never stole the souls of newborn babies or cast potent spells to make the rains unending or the fish in the harbor uncatchable. Nor had they the skills to spin a curse as everlasting as the one that bound them now.
But magic was not always so linear. It was born from odium. From love. From revenge.
FIFTEEN
At two a.m. on the dot, my eyelids flutter open. The room is dark except for the angular shape of moonlight spilling across the floor from the window. The rain clouds are gone and the sky has split open. Bo is awake, sitting in the chair, finger tapping slowly and rhythmically on the armrest. He turns his head when I sit up in bed.
“You should have woken me sooner,” I say drowsily.
“You seemed like you needed sleep.”
I’m still fully dressed under the blankets, and I kick back the layers and stretch my arms in the air. “I’ll take the next shift,” I say. The wood floor is cold and creaking beneath the weight of my feet. “You must be tired.”
He yawns and stands up. We bump shoulders as we try to move around one another, both of us sleepy. And when he gets to the bed, he collapses onto his back, one hand on his chest, the other stretched out at his side. He pulls his hat down over his face. I’m tempted to crawl back onto the bed beside him, rest my head on his shoulder and doze back into my dreams. It would be easy to let myself surrender to him, both in this moment and forever . . . let the days flit away until there are no more days left to count. I could leave this island with him and not look back. And maybe, possibly, I could be happy.
It doesn’t take long for Bo’s hands to relax, his head to shift slightly to the left, and I know he’s asleep. But I don’t settle into the chair. I walk to the door, opening it just wide enough to slip out into the hall. I move silently down the stairs to the front door.
A few intermittent clouds pass beneath the moon then reveal it again. A ballet of clear sky mixed with low clouds, washed in moonlight.
I wrestle into my raincoat, trying to move quickly, and then hurry out into the night, headed to Old Fisherman’s Cottage.
* * *
It takes several tries before I’m able to dislodge the board from under the doorknob. My hands are wet; the wood board is wet. And when the door creaks open, the only light inside the cottage is from the fireplace across the room.
It smells like mildew and mothballs and a little like vinegar. And for a half second I feel bad for Gigi being trapped inside this place.
She is standing across the small room, awake, holding her palms over the fire for warmth. “Hello, Penny,” she says without turning around. I close the door behind me, shaking the rain from my coat. “I didn’t kill his brother.”
“Maybe not,” I answer. “But he’s determined to find out who did.” Instinctively, I want to move to the fire for warmth, but I also don’t want to be any nearer to her than I already am. On the couch, I notice the folded-up blanket I brought her earlier. She hasn’t slept at all.
“Did you come to invite me up to your house for tea and a shower? I could really use a shower.”
“No.”
“Then why are you here?” She pivots around, her shoulder-length, straight blond hair hanging frayed and dirty like the bristles on a broom. Again I stifle back the sensation of feeling sorry for her. She blinks, and the flickering, silvery-gray outline of Aurora Swan beneath her skin blinks too. They are like two girls transposed over top of each other. Two photo images developed all wrong, one hovering over the other. But when Gigi turns away from the firelight, I almost can’t see Aurora inside her; the outlines of her face fade and turn shadowy. I could fool myself into believing that Aurora is no longer there and Gigi is just a normal girl.
“I need to talk to you.”
“Without your boyfriend?” she asks, the left side of her lip arching up at the edge.
“He wants to kill you. . . . The whole town does.”
“They always have; that’s nothing new.” In the corner of the ceiling behind her is a cobweb, partly decayed, dark specks—flies and moths—trapped in the sticky remains. Doomed. Legs and wings stuck. The spider is long dead, but the web keeps on killing.
“But this time they caught you swimming back to shore after drowning two boys. They’re certain you’re one of them.”
Her eyebrows come together, forming a line that rises up into her forehead. “And I’m sure you’ve done nothing to encourage that idea.” She’s implying that I’ve said something, revealed that she is indeed a Swan sister, but I’ve only told Bo.
“Aren’t you tired of this?” I ask. “Of killing people year after year?” This is what I had wanted to say when I confronted her at the boathouse, before Lon caught me talking to her.
She looks intrigued, and her head tilts to the left. “You say it like we have a choice.”
“What if we do?”
“Don’t forget,” she says crisply, “it’s your fault we ended up like this in the first place.”
I drop my gaze to the floor. Dust motes have collected around the legs of the kitchen table and against the walls.
She smiles then rolls her tongue against her cheek. “Let me guess, you’re falling in love with that boy?” Her mouth turns up again, grinning with satisfaction that she’s hit on something that makes me uncomfortable. “And you’re starting to think that maybe there’s a way to keep this body you’re in, to stay human forever?” She steps away from the fire, pushing her lower jaw out like she might laugh. “You’re fucking naive, Hazel. You always have been. Even back then, you thought this town wouldn’t actually kill us. You thought we could be saved. But you were wrong.”
“Stop it,” I tell her, my lips trembling.
“This isn’t your town. That isn’t your body. These people hate us; they want us dead all over again, and you’re pretending that you’re one of them.” She lifts her chin in the air like she’s trying to see me from a new angle, spy the thing inside me. “And that boy . . . Bo. He doesn’t love you, he loves who he thinks you are: Penny Talbot, the girl whose body you stole.” The words are spit from her lips like they taste vile on her tongue. “And now you’ve locked up your own sister in this disgusting cottage. You’ve betrayed us—your own family.”
“You’re dangerous,” I manage to say.
“So are you.” She laughs. “Tell me, were you planning on going the whole season without drowning a single boy? The solstice is coming.”
“I’m done with that,” I say. “I don’t want to kill anymore.” Even though the urge gnaws at me, tugging at my soul—the need like a thorn at the back of my throat, always pricking the skin, reminding me of what I’m here to do. But I have resisted. At times I’ve even forgotten. With Bo, the desire for revenge has been dulled. He’s made me believe I can be someone else . . . not just the monster I’ve become.
“You have to. It’s what we do.” She twirls a strand of blond hair through her thumb and index finger, pressing her lips together into a pout. Aurora’s face seems to push against the inside of Gigi’s skull, like she’s trying to find more space, stretch her neck a little within the confines of her body. I know the feeling. Sometimes I feel trapped in Penny’s body as well—imprisoned by the outline of her skin.
“We’ve been living like this for too long,” I say, my voice stronger now, finding purpose in the words. “Two centuries of torturing this town, and what has it gotten us?”
“
You fall for some boy, who’s not even a local, and now suddenly you want to protect this town?” She folds her arms over her chest, still wearing the same soiled white blouse as when she drowned those boys in the water. “And besides, I like coming back. I like making boys fall in love with me, controlling them . . . collecting them like little trophies.”
“You like killing them, you mean.”
“I make them mine, and I deserve to keep them,” she snaps. “It’s not my fault they’re so trusting and gullible. Boys are weak—they were two centuries ago, and they still are.”
“When will it be enough?”
“Never.” She cants her head to the side, cracking her neck.
I exhale. What did I expect coming in here? What was I hoping for? I should have known: My sisters will never stop. They have become just like the sea, breaking apart ships and lives without remorse. And they’ll keep on killing for another two centuries if they have their way.
I turn for the door.
“Haven’t you learned your lesson, Hazel?” she says from across the room. “You were betrayed by the boy you loved once before; what makes you think Bo won’t betray you too?”
I bite down on the fury boiling inside me. She doesn’t know anything about what happened before—two centuries ago. “This is different,” I say. “Bo is different.”
“Unlikely. But he is cute.” She smirks. “Maybe too cute for you. I think I should have him.”
“Stay away from him,” I bark.
Her eyes turn to slits, narrowed on me. “What exactly do you plan on doing with him?”
“I won’t kill him.” I won’t take him into the sea and drown him. I don’t want that for him—a dark, watery existence, his soul trapped in the harbor. A prisoner shifting with the tide.
“You realize that you’re just going to have to leave him behind in a few days. And he will have fallen in love with a ghost and be left with the body of this girl Penny, who won’t remember a thing.” She lets out a short laugh. “Won’t that be hilarious? He will be in love with Penny, not you.”
A rattling of nausea starts to rise in my gut. “He loves me . . . not this body.” But the words sound feeble and broken.
“Sure,” she says, and her eyes roll in her head—such a Gigi thing to do. We can’t help but take on the mannerisms of the bodies we inhabit. Just as I have taken on the traits of Penny Talbot—all of her memories sit dormant in my mind, waiting to be plucked like a flower from the ground. I am playing the part of Penny Talbot, and I do it well. I’ve had practice.
I touch the doorknob. “I meant what I said,” I say back to her. “Stay away from him or I’ll make sure those boys in town get the opportunity to do exactly what they’ve been dying to do—kill you.”
She chuckles, but then her gaze turns serious, watching me as I slip out the door and kick it shut behind me.
HAZEL SWAN
Hazel was walking swiftly down Ocean Avenue, a small package containing a vial of rosewater and myrrh perfume held delicately between her hands. She was on her way to deliver it to Mrs. Campbell on Alder Hill.
She had glanced down at the package, expertly wrapped in brown butcher paper, when she smacked right into the hard shoulder of someone standing on the sidewalk. The package slipped from her fingers and broke on the cobblestone street. The scent of rose and myrrh evaporated swiftly into the soggy, seaside air.
Owen Clement knelt down to scoop up the remains of the package, and Hazel did the same, her arm grazing his, their fingers touching and soaking up the perfume.
Hazel had always avoided the fervent affections of men, unlike her sisters. And so she wasn’t prepared for the desire that twined through her upon meeting Owen Clement, the son of the first lighthouse keeper who lived on Lumiere Island. He was French, like his father, and words rolled from his tongue like a sanguine breeze.
Nightly, Hazel began sneaking across the harbor to the island—hands pressed to skin and tangled in each other’s hair; bodies formed as one; waking each morning in the loft above the barn that stood near the main farmhouse, the air smelling of hay and sweat. The chickens clucked from their pen below. And in the evenings, with only the moonlight to reveal their faces, they wandered the single row of young apple tree saplings that Owen’s father had planted that spring. It would still be several years before they would turn a harvest. But the promise of what they would bring felt ripe and sharp in the air.
Together they explored the rocky coastline; they let the water lap against their feet. They imagined a new life together, farther south. California, maybe. They threw flat stones into the water, and they made wishes for impossible things.
But Owen’s father distrusted the Swan sisters, who were rumored to be witches—temptresses who lured boys into their beds just for amusement—and when he discovered his son and Hazel folded together in the loft one morning, he swore he would make sure they never saw each other again.
It was Owen’s father who mounted the inquisition into the three sisters. It was Owen’s father who tied the stones around their ankles that pulled the three girls to the bottom of the harbor. It was Owen’s father who was responsible for their deaths.
And year after year, summer after summer, Hazel feels drawn back to Lumiere Island, reminded of the boy who she loved in that place, who she forged promises with, and who she lost two centuries ago.
SIXTEEN
Bo is still asleep on the bed when I get back to the room.
The sky turned dark on my way back to the house, rain once again blowing across the island.
His chest expands with each breath; his lips fall open. I watch him, wishing I could tell him the truth without destroying everything. Without destroying him. But he thinks I’m someone else. When he looks at me, he sees Penny Talbot, not Hazel Swan. I have carried the lie around as if it were the truth, pretended that this body could actually be mine and that I wouldn’t have to return to the sea at the end of June if I believed it hard enough. Maybe this feeling blooming inside my chest will save me; maybe the way Bo looks at me will make me real and whole. Not the girl who drowned two hundred years ago.
But Gigi’s laugh rings in my ear. It’s what we do. We’re killers. Our revenge will never be satiated. And I can never have Bo, not really. I’m trapped in another girl’s body. I’ve been repeating the same endless cycle summer after summer. I am not me.
I hardly know who I am anymore.
I walk to the white dresser against the far wall and run a finger along the surface. A collection of items lie scattered like fragments of a story: vanilla perfume that once belonged to Penny’s mom, beach pebbles and shells in a dish, her favorite books by John Steinbeck and Herman Melville and Neil Gaiman. Her past rests unprotected in the open, so easily stolen. I can make these things mine. I can make her life mine. This home, this bedroom—including the boy asleep on her bed.
A photograph is tucked at the bottom corner of the mirror above the dresser. I pull it out. It’s an image of a woman floating in a tank of water, a fake mermaid’s tail fastened at her waist to conceal her legs. Men are gathered in front of the tank, staring in at her while she holds her breath, her expression soft and unstrained. She is a lie. An invention used to sell tickets at a traveling carnival.
I am her. A lie. But when the carnival closes for the night—all the lights flicked off and the water drained from the tank—I do not get to remove my fabric mermaid fin. I do not get to have a normal life outside of the illusion. I will always be someone else.
My deception has lasted two hundred years.
I place the photo back at the edge of the mirror and rub my palms over my eyes. How did I become this thing? A spectacle. A sideshow curiosity. I didn’t want any of this—this prolonged, unnatural life.
I blow out a breath, keeping the tears from seeping to the surface, and turn to face Bo, who’s still asleep.
He twitches on the bed then opens his eyes, as if he felt me watching him in his dreams. I flick my gaze away to the window.
“Fine.” But I’m not. This guilt is burying me alive. I’m choking on it, suffocating, swallowing down mouthfuls of each gravelly lie.
“Did you go outside?” he asks.
I touch my hair, wet from the rain. “Just for a minute.”
“To Gigi’s cottage?”
I shake my head, pulling in my lips to hide the truth. “I just wanted some fresh air.”
He believes me. Or maybe he’s only pretending to believe me. “I’ll stay up for a bit so you can sleep,” he says. I start to tell him no then realize how exhausted I am, so I crawl onto the bed, knees drawn close to my chest.
But I can’t sleep. I watch him standing at the window, looking out at a world that I don’t belong in.
The sun will be up soon. The sky made new. And maybe I’ll be made new too.
* * *
Three days whirl by in fast-forward. Rose comes to the island to check on Gigi—her freed prisoner. She brings forgetful cakes from her mom’s shop: blackberry mocha and sea salt caramel with crushed pistachio.
She tells us that Davis and Lon are searching for Gigi, that they’re worried they’ll get in trouble if she goes to the police and rats them out for keeping her locked up in the boathouse. Somehow no one seems to suspect that she might be on Lumiere Island, secretly incarcerated in one of the cottages.
Bo spreads out books on the floor of his cottage each evening, fire blazing, his eyes watering and tired from reading late into the night. He is searching for a way to kill the Swan sisters but save the bodies they inhabit—a pointless endeavor. I know things he doesn’t. And I, secretly, am hoping for a way to keep this body forever.
I read books too, curled up on the old couch, the wind rattling the cottage windows. But I’m looking for something else: a way to remain, to exist above the sea indefinitely—to live. There are legends of mermaids who fall in love with sailors, their devotion granting them a human form. I read about the Irish tales of selkies shedding their sealskins, marrying a human man, and staying on land forever.
