Mistwalker

by Saundra Mitchell

  I reached for the EPIRB, then jerked my hand away. It was a new one. It would send a distress signal. But if the Coast Guard came, I’d have to leave the Jenn-a-Lo on the open water, lost to the tides.

  I didn’t know why I was panicking. I’d been on plenty of rough seas. Rode out waves so high and white, we called them bed sheets. Survived any number of pop-up squalls. So I clung to the cabin door’s frame as the next swell hit.

  Everything shifted again.

  The stern raised against the sky. An awful cry filled the air, the hauler wrenching against its bolts. Our soda cooler tumbled down the deck, crashing into me. Ice fountained from it, frigid bullets against my skin. Even that was lucky. If there had been a full load of traps on deck, I’d have already been dead.

  The boat crashed down. The cooler bounced up and out, flung into the sea. The hauler gouged the cabin wall again, right next to my head. It left a deep welt in the wood. Ice cubes skittered beneath my feet.

  Slicked with sweat, I dragged myself into the cabin. Righting myself, I twisted the key. The engine growled, then caught. It didn’t make a difference. The next wave hit. Daddy’s hula girl, hanging from the radio, went horizontal.

  I cracked my head against the windshield. A wave crashed inside my head, this one dark and full of sparks. A hot streak of blood spilled down my temple. I ignored it. Instead, I flipped all the lights on. The radio, too. I had to get my bearings.

  The engine was running, but it would be dangerous to steer into the sea blind. There had to be other boats out, farther out. Daddy’s Girlfriend would have advice too.

  As warning lights flashed, the bilge alarm went off. The radio whispered white noise. In the cacophony, I caught a snatch of an automated warning. Storm surge in conjunction with unexpectedly high tide causing three- to four-foot waves. Danger to small vessels, and no freaking kidding.

  Alarms blared around me. Taking on water! Check engine! When I keyed the mic, the static went quiet. But no one answered my call. With the lights on, I saw the chaos clearly. Sharp, angry angles of waves ahead of me, peaked like meringue. Then, the slow rise of the Jenn-a-Lo’s bow, anticipating the strike to come.

  It hit, and the boat lunged once more. More water spilled onto the deck. That wasn’t enough to sink the boat. The bilge pump was already on, pumping as fast as it could. The Jenn-a-Lo was made to stay dry. We hauled traps onto the deck all day long, draining them out the sides.

  No, that wasn’t the problem.

  Another wave struck. It came down like a fist. That was the problem.

  The ocean, when it was riled, could drown a boat. Not sink it—drown it. Shove it beneath the surface and hold it there. It wasn’t sinking if you filled with water all at once. It was drowning, drifting. A graceful submission. Gliding to the bottom to lay with other boats and other sailors, all sacrificed to the great blue.

  Trying to find my way up, I gagged on the acid of cigarette ash. Rubbing grit off my face, I lurched when the ocean punched the Jenn-a-Lo again. Cords hung everywhere. They dangled like innards, the guts of some black beast cut open. Everything stank: salt and ash, spilled bait, fear sweat. I was flashes of cold and hot at the same time, trying to find my feet.

  The mic swung close. I scrambled to catch it and keyed the button. “Mayday, mayday, mayday. This is the vessel Jenn-a-Lo, call sign ZMG0415.”

  The sea answered, groaning like it was possessed. Like it was alive. I dropped the radio and turned. A wall rolled toward me. Black, streaked with silver, it was its own constellation. Poseidon rampant. Neptune at war.

  All at once, I was calm. I wasn’t going to have to explain what I was thinking when I took the boat out. I wasn’t going to have to plead guilty or let a defense attorney tear me up. I wouldn’t ever see Seth driving around with another girl.

  A sharp touch of regret twisted in me: I wouldn’t see Bailey again. My mother. My father. One more sunset on the Atlantic.

  Before that registered, the wall came down. I was swallowed by the sea.

  FOURTEEN

  Grey

  I don’t know. Usually I don’t know.

  I see one of the human lights floundering beneath my beacon, and I thrill. Who it is matters not. It’s a mystery I can’t solve, and I don’t try. I snatch a jar from the cabinet. These vessels whisper and rattle, so alive in my hand. Into the elements, I rush.

  Though I stay there most of the time, I’m not bound to the lighthouse. It’s the island that contains me. Thus, I can run to the shore when it’s time to add to my collection. When someone breathes his last, his soul rises to the beacon road. I open my jar, and his essence coalesces in it.

  The whole spark of a human being is a beautiful thing.

  I tremble in anticipation as I take my jar and rush to the water. A storm and stars, lighting and a full moon. It’s an extraordinary night! One more silver, swirling vial of life to line the shelves. One more tick off my immortal clock.

  But when I reach the shore, I see autumn colors instead of an indeterminate glow. Copper hair, dusky mouth, I see her. This time I know her name. The shape of her hand. I recognize the essential parts—this isn’t another light, this is Willa.

  I drop the bottle. Its bulb shatters on the rocks, and I wade into the water. When I go too far, I peel apart. I’m red-hot strips of agony, then nothing in an infernal cold. Then I form again on the shore, whole. Complete. Watching her go under.

  This can’t happen. One more out of a thousand is not enough: collecting her ruins everything. She’s my hope. My escape! She’s walking on the far shore this year instead of a millennium hence. She comes to me and touches my things. She’s real and alive; I need her to stay.

  There are no mannerly waves tonight. They roll and crash, making walls of driftwood, pushing them ever closer to the wood that shadows my rock. I can’t get closer. My agonizing insubstantiality persists. There are borders to my curse, a gate through which I cannot pass.

  So I call the mist. I wind it around the island, wool on a spindle. I hope that it will calm the seas, just enough to bring her to shore. Not just her soul, but the whole of her.

  Since the curse has been so very accommodating, I wish. On my breakfast plate, I want proof that she’s well, that she more than survived the night. The curse will grant it; a wish like that couldn’t be more contrary to its desires.

  The waves roar yet, now blanketed in haze—but I see her light. With each surge, it flows toward me. I hold out my hands. To catch her; perhaps to call her. As if I’m some saltwater god and not a monster in a tower.

  She can’t be lost. I’ve waited too long. I’ve been too generous, too careful, too kind. Despite my strange-made flesh, I’ve been so very human, and it’s time. I deserve this. I deserve her, deserve the chance to kiss her. To make her love me enough to die for me. All these things should be mine.

  I wade in again, the island sure beneath my feet in spite of the inundation. The next wave crashes through me. There’s a trembling, the curse threatening to shear me to pieces again. I’m almost too far out. My contradictory bones ache from the cold, but, oh, lucky hand! I catch a length of what must be her hair.

  Winding my wrist in it, I drag her into the air. It’s brutish, but it works. Once I’ve pulled her from the surf, I can better grasp her. I can even be gentle—scooping my arms beneath her, hefting her sodden shape off the ground. Her edges trail like seaweed.

  Suddenly, her edges sharpen. She’s less a haze of light and shape, and more a girl.

  No, she’s a mermaid made real, cradled in my arms and breathing! Gloriously, wonderfully breathing. Her face is battered. Bruised and swollen. Her skin cast in faint shades of blue. A vicious shudder rolls through her, and though she’s stiff with cold, she curls toward me. Catching my shirt with one hand, she clings to it.

  Usually I don’t know the names or faces that belong to the souls in my bottles. Like the lights on the shore, they’re no more than the flickering of fireflies, single keys to try in the lock of my cage.


  But this time, I looked out and knew it was Willa, and I thrill at her exception. She’s special; it must be destiny.

  My curse’s end must be near!

  FIFTEEN

  Willa

  The angle of the light was wrong when I woke up. The sunrise was supposed to come through my window direct. It should have warmed my face, then my neck, then made me too hot to stay in bed anymore.

  Instead, a single streak of light played above me. It danced, and reflected off a mirror I didn’t own. I jerked up and stared. The room wasn’t mine, but it was familiar. A lacy canopy draped the bed—the kind I always asked for when I was little. Glass witch balls in green hung by the window. I’d begged for those at a street fair once.

  An oar hung on another wall. It gleamed, perfectly polished. Below that, pictures of the sea. At dawn. At dusk. With a storm on the horizon. In the clear after a squall. And then, the Jenn-a-Lo sailing away, outlined by fireworks. A younger version of me leaned on the rail, elbow to bony elbow with Levi.

  The memory of water crashed over me. Frigid cold, it stole my breath. The salt blood of it filled my nose, the room. I was dry drowning, so I threw myself at the window. The glass reflected my ghost self. My lip was split, my eye blacked. I had to touch my forehead to confirm the goose egg there.

  Wrenching the curtains open, I shrank at the blinding burn. Then, as the sensitivity faded, I made out shapes. The water, the ground, too far below. My throat seized and my lungs, too. I recognized the view. I stood at the top of the lighthouse. Across the water, my village.

  Even from so far away, I saw the destruction in the harbor. Boats piled on top of boats; masts like matchsticks, snapped and scattered. The sun shone too bright. It mocked the washed-out wharf; it mocked me.

  A slow throb started in my head. It beat in time to my pulse as I turned from the window. Those swells had swallowed my father’s boat. They’d beaten at Broken Tooth, littered the shore. How many of us were ruined?

  I pushed the window open and grimaced. Dead fish and algae, seagrasses in the sun—it was a terrible smell. It would take weeks to fade.

  Cold, rank air coated too much of my skin. Looking down, I realized my jeans and sweatshirt were gone. I wore a guy’s shirt in the palest green that could still be called green, and panties. My panties, thank God. But my insides soured.

  Grey’s hands had been on me when I was passed out. He’d looked at me, undressed me! My head hurt when I tried to piece the night together. But all that came back was the wave. A tower of glimmering black and then nothing.

  Throwing a blanket around my shoulders, I turned expectantly. There should have been stairs, but there weren’t. Spinning around again, I waited for the magic to happen. How crazy, screwed up, straight-up damaged was that, expecting magic.

  Nothing happened, and my pulse raced. I brought my heel down hard. The witch balls quivered on their ribbons. I stomped on the floor. If that didn’t reveal the stairs, maybe it would get that freak Grey’s attention.

  A small part of me wondered if I really wanted it. Maybe throwing myself out of the tower would have been a better escape. Terns swooped against the flawless sky. Shrill cries echoed against the lighthouse. If only I could follow the birds. Fly away home. Fear spilled out of me.

  “Grey!” I shouted. My voice broke. “Let me out!”

  He didn’t answer. I tried again, a few times. Too many times. Until my throat felt raw, and the sounds I made were barely recognizable. He wasn’t answering. I’d have to rescue myself. Free myself. There would be blood spilled before I settled down to be his Rapunzel.

  Stripping the bed, I laid the linens out. All of them—the sheets and the coverlets, the duvet, and even the dust ruffle. Dropping to my knees, I tied the corner of one to the next. My bowknots were good and strong. I wasn’t that far off the ground. It worked in movies, although that didn’t mean much.

  I secured one end of my rope to the bed. Just as I hefted the rest to the window, the room shifted behind me. Two footsteps sounded on a spiral staircase. China rattled on a tray, and Grey looked seriously confused.

  “I brought breakfast,” he said, and turned away from me.

  “Where are my clothes?”

  The question seemed to embarrass him. He didn’t blush. There wasn’t that much color in him. Sliding the tray onto the bed, he gestured at a stand-up chest. “I’m sure they’re dry now.”

  Edging around him, I opened the door. I yanked my jeans off a hanger. They rasped when I put them on, but they were warm and soft. Cedar sweetened my sweatshirt, surrounding me as I pulled it over my head. I didn’t bother to take off the foreign shirt. I could get rid of it at home.

  Eyes on the ceiling, Grey started, “You seem perturbed—”

  “Don’t.”

  I pulled my shoes over bare feet and snatched my coat. The hangers swung on the bar, whispering as they rubbed together. Little echoes filled the armoire, ripples in the air. Freeing my hair from my collar, I backed toward stairs that finally existed. Grey left the tray on the bed and turned to follow me.

  “I don’t understand what I’ve done wrong. You almost drowned; I pulled you from the water.”

  His weight made the spiral staircase tremble, and I didn’t know where it was going anyway. So far as I saw, rooms came and went in the lighthouse. They only existed when he wanted them to. I was relieved when the next landing was the library.

  Desperation in his voice, Grey reached for me. “What have I done to offend you?”

  “Nothing,” I told him. “No, wait, you said let’s be honest.”

  “Please.”

  The rough iron rails bit into my palms as I hurried down stairs that never seemed to end. I was almost out of breath. The music-box room should have been ten steps down, but I kept spiraling with no end. “You pulled me out, great, thanks. But you stripped me. You locked me in that room. What’s wrong with you?”

  “That’s the worst possible interpretation. You can’t afford me the benefit of the doubt?”

  I threw a look over my shoulder. He was serious. He was actually ticked that I didn’t appreciate all his creeping when I was unconscious. A shudder raced through me. “What’s the good spin on locking me in your tower?”

  “The truth,” Grey said stiffly, “is that I put you in my bed but the lighthouse decided to provide you with your own chamber.”

  “It’s a building! It doesn’t decide anything!”

  “Doesn’t it?”

  He reached past me and pushed open the door. A door—it wasn’t there a second ago. And it didn’t open onto the music- box room. Instead, the wind rushed in, bitter with death. The beacon hummed, spinning without light. I was back at the top of the lighthouse.

  The dull ache in my head turned sharp. I stepped onto the lantern gallery because I didn’t have anywhere else to go. Outside seemed better. I could breathe there. I could back away from him. Iron rattled with my steps. I pressed the heel of my hand to my temple. “Let me out.”

  Grey drifted past me. He was smart enough to keep his hands to himself. Though his shadowy eyes pinned me, he moved away. Wrapping his hands on the guardrail, he stared at the sea. Didn’t even look over once. The wind tried to snatch his voice, but I heard him all the same.

  “It stuns me that you think I have any control over this whatsoever.”

  “You’re telling me you don’t?”

  He looked like a storm coming in. He threw his hands up, flashes of lightning, his voice thunder. “It’s cursed. I’m cursed, this place is cursed. Don’t you know an illusion when you see one? You woke up in the room you desired, dressed the way you imagined.”

  My mouth gaped. “That wasn’t my imagination.”

  “I swear to you, it was.” He turned to me finally. His hands flew, dangerously constrained against his chest. But they trembled; he was furious. “You’re not flesh to me, Willa. I see the life in you that I could collect, but nothing more. You’re a ghost. You’re a lie.”

  I probably was all tho
se things. And I was afraid. I glanced at the rocky shore below. I didn’t have my sheet rope now. No matter how many physics classes I missed, I still understood terminal deceleration. It was too far down. I’d never survive. Nobody could survive.

  Grey set his jaw and looked away. “Just want to leave and you can. Only one of us is bound here.”

  “Yeah?” I spread out my arms. “I’m still here. And I can think of about a million places I’d rather be.”

  “You must not want to be there very badly.”

  If I’d known him, if we’d grown up together, I might have decked him. Instead, I threw out my arms and said, “Wishful thinking on your part.”

  Instead of answering, Grey’s expression darkened, and he looked back to the sea. He was made of marble. Chill pale, with grey veins that pretended he had a pulse. I bet if I touched him, his hands would be stone. His mouth would be ice.

  This frozen creature stepped onto the rail. The wind plucked at his hair. It was mist and nothing more. Wild, foggy tendrils that flowed around his head, then pulled straight.

  Grey jumped.

  He didn’t say a word. He didn’t even look back. Over the side, he plummeted without a scream. There was screaming, though: mine. It tore from my throat. I threw myself against the rail, raw with terror.

  Clinging to iron so cold, it bit, I leaned over. I was fast. I saw him hit the ground. Exploding into ribbons of haze, he disappeared. No body. No blood. Nothing left of him.

  “As you see,” he said behind me. “Only one of us is bound here.”

  My skin crawled. I whipped around, and there was Grey. Whole. Still cold and pale and frightening. But fine as could be, like he’d never jumped at all.

  Frigid wind blasted off the water. It pushed me back, and I saw the stairs. I shoved past Grey. My heart was jelly, quivering instead of beating. I almost fell, but I didn’t slow down. Taking the stairs two at a time, I ran. Like if I hurried, the lighthouse would have to let me go.