Mistwalker

by Saundra Mitchell

  I needed to be outside. I wanted to go home.

  My footsteps echoed in my head. In my ears. If I did fall, I wondered if I would ever stop. The spiral could have gone on infinitely. My body would tear apart. Smaller and smaller pieces, until nothing but blood and atoms stained the steps.

  Tinny, discordant notes jangled around me. Music boxes trembled. A soaring wall of them, delicate brass and silver fixtures shivering, strangely alive. Light glinted on them; it was too bright. I caught glimpses of my face, bent by spiked wheels and shimmering gears. A thousand fun-house mirrors, all playing their own eerie songs. So many sharp edges.

  I ran past them and crashed through the door.

  Pushing through, I clapped a hand over my mouth. By force alone, I strangled a laugh or a sob. Maybe both. Because when I passed through, I didn’t find myself standing on the stone cliff of Jackson’s Rock.

  I was at home.

  I stood on my own front step, staring at the front door my mother liked to paint a new color every spring. I reached for the knob and yelped when it turned on its own.

  Daddy stared at me, uncomfortable in a suit. His face looked like putty, the color off and the shape of it just a little wrong. Lips parting, he smoothed a hand over his head. Then, without softness, he demanded, “What happened to you?”

  My body wouldn’t let me admit any of it. Losing the Jenn-a-Lo felt just as imaginary as the Grey Man.

  Since I didn’t answer, Daddy rolled his eyes at me and went back inside. He called to my mother, “She’s back!”

  I was. I was home. And I had a court date.

  FIFTEEN

  Grey

  She thinks I’m a monster.

  It was evident in her eyes and her accusations. Though I have my own motives, I can’t think of a thing I’ve done to deserve that kind of reception. I’ve been kind; I’ve been gentlemanly. I’ve told her the truth all along—most of it, enough of it.

  It makes me wonder what kind of world really runs on the other side of the sea. There have always been passions and madness. Murders and cruelty and all manner of evil in the world. I’m not so naive; I was a fool for Susannah, but not unworldly. Things were no better when I walked free; I could argue they were worse.

  But Willa thinks I’m a monster. As if I would take advantage of her in all her helplessness. As if I could be so ungallant—I’m not made that way. I’ll tell her what I want from her, very clearly.

  I’ve promised not to lie, because she shouldn’t swallow everything with bitterness when she takes this post. A thousand years or a thousand souls, it’s an eternity to suffer alone with your regrets.

  I wonder if I shouldn’t have collected her last night. Given up on the possibility that she would take my place here. I can’t seduce her. I can’t sweeten her with words. My music boxes frighten her.

  I frighten her.

  It must have been so much easier for Susannah. She tilted her pretty eyes, and I fell. I imagined I loved her before a single word passed between us. She was nothing more than a figure on a cliff. Her mystery lit my blood; all the rest I’d invented. I’d done all the work. By the time I found my way to her shore, she but had to wait for me to say the words. I volunteered them! Of course I would die for her. Kill and steal and lie for her.

  How easily I gave up my heart, my freedom. My flesh.

  Willa won’t be so easily persuaded. I worry she won’t be persuaded at all. Other sins can be rectified; if I had been short with her, or angry, or inconstant. Those could have been cured with apologies. But fear is base. Innate. It’s impossible to convince people they aren’t afraid.

  But—and isn’t there always a but—she’s the one who thought of me. Who came to me. Who broke through the barriers and landed on my island. She’s the one. She has to be the one. I know that she’s wounded, but this morning above all proved she will not surrender.

  Wonders and magic don’t entice her. The eerie beauty I wear on account of this curse does nothing to delight her. I can’t beat against her; she is no shore to be softened by persistence. Tricks will buy me nothing with her. I think, to win her and my freedom, that I have just one course.

  I’ll have to understand her.

  SIXTEEN

  Willa

  My mother sat in the front seat, pressing her temple against the window. Her voice was glass, thrown at me. “You feel like telling us what happened to your face?”

  “There was a storm,” I started. They had to know there was a storm. Daddy would have been at the shore at daybreak. He knew the Jenn-a-Lo was gone. He probably knew I was the one who lost her. I was sick in my soul with it. Like if somebody cut me open, I’d be nothing but green bile inside.

  “There’s a news flash.” Ma had a gift for sarcasm when it suited her.

  Making a hard left, Daddy grunted. “Leave it be.”

  “I didn’t know there would be swells like that.”

  Mom turned around. A faintly orange mask of makeup obscured her real features. Granny’s pearls hung from her ears, matched by the rope of them around her neck. She was a Kabuki dancer, painted to play her part. Mother of the defendant. The wine-dark lipstick made her look old and angry. “All night on the water with Seth?”

  Recoiling at the sound of his name, I stared at her. “I told you we broke up.”

  Her teeth were white, too white. Like bone, behind that lipstick. They chopped and snapped, making a sharp breath whistle. “Seth did that?”

  “No!” She wasn’t listening. She wasn’t even trying to listen. She just wanted me to fill in the script she already wrote. “We’ve been broken up. I hit the windscreen, Ma. I was on the boat when it . . .”

  “Knock it off, both of ya,” Daddy said.

  With a huff, my mother turned on him. “I don’t think I will, Bill. Look at her! Going to court looking like a prizefighter. And God knows, last time she went running around all night long . . .”

  “I sailed to Jackson’s Rock,” I shouted. I raised my voice to blot hers out. It was about as elegant as clapping my hands over my ears and singing, la la la, I can’t hear you. The long drive to the courthouse in Machias was bad enough.

  A death watch, counting down minutes until everything was over. I wanted to explode, or to die. Something—some kind of penance for ruining everything. For Levi and for sinking the Jenn-a-Lo and for pitting my parents against each other.

  Another snort punctuated the air. Daddy flicked his pale eyes to peer at me in the rearview mirror. “I told you to stay off the boat.”

  “I know.” I dug my fingers into the rubbery seat, straining against my seat belt. “And I’m sorry. I’m sorry for everything. I’m sorry . . .”

  Then he laughed. It was hollow and terrible. He wheezed when he drew the next breath, and whistled it out with laughter. Sweeping away tears, he drove with one hand, faster on the highway than Mom liked. I was baffled. I guess I could have been offended. Or hurt. Or angry, but he was laughing, and I was too confused to feel anything else.

  Not so my mom. She pursed her lips and dropped back against the seat furiously. “I’m glad you’re having a good time.”

  “You and me both.” Daddy said. “You shoulda seen the look on Eldrich’s face. Like somebody slapped a herring. Can’t say I blame him. His Boondocks was standing ass over end, leaning against the bait shack. Half the fleet’s upside down. Then, then . . .”

  He burst out laughing again. The car veered a little, and I wondered if this was what a real nervous breakdown looked like. If all the breaking I’d been doing was just a tantrum. Daddy’s face was scarlet, and he kept coughing between his giggles. Mom took the wheel, steering us back into our lane.

  “There’s the Jenn-a-Lo!” Daddy shouted, then hiccupped. “Floating all alone in the harbor. Bell missing but pretty as the day I bought her. I look at Eldrich. He goggles back at me. Then he says, ‘Guess it’s your year.’”

  Daddy was the only one who found it funny. He dissolved into more laughter. And that turned into a coughing
fit. It had been a long time since he coughed like that, wet and sticky. Since he quit smoking last time, as a matter of fact. It rumbled and bubbled in his chest, and made me want to cry.

  I couldn’t even be relieved. It was a miracle that the Jenn-a-Lo was floating. Impossible. Magic.

  Gripped by an unholy cold, I folded into myself. I wasn’t giving Grey credit for saving the boat. He didn’t get credit for pulling me out of the water, either. He had to go into a box in my head. Clamped down and locked down, because the things that happened on Jackson’s Rock couldn’t come into this world. My real world.

  The one where we rolled into Machias under a perfect sky. The leaves were almost finished shifting—some still green, but most a vibrant orange against blue. Yellow and white Victorians lined one side, blue and grey Cape Cods the other. The highway turned into Court Street.

  The court building was a red brick box, capped with a white bell tower. Didn’t seem right that it wasn’t all marble. Sporting columns instead of narrow windows; it should have looked like a place of judgment. Close enough, since it could have been a church, from the look of it.

  Now that he had to slow to park, Daddy’s laughter died. Mom sat stiffly, shaking her purse like she was panning for gold instead of her lipstick. In the back seat, I kept my split-lipped mouth shut. After midnight in the Great South Channel wasn’t so cold, or so almost-quiet, as it was in that car.

  I wanted to run. Just fling open the door and tear off. Past the perfect little park across the way. Through the blazing trees, down the asphalt streets. If I kept going, if I ran long enough, I’d find the ocean again. I could throw myself into it. Drown like I was supposed to the night before.

  Instead, I folded my coat over my arm and followed my parents inside.

  Two seconds before I stepped up in front of the judge, I met Mr. Farnham, a lawyer I didn’t know I had. Mom gave me a hug and pushed me in the lawyer’s direction. I wavered. Hanging like dew on a line, suspended.

  Even though the courtroom was claustrophobic—I could hear two ladies in the back row whispering—I felt so alone. I think Mom knew; she looked like she was sorry, but she slipped her arm through Daddy’s and led him to the back of the gallery anyway.

  I sat in the front row with Mr. Farnham and stared at the empty jury box. Everything was planned, I was given up to it. But there was telling my head what was going to happen, and then there was convincing my bones.

  Sometimes, people walked into the ocean on purpose, weighted themselves down, even. But I guarantee, their flesh fought it in the end. All of a sudden, my life was a case number. The things I’d agreed to do tasted like poison. I longed to spit them out. Raise my voice. Change my mind.

  “One-twelve dash CV dash twelve dash WLF,” the bailiff read. She looked like she’d had to put a book down just when she’d gotten to a good part.

  Mr. Farnham stood and hustled me to my feet too.

  Bored and wanting to be elsewhere, it was written on the bailiff’s face. It dripped through her voice when she read the complaint against me. Not charges, because it wasn’t a crime anymore, gear molestation. The complaint. The bailiff’s gun belt hung low, jingling a little when she handed the file over to the judge.

  Over the folder, the judge raised a brow at me. My black-and-blue face didn’t match the navy blue dress my mother had picked out for court.

  It didn’t match me, either. It felt like a straitjacket, rough and binding. My dress shoes pinched. I wasn’t handcuffed, but I kept my arms folded behind my back. Was I supposed to try to look sorry? Penitent? I probably wasn’t supposed to grimace when the judge talked at my lawyer.

  Mr. Farnham, all shave bumps and ghostly green eyes, nudged me. He smelled expensive, like the country club Bailey waited at last summer. Just one scent, and my head was full of old men and silk ties. Of places Bailey and I had seen together. Of Levi pressing his crooked teeth into an apple to make a jack-o’-lantern smile in red flesh.

  Memories stirred and twisted: kissing Seth Archambault in my mama’s kitchen, stories about the October storm that Mom and Dad missed because of their wedding. The first time I earned a hundred-dollar bill; learning to plot strings into the GPS.

  Dixon names carved into the newel post at school, a hundred years ago. Eighty, sixty, forty, twenty—and mine, fresh and new.

  “Willa,” the lawyer said. He turned to whisper behind my ear. “The judge asked if you’re entering a plea. Now you say, ‘Yes, your honor.’ Then she’ll ask what you plead.”

  I stepped off a ledge. “Guilty,” I said.

  It was hard to tell if the judge cared that I went out of order. Flipping papers, she barely looked up at me. “Am I to take it to mean that you would like to admit liability?”

  Voices exploded behind me. I recognized my father’s baritone in them, and turned. His face was red, and he whispered furiously to my mother. A few people around them murmured. I saw their lips moving, but couldn’t make out a word.

  The judge didn’t shush them. She talked over them. “Mr. Farnham, Miss Dixon?”

  Rattled, my lawyer looked back to my parents before addressing the judge again. “Yes, ma’am, that is, we are . . .”

  “You understand that by admitting liability, you’ll forfeit your right to an appeal. That your fishing license will be suspended for three years. That you will be responsible for all fines levied against you.”

  Daddy dropped an F-bomb, standing up and raising his voice. I don’t know what he was going to say. The judge cut him off, regal and unruffled. “You can wait outside, sir.”

  “Your honor,” Daddy said between gritted teeth.

  “Escort yourself or be escorted,” the judge replied.

  My mother stood with him and put a hand on his elbow. It shocked me when he wrenched away from her touch. They’d raised their voices over the years. One memorable Thanksgiving, Daddy even threw his baseball hat. But I’d never seen him pull away from her, not once. Stalking outside, Daddy threw a last, ugly look back. I didn’t know who it was for exactly.

  All I knew was that it wasn’t for me.

  SIXTEEN

  Grey

  What’s most curious is that I have no idea where to start. The room she left behind should be full of clues.

  I sit on the foot of the bed and ponder it like a puzzle. The family pictures are a lie. The brother is dead, one silver light in a jar that counts toward my tally. The boat is her father’s. The oars belong to no vessel; the witch balls are empty magic.

  Willa doesn’t believe in magic. She accepts that I exist and disdains it at the same time. Now she disdains me; in this very room she believed the worst of me. I want her to take my place; my hands tremble to cover hers, and I want to breathe this curse into her mouth, feel my life come back on the warmth of her lips.

  But willingly! Knowingly! I’m a creature, but not a beast. She doesn’t know the difference. I admit, I’m wounded, the smallest part. I put a ripple in her still pond. She put a pea beneath my mattress.

  Slipping back on my elbows, I melt into her bed. It smells of her, but only faintly. Not enough to start that pang in my chest again. I stare into the net of her canopy. Bleached shells and sand dollars dot the lines, oceanic constellations to replace the stars. Everything is the sea: her photos, her memories—but I don’t think it signifies the same things to us.

  My father’s boat was a hateful thing to me. Cutting ice is nearly as exciting as eating oatmeal. Our path varied only by the season—to Maine in the winter, to Nova Scotia in the summer. The cold and the slick pervaded the ship. I was never warm or dry, except in my thoughts.

  Boats took me nowhere, again and again. The water was lonely. Blank and bare. No better than sitting in an empty room, without even a book for company.

  Throwing my arm over my eyes, I hold my breath. My sea is not Willa’s sea. When I open my eyes, I intend to see it her way. I’ll let myself burn and feel a taste of desperation. She did last night; she coughed and struggled, even in her senselessn
ess.

  Now, it’s true I can’t die. My body’s not a real thing, but it plays the part beautifully. My imaginary whiskers grow. My wisplike hair falls in my eyes. An empty expanse imitates hunger. This insubstantial brain roils and sometimes has nightmares. The heart beats. It’s disconnected to me, but I think I feel it all the same.

  So I sit up and try to see Willa’s room anew. She’s here, in the whites and blues and greens. The water, the photos. But I come back to the witch balls. They quiver in the window, put in motion by an ever-shifting earth. The vibrations break the light that shines through the glass. Rays flicker along the walls, dazzling and dancing. When sunlight plays the waves, it looks much the same.

  That’s the answer, I decide. It’s not that she bears some secret well of magic. I remain her irritating exception.

  Satisfied I’ve unlocked her, I slide to my feet. No, there’s no secret magic in her at all. It’s only another taste of the ocean for her. She loves it so much, she brings it inside. She longs to live on it.

  Perhaps that’s the whole of Willa. It could be that she’s not so complicated after all.

  But as I descend to my kitchen and my newest music box, I’m bothered. It feels like someone is pressing a finger behind my ear. It doesn’t hurt. It just lingers, coming from nothing, going nowhere. It makes me uneasy.

  The brass bones of my oldest music box gleam in the light. I wished for a song to make sense of her, and this is what came with my breakfast. A clockwork I built a century ago, my very first. The parts hum when I touch them. Somehow, despite the hundreds I have, no matter the tedious hours I’ve spent building them, this one excites me.

  Carefully, I pick up the movement and turn its key. The tinny pluck of each spike sounds on my skin. My body sings along; it mourns with the ballad. The lyrics are ghosts on a thin sheet of paper. They can float away; I already know this one. It’s the song my father’s piper played. An old tune; ancient even when I was alive.