Between the Spark and the Burn

by April Genevieve Tucholke

  I was going mad

  I took a deep breath, and brushed the last bit of sand from the back of my neck.

  After we followed Canto, and found out where she was going, we would come back here and Neely would crawl in my bed again and then I’d tell him about the sand and the dreams.

  And he would make it stop.

  It was just a glow thing, a leftover glow thing. Neely would understand.

  “Violet?”

  My door opened.

  I stood and turned and he was already halfway across the room.

  He put his hand on my chest. Right in the middle. Fingers spread wide. He guided me back, gently, until my body touched the wall between the windows and the dresser.

  I closed my eyes and pictured the wild horses.

  River’s brother kissed me in the darkest hour of the night at the darkest time of the year, but what I felt when his lips touched mine wasn’t darkness.

  It was clear warm bursts of yellow high noon sunshine.

  I kissed him back.

  I let that sunshine pour right over me, right through me. I ran to meet it.

  Neely pulled away, and laughed, a whooping, happy, Neely-laugh.

  “I had to do it,” he said. “In case something happens tonight. In case we find something. I had to do it, Vi.”

  Then he was kissing me again, up my cheeks and down my neck and under my necklace and over my shoulders and inside my elbows and back up my arms and I could feel his hip bones through my nightgown and I could feel my heart beating and my skin tingling and my thoughts tingling and I was wide-wake and wide-eyed and it was everything, everything.

  Neely drained the last lingering glow right out of me with those kisses.

  What I’d had with River last summer didn’t seem wonderful anymore.

  It didn’t seem mysterious and exciting and beautiful.

  It felt wrong. Wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong.

  Wrong like plagues of locusts and seas of blood and death of the firstborn and hail, thunder, darkness.

  Neely whispered sorry, sorry in between the kisses, but I didn’t know if he was saying it to me or to River . . . and then I was crying again, though I didn’t know why because I was so damn happy, I was about to burst out of my skin, and Neely brushed the tears off my face with his thumb. He kissed me, and I kissed him back, on and on, and the tears ran down my cheeks, though I didn’t understand them and didn’t want them there, and they slipped down my neck, damp and warm and unwelcome.

  “I’m not a crier,” I said, eventually. Though I guess I was now.

  “I know, Vi, I know.” Neely’s lips went to the soft spot behind my left ear. “I’ve wanted to kiss you since the first second I saw you,” he whispered, “since the first second I saw you curled up in my brother’s arms.”

  I put my hands on Neely’s face, and tilted it down to mine. Then I lifted my wet eyes to his, and looked deep.

  I saw his temper, jumping about and stamping its feet and waiting for a chance to shine.

  I saw the glint that all the Redding brothers shared, the I’m-going-to-glow-or-fight-or-whatever-I-want-and-no-one-will-stop-me-not-even-you glint.

  But I also saw something else . . . something that made my damn heart screech to a halt.

  Something that had been there all along, I think.

  I heard the front door open and close. I sighed, and dropped my hands.

  I walked to the bay window and looked down. A flashlight turned on and a beam of light started moving away from the house.

  Neely breathed in. And let it out.

  I watched the light . . .

  And I felt dread start to fill me up, black and loud as the sea.

  But I felt the restless itch begin to surge back too.

  My feet wanted to move, run, kick up sand, go, go, go . . .

  Chapter 14

  FINCH CAUGHT US on the steps. He’d woken up when he heard Canto’s bedroom door open and so he was coming too, damn it.

  We followed the beam of Canto’s flashlight. We walked across Captain Nemo’s main deck, our feet crunching in the sand. Down the steps. Down to the beach.

  Within seconds Canto got too far ahead and then all I could see was the light, bobbing and bouncing ahead of us, leading us on.

  We walked for a mile, maybe more. Finch was quiet. Neely was quiet. I was quiet. The sea was not. There was a storm out on the ocean somewhere and the water was slapping the sand and the wind was yelling in our ears.

  I looked at Neely, stretching up tall into the dark sky, the ocean gales whipping his shirt open at the neck so I could see the top of his scar, faint in the moonlight.

  The sand curved around a hill and opened into a hidden little cove.

  Our beam of light joined the others. Dozens of yellow lights, blinding us.

  We sank down behind the tall grass that bordered the inlet, sheltered from the wind, but I could still hear it howling at the edges, trying to get in.

  The flashlights clicked off just as the moon came out from behind the clouds.

  I saw them all.

  The people drinking coconut milk lattes in the Green Salmon. The greyhound woman. The regulars at the Hag’s Shack. Kids, the elderly, everyone. The sea wind spun their hair and their clothes and everything fluttered and flapped, and their eyes were closed but their mouths were open, slack round circles . . .

  And, right smack in the middle, was Canto.

  Finch made a sound when he saw her, a low moan in the back of his throat like winter wind whistling through dead winter trees. But he didn’t go to her, didn’t shout her name.

  I saw a fisherman’s hut off to my right.

  And I flinched at the sight of it.

  There was something . . .

  Some idea, some memory . . .

  I’d seen that hut before . . .

  I’d been in that hut before . . .

  Some of the islanders began to gather driftwood into a pile. Others squatted next to black buckets and began to clean the fish in them with sharp knives. Some held children. Some just stood still, still as death, arms at their sides, staring at the sea like it was the answer to their prayers.

  They didn’t move like real people. They moved like . . . sleepwalkers. Luke used to sleepwalk, when he was a kid. I remembered the sound of his somnambulist feet in the hallway, shuffling, hesitant, ungraceful, unnatural. I would throw back my covers and find him standing outside my door, eyes wide open and unseeing. I’d grab his arm and shake him, over and over, until he woke up with a start, until he said something like What the hell is your problem, Vi? before turning around and going back to bed.

  I thought about Jack’s father, Daniel Leap, stumbling into the town square, moving like the people in front of me, and not from the drink for once. I thought about my grandfather Lucas breaking his arm when he fell down the stairs, and the priest, burning up the church with himself inside, and Rose Redding, her life pouring out through the slit in her neck . . .

  And suddenly I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t remember how to do it. I stuck my chest out and sucked my stomach in and nothing happened, and it was like drowning. I was drowning fifty feet from the sea.

  And then Finch was wrapping me in his tough forest arms, pressing my face into his shoulder until the grass tickled my neck. He held me hard until the breath came. In and out. In and out.

  Neely glanced at me in Finch’s arms, but then went right back to watching the islanders. They had dropped what they were doing now and were forming a semicircle around the fisherman’s hut. We watched as they stood, silent, arms at their sides. My breath went in and out, in and out. The islanders fell to their knees, eyes lowered. Even the children kneeled, short legs bent beneath them, small heads tilted down.

  I heard a noise in the hut. An about-to-open-the door noise.

  Neely�
��s hands were twitching. I could see them in the moonlight, rattling the nearby blades of grass.

  We got to our feet . . .

  Just as a naked-from-the-waist-up William Redding III stepped out of the hut.

  It was him.

  It was.

  It was River.

  It flooded through me like full tide, like the sea singing in my ears . . . the dirty shack, River sleeping like an angel, like a damn angel, River’s hands on me, skin to skin, and more, and more, and more, and the heat, and the cold, and the pulse, and the wanting and River’s whisper, right in my ear, Don’t remember, Vi, don’t see me like this, leave here, don’t remember . . .

  The sand, and the dreams, and the crying, and Neely . . .

  Oh, Neely . . .

  I felt a scream building in the back of my throat, getting stronger . . . growing teeth . . . claws . . .

  Don’t think about it, Vi, don’t think about it, there’s no time, not now, you’ll go mad, don’t think about it—

  The islanders’ heads were lowered, and River’s was raised to the sky. He stretched his arms out, palms up. He opened his mouth. Sounds came out . . . but no words. At least, not words I understood.

  Like Alice, like ’twas brillig and the slithy toves . . . River’s words almost made sense. Maybe if I listened close enough, I would understand. I could almost . . . I was so close . . .

  The islanders, eyes shut, knees still kissing the sand, joined him.

  “They’re praying to River,” Neely said. His eyes were fixed on his brother, standing there on the hut’s deck, half naked, arms in the air. “And River is praying to the sea.” Neely breathed in deep, and sighed.

  River’s voice surrounded us, louder now that the crowd had joined in. It sounded like the sea, like creaking boards and cold winds from the north and captains going down with the ship and fins fluttering in the dark and . . .

  Finch’s shoulder touched mine, and a second later, Neely’s. They sandwiched me between them, side by side.

  I opened my eyes.

  “Be careful, Vi,” Finch said, his fingers weaving into mine, squeezing tight.

  River stopped the sea words, snap, as quick as he’d started, and the islanders went silent, snap, just as fast, and Finch’s last two words rang out into the new, brittle silence.

  River lowered his arms.

  The islanders stood up. They didn’t see us, didn’t hear us, didn’t look at us. A group of them broke off and lit the driftwood. A fire blazed up.

  River always did like his bonfires.

  I saw Canto. Her dress swished against her legs as she shuffled to the side of the hut and crouched down in the sand.

  River turned around then, away from the sea.

  He looked straight at the three of us standing in the tall grass at the edge of the cove. Like he knew we’d been there all along.

  His eyes perked up. I swear they did.

  And then he smiled his crooked smile like it was all nothing. Like he was right where he wanted to be, beautiful and lean in the December cold, the world at his feet.

  Nothing had changed. Nothing had changed at all.

  “Hey, Violet,” he said.

  Espresso and olive oil and tomatoes and midnight and kids in cemeteries and sizzling, crackling fear and a blood-dripping neck and fire and smoke and the warm, happy feeling of the glow flowing through me and through him, buzz and hum and purr and kissing in the guesthouse and the shack with the dirt and the nets and the seaweed and the salt under my fingernails and River’s hands pulling at my clothes . . .

  “Violet,” River repeated. “Would you like to join me while my congregation prepares a sea feast?”

  I stepped out into the full light of the newly built fire. The Carollians ignored me. There were no flashes of recognition, no looks, no waves, no nothing. Not even from Canto. She was sitting cross-legged in the sand, head bent, shucking oysters. Finch and Neely followed me. Finch called out her name as we walked past, voice soft and urgent, but her eyes, when she looked at him, weren’t alert and scrappy. They were big and black and dead. Dead like Gianni’s had been, up in the Glenship attic before he tried to set Jack on fire. Dead like Cassie’s and Sam’s had been, after beating their daughter, Sunshine.

  The three of us walked up the two steps to the long deck that circled the old fisherman’s hut. River smiled his lazy smile and moved aside to let us through the door.

  I didn’t meet his eyes as I passed.

  If he smiled at me in that crooked way again . . .

  I’d lose my mind.

  Maybe I already had.

  I heard the sea sounds again in my head, like before, River whispering, singing—singing me down to the deep, with the whales and the fish and the sunken ships and the mermaids and the eels and the half-human seals . . .

  My eyes closed . . .

  Finch yanked me through the doorway and into the room. Neely put his hands on my shoulders, and shook me gently until my head bobbed up and down. “Stop it, Vi,” he whispered. “Don’t let him in. Stop it.”

  “How?” I stared at Neely. And then I turned and looked around the dank, murky room. “I think . . . I think I’ve been here before . . . the sand in the bed . . . and my hair all wet, I—”

  River shut the red door behind him, and the sound of the sea softened. He swept his right arm through the air. “It’s not much, just a humble fisherman’s shack, but what’s more fitting for a sea king? We have the ocean, and our people. You may sit.” He motioned toward four overturned crates under two small, dirty windows.

  The only light in the hut came from a half-dead candle on the table and the bonfire outside the small square windows. I sat down on a crate by Neely and Finch. I was shaking. I tilted my head back and looked River full in the face for the first time.

  His eyes had changed. Even in the gloom, I could see it. They were brown still, shiny deep brown, but that mysterious, mischief-loving glint from before . . . it was gone.

  Now River’s eyes were just . . .

  Wrong.

  Off. Jittery. Bad.

  “And who is this before us?” River asked, looking at Finch. “Is it our brother Brodie? He had red hair. We seem to remember him having red hair.” River still stood by the door, shoulders straight, eyes narrowed.

  “Not Brodie. Finch. Finch Grieve.” Finch’s expression was calm, calm and caged and not wild, not wild at all.

  “So you’re calling yourself a sea king.” Neely’s voice sounded strange. Wound up tight and ready to spring. It was so un-Neely, so un-Neely of an hour ago, up in the treasure map room, it made my ears ache to hear it. “We heard about a sea god,” Neely added, shrugging, “but a sea king is just as good, isn’t it, River?”

  “Sea king,” River repeated, low and soft and sly. “Yes. King of the barnacle. King of the algae, the abalone, the sea horse, the sand dollar, the eel, the mollusk, the brine.” River leaned his naked torso against the wall by the door and crossed his arms. “Who are you again?” he asked, looking at me. “Come over here so we can get a good look at you.”

  I jerked to my feet.

  Neely snapped his arm out and blocked my way. “Don’t let him touch you.”

  River’s eyes cleared for a moment, like mist evaporating in the sun. He looked right at Neely, and smiled. “Oh, that. That’s all over. The sea has made us strong. It took us and gave us back. We were drowned and then un-drowned. We were remade in the sea king’s image. Skin on skin became a thing of the past. The glow, the burn, the spark, it flows right from us to these simple islanders now, flowing, flowing, like the water and the tides, never stopping, on and on and on—”

  Neely’s fists clenched at his sides, and the muscles in his neck went tight. “Stop it, River. Simple islanders? Sea king? I can’t keep listening to this—”

  “You,” River said, ignoring Ne
ely and looking at me. He tilted his head and pointed a finger at my face. “I think I almost loved you once.”

  I shook my head. “No, you never did,” I said. “You never did.”

  River raised his eyebrows. “Or maybe it wasn’t you. I loved a blond-haired girl by the sea, though, once upon a time. It was many and many a year ago, in a kingdom by the sea, that Annabel Lee lived with no other thought than to love and be loved by me.”

  River paused. “No, that’s not right. Annabel belonged to someone else. You’re Violet. And I did love you once. I did. I think I did.”

  Neely’s cheeks had gone red, and the red was bleeding down his neck.

  If Neely hit River . . .

  River would kill him.

  “Kiss me, Violet or girl-who-reminds-me-of-Violet,” River said. “Come here and kiss me.”

  I looked at Neely. He was breathing fast, and his hands were twitching.

  “It might break his madness,” I said. “It might bring him back, Neely.”

  I don’t know why the hell I thought this. I just did. Something about this hut—I remembered . . . I had kissed him in here, and it had helped . . .

  Hadn’t it?

  “Don’t do it. Don’t you do it.” Neely’s voice was low and hot and wired.

  Was he talking to me, or River?

  Did I care?

  River . . . before . . . in the shack . . . he’d been skinny and dirty and in bad shape, but he had still been River. But this sea king boy before me . . . He was a stranger.

  I went to him anyway.

  He needed me.

  River needed me.

  I let him slide his dirty sea king hands into my hair. He gripped my skull. Tight.

  I forgot Finch. I forgot Neely.

  It’s summer and you’re standing in the guesthouse kitchen and the smell of coffee lingers in the air and his heart is pressed into yours and his fingers are slipping down your skin and it’s already gone too far and not far enough and you don’t want it to stop . . .

  His lips parted like the sea.

  I thought of Freddie and Will and Will’s burning and Rose’s swinging hair and the blood soaking them both . . .