The Lighthouse Witches

by C. J. Cooke

  “People are bastards,” he says, kissing her forehead, and she breaks involuntarily into a snigger, glad of the opportunity to shift her mood. She hates talking about her dad. It always makes her chest tight and opens up all the old wounds.

  V

  She wants to photograph him, or sculpt him. Velvety pale skin, bee-stung lips that she imagines against her neck, her wrist, her thigh. Dark hair worn slightly long and messy, and his hands . . . Michelangelo couldn’t have sculpted better hands. The kind that can wield a broadsword or tear the heart out of a dragon. She glimpses the bare skin of his knees through slashes in his black jeans. He has perfect knees. An image of her kneeling before him, licking the skin of each knee, startles her with its sudden eroticism.

  When he kisses her again, his hand slips to her breast, and she pulls away sharply.

  “What’s wrong?” he says.

  She feels embarrassed. “It’s just . . . I don’t know.” She wants to say it’s too early for that, she feels it’s much too early, but then he’s seventeen, and maybe for seventeen-year-olds it isn’t too early.

  “You don’t like me,” he says. “That’s it, isn’t it?”

  “No!” she says, straddling him, cupping his face with her hands. “I do like you.”

  He fixes his eyes on hers. “Then why not?”

  Slowly, she moves his hand under her shirt. It feels uncomfortable and nice. Something in her wants to run away but she grits her teeth and pushes the feeling down into her stomach.

  “You can touch me, too,” he says.

  “OK.”

  He guides her hand to his crotch, unbuttoning his jeans and slipping her hand down his pants. She forces a smile onto her face as she touches it, the foreign hardness. She’s only ever done this with Jack, and that was after dating for four months. She and Jack are both virgins, but she still feels much less comfortable with Brodie than she did with Jack. She’s scared of being useless and disappointing.

  It literally lasts a minute, maybe less. She yanks her hand away, trying not to show her disgust, as he strokes her face and buttons himself up.

  “When are you going to break up with Rowan?” she says, wiping her hand discreetly on a clump of grass. She didn’t intend to say it, and she feels him flinch.

  “Actually, it’s been on my mind,” he says, lighting up a cigarette.

  “It has?”

  He blows out a puff of smoke. “Timing has to be right, though. Her dad’s a policeman.”

  She nods, but she doesn’t understand what this has to do with dumping Rowan. But then, a voice inside her reminds her that she’s only here until the end of the month. She’s only fifteen. She can hardly just stay on the island. She’ll have to go home, and he’ll be here, alone. No. Not alone. With Rowan. The girlfriend he’s had since he was fourteen years old. Three and a half years against five stolen nights.

  “I liked the photo you gave me,” he says as they walk home. It’s four in the morning, and she can’t help but yawn into her hand.

  “Thank you.” The photo was a Polaroid of herself that she took in her bedroom.

  “Do you think you could give me a few more?” he says. She turns. “Maybe some sexy ones?”

  She searches his face, realizing at once that her understanding of what “sexy” means doesn’t match his.

  “Would that be OK?” he says, faux-sincere. “Or is it too early for you?”

  He slips a hand under her shirt, touching her breast, and she squeezes her eyes shut, pushing away the urge to remove his hand. Why doesn’t it feel nice? she thinks. Why does it feel like he’s taking something from her?

  “No,” she tells Brodie. She wraps her arms around his neck and forces herself to smile. “Not too early at all.”

  LIV, 1998

  I

  The days passed in a whirlwind of paint and school runs. The project of painting the lighthouse quickly proved to be the distraction I’d hoped for. I didn’t have time to think about the phone call from the hospital, or about what another cervical scan might reveal. My days were carved up neatly by paint colors and sections mapped out by the mural, which I’d transcribed to several pieces of paper fixed in a circular shape and taped to the dining table in the bothy, along with Polaroids of the sections of wall where they were to be painted. Each weekday I dropped the girls off to school at eight a.m., then worked solidly until I collected them from after-school club at five thirty, often returning to the Longing once they were in bed. I enjoyed Finn’s conversational tour of Lòn Haven, and occasionally his death metal tapes. Here, on Lòn Haven, I was untethered from the past. Everything I’d carried for the last fifteen years—the shock of my pregnancy with Saffy, the grief at losing Sean, and now that terrifying phone call—was gobbled up by the ravenous tide. And witnessing the Longing transform, stroke by stroke, into something a little less knackered, its former glory beginning to creep back, was rewarding. I felt that, maybe, I could start again, too.

  One night, when I’d decided to give myself the evening “off,” there was a knock at the door of the bothy. I thought it might be Finn, eager to get going at the new section he’d finished plastering that day.

  But it wasn’t Finn. It was a group of chatting, excited women. Isla stood at the head of them.

  “We’ve come to show you the mareel,” she said grandly.

  “The what?”

  “See for yourself,” one of the other women said, sweeping a hand toward the bay. I stepped outside to see what she was referring to. The tide was shimmering with an astral blue light, as though it was filled with fireflies.

  “The mareel, also known as sea sparkle,” one of the women said. “Scientists know it’s caused by bioluminescent microorganisms.”

  “It means good fortune for those who see it,” said Mirrin, a short, stout woman with a mane of gold hair, “and even more for those who swim in it.”

  Isla held up a wet suit and winked. “Well now, isn’t it lucky I’ve got a spare? Come and join us. I insist!”

  I got changed quickly and followed the group to the beach, where the ocean greeted us with softly rolling waves, iridescent with trapped, glowing light. There were eight of us in the group. Mirrin, who worked part-time at the grocery store in town and sold paintings in the small art gallery owned by her partner, Greer, who was also there. Ruqayya was a widow who ran the island’s mobile library. Ling was a shaman, yogi, and sculptor. Both Ailsa and Louisa were veterinarians who had relocated from England twenty years ago to run a small animal sanctuary on the west coast of Lòn Haven.

  “How often does it happen?” I said, clasping my arms across my chest. The icy water was only up to my ankles but I was shaking from the cold.

  Ruqayya stood next to me as she tucked her long gray hair into a swimming cap. “Once or twice a year,” she said. “We always make sure we try and swim in it. The Vikings believed it was a healing tide. That if you have an affliction, mental or physical, and you swam in it, you’ll be healed.”

  “Do you believe that?”

  “Not when I first moved here,” she said. “But I had terrible arthritis. My fingers were all twisted. And now look.” She held out her hands. They looked strong and perfectly straight.

  She stepped forward and lowered herself to swim. As her body moved, the water responded, each stroke of her arm streaking the water electric blue.

  “Come on,” another woman urged gently from my left. Ailsa. She threw me a bright smile, her face lit up by the glow. “You don’t know how long it’ll last. And you’ll miss your chance.”

  The cold water felt like a bite, fierce and swift. Isla cheered and clapped as I pushed my arms out in breaststrokes that created vivid neon arcs in the water, as though I was writing on the waves, imprinting the sea with my body.

  I was mesmerized by the mareel. The ocean, it seemed, had become conscious, mimicking the northern lights. Some of
the women were dressed only in a cap and swimsuit yet braved the water without hesitation. I tried to think of the last time I’d been in the sea—it had been at least twenty years. I hadn’t had a holiday abroad since having children. I hadn’t laughed with a group of women like that in a long time. Having a child so young had ostracized me from my friend groups. And who has time for a social life when you’re eyes-deep in nappies and teething?

  I stayed in the water for as long as I could, secretly pleading with it to heal me. Any other time, I’d have rejected the idea of a “healing tide,” of anything but medicine having the power to cure. But belief is a powerful thing. Maybe, I thought, if I put aside my skepticism and willed myself to believe that the cancer could disappear, it would.

  II

  In the days after that night in the mareel, I felt a lot better. The blood in my urine cleared up; I stopped getting backaches. I didn’t dare believe that it had anything to do with swimming in the mareel, but I was delighted all the same.

  I took to joining Mirrin and Isla for a swim first thing every morning before the school run. Even in brisk winds, the icy sleeve of the waves around my body was exhilarating. I felt like I’d discovered a rare secret, the thrill of immersing myself in the thrashing wilderness of the Atlantic Ocean. Maybe, I thought, the diagnosis was wrong. They get things like that wrong sometimes, don’t they?

  Isla invited me and the girls to join her for dinner. We ate in her dining room, which was the size of all the rooms of the bothy combined, with an oval oak table in the center and a fireplace that I could easily stand up inside. Rowan and Saffy sat next to each other. I’d hoped they’d be friends, but now I could see the reason why they hadn’t clicked. They were like chalk and cheese. Rowan wore a vial containing wolfsbane—“It kills werewolves, and you never know”—and a floaty purple dress embroidered with mystical symbols. Her fingers were covered in heavy silver rings and she talked in her high-pitched voice about tarot and a retreat to Iceland she wanted to take to meet with a coven. I spotted Saffy rolling her eyes more than once. She was dressed in a thrift store lumberjack shirt and ripped jeans with nine-hole Doc Martens boots with yellow laces. Her blonde hair hadn’t been washed in a week and she’d piled it up on the top of her head with a pen spiked through the nest of it. She stifled a yawn, and I realized suddenly how tired she looked.

  “And how is school, my lovelies?” Isla asked Clover and Luna when the conversation began to flag.

  “I don’t like it,” Clover said flatly. Always to the point.

  “How come?” Isla said.

  “We don’t do any science, just collecting leaves and building dens in the forest.”

  “Well, that can be scientific, can’t it?” Isla countered.

  “By ‘science,’ I think Clover means they don’t set stuff on fire,” I said. Her school in York had a science lab, and Clover had shown a slightly worrying interest in exploding things.

  “I like the school here,” Luna said. “We made puppets yesterday.”

  “What about you, Saffy?” Isla said. “Rowan said you’ve settled in well?”

  Saffy’s cheeks reddened. “It’s OK,” she said to the plate.

  “Will you be taking the girls guising, Liv?” Rowan asked.

  “Guising?”

  “Trick or treating,” Isla translated.

  “It is not trick or treating,” Rowan said, mock-offended. She shook her head at me. “Guising’s a very different matter. You dress up to disguise yourself so the spirits think you’re one of them. And you perform for your neighbors to bring them good luck.”

  “So you don’t get sweeties?” Clover asked.

  “You might,” Rowan said. “But if the neighbors give you something, it’s to ward off bad luck.”

  “Can we still dress up as Egyptian mummies?” Luna asked.

  “If you like,” Rowan said lightly.

  “What about bobbing for apples?” Clover added.

  “It’s a pagan ritual,” Saffy said, and Rowan turned to her in surprise.

  “Dookin’ for apples is a pagan ritual?” Isla asked. She cocked an eyebrow at Rowan. “Did you know that?”

  Rowan’s cheeks flushed. “ ’Course I did,” she said, but she’d hesitated a second too long for it to be convincing. Saffy threw me a quick smile, proud of herself for one-upping Rowan.

  Isla’s husband, Bram, came in then, late from work—Isla said this was usual—and sat down at the head of the table. I said hello, but he didn’t answer.

  “Remember Liv?” Isla said, trying to get his attention. He was busy pulling off his tie and adjusting his shirtsleeves. “We met her at the bothy. You’ve already met Saffy, and the younger ones are Clover and Luna.”

  Bram merely raised his eyes and gave us all a disinterested stare. I wondered if we’d come at a bad time. He was a good deal older than Isla, mid-sixties, with a ruddy face and heavy-lidded, unimpressed eyes that flicked at me from beneath woolly eyebrows. Isla brought out his plate and set it in front of him, and immediately he said, “Are you trying to kill me?”

  “What’s wrong?” Isla asked. He was looking at the plate as if he’d been served a human head.

  “Are you blind?” he said, gimlet-eyed.

  Isla looked puzzled, then seemed to realize her mistake and tutted. “Sorry. Forgot you’re off meat at the moment.” She rose from her chair and whisked the plate away. Rowan picked up her conversation about Samhain—Halloween—and the conversation moved on.

  I thought it odd that Bram was so rude, especially with company present. I knew he was chief inspector on the island; perhaps he’d had a bad day. Isla never mentioned it afterward.

  Rowan came to the lighthouse the next day after school to “cleanse” the place. Isla brought her as well as a flask of hot tea to share with me, while she indulged Rowan’s lighting of a piece of sage and wafting it around the place while chanting something in Latin. I’ll admit, I felt better once she’d done that, and yet I usually wouldn’t have given heed to such things. Fear, combined with a touch of desperation, makes you much more open to buying into otherwise unwise practices.

  Later that night, once I’d put the girls to bed, a knock on the window made me jump. Isla and her ladies, I thought, come to collect me for a night swim. It was dark, and I could only see a shadow falling up the garden path. It didn’t seem the caller was Isla and her ladies after all. Three more knocks at the front door.

  “Mummy?” Luna called out drowsily from her bedroom. “Is that you?”

  I stood in front of the door and took a deep breath. Maybe it was Finn.

  “Go back to bed,” I called to Luna. Then I opened the door.

  Standing on the front porch was a little girl, about four or five years old.

  Her pale hair was wild and matted, and her face was covered in mud and scratches, as if she’d fallen.

  It was pitch-black, but from the glow of the light of my living room I made out that she was wearing nothing more than a filthy rag wrapped around her waist and that she was barefoot, overgrown toenails black with dirt. Also, she was shaking with cold.

  “Are you all right?” I said. “Come in, come in. It’s freezing out there. You’ll catch your death.”

  Her teeth were chattering and I could see her eyes were glassy. I placed a hand on her bare arm, frail as a twig. I realized she must have been the child I’d spotted in the Longing. That child had this same white-blonde hair to her shoulders. But that was weeks ago. My mouth ran dry at the thought of her being out here alone all this time.

  She spotted the fire and lunged toward it, holding her hands close to the flame. The rag that was wrapped around her waist loosened and fell to the ground, and I saw something between her legs. A penis. She was a boy.

  I tore the throw off the sofa and wrapped it quickly around him.

  “Where do you live?” I said. “Are your pare
nts nearby? Did you get lost?”

  He answered me at length, but it was in a language I didn’t know. German, or perhaps Dutch. Slowly, understanding crept upon me. The boy was from overseas. Perhaps he’d fallen off a boat, or escaped from traffickers.

  He sat down on the floor then, the flames bringing color back to his pale skin. I knelt by him and swallowed back a gasp at the smell. For such a delicate child, he smelled revolting.

  “Your mum and dad must be very worried about you,” I said, crouching down beside him. He flinched, and I moved back a little to reassure him I wasn’t going to harm him. “I’m going to call the police to let them know you’re here. And I’ll get you some hot tea and a sandwich.”

  He didn’t answer, and I decided he must not speak English. I was at once alarmed and relieved. For a while, I’d thought I was going out of my mind. And yet here he was, in the cottage. Proof that I had seen a child.

  I rose and moved to the kitchen, pouring a glass of water and making him a sandwich. Then I brought it through, intent on calling the police while he ate.

  But the boy was gone. The rag that had been wrapped around his waist lay on the floor, and the front door was ajar. I raced out, calling “Come back! Come back!”

  But there was nothing but a long strip of moonlight where he had stood only minutes before, the navy sea blinking out the causeway.

  III

  My mother, along with Jenny, Finwell, and the nine others, were walked in chains back to the broch, where they had been imprisoned for two months before standing trial. The judge explained that the stake should be placed in the grounds of the church, as per the wishes of the Royal Inquiry. But as the ashes of the witches would possibly be carried by the wind across the home of the man whose life they had taken, it was inappropriate. So they would be burned by the broch, where naught but the sea may be touched by the ashes.

  The day was bright, the sky clear of clouds and the blue sea gently swaying. Four stakes had been erected in front of the stone broch. I’d seen some villagers hauling the trees from the forest a few days before—it was good-quality wood, tall lengths of it forming the spine of the stakes and thick branches propped up at angles against it to catch the flames. I wanted a storm to rise and send lightning forking down, or the sea to rear up over the rocks and sweep away the stakes. Surely if the women really were witches, the Devil wouldn’t let them be burned?