by Shea Ernshaw
“I wouldn’t know if I had,” I say between gasps for breath.
“Do you really believe that? If your body was inhabited by something else, you don’t think you’d know?”
I stop on a solid step and look back at him. “I think it’s easier for the mind to forget. To sink into the background.” He doesn’t seem satisfied, his jaw shifting to the left. “If it makes you feel better,” I say with a partial grin, “if a Swan sister is ever inside me, I’ll let you know if I can tell.”
He raises an eyebrow and his eyes smile back at me. I turn and continue up the stairway.
The wind rattles the walls the higher we climb, and when we finally reach the upper lantern room, a howling gust screams through cracks in the exterior.
“The first lighthouse keeper was a Frenchman,” I explain. “He named the island Lumiere. It was a lot more work to keep the lighthouse running back then—maintaining the lanterns and the prisms. Now it’s mostly automated.”
“How did you learn all this?”
“My dad,” I answer automatically. “He studied lighthouses after my parents bought the island.” I swallow hard then continue. “We need to check the glass and the bulb each day. And everything needs to be cleaned a couple times a week to keep the salty air from building up. It’s not hard. But during a storm or a thick fog, this lighthouse can save the lives of fishermen out at sea. So we have to keep it running.”
He nods, walking to the windows to look out over the island.
I eye him, tracing the outline of his shoulders, the curve of his assured stance. Arms at his sides. Who is he? What brought him here? Fog has rolled in over the island, creating a sheer veil of gray so that we can’t make out any features of the terrain below. After a few minutes of staring through the glass, he follows me back through the doorway and down the winding staircase.
Otis is sitting on the wood walkway outside, waiting with eyes blinking against the rain, and I pull the lighthouse door closed. Olga is several yards up the path, licking her orange-striped tail. They’re both used to the relentless downpour, their cat instincts to escape wet weather have gone dormant.
We walk up the path to the high center of the island, through the old orchard, where rows of Braeburn apple and spindly Anjou pear trees grow in wild, unruly directions. People used to say that fruit trees couldn’t grow in the sea air, but they’ve always thrived on Lumiere Island. An anomaly.
“What about the orchard?” Bo asks, pausing at the end of a row.
“What about it?”
“These trees haven’t been trimmed in years.” I squint at him and he reaches up to touch one of the bony, leafless branches, as if he can sense the tree’s history just by touching it. “They need to be limbed and the dead ones cut down.”
“How do you know?” I ask, shoving my hands into the pockets of my raincoat. They’ve started to go numb.
“I grew up on a farm,” he answers vaguely.
“My mom doesn’t really care about the trees,” I say.
“Someone cared about them once.” He releases the spindly branch from his fingers and it springs back into place. He’s right; someone did care about this orchard once. And there used to be more rows and a variety of hardy apples and pears. But not anymore. The trees are overgrown and windswept, only producing small, often bitter fruit. “They could live another hundred years if someone maintains them,” he says.
“You could really bring them back to life?”
“Sure, it will just take some work.”
I smile a little, scanning the rows of trees. I’ve always loved the orchard, but it’s been years since it’s seen a real bloom. Just like the rest of the island, it’s fallen into decay. But if the trees could be saved, maybe the whole island could too. “Okay,” I say. “Let’s do it.”
He smiles faintly, and our eyes meet for an instant.
I show Bo the other buildings on the island, and we circle around the perimeter. He’s careful not to walk too close to me, keeping his arm from brushing mine when we walk side by side, his steps deliberate and measured over the stony landscape. But his eyes flick over to me when he thinks I’m not looking. I swallow. I tighten my jaw. I look away.
When we reach the cliffs facing west, the ocean slamming against the shoreline in violent waves that spray water and foam against the rocks, he stops.
This close to the sea, the song of the sisters feels like a whisper in our ears. As if they were standing beside us, breath against our necks.
“How many people have died?” he asks.
“Excuse me?”
“During the months when the Swan sisters return?”
I cross my arms, the wind brushing the hair over my eyes. “They each drown one boy . . . usually.”
“Usually?”
“More or less. It depends.”
“On?”
I shrug, thinking about the summers when five or six boys were found tumbling with the waves against the shore. Sand in their hair. Salt water in their lungs. “How vengeful they’re feeling . . . I suppose.”
“How do they choose?”
“Choose what?”
“Who they’re going to kill?”
A breath sticks in my throat, trapped like a hook in a fish’s mouth. “Probably the same way they chose lovers when they were alive.”
“So they love the boys they drown?” I think maybe he’s being sarcastic, but when I tilt my gaze to look at him, his dark eyes and punctuated full lips have stiffened.
“No. I don’t know. I doubt it. It’s not about love.”
“Revenge, then?” he asks, echoing my words from last night.
“Revenge.”
“The perfect justification for murder,” he adds, his stare slipping away from mine to look out over the hazy brume rising up from the sea like smoke.
“It’s not . . .” But I stop myself. Murder. That’s precisely what it is. Calling it a curse does not unmake the truth of what happens here each year: murder. Premeditated. Violent, cruel, barbaric. Monstrous even. Two hundred years’ worth of killing. A town reliving a past it can’t change, paying the price year after year. An eye for an eye. I swallow, feeling a pain in my chest, in my gut.
It’s as predictable as the tide and the moon. It ebbs and flows. Death comes and it goes.
Bo doesn’t press me to finish my thought. And I don’t offer to. My mind is now twisting like a snake into a deep dark hole. I lift my shoulders and shiver, the cold seething through me.
We peer out at the churning sea, and then I ask, “Why are you really here?”
“It was the last stop on the bus line,” he repeats. “I needed work.”
“And you’ve never heard of Sparrow before?”
His eyes slide to mine and the rain catches on his lashes, lingers on his chin, and spills from his dark hair. “No.”
Then something changes on the wind.
An abrupt hush breaks over the island and sends a quick chill across the nape of my neck.
The singing has stopped.
Bo takes a step closer to the edge of the cliff, like he’s straining to hear what is no longer there. “It’s gone,” he says.
“The sisters have all found bodies.” The words seem pulled from my throat. The quiet settles between each of my ribs, it expands my lungs, it reminds me of what’s to come. “They’ve all returned.” I close my eyes, focusing on the silence. It’s the fastest it’s ever happened before.
Now the drowning will begin.
A WARNING
We wait for death. We hold our breath.
We know it’s coming, and still we flinch when it claws at our throats and pulls us under.
—Plaque located on the stone bench on Ocean Avenue, facing the harbor (commissioned in 1925)
SIX
The soil squishes away beneath my rain boots. A steady, uninterrupted drizzle collects on the waterproof sleeves of my raincoat as I move back down the rows of the orchard.
Bo is back in his cottage. We parted
ways an hour ago. And even though I thought about going back to bed—my head still pounding, my skin rattling against my bones—I decided I wanted to be outside, alone.
I find the familiar old oak tree that grows at the center of the orchard, where Bo and I passed by not long ago. But we didn’t stop here.
This is my favorite place on the island—where I feel protected and hidden among the old, rotted fruit trees. Where I let memories slide over me like a cool stream. This oak tree stands alone among the rest, ancient and weathered from the sea air—its growth stunted. But it’s been here since the beginning, nearly two hundred years, back when the Swan sisters first stepped onto land, when they were still alive.
I run my fingers along the crude heart etched into the wood, cut there by lovers long ago dead. But the heart remains, the bark fallen away, permanent.
I slide down against the trunk of the tree and sit at its base, leaning my head back to look up at the sky, speckled with dark clouds caught in the fickle ocean winds.
The Swan season has begun. And this little town tucked along the shore will not come out unharmed.
* * *
A storm is blowing in from the ocean.
The clock beside my bed reads eleven p.m. Then midnight. I can’t sleep.
I walk from my bedroom into the bathroom across the hall, my thoughts straying to Bo. He’s not safe, even on the island.
I can hear Mom’s fan blowing in her room two doors down while she sleeps. She likes to feel a breeze, even in winter; she says she has nightmares without it. I flick on the bathroom light and look at myself in the mirror. My lips are pale, hair lying flat across my shoulders. I look like I haven’t slept in days.
And then a sliver of light blinks through the bathroom window and reflects back at me in the mirror. I lift a hand to block it. It’s not the beam of light from the lighthouse. It’s something else.
I squint through the rain-streaked window. A boat is pulling up to the dock down on the lower bank.
Someone is here.
* * *
I shrug into my raincoat and boots and slip out the front door quietly. The wind howls over the rocky outcroppings on the island, blowing the hardy sea grass sideways and swirling my hair across my face.
As I get closer, I see a light pass over the dock—a large flashlight—the kind used to see into the fog when you’re trying to pick your way through the wreckage of the harbor back to port. There is a low exchange of voices and the stomping of feet on the wood dock. Whoever it is, they aren’t trying to be quiet or covert.
I lift a hand over my face to block the wind. And then I hear my name. “Penny?”
In the dark, I make out Rose’s wild hair caught up in a gust. “Rose—what are you doing out here?”
“We brought wine,” says Heath Belzer—the boy who walked Rose home from the Swan party last night, and who is now standing beside her, holding up a bottle for me to see.
The boat behind him has been secured sloppily to the dock, ropes hanging down into the water, and I assume it must be Heath’s parents’ boat.
“The singing stopped,” Rose says in a hush, like she doesn’t want the island to hear.
“I know.”
She takes several steps toward me, swaying a bit, obviously already a little intoxicated. Heath looks back at the harbor, the sea lapping against the dock. Out there, in the darkness, is where at least three boys’ lives will be taken.
“Can we go up in the lighthouse?” Rose asks, changing the subject. “I want to show Heath.” Her eyebrows lift, and she bites the side of her cheek—looking like a cherub all rosy-cheeked and saucer-eyed. I can’t help but love her—the way she always brightens the air around her as if she were a light bulb. Like she were a summer day and a cool breeze all in one.
“Okay,” I say, and she smiles big and dopey, tugging me up the boardwalk with Heath following.
“I seem to recall a boy with you last night,” she whispers in my ear, her breath hot and sharp with alcohol.
“Bo,” I answer. “I gave him a job on the island. He’s staying in Anchor Cottage.”
“You did what?” Her mouth drops open.
“He needed work.”
“You must have been drunk if you were willing to take in an outsider. You realize he’s probably just a tourist.”
“I don’t think so.”
“Then why’s he here?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Penny,” she says, slowing her pace up the path. “He’s living on the island with you. . . . He could murder you in your sleep.”
“I think he has more to fear than I do.”
“True,” she agrees, pulling down the sleeves of her white sweater so her fingers are tucked in out of the cold wind. “He couldn’t have shown up at a worse time. We’ll see if he makes it until summer solstice.”
A chill shuttles down my spine.
Once we reach the lighthouse, Rose giggles as she sways unsteadily up the spiral staircase, and Heath keeps grabbing on to her to prevent her from tumbling backward.
At the top of the stairs, I push through the door into the lantern room. But it’s not dark like I was expecting. The lamp resting on the white desk on the right-side wall has been switched on, and a silhouette is standing at the glass, one shoulder leaning against it.
“Bo?” I ask.
“Hey.” He turns around, and I notice a book held in his right hand. “I came up to watch the storm.”
“Us too,” Rose squeaks. She steps forward to introduce herself. “I’m Rose.”
“Bo.”
Rose grins and looks back at me, mouthing he’s cute so no one else will see.
Bo and Heath shake hands, then Heath holds up the bottle. “Looks like we have a small party.”
“I should probably head down,” Bo offers, tucking the book under his arm.
“No way,” Rose says, grinning. “You’re staying. Three isn’t a party, but four is perfect.”
Bo glances at me, as if looking for permission, but I stare back at him blankly, unsure what to think about him up here all alone, reading or watching the storm. Whatever the truth might be.
“All right,” he agrees, a hint of reluctance in his eyes.
Heath produces an opener from his coat pocket and begins uncorking the bottle.
“Heath stole two bottles from his parents’ B and B,” Rose says. “We drank one on the way over.” Which explains why she’s already so tipsy.
There aren’t any glasses, so Heath takes a swig, but before he passes it around, he says, “Should we take bets?”
“On what?” Rose asks.
“How long until the first body turns up in the harbor.”
“That’s morbid,” Rose says with a grimace.
“Maybe. But it’s going to happen whether we want it to or not.”
Bo and I exchange a look.
Rose exhales a breath through her nose. “Three days,” she says meekly, grabbing the bottle from Heath’s hands and taking a drink.
“Three and a half,” Heath guesses, eyeing her. But I think he only says it to be cute, playing off her number.
Rose hands the bottle to Bo and he holds it low, looking down at it like the answer is somewhere inside. “I hope it doesn’t happen at all,” he finally says.
“That’s not really a guess,” Rose points out, lifting an eyebrow.
“Sure it is,” Heath defends. “He’s guessing no days. Which has never happened, but I suppose it’s possible. Maybe no one will drown this summer.”
“Unlikely,” Rose adds, looking a little disgusted with this whole game.
Bo takes a quick slug of the red wine then holds it out for me. I take it carefully, sliding my thumb down the neck of the bottle, then look up at the group. “Tonight,” I say, tipping the bottle to my lips and taking a full swig.
Rose shivers slightly and Heath wraps an arm around her. “Let’s talk about something else,” she suggests.
“Whatever you want.” And he smile
s down at her.
“I want to count ghosts!” she chirps, her mood returned.
Heath releases her and frowns, confused. “You want to do what?”
“It’s a game Penny and I used to play when we were kids, remember Penny?” She looks to me and I nod. “We’d look for ghosts in the beam of light from the lighthouse as it circled around the island. You get points for every one that you see. One point if you see it on the island and two points if you see one out on the water.”
“And you actually see these ghosts?” Heath asks, one eyebrow scrunching up into his forehead.
“Yes. They’re everywhere,” Rose answers with an artful smirk. “You just have to know where to look.”
“Show me,” Heath says. And even though he’s obviously skeptical, he smiles as she drags him to the window. It’s a childish game, but they press their palms against the glass, laughing already.
I hand the bottle back to Bo, and he takes another drink.
“What are you reading?” I ask.
“A book I found in the cottage.”
“About what?”
He slides it out from under his arm and sets it on the white desk. The History and Legend of Sparrow, Oregon. The front cover is an old photograph of the harbor taken from Ocean Avenue. A cobblestone sidewalk is in the foreground, and the harbor is crowded with old fishing boats and massive steamships. It’s more of a pamphlet than a real book, and you can find it at just about every coffee shop and restaurant, and in the lobby of each bed-and-breakfast in town. It’s a tourist’s guide to everything that happened in Sparrow two centuries ago and everything that has occurred since. It was written by Anderson Fotts, an artist and poet who used to live in Sparrow until his son drowned seven years ago and then he moved away.
“Brushing up on our town’s history, huh?”
“Not much else to do in the evening around here.” He has a point.
I stare down at the book, knowing its contents all too well. On page thirty-seven is a portrait of the three Swan sisters sketched by Thomas Renshaw, a man who claimed to have met the sisters before they were drowned. Marguerite stands on the left, the tallest of the three, with long auburn hair, full lips, and a sharp jaw, her eyes staring straight ahead. Aurora is in the middle with soft waves of hair and bright full-moon eyes. Hazel, on the right, has plain, smaller features and a braid twisted across her shoulder. Her eyes are focused away, like she’s looking at something in the distance. They are all beautiful—captivating, as if they were shifting slightly on the page.