The November Girl

by Lydia Kang

  I would scream, but I can’t. The Anda I know, she’s not here anymore. A brutal tidal force pulls me ruthlessly away from her arms. She disappears in the greenish-black darkness of the water as I’m swept out toward the body of the lake. I need to breathe, but I don’t know which way is up. The burning in my chest grows into a vicious, hard knot. I remember learning about rip currents in science class. But I don’t remember what to do. Fight the current? Swim perpendicular? Ride it out and let it take you?

  All I know is that Anda is underwater, and I can’t help her anymore. I came to the Isle to steal my life back, and I’m losing it. But I won’t, not without a fight. So I kick and kick, trying to find the surface, trying to exit the stranglehold of water that’s pushing me down, fast, away.

  When my heart almost bursts in my chest, I realize my mistake.

  This time, fighting was the wrong thing to do.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  ANDA

  I know what death tastes like.

  It’s sweet. Not like sugar, which coats the tongue with those cloying molecules—carbon, oxygen, hydrogen. No; death is not encoded in atoms or things you can touch. It’s bitter to some, like a tincture that must be taken in an inevitable dose. But to me, it’s an unearthly sweetness that I crave, that can’t be satiated with anything but the resolution of life.

  I could have three deaths. I can almost taste them.

  Thomas still clings to his boat, hoarsely screaming for his wife. There is so much water on board that the bilge pumps are useless. He cannot tell the difference between the lake and the rain anymore. It is all gray, the strange color between night and day, life and death, the places where I exist best.

  The water has become one powerful thing, so overwhelming that he wonders why he ever thought it was a good idea to sail, when such a force lay simmering beneath the surface all along. He knew the history behind Lake Superior and me. He remembers only now the tales of the November storms so brutal, they’re called witches. I’ve fooled him with his own tenacity and confidence.

  It’s a beautiful day, Aggie. C’mon. Just one last sail for the season.

  His belly is full of lake water. He’s vomited twice and keeps swallowing it down with every relentless splash. He screams into the void for Agatha. He continues to fight.

  I like them like this.

  Agatha, in her life jacket, is sloshing on the waves, lost to him. Her gray hair is plastered to her skull. I can see her skull so easily now. Her flesh is but a thin covering on what will soon be at the bottom of the lake. She stopped screaming a few minutes ago. Despair has set in, and her tears add salt to the storm. Agatha carries more peace in her heart than Thomas, or younger sailors, who lust for more years of life. Her death will not satiate nearly as well. When life comes with more to lose, it means more when I take it. When hope has trickled away, they welcome the inevitable. It would be effortless to take them then. There would be no beauty in that.

  Next November, I’ll listen for the bells tolling at the Mariner’s Church. Three more sonorous noises, added to those I’ve already taken from the St. Anne. The music is written. It’s waiting for me to play the tune.

  I could tear the life jacket off with a sigh and let her sink to meet me. Thomas, I could pitch into the water with just a whisper.

  And there is Hector.

  He hasn’t a breath left. But he fights so hard against the unnatural riptide I’d created to pull him away from me. He let himself come to Isle Royale. Every night, he has come into my arms. He could have been at home.

  Ah, but that was not a home. It was never safe. He hasn’t said this explicitly, but I know it. Because as terrible as I am, I am safer than what he had. What a sad truth. My conscience creaks at these thoughts. But he fed me. Didn’t he? He tasted my lips. He saw me. No one ever sees me with so little effort.

  Ah, take him, Anda. I know how hungry you are.

  I am. So ravenous. I reach my hands forward and feel the lake water in my blood.

  Thomas. Agatha. Hector.

  This should be easy. I never have to struggle like this. But I can’t fight the newborn feeling mewling in my chest. I don’t want Hector’s life to keep mine alive. I just want Hector. But if I let him live, I have to relinquish my hold on the whole storm. I could let go.

  But I can’t.

  I cannot.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  HECTOR

  A wave swallows me and I’m underwater, battered upside down again. And again. And again.

  I’m going to die. I know this, but I won’t stop fighting. I swim upward and gasp air, trying to tread water. Not that far away, I actually see a boat. I scream. I scream louder. It’s no good—I can barely hear my own cries for help. The water is dark and green and churning, and I’m a dark dot bobbing too far away. They’ll never see me.

  And then I realize the boat has capsized. The boaters are in trouble, too. One is an old guy, white hair plastered against his head, clinging to the ropes on the capsized sailboat. I barely see a woman—in a split-second glimpse, she looks like someone’s grandma—fighting the waves in the distance, her bright life vest marking her position too far away.

  An enormous wave lifts me up, up, up, on a swell. I inhale hard, and together we crash over and I’m tumbling again under the waves. And then I see her.

  Anda.

  She’s right there, an unmoving body under the waves. My vision is fuzzy underwater, but I know it’s Anda. Her eyes are dark coals in her sockets. And the violent surges and waves don’t move her an inch. It’s like she’s suspended in the vacuum of space, her cropped hair floating sweetly around her temples, her nightgown unruffled by the water, bare feet peeking out from the hem.

  It’s not possible. None of this is possible.

  I’ve ignored the things I haven’t been able to explain. The hole in the boat by the America. The earthquake, or whatever made it rise to the surface. The flower that grew and died in the span of a few hours. But I have a feeling I’m going to know, too soon, what I’ve been afraid to realize all this time.

  Anda raises a single hand, and in response, the capsized boat is pulled beneath the waves. The old guy who’s holding on to the boat is pulled down too, his arm tangled in rope. He’d probably wound it around himself so he wouldn’t drown, and now it’ll be the death of him.

  Anda lowers her hand. The sailboat and the man sink like stones. The last thing I see is his white face, his open screaming mouth that can’t scream underwater. Bubbles issue from the boat around him as he’s pulled into the depths.

  Chapter Thirty

  ANDA

  I sigh.

  Exquisite, this feeling. This beautiful peace where the violence that is life is finally released.

  Something touches me.

  I turn and see Hector. He’s swiping at my arm, trying to grasp my hand. In this state, all living things flee from me, but this boy is trying to get closer. I furrow my brow, not understanding.

  Two more, Anda. Do not be distracted.

  He’s so tired, he barely has the energy to reach for me before his body bobs upward. Buoyancy is his enemy. He can’t speak to me when he’s underwater, but I hear him scream when he breaks the surface.

  “Stop it, Anda. Please. Oh God, stop!”

  God. He prays, but not to me. Nothing can help him, except me.

  Me.

  No, Anda.

  I blink in the mist, and the rushing force of the water whips my nightgown around my legs, tangling them. My vision blurs and I look up, seeing Hector’s legs kicking. Fifty-two feet away, Agatha is not kicking anymore. She is weeping because she saw Thomas go down with the sailboat. She knows he’s lost, and she’s mourning him. It’s a beautiful thing, her sorrow, but I cannot feed on sorrow. I see Thomas’s fight in Hector.

  But I see Agatha in me.

  I begin to weep.

  Hector’s legs are kicking less vigorously. He doesn’t have the power to dive down to me anymore.

  “Anda!” he
cries out. “Please!” A wave takes him under again, and this time, he doesn’t have the strength to swim up.

  The sensations war within me, tearing at my joints and sinews. I scream, for the pain. What have I done. What am I doing.

  You are doing what is in your nature.

  But no. I’ll do what I want. Not what I need.

  Anda, no—

  I open my eyes in the water. I can feel Mother’s fury and disappointment, but at a distance. I release my clawing grip on Agatha, softening the wind and waves about them so she can breathe without a lungful of wet. The Jenny is deep on the lake bottom; I have not yet broken her completely. Thomas’s body has pulled free of the rope and his corpse is floating with the deeper current toward Grand Portage. I change the water pressure and let the remaining air trapped in the fiberglass hull of the Jenny do its job. The boat shoots up like a lost cork to the surface, only feet away from Agatha.

  She gasps in surprise. It only takes the smallest effort for her to grab the metal ladder on the side and pull herself up. Her relief resonates as anguish within me.

  I relax my hands, and the lake storm untightens its fist, opening up. The distress signal from the Jenny is received by the Coast Guard. It will take them at least an hour to find Agatha, but they will find her. I open a passage of rainless clarity between her and the nearest Coast Guard boat.

  I release Hector, too. His desperate gasps are terrible to hear. I use an undercurrent to drag him closer to shore—it’s painfully fast for him. The minutes unravel to nothing, and I meet him there, barefoot, dripping, with one foot in the world of death and one in the world of the oblivious living. Hector’s body lies upon shore and he’s coughing and gasping, turning over to pitch the water from his stomach.

  You’ll be sorry, Anda. This was a mistake.

  Not now, I tell Mother. Not yet.

  The hunger in my bones is partially sated by Thomas’s death. It will have to last. Maybe forever.

  Not for a witch like you, Anda. Look what happened to your sisters.

  I think of my three sisters. The previous witches battled with their half selves, too. But their desire won out until they became wholly inhuman. Their histories are blurred because I’ve never been told how they began. But somehow, I feel their origin stories in my core. Somehow I know they were once like me, impossibly born of wind and flesh. Now they accompany the storms, three enormous rogue waves that consume ships almost as greedily as I have. Unconsciously, I have been falling into their destiny these last few years. How much time would I have left if I allowed it? Would I wake up and find my corporeal self gone? Would I even have the chance to say good-bye to Father?

  My sisters wait for storms, their waves licking in hunger for work to do. Vaguely, I hear them hissing at me.

  I ignore them and crouch down by Hector’s side. My fingers touch his cold chest, which heaves with effort. He’s so alive. It’s a beautiful thing to see and touch. His eyes open, wide and wild, and meet mine.

  “It’s okay,” I murmur. “You’re going to be all right.”

  As the wind on the water begins to quiet down, a shadow nears us—a beautiful cloak of dove gray, softer than velvet. Mother is all soft, blurred edges and she touches Hector’s forehead sweetly. I wonder if Hector’s mother touched him with such tenderness. I don’t want Mother so near me. So near him.

  Hector’s eyes open, and Mother disappears in wisp of moisture.

  “Anda,” he rasps.

  “Yes, Hector,” I say. I lean closer.

  “Don’t ever touch me again.”

  Chapter Thirty-One

  HECTOR

  I know what I saw. I know what I have to do.

  Anda leans over me, dripping wet. Even now, she’s so beautiful that I ache just looking at her. But I know what she is. I saw that old man’s face as he was drowning. That man is dead, and Anda killed him. Suddenly, I can’t see anything but his screaming face.

  I turn to the side and vomit onto the stones of the rain-washed beach.

  My body is sodden, and I have an exhaustion I’ve never experienced in my whole life, not even when I woke up after a night blacked out in my house in Duluth. I sit up, wiping my mouth and groaning. Anda watches me expectantly. Normally, I’d think we needed to get back to the cabin so she won’t get chilled. So she won’t get sick. But I know now that the whole time I’ve been worrying about her, it’s been a phantom worry.

  I’m the one who has something to lose, and I’m not going to lose my life over this…thing.

  I stand up, my legs shaking beneath me. “Don’t follow me. Don’t talk to me.”

  She opens her mouth, her eyes large and filling with tears. I wonder if she cries lake water instead of salt. She starts to say something, but I cut her off. “Don’t.”

  Fifty feet away, I find my boots and clothes. I stumble three excruciating miles back to the cabin. I don’t look behind me to see if she’s following. The truth is, I’m terrified that she will. That she’ll be there smiling for me in that cabin, waiting to throw me back into the lake and drown me with a little toss of her head.

  God. “This can’t be happening,” I mutter, but saying it out loud makes it all more real.

  By the time I get to the cabin, I can barely stand. Thankfully, she didn’t magic herself here somehow. Smoke stains the whitewashed ceiling. The couch is there, lumpy and soft, with the tossed blanket from last night. But I can’t rest. I can’t. I have to get out of here.

  I take off my clammy, damp clothes and put on dry stuff. I find my backpack, and start stuffing all my belongings back in. There isn’t much. The few sets of clothing take up most of it. I roll up my sleeping bag tightly. I wish it were thicker. There’s my knife, which I attach to my waistband. One half-empty box of camping matches. My fishing gear.

  I stand up to head to the kitchen, and white and black stars pop in my vision from dizziness. My mouth is dry and my throat raw and sore from screaming. Nausea hits me every few seconds, probably from having swallowed all that lake water.

  Ugh. I gotta focus. Get out of here, Hector, I tell myself. Run. You’re good at that.

  I sift through the stuff we stole from the camping store. She probably doesn’t even need food—God, it all makes sense, how weird she was about eating. But I shake my head. I’m not a dick, even if I’m going to die soon. I won’t take all the food.

  I divide the now-very-small pile of camp food and energy bars in half and put my portion in the bag. I fill a bottle with the boiled water we’ve kept in a big pot on the stove. I take one of the water purifiers and the fuel canisters for the tiny portable stove. She’s got a propane tank and a cabin, after all. But the amount of food is laughably small. I could eat it all in one day, easily.

  Maybe I can make it to the other side of the island. I’d been planning on going there with Anda, anyway. But now it’ll just be me. Surely there’s food in the lodge restaurant I can use.

  Maybe Anda won’t follow me.

  Maybe then I can get off this island in a few months, a free adult, free from my uncle.

  It’s a lot of maybes.

  Also, I’m pretty sure that I have a raging fever now.

  I’m seriously fucked.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  ANDA

  I stay in the same position, kneeling on the shore at Middle Point. Mother stays silent—she knows how wrong my choices are. She has a glacial patience and will wait for me to return to my senses.

  I will not.

  Hours ago, Hector lay before me, alive, his heart beating so loudly in my eardrums, the most magnificent sound in the world. And then he left me.

  I had forgotten what sadness meant, and human loss. The ending of one season, of one wolf—it brings about more life. Those endings are beautiful because of what might come next. But the ending of us, of Hector and me…nothing beautiful is born of this.

  This is what you wanted. And now you see the consequences. It’s not too late—

  She’s right. I’ve done thi
s to myself, allowed myself to open a door I thought closed. I’ve invited in the possibility of an altogether different pain.

  I weep, still kneeling on the shore.

  Mother is coaxing me back into the water. There will be other boats. The whole month of November is still mine. But she doesn’t understand the nature of my keening.

  I want this agony. I want to know that I can bleed red like Hector. I want to miss biting his lip when we kiss. I want to miss him making me breakfast. I still want to discover the best and worst of him, a little bit every day.

  I inhale the lake air hard, and it hurts my lungs. And I cry for the happiness of the pain.

  The waves have calmed, not completely, but their energy is diminishing. I know that Agatha is being airlifted into a helicopter, and that boats are patrolling the area for Thomas’s body, which they will find soon. I’m swirling the currents above the lake bed, and will lift his remains to the surface so Agatha may mourn her lover. Humans so adore lingering with their dead. I understand they even perfuse their bodies with plastic and preservatives so they can hoard their remains forever.

  Finally, it grows dark. I think of Hector. I know he’s left the cabin, and he’s already on the Greenstone Ridge Trail to the other side of the island. He’s trying to flee from me. Satiated on Thomas’s death, I can think more clearly now, and my heart—my heart—it chafes and knifes at me on the inside with every beat.

  I miss Hector.

  But I must respect his wishes. Shouldn’t I? We were a story with no happy ending, and deep inside, I knew that. Hector had yet to learn, but he did. And yet I made sacrifices anyway.

  Sacrifice.

  The word reminds me of another one Hector knows. “Scarify.” To create scars. I think of the rounded burns on his arm, and I start crying again.

  I miss Hector.

  ...

  When I get to the cabin, it is empty. The ghost of his presence is the only thing lingering behind. His scent on the couch; the soap in the bathroom he probably forgot to pack with him. The food on the kitchen counter has been trifled with; only a portion of it is gone, as well as half of the camping equipment from the store.