by Lydia Kang
“That I did,” he says, staring out at the darkness. He seems to be concentrating on something specific, somewhere south of us, but everything is awash in pure black right now. His hand pulls out a package, and I smell an earthy scent wafting on the air.
“So what is she?”
“To be honest, I don’t exactly know myself.” Anda’s father holds up a wooden pipe and opens the small drawstring bag of tobacco. He starts taking pinches of the stringy stuff and poking it into the bowl.
What? “Well, where’s her mother?”
“She’s gone. Left even before she was born.”
I chew on that one for a while. “Wait. How could she…before…” I shake my head. “That’s not possible.”
For a few minutes, he concentrates on packing the pipe with the yellow-stained tip of his pinky until it’s just right. Then he takes out a tiny box of matches and strikes one. The spark brings with it the familiar, sneeze-worthy scent I love. He inhales so hard with the match that it makes bubbling noises until it’s lit. The smoke is enticing, brown and earthy. I’d ask him for a drag, but somehow I doubt he’d share with a kid. After a few good puffs, he starts talking again.
“I grew up in Canada. Dwight, Ontario, to be specific. Had a real love of water. I couldn’t get enough of it. I dreamed about spending all my days boating and got myself a regular obsession with Lake Superior. I read about the geology of how it came to be, the maritime history, everything. Finally moved here in my forties and spent every day on the shore, or in a boat. Then one day, a November storm hit me while I was chartering a ship full of tourists. We sank about three miles south of Isle Royale.”
“But you lived.”
Anda’s dad peers at me sideways. “Yeah, you’re a smart one.” He laughs roughly. “I shouldn’t have lived, though. I knew about every shipwreck that ever happened on these waters. Pored over them since I was a boy. I’d map them out, wrote tables and coordinates and saved the newspaper clippings. I think, in my heart, I wanted to die in this lake. Had an unnatural love of the Lady, if you know what I mean.”
“Lady?” Was that some sort of designer drug?
“The Lady. It’s what some folks call Lake Superior. She called herself a different name. Gracie.”
This. This is the other thing that’s been whispering in Anda’s ear, what she’s afraid of. Gracie? It seems like such a wrong name—too cute, too…religious, maybe. I’m not sure what to say, so I say nothing. Mr. Selkirk puffs on his pipe, and the bluish smoke rises into the sky.
“She’s a beautiful thing. Even when she’s angry. Even now, when she don’t have much to say.” He closes his eyes halfway and just listens to the water splashing in musically over the rocks. “I asked her for death when I hit that water. I said I’d like nothing better than to die in her arms. I had no friends. No real amours in my life. And so…she spared me.” At this, he turns his face away from me, listening to something beyond me.
“What is it?”
“Nothing.” He opens his eyes and smiles sadly. “I can’t hear her no more. Never stop trying, though. Back then, I did. She let me live, and I started to hear her voice. I’d dream about her. I’d see her in the trees, in the wind. I spent all my days talking to her, and she’d show me she’d been listening. Little things, like sending a little mist my way, or a wave of water at my feet. She’d even come visit my bed.” He shook his head, and I swear that if he didn’t have a beard and it was daylight, I’d see him blushing. “And then one day, Anda showed up.”
“Where?”
“On the beach. November first, it was. Freezing cold, and there she was, bare as newborns are, on the shore not thirty feet from my house on the Isle.”
“Wait, wait, wait.” I put my hand out and stanch the urge to jump up and run away. I’ve got to calm down. “Wait.”
“I’m not going anywhere, son. I’m in no rush. So stop telling me to wait.”
I want to laugh, but it’s not hilarious. “You’re telling me that…Anda’s mother is…the lake.”
Mr. Selkirk nods.
Whatthefuck. “So what does that make her?”
“Look. The shipwrecks on Lake Superior aren’t like others. I would know; I’d forget my own birthday before I forgot those dates. When the November gales come, they’re a special breed of storm. And they’re hungry and vicious and take ships like an island wolf could shake a coon pup. They have a name for this kind of storm. The Witch of November.”
I swallow, but my throat is so dry I could choke on the air. The light from behind my head pulses into the gloom. This can’t possibly be real. It just can’t. I stare out in the darkness, as if it could tell me that yes, I’m hearing what I’m hearing.
He looks at my unbelieving face. “I know you think it’s not possible. There isn’t a book in the world that’ll tell you what I know now.”
“That Anda is the Witch of November?”
Mr. Selkirk nods. “Yes. She’s my November girl. It’s not always November, but November’s always inside her.”
I grimace at him. “How do you know she isn’t…the Lady?”
“Aw. No. Anda and the lake aren’t the same thing. They need each other. Speak to each other. To the wind, and the storms, too. She has the lake in her blood, to be sure.” He splays his hand apart, showing me his coarse palms. “See, there are moments when Anda is in this world.” He shakes his left hand. “Human. But not often. She’s like a spirit, snagged on earth, I suppose. Most of the time, she can’t make sense of anything civilization has to offer.”
He shakes his callused right hand. “And the lake, and the wind and storms, they communicate with her. Or she controls them. When the season is just right…” He clasps both hands together. “You can’t hardly tell them apart.”
“You mean, in November.”
He nods.
“Which is why you left.”
He nods again. “She’s dangerous. Less human than any other time. She’s nearly killed me more than once. Sure as day is day, she can sink a ship anytime. But the storms in November, they’ve an energy like no other time of the year because of her.”
“Can’t she just stop it?”
“Stop sinking ships? You can’t hold down her nature, not with chemicals, not with ropes. Sooner or later, the dam breaks. Half of what she does is life, the other half is death. The living part, it bothers her the most. But she needs it.”
“What if she tried?” I persist.
“It can’t happen. Her sisters were the same way. Don’t know who the fathers were, but legend says her sisters were like Anda. And they kept killing every November, tending to the Isle until their human sides just faded. I don’t think there is ‘trying’ in this scenario, Hector. There is no good end to this story. But there could be one for you, and that would mean leaving.” He pauses. “I’m not being selfish about Anda. Truly. If you don’t leave, she’ll swallow you whole and spit out your bones. She’ll forget you meant anything to her by December.”
All this time, I’ve been hanging out with something that could kill me, but I thought it could end. That she could change. What was I thinking? Should I just get out of here as soon as I can? But then again, she didn’t kill me. She did the opposite. But how much longer can she hold out until I get hurt? Until I die?
I digest all this for several minutes.
“So why did you come back?” I finally ask.
“I knew something had affected Anda when she allowed that survivor. I didn’t expect it to be you. You’ve changed her, somehow.”
“You say that as if I’ve done something wrong.”
“You have.” He stands up, slowly, hand on hip as if his joints ache. As if the conversation just aged him ten more years. He starts to descend the metal staircase, lantern in hand. The light blinds me as I follow him.
“Wait. What have I done that’s so bad? She would have killed people. She’s a murderer, you’re telling me, right? She sinks ships for breakfast. So why the hell is it so bad for her to…not
kill people? To be more human? Maybe none of her sisters ever tried hard enough.”
Mr. Selkirk turns around, and the lamplight shines upward, casting eerie shadows on his chin and nose and eye bags. He looks straight out of a Halloween horror movie, but when he lowers the lamp a little and the harsh shadows soften, he transforms back into a sad old man. Loneliness has carved out his cheeks, his temples.
“There ain’t no life without death. Always has been, always will be.” He shakes a finger at me. “And it’s not just that. Boats aren’t natural, Hector. Trying to use a hollowed-out hunk of metal to command something untamed like a lake, it isn’t natural. Men take and take of nature all the time. Oh, they think they’re being good and fair, lording over everything. That they deserve it all. But witches have been taking payment since we first started to challenge the Lady, back in the seventeenth century, the first time a schooner ever touched the water. And she don’t take much, to be honest. It isn’t up to you or me to decide the balance of things we don’t really understand.”
“But—”
“I find it curious that a fella running away from humanity wants someone like Anda to be more human.”
I shut my mouth.
“Anyways,” he adds, “time to sleep.”
Without another word, he descends. When we make our way back to the house, Mr. Selkirk helps set up the sleeping bags. Only two. I explore the other small rooms, but they’re empty. I run up the stairs, but the upper floor is empty, too.
When I come back down, I ask, “Where’s Anda?”
“Never you mind.”
I head for the front door, but Mr. Selkirk beats me there with a crooked few steps. He slaps his gnarly hand on the doorknob. “She’ll be fine. She can take care of her own.” He lies down on his sleeping bag and shuts his eyes. “You won’t see her until morning.”
Eventually, I fall asleep. And I dream of black waters, of my uncle looming in the recesses of my mind, sad and weary, but with a strange, starved look in his eye that I can’t wash off my skin. I dream of Anda, peering at me with her tireless, wide-open stare.
And behind her, a watery shadow that watches us all.
Chapter Forty-Four
ANDA
I’ll stay away all night. My presence is unwanted at the lighthouse, and there’s nothing like a lighthouse and closed door to drive me far, far away.
The sky is carpeted with a thin film of clouds. Layers, actually. Cirrostratus fibrous duplicatus. I love the names of every species of cloud. I’m thankful that science has categorized them like the living things that they are—each with their own temperaments and life cycles.
I have already reached the shore, only twenty or so feet from the door of the house. The water laps at my toes and begins to climb my ankles, coaxing me in.
I walk step by step until there is no need to walk. Until gravity falls away and there is nothing between me and the water. The surface of the lake climbs through the strands of my hair and cradles my scalp with icy fingers. And then I succumb to the liquid, letting it carry me into the deeper, darker depths.
Mother.
I want things I cannot have. I want to be something I cannot wholly be. I feel things that I could not before, and they gnaw at my untouchable heart.
I have done some terrible things that, perhaps, I should not have done.
What once was a simple question—how must I be with this boy?—is drowned by something far larger. What am I?
I don’t know. Oh Mother, I don’t know.
I’m afraid of what she will think of me.
I sob with my eyes closed. The lake is just a reservoir for my tears now. She’s cold at first, but like all mothers, she welcomes me back into her arms.
Welcome home, my dearest.
...
I stay the whole night, drifting in layers of silken, blanketed currents above and beneath me. Father understands my need for immersion; he’s seen me disappear into the water for days at a time.
The water soothes, but doesn’t quell my mind.
In Hector, I see what I can take, mercilessly, and what it would cost. There is beauty in keeping him alive. It also means keeping his pain aloft, perhaps forever. Death has always been a pretty thing to me. A relief. An exhalation. But I don’t want this. Not for him, or for us.
He’s broken you.
No. He handed me the glass; I let it shatter. Hector brought me closer to the other reality in my life that I’ve never been comfortable with.
Do you miss Father?
Yes. And no. I feel the loss of him every day, though he tries to stay close to me. But I am content to be, without him. It is our nature. We belonged to this world before we ever belonged to anyone else.
This is the price I paid to love a man. The pain. You are a price I paid, too. I knew you would inherit this legacy. Are you willing?
I don’t know.
Oh, Mother. I don’t know.
...
It takes a while for the morning temperature to penetrate the surface of the lake. It holds energy and releases it so sweetly. Just as it’s releasing me back to my father.
The stones of the lake bed touch me underfoot and I splay my hands out, balancing myself. My feet take one step after another as I rise out of the water. My body is drenched and so awfully heavy. So clumsy, this body on land. Eyes still closed, I let my face find the warmth of the risen sun to my right. East. The wind begins to dry the beads of water on my eyelashes and cheeks. The lake water leaves behind a film on my skin, an ancient perfume. I inhale the cold air and let my lungs fill, the first breath I’ve had in almost twelve hours.
“You aren’t even cold, are you?”
My eyes fly open. Right on the dense, wintering foliage of the island, Hector sits. He’s fully dressed, with a coat and a sleeping bag loosely draped over his shoulders. His expression is inscrutable.
He’s spoken to Father. They’ve spoken of me, of Mother, perhaps all night long. But I recognize the dark gleam in his eye.
He knows it all.
And here I stand, naked beneath my sodden nightgown after a night with Mother, who in the end, still left me with questions I must answer on my own. She left me the questions because we both know what the answer must be.
Oh, Hector. What must he think of me? Why doesn’t he run? Why doesn’t he attack me?
I don’t know what to say or do. I’ve forgotten his question already.
“Come inside,” he says impatiently. He stands up and gathers the sleeping bag in his arms in a gentle hug, and I suddenly know that maybe my life would be happier if I were such a sleeping bag.
I follow him obediently into the little house, though I know I don’t have to. The lighthouse glares at me, its eye within the octagonal chamber now dead for the day. I bare my teeth at it, before entering the darkened house.
“Your clothes are here. I’ll step out while you change.”
I spin around to watch him go back to the door. “Where is Father?”
“He went back to the island. He’s cleaning up the house and Washington Creek campsite where I stayed.”
“Oh.” I stare at my feet, afraid to ask the next question. It’s not necessary, though. He answers it for me.
“I’m leaving tomorrow morning.”
There’s a tumble of thoughts in my mind, but none of them make it to my lips. He hesitates, and when I say nothing, he leaves me in the dark and shuts the door behind him.
I should have said something.
It’s better this way.
“Is it?” I ask, aloud. But there is no reply. So I listen to the voice of my half-human heart.
Run. Run after him, Anda.
So I do. I reach for the door and bolt outside, where the sun’s light is already gaining muscle and warms the bracing breeze trying to nip at my ankles and wrists.
“Hector,” I holler. “Hector!”
“Geez, I’m right here, Anda.”
I spin around. Hector is leaning against the wall of the building,
next to the iron acetylene shed. There is so much distance between us, growing rapidly even as the seconds tick by. My damp nightgown sticks to my legs and belly as I step closer. Hector crosses his arms in front of his chest and won’t meet my eye.
When I’m only inches away, I see that he’s breathing fast. I have this effect on him, and it warms me to know that I still matter. Perhaps it’s pure fear, but perhaps not. I put my hand on his chest and he freezes, as if I’d put a cold pistol against his temple. His heart beats so fast. I know the current of blood within it, the dance between valves and chambers, the laminar flow and miniature eddies that sing to a creature like me.
“Don’t,” he whispers, still looking away. He begins to tremble.
“I won’t be ignored, Hector,” I say steadily.
“But you aren’t real. And I have to leave.” His voice is hoarse, and he’s got purplish shadows beneath his eyes. He didn’t sleep well.
“My father said you have to leave, didn’t he?”
“It doesn’t matter what he said.” Hector can barely look at me. “I need to go.”
“Look at me,” I command him.
He does, but it takes a year and a day for his rich brown eyes to finally meet mine. They see me only superficially, not like how he looked at me before last night.
“I’m still here,” I whisper. My body leans into him, and I put my cheek against the hollow of his throat, listening to him breathe. I let my fingers skim up his arms and hook over his shoulders. And still he stays frozen.
“I know what you are. I can’t…” he whispers. “You aren’t real to someone like me.”
“I am. Right here. Right now.” I stretch up on my toes and let my hands follow the curve behind his neck. He closes his eyes, and I pull his face closer.
He is so beautiful. His tired eyes, dark eyelashes, his defeat, and the terrors of a life that drove him into my arms. The arms of a murderess.