Mistwalker

by Saundra Mitchell

  Levi and I slid up to our slip at the wharf, still smiling. Me more than him, but it was one of those things. The thrill of getting away with something together. He hopped off the deck first and held his hand out for mine.

  It never crossed my mind that Coyne might be out on the water too. He must have cut his engine the same time we did, so we didn’t hear him approach.

  “Hey, Dixon,” he shouted.

  We both turned, just in time for Coyne to appear in the mist. Just in time to see the gun, but not fast enough to do anything about it.

  He fired twice.

  It sounded like a wire snapping, hollow and high-pitched. It echoed forever, ebbing into the distance. I understood what happened, but I didn’t know it. Not until Levi stumbled back onto the boat and fell into me.

  Black blood spread on the front of Levi’s shirt. And then it started spitting. His air poured out through his chest instead of his throat. My body moved on its own because I wasn’t thinking.

  Silence swallowed me. I snapped the tab on our EPIRB, our emergency beacon. The radio inside it crackled to life, sending a mayday to the Coast Guard. And because we were supposed to use it out at sea, a strobe burst to life on top of it.

  Blinded, I sank to the deck and clapped a hand over the hole in Levi’s chest. Heat spilled from it. Dark foam bubbled between my fingers. In my shock, I thought I saw his soul slipping out, a grey ghost that lingered near his chest.

  But it was cold that night. It was just frost forming on the heat of his blood, the same way my breath hung in the air. Above us, the rescue beacon pulsed, lightning that bounced off the fog in eerie patterns.

  “Coast Guard’s coming,” I told Levi.

  The last thing Levi ever said was, “’Kay.”

  I kept thinking, Too bad Dad doesn’t smoke anymore, because every time he watched Platoon, he’d tell us that the plastic wrap on a pack of cigs could close up a bullet hole. Slap it on, good as new. It was stupid trivia. Who even knew if it was true?

  But that’s what I was thinking while I tried to hold in my brother’s last breath.

  It wasn’t until Ms. Park left that Dad finally came in. While I boiled mud and memories from my skin in the upstairs shower, I listened to him talk to my mother in the kitchen.

  Not his words—I couldn’t really pick them out. Just his voice, rising and falling. Slipping beneath my mother’s voice, strange and dark. Maybe it was about me. I didn’t know; I couldn’t tell. But it felt like an accusation.

  It was always obvious to my parents what happened that night. Pretty much the whole village knew and understood. Our waters were our waters. If Coyne hadn’t dropped gear on top of ours, he’d have been dropping it on someone else’s.

  Broken Tooth didn’t have much. We were all starving a little bit, shrinking every year. Bailey wouldn’t come back. A degree in political science wouldn’t do her any good around here. The bright ones like her, they went off to the world. To New York Cities and LAs and Londons. None of the Baileys came back.

  Instead, tourists moved in, all romantic about living Down East. Untouched wilderness, rustic everything. Then they paved it and blocked off our beaches. They pitched a fit about how much noise we made in the harbor when we went out to fish. They held condo meetings about the stink of salted herring that lingered when we sailed out.

  But our harbor was what we had. Our families and our town. The burying ground was full of slate gravestones, our names all the way back to the 1600s. Washburns, Dyers, Dixons. Archambaults and Ouelettes, on and on, over and over.

  What I did, my neighbors woulda done too. The Coynes and the out-of-towners carried poison with them. No one in Broken Tooth would have blamed me.

  Ducking my head under the water, I let heat flow through my hair and run the trail of my lips. Fresh water always smelled like blood, especially when it was turned up hot. The steam robbed me of deep breaths. I stared as sand collected in the bottom of the tub, slinking toward the drain.

  Downstairs, Dad raised his voice, then the back door slammed. I didn’t hear it so much as feel it, an unexpected slap. Twisting the tap off, I listened to the silence that followed, then the low hum of his truck driving away.

  They’d always known what I did, but tonight they had to admit it. The space gouged out of this house, this family, it was—

  I was never afraid I’d get in trouble for cutting off Coyne’s gear. It was the telling that scared me. The confessing. Having to look at my mother and my father afterward. Having to look at myself. Having to say it out loud:

  It was my fault Levi was dead.

  Not in some roundabout, butterflies-in-Africa-starting-hurricanes-in-Maine kind of way. My little brother would have been a Bailey. He had a soft smile, and notebooks full of art. Full of good song lyrics that Nick and Seth put to bad music. He made stop- motion movies, and flipbooks, and plans to give up the sea entirely.

  He could’ve; he would have.

  Except I leaned in his doorway that night. I waited for him to pull out his ear buds and ask me, “What up, Willard?”

  And instead of saying “Let’s go find the Grey Man” or “Nothing, I just wanted you to know I ate the last of your Trix on purpose,” I tossed him the keys to the Jenn-a-Lo.

  He caught them on the first throw.

  THREE

  Grey

  There she is again, thinking about me.

  I transfer my calipers to my left hand and peer at the music box on my desk. The coils are tightened, the clockworks pinned. Nothing rattles when I lift it to my face.

  Turning the copper key, I hold it—master of time, the god of the figures trembling on top of the box. If they dance, it’s because I wish it. If they hang forever in anticipation, that, too, is within my grasp.

  But I let the key go, and it slowly unwinds. The “Maple Leaf Rag” is more a waltz at this pace. The figures circle each other, their copper skin glinting with each mechanical turn. Placing it in the window, I watch them sway against the line of the horizon. Tonight’s sunset is red and bright—sailor’s delight.

  And mine, too, for she’s thinking of me. She must be realizing, as I once did, that something lives on this rock. Tomorrow I shall stand on the cliff and wait. I will be the pale star that blinks on the horizon. I will be ethereal and tempting.

  If there is any balance in the world, any justice between the heavens and the earth, she’ll see me. Is that not the true nature of this curse? I’ve no chance of collecting a thousand souls. Nor did Susannah, nor any other Grey to stand on this island. The only escape is through another. A willful, if stupid, choice—she must say yes. She must choose this mantle.

  I do believe she’ll come. I could wish for it, for her to appear at my breakfast table the same way my books and toys and oddments do. But the bindings of the curse are clear: anything that I want will be mine.

  Only by happenstance and the slightest shift of fog can I get what I need.

  Tomorrow I’ll hold back the mist, arrange myself handsomely. The wind will finger through my hair while I stand and wait. If there’s any justice at all, I’ll meet her eyes across the water and become her fascination.

  Already she’s thinking of me.

  Now I just need her to come.

  FOUR

  Willa

  “I could take Latin next year,” Bailey said, “but I’d have to drop welding so I can drive all the way up to Herrington.”

  My head hurt. And much as I loved Bailey, I didn’t know if I could go another two hours dissecting her senior year schedule. Since I wasn’t going to college, I planned to take the five classes I needed to graduate. That would let me get out at one, so I could go pull traps with my dad. Well, that’s what it used to be. I figured I’d be getting out at one to go pull bloodworms now.

  That’s what I was doing—sorting them at the cellar, anyway. The room was too cold and stank of fish and mud. The professional worm diggers, the ones who made their whole living year round on it, had already gone. They counted faster
than we did. And maybe they didn’t want to hear about dead languages versus vocational arts either.

  Bailey was overachieving like usual. She already had three years of Spanish. She didn’t need Latin. Not like she needed welding, because her truck was about to fall apart. It was probably two sticks of gum and some duct tape away from collapsing into parts.

  One more language on her transcript would look good. And she was gonna twist her schedule until she got it. I already knew the ending, so it was hard to get excited about the journey.

  After a while, she noticed I was only offering her uh huhs and yeps. Her plastic sorting tray thumped against mine. My pile of worms was smaller than hers. Probably because I’d been counting instead of talking.

  “Are you listening?”

  I had to shake my head. “Not really. Sorry.”

  Shifting her tray again, she started pulling the shorties to one side. We got paid less for those. She made a leap I hadn’t. “I know you hate letting Seth go out with Dad. Somebody has to, though.”

  “I’m well aware.”

  “Quit being so damned old,” she said.

  “I’m not,” I sniped back. “I’ve got a lot on my mind. I can’t imagine why.”

  This time, Bailey cracked her tray against mine on purpose. “You’re allowed to be depressed. You’re not allowed to feel sorry for yourself.”

  “And why not?”

  Bailey had a fire going inside. Probably tindered when she was on time to talk to Ms. Park and I wasn’t. She’d had a couple of days to feed it. While she was good enough not to play silent-treatment games on me, I sometimes wondered if I wouldn’t have liked that better.

  “Because you shut everybody out and make it worse. On purpose. Things won’t get magically better because you punish yourself.”

  “Who said it would?”

  Starting to clap a hand to her face, Bailey stopped at the last minute. She wasn’t mad enough to rub worm all over her cheek. “You act like it, and you know it.”

  “So you say.”

  “So I know,” she retorted.

  Picking up my Styrofoam cup, I dumped the rest of my worms in it. Back stiff and jaw tight, I didn’t look away. I wasn’t afraid of Bailey. I knew her secrets, and she knew mine. Arguing with her was as safe as it got. In the morning, she’d still love me. Even if she was mad. Carrying my collection to the register, I turned back to her. And because I didn’t have anything to say that was true, I flipped her off instead.

  With a sneer, she put her head down to finish counting.

  Mom worked second shift at police dispatch, and Dad fished from dawn ’til dusk. That meant whoever got home first made dinner.

  It used to be Levi, and it was too bad it wasn’t anymore. He could find three random things in the pantry and make a meal. I could follow instructions on a box, more or less.

  Low tide came twice a day most days. I’d already earned a couple hundred at the noon low. I could hit the next at midnight, but Seth’s flannel shirts, one I’d stolen from his bedroom, beckoned. It smelled like him. It felt like him wrapping his arms around me, my only constant.

  Once I had it on, it was decided. I was done worm digging.

  I jogged downstairs to find something easy to make. Bacon and eggs would be plenty for me. But Seth and Dad would be starving when they came in, so I pulled a box of pancake mix from the pantry, butting it against the grease jar as I went back for jam and syrup. The phone rang before I managed to crack one egg.

  “Don’t worry,” Mom said when I answered.

  Tension laced me tight. Leaning against the counter, I turned the burners off one by one, pretty sure that whatever I wasn’t supposed to worry about meant I wouldn’t be home long enough to need hot pans. Somehow, I sounded calm when I asked, “What’s going on?”

  She cleared her throat, then I heard her talking to someone else. Way to drive me crazy, to make sure that knot in my throat was as big as it could be. Finally, she came back and said, “I don’t want you coming up here, Willa. I just wanted you to know your dad’s up at the hospital with me, but he’s all right.”

  A slow, sharp pain pierced my temple. “What happened?”

  “He was gaffing a buoy and wouldn’t let go. Got knocked on his ass.”

  It was a stupid mistake to make, getting hauled down the deck because he didn’t want to lose a cheap hook—a greenhorn mistake. One that could pull you overboard, drown you before anyone realized you were gone.

  Anger welled in my chest. He shouldn’t have been on deck to begin with. That’s why Seth was there. Pressing fingers to my brow, I tried to smooth away the ache. “What did he do that for?”

  “Just an old fool, I guess.” She said something I couldn’t hear again, then went on. “We’ll be home as soon as somebody tracks down the doctor, but don’t wait for us.”

  “And tell her to stay off the boat,” Dad said in the background.

  For some reason, my mother didn’t repeat that. Instead she said, “Your boy should be dropping by, so you know.”

  The crunch of gravel out front proved her right. I didn’t have to turn to recognize the sound of Seth’s truck in our driveway. But everything inside me felt curiously empty. I didn’t move; Seth would let himself in. All my friends did, and he was more than that now, wasn’t he?

  “Willa?”

  Shaking my head, I pushed off the counter. “I think I hear him now. Tell Daddy he’s on bait until he learns his lesson.”

  “I’ll do that,” she said, and hung up as the side door opened.

  Filling the space, Seth looked wrecked. His face was drawn. Dismay darkened his eyes, which seemed nearly black against his ashen skin. The way he started toward me, it was a good thing Mom had called first. Just to look at him, I would have guessed somebody else had died.

  Seth caught me in his arms, burying his face against my hair. “Baby, I’m sorry.”

  Slowly, I wrapped my arms around Seth’s waist. “Mom says he’s fine. I heard him complaining, so I know it’s true.”

  “I’m sorry,” he repeated. “Everything got tangled in the hauler, and . . .”

  “It’s all right.” I spread my hands across his back, rubbing muscles stiff from work and worry. It felt like a chore at first. Something automatic like the lighthouse, the right motion for the moment. It kept me from thinking too much. From pointing out I’d warned him about the hauler.

  By inches, Seth melted against me, and we ended up swaying. We were a slow pendulum, and listening to his reedy breath thawed some of my numb, cooled some of my anger. When he kissed my brow, my heart turned and I clung to him. The house would have been too quiet without him. My thoughts would have been too loud.

  “You want me to stay?” he asked.

  “Yeah, you can help with dinner.”

  And he did; he knew where everything was. He also knew a little cinnamon in the pancake mix made it special. I knew the syrup would explode in the microwave if we left the cap on. We were solid, and certain—a team.

  The window framed us, night glass reflecting us—and for a moment, I stared. We fit exactly. Always had. Everyone knew it. Like the moon changed shape, like the sun came up—the two of us were meant to be. In third grade, Bailey and Amber chased me across the playground, throwing dandelion heads and singing:

  Tikki-tikki-tembo, Seth Ar-sham-bow

  Kissing Willa Dixon, in her mama’s kitchen!

  Gonna get married, gonna get married, boo!

  They sang it until I cried, and Mrs. Graham sent them to time-out.

  No idea why it upset me.

  FOUR

  Grey

  Susannah wasn’t the first girl I loved. Nor the third nor the sixth. I was entirely indiscriminate with my affections. The pretty girls were the only benefit to following my father from Massachusetts to Maine, from Boston to Nova Scotia.

  All else was torment, but always on the shore, lovely girls. Girls with exotic accents. With brown eyes, blue, and green. With parasols and gowns that dr
aped them as if they were Grecian goddesses. They distracted me from the hardships of merchant life. In return, I treated them from the stores.

  Tea from Boston, mostly. It made a good gift—it wasn’t expensive, it didn’t spoil. I trailed spiced leaves all along the shore, filling cups wherever I walked.

  In the beginning, the very beginning, I thought perhaps this lighthouse was my penance. That here, I would learn to be selfless. To become a man, someone worthy of esteem. I was by beauty trapped and thus made a beast. It made sense that by beauty I would be set free.

  How brilliantly I deceived myself. But, in my own defense, isn’t that the conclusion bred into us by the Misters Grimm and M. Perrault? (Hr. Anderson seemed rather more occupied with eternal suffering and thus wasn’t a favorite of mine.)

  I offered pretty prayers. I wished for a rosary and learned it. Then mala beads, then bells. I wished for a singing bowl and tried rather hard to learn to meditate. But I had nothing but the sea to surround me. Its whisper, constantly in my ears. I was the most shut away of monks, but I never found pleasure in it.

  Always my downfall. Pleasure, the wanting of it. The pursuit of it. I ignored my true calling for a decade. Though I held the mists off, I thought, This is my test. If I suffer it nobly, I’ll be rewarded. Another girl will come, I’ll be transformed. I’ve learned my lesson and stopped hating the ocean.

  These are lies. Sometimes I repeat them. It makes the hours, one after the other, same as the last, same as the next, go by. And now, my reward is at hand. My release. My freedom, and though in those early days I swore I would be better, I swore I would never press a cursed kiss on anyone the way Susannah had pressed one on me—

  I realized, I had meant it only halfway. Because there, on the shore, she’s thinking of me. If she’ll only come, I’ll press this curse on her without hesitation. I’ll do it with the truth. With revelation. She’ll see every sweet benefit, and it’s no concern to me if she discovers the disadvantages. By then, it will be much too late.