“What are you doing?” I asked, holding a hand out to stop her.
“I’m not going to hurt myself, Trevor. I just can’t stand my hair today.”
Taking a long section in her hands, she cut the strands, letting the fierce, winter wind tear her hair away. She snipped until her hair was above her shoulders. It was choppy and uneven, but when she turned and smiled at me, my breath caught in my chest.
Chapter seven
TREVOR
The next morning, Raya’s hair was long again. And the small moment of happiness she had yesterday had turned to vapor. She didn’t deserve to live this way.
Neither did I. I had to think of a way to get us off this island.
“Suppose you didn’t burn all the firewood, and instead, piled it elsewhere,” I mused. “Will the pile disappear?”
“No, it won’t disappear, but a new pile will be beside the fireplace in the morning.”
“So we could save some to burn later,” I deduced.
“Yes, but that’s not likely in winter, unless the storms ease. The pile of wood is always exactly what I need to get me through a day.”
I pointed to the ceiling above us, to the platform where the lighthouse fire should be burning. I didn’t go up there often. As much as heights didn’t bother me from my tower windows, the platform was exposed to the wind on all sides, as well as what and whomever was on it. “We could pile it up there and wait. On a clear night, a big enough fire could be seen for miles. On a clear day, the smoke would travel. If we see a boat in the distance, the men on board might see it.”
“But that would take years,” she argued.
I threw my hands out. “We’ve got nothing but time. Right?”
She shrugged, considering. “It’s a long shot. A ship would have to be in the right place, at the exact time, and the men would have to be alert enough to see it.”
“Got anything better to do while we wait?”
“Nope.”
“How warm does the water get in the spring?”
“It’s still cold, but it won’t kill you to swim in it.”
“I could swim out and take wood from the closest wrecks when the water warms.”
She stared out the window and was quiet so long, I was sure she was formulating an argument, a reason why my plan was insane and impossible. Instead, she answered, “I’ll help. I’m a great swimmer.”
Tross flew into the window. She jumped out of his way as he burst into the room, shaking his feathers off. “You’re freezing,” she cooed, grabbing a small blanket from her bed and throwing it around him. He nuzzled into her embrace.
She turned and caught me staring, the corners of her mouth turning upward.
RAYA
We were able to cut down on our firewood consumption after the last big storm passed, saving at least a couple logs each day. Trevor brought up the ladder that the lighthouse keeper left tucked beneath the spiral staircase. The ladder had seen better days, and wobbled with every step he took. I thought it would shake apart, but it held his weight and then mine.
The platform was just that – a layer of thick stone held up by the wooden beams that encircled my room, with columns spaced a few feet apart around the circumference. High above was a small, peaked roof made of stone so thin, it looked like wooden planks. It was fireproof, but it was also tremendously heavy. One day, those stones could cave in on me, I realized.
An uneasy feeling settled in my gut.
Every day, Trevor climbed up to the lighthouse platform with the wood we had spared, and for hours he stared at the sea that stretched out on every side of him. It didn’t matter how cold it was, if it was snowing, or if icicles hung down and obscured his view entirely. Every day, he climbed up and quietly pondered.
Today, he asked which direction the witch had brought me from. Dark circles draped beneath his eyes, and he needed me to shave him again, but he hadn’t brought it up and I was afraid to upset him. Instead, I gave him the only thing I could: an answer.
I pointed in the direction I knew Paruth lay.
“That’s how the other ships will come,” he declared confidently. “My ship kept close to the Seven Kingdoms; skirting the coast, but staying far enough out that the boat didn’t get caught up in the shallows. When my father sends ships to look for Captain Emry’s, they’ll come that way. We’ll have to wait for a shift in the wind. It’ll carry the smoke right to them.”
Saving the firewood had given Trevor a purpose.
There was nothing wrong with being focused or thinking things out, but his vision quickly began to morph into an obsession. The signal. The smoke. Being discovered here was all he could think about. I was worried about him. The likelihood of someone seeing a fire before it burned out was incredibly small.
There used to be large, glass windows that encircled the platform, but they had long since shattered. Not even a shard remained, but you could see the wooden framing alongside the stone pillars. Without the benefit of glass or some other type of buffer, the gusty breeze would blow the flame out. And we couldn’t board the sides of the platform, because that would hide any light from a fire we could build.
There were times I wanted to scream at him to think this through. Think about how dangerous it would be to swim out into open water and retrieve the boards and planks, or how hard it would be to tear them from the hulls, or perhaps how we might lose them to the ocean in the process and come home tired, spent, and empty-handed.
I wanted to tell him that we would likely have to repeat this process for many seasons – for years – without anyone coming close enough to help us, let alone save us.
But the look in his eyes confessed he knew, but wasn’t quite ready to accept the truth of his predicament. There might be freedom in honesty, but only when it didn’t harm the other person.
And in truth, he himself was a living testament to the fact that despite all odds being stacked against a person, miracles did happen. He washed up on shore in frigid water. He coughed up part of the ocean and took a breath. He lived, and was here with me now.
So maybe it was possible.
Or maybe his obsession and the passion with which he chased it was contagious.
Maybe I didn’t want to see the light in his eyes grow dim and vanish.
He was on the platform when I jogged down the tower steps, threw open the door, and walked out onto the glistening sand. The wind was cool, but not freezing. The sand felt the same, and bits of it were even a little warm from the bright winter sunshine.
Trevor joined me a few minutes later, as I’d hoped.
“What are you doing?”
“Enjoying the sun.”
He glanced up at the platform for a moment before his eyes settled back on me. Then, he closed them and let the rays hit his face. He finally took a deep breath, blowing it out slowly through his mouth. “It’s nice.”
“Winters are hard wherever you are, but they’re especially brutal here.”
He nodded.
“Are you doing this for her?” I’d finally gotten up the courage to ask.
“What are you talking about?”
“Are you trying to be rescued so you can see her again?”
He leveled a glare at me. “It has nothing to do with her.”
“You still love her.”
“And if I do?”
I shrugged. “I’m glad she makes you want to fight.” It was true. Even though I thought it was likely in vain, it was good to feel like we were working toward a goal. Together.
He folded his hands behind his back. “I’m not doing this for her. She made up her mind about me a long time ago.”
“For your father, then?”
“Why does it matter why I’m trying to get us out of here? Isn’t it enough that I am?”
In the end, it didn’t matter what motivated him, only that he kept his sanity. The end mattered, not the means. Never the means.
I nodded. “It is. I just wondered, and sometimes I say things before I thi
nk about them when it comes to you. I never used to speak out of turn.”
“Me either. But things change, and so do people.”
“Sometimes you speak very properly. I can see the Prince emerge once in a while. He’s still in there. You haven’t lost him yet,” I chided softly.
Trevor flashed his lop-sided grin at me, and suddenly the desire to melt into that warm sand had nothing to do with the comfort the sunshine offered. “And have you lost the Princess?”
“She’s been gone for a very long time.”
The smile I loved fell away and his lips thinned. “That’s the true reason why I’m doing this, Raya. You deserve a real life.”
“I don’t deserve anything.”
He scuffed a foot on the sand, making a zipping noise. “Your parents wanted more for you, and they tried to give it the best way they knew how. It just didn’t go as planned. When we are rescued,” he started. I looked away from him, but then felt his fingers tip up my chin. “When we are rescued, I want you to come to Galder with me.”
“What about Paruth?”
“I’ll send a party to see if it’s safe, but there is nothing there for you, Raya. If you go back, it wouldn’t be any different than staying here alone. At least in Galder, you could live out your days in the palace. You could attend court, find a young noble, and settle down. You could be happy.”
I bristled. Why would he assume I wanted any of those things? “Why do you care about my happiness?”
He was still touching my face when he answered, “Because you’re my friend.”
Chapter eight
TREVOR
She walked back inside stiffly after I said those words, though I couldn’t figure out why she seemed upset. She was my friend. She saved my life, fed me with her magical fruit and anything else she could pull from the ocean, shaved my neck, taught me to kiss her giant bird, and showed me her smile could chase the darkness away; that she could chase the loneliness away. I hadn’t been alone on an island for the past ten years, but whatever state I’d been living in didn’t feel much different than this.
The only bright spot I’d had in my life in years was Raya. Her hope, her resilience, and the thought that I might be able to repay her. If I could get her off this island and give back her life, maybe I could save her in return.
I knew she thought I was crazy or delusional, that our fire would do no good. Maybe she’d tried it before. The platform of stone was charred by the remnants of many fires, and it was hard to tell if any had been recent. The wood pile the lighthouse keeper had brought with him had made an indention in the sand all around the southern face of the tower. It was wide and deep, and judging by the discolored stone, at one point was half as tall as the tower to keep the flame lit at night. Either ships docked here, or they came close enough to use a rowboat to drop off supplies at the lighthouse.
They put this tower out here for a reason, because ships needed to be warned about shallow water. They staffed and maintained it because there were ships at risk. Once upon a time, these waters weren’t as dangerous. But given all the bones resting underwater, that must have been a very long time ago.
Raya told me that the witch Hildegard declared the waters were known to swallow ships whole, which was why no one sailed these seas anymore. It was why there was no longer a Keeper; no one to warn anyone who was pushed this way, and no one who would sail close enough to the Sea of Bones to get knocked off course and into the dangerous waters.
I wondered about the time before, when ships did venture this way.
What lay beyond the Sea of Bones that would entice ships to either sail past or through it? My father’s maps showed nothing, although they didn’t show this small island, either. I just wondered why ships had come so far north. Maybe the sea had a more favorable, faster current in these waters at one time. Or maybe something else lay beyond the Sea of Bones, a land someone wanted to forget…
From the window, Raya yelled, “I’m going to bathe. I’ll knock or yell when I’m finished.”
“Okay,” I shouted back.
The sun warmed my skin. Or maybe it was the thought of her with water sluicing down her skin, the sun’s rays stretching lazily into the room, reaching out for her the way I’d thought of doing so many times.
I waded into the cold water, letting it cool my blood. Finding the rope with my feet, I reached in and tugged on it until the trap emerged from the waves. Inside was a fish, flat and silver, but big enough to feed us both tonight.
I set the trap back into the water, taking care to wedge it between two submerged rocks, and took the fish to the sand, sitting beside it and looking out over the water. Raya, whose baths were usually short, took her time and I was glad she did. It gave me time to think. Even if most of my thoughts inevitably returned to her.
RAYA
I called his name from the window and then ran down the steps as fast as I could to hide behind the door at the bottom. He nudged it open, and just as he took his first step into the tower, I banged on the wood and screeched at the top of my lungs. He jumped backward, screamed, and threw a large, flat fish at me. It landed on the stones near my feet.
“What the hell was that?” he roared, stepping toward me, balling his fingers into tight fists.
I burst into a fit of laughter, tears running down my face. My stomach hurt from laughing so hard, and I doubled forward. “You should’ve seen your face!”
He gritted his teeth, gave a toothy grin, and shook his head in warning. “I will get you back.”
“I hope so. I sincerely hope so, Prince.”
He did get me back. Often. In fact, Trevor became quite skilled at scaring me.
There were times he used a simple approach; making a loud noise when all was quiet and I was reading, causing me to jump. He’d flash a smirk at me and go on about his business. Those were mild. I could handle them with ease, and sometimes, pretended like they didn’t startle me in the first place. Which really annoyed him.
But then there were other times… Like when I was bathing, and he would bang on the hatch door and I would shriek and cover up in case he came in.
He never did.
Every day we took turns checking the trap, because he cited the need to pull his weight and claimed it wasn’t fair for me to always do it. When it was my turn, he would lie in wait, ready to pounce. For such a small tower, and for a man of his considerable height and build, he was great at finding new and creative places to hide.
Today, it was my turn to check the trap. It was empty. I hurled it back into the water and watched the rope disappear under the calm waves. If it wasn’t freezing outside, I would’ve stayed out longer.
“I’m back,” I announced. “I know you didn’t have long to hide, but I’m sure you’ve been planning your attack since yesterday.”
“I’m not hiding,” he shouted back from upstairs.
“Not hiding?” I laughed as I jogged up and around the winding staircase.
“I’ve found a more interesting way to spend my time.”
What was he talking about?
I jogged faster, peering into the room as I emerged from the hatch.
My mouth popped open. He was sitting on my cot, looking through my drawings. Oh, my God. He didn’t. Those are none of his business! I ran across the room and snatched them out of his hands. “Those are private,” I snipped.
“They’re good. Especially the ones of me.”
I wanted the floor to swallow me whole. Unfortunately, it didn’t comply, so I was left to shuffle them into a pile, taking care to bury the ones of him deep within the stack, placing a recent sketch of Tross on top. I pretended to straighten them as I turned toward the wall. I knew my face was hotter than the fire in the hearth, and tears welled in my eyes for a moment. He was going to think I was terrible, that I’d invaded his privacy by drawing him.
“You have amazing talent.” When Trevor stood and put his hand on my shoulder, I couldn’t hold back the tears any longer.
; “I’m sorry I drew you. I just... There’s nothing new here. Until you, it’s always been the same, and I... You’re beautiful and different than I expected, and I just wanted to remember my time with you.”
I couldn’t look at him.
“Hey.”
He placed both hands on my shoulders. He could probably feel them shaking. I took in a shuddering breath and apologized again.
“Raya, look at me.”
I shook my head.
He turned me around. “Look at me.”
He tipped my chin up, but I kept my eyes closed for a second. “Please,” he begged.
I opened them.
His hazel eyes searched mine. “I love that you drew me, and it’s no different from the drawings of Tross, okay? We’re friends. We live in the same space. You like to draw, and you’re amazing at it. I’m glad you drew me, just like I’m glad you drew Tross, and the sea, and this tower in every season. I don’t want you to feel embarrassed, and I didn’t mean to hurt you by looking. I just saw your folder laying open and the first drawing was so intricate, I couldn’t help but flip through them. I didn’t think you’d mind, but I should’ve asked you first. You didn’t do anything wrong. I did. I’m very sorry. Okay?”
I sat my drawings down on the cot beside us and plopped down next to them.
He sat beside me and pulled me into a hug, holding me against his body. I didn’t know what to do with my hands. I let my fingertips graze his tunic, and then when he pressed me harder against him, I pressed my hands harder against his back. The muscles in his back rippled.
“How do you smell so good?” He inhaled deeply, his chest expanding against mine.
“We smell the same.”
“No, we don’t. There’s something sweet about your scent. I can’t place it.”
I removed my fingers from his back and eased out of his arms before I did something mortifying like sniff him back, or tell him how good he felt, or how good it felt to be in his arms.
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