Journey's End

by Rachel Hawkins

  Clutching the side of the boat, she reminded herself that she was a girl born on the sea, who came from a long line of sailors. She’d been on her father’s boat for years, and she wasn’t going to let this scare her.

  Still, it was one thing to tell herself that, another to feel like the little boat beneath her wanted to get away. Wanted to plunge back into the fog it came from.

  “I really hate this,” Nolie said softly as Albert clambered into the boat. “Just so you know.”

  Bel looked at Nolie, swaddled in her slicker, and made herself smile.

  “Bet this isn’t what you planned for your summer vacation.”

  For the first time since they’d left Maggie’s, Nolie smiled, looking more like herself.

  “Oh, no, this is exactly how I thought it would go. You know, see my dad in Scotland, hear some bagpipes, sail off to fight a ghost witch, light a magic lighthouse, and save our dads.”

  That made Bel smile, too, and better than that, it made her feel brave.

  Still, she held tight to Nolie’s hand, and Albert rowed the boat farther offshore.

  It was a gray day today, like most days in Journey’s End, and Bel found herself wondering if she’d remember what happened today. Looking around now, forgetting seemed impossible. How could she forget the smooth gray of the sky, the deep slate of the sea?

  The boat was carried aloft on a swell then, and Bel felt Nolie’s hand clutch hers tighter. She swallowed hard, looking ahead of her.

  But ahead was the fog, and while Bel had been closer to it than this before—she’d been out on her dad’s boat more times than she could count—this felt different.

  Albert looked over his shoulder at the Boundary, and when he turned back to them, his thin arms working hard to row them faster, he said, “This is like I remember.”

  Bel was about to ask what he meant by that, but then she could feel it, too. The day had already been windy and cold, but now it felt even chillier, and more than that, there was a feeling to the air, a sort of charge that had the hairs on the back of her neck standing up.

  “Bel,” Nolie murmured.

  “What, Nolie?”

  “Remind me that jumping overboard right now is a bad idea.”

  The fog rose up above them, thick and dense and roiling. They were close to it now, almost as close as Bel had ever been.

  “It’s a bad idea,” she said to Nolie. “Because you’d drown.”

  “Not sure that would be worse than this,” Nolie muttered.

  There was a soft clacking sound as Albert drew up the oars, and Bel frowned at him. This close to the Boundary, her skin seemed to itch, and she felt that same feeling she’d had earlier by the shore, that need to go as fast as she could before she lost her nerve.

  “Why aren’t you rowing?” she asked, and Albert shook his head.

  “Like I said, this is how it was last time,” he told her, voice so soft she could barely hear him over the waves and the wind and the rush of blood in her ears.

  “This, I remember. You can’t row into it,” he continued, his arms folded. “It has to draw you in.”

  Nolie dropped Bel’s hand.

  For long, long moments, they sat there on the boat, feeling it rock in the waves, listening to the splash of water against the hull. It was one of the worst feelings Bel had ever felt, that wait. Just like before, it gave her time to think, and she knew that was the worst thing you could have when doing something like this. Time to think meant time to reconsider, and they didn’t have that right now.

  The Selkie had come to them, and whether they wanted that responsibility or not, it was theirs now.

  But then she felt the boat slide forward.

  It wasn’t a lurch, nothing like the violent bucking she’d felt when they first rowed out. This was more like there was an invisible rope tied to the boat.

  Nolie felt it, too, Bel could tell. Her hands curled around Bel’s again, fingers cold, grip tight. At the front of the boat, Albert sat very still except for his fingers, still drumming on his legs.

  The boat slid over the water, and with one smooth tug, they were pulled forward, the fog enveloping them.

  CHAPTER 28

  AS SOON AS THE FOG CLOSED OVER THEM, EVERYTHING went silent. It was the strangest thing Nolie had ever felt, and her ears were suddenly full, like someone had stuffed them with cotton.

  Bel was right in front of her, but she could hardly see her; only the bright red of her own hair was visible in the mist. Albert was little more than a shape, and Nolie tugged at the straps of her backpack.

  Like that was going to help her now.

  The boat was still being pulled forward, she thought, but it was hard to tell since the fog kept moving around them, pressing damply against her skin, and Nolie realized she was taking quick, shallow breaths.

  “I don’t want to breathe it in,” she told Bel, who nodded, still looking around her.

  “It’s like being in a cloud,” Bel said, but Nolie didn’t agree. Sure, it reminded her of being on planes, caught in high clouds, but there was something different about this fog. She’d felt it from the day she’d gotten to Journey’s End, and she definitely felt it now.

  “My dad says magic and science are the same thing sometimes,” she said to Bel, “but I think he’s wrong. There’s nothing ‘science’ about this.”

  She wondered where her dad was now. Wondered whether, after they got him back—and they would get him back—he’d pack up and leave the Institute, knowing there was no way he would ever be able to figure out what this was.

  This, Nolie knew, was magic, pure and simple.

  They kept floating, the boat rocking gently, the fog never thinning, or getting any thicker, either, just there, a real thing almost solid, and Nolie peered through it, hoping to see something. But there was nothing except fog and fog and more fog, rolling out in front of them.

  “What would happen if we rowed out now?” she asked, surprised to find she was whispering.

  But Bel whispered back. “I don’t think we can row back,” she replied. “Which way would we even go?”

  It was a good question. Everything looked exactly the same in all directions.

  “That’s the thing,” Albert said from the front of the boat, and Nolie heard the creak of the oars as he rested his elbows on them. “This deep in, there is no out. No in, either, I s’pose.”

  “Do you remember getting this far last time?” Nolie asked, and she could make out Albert nodding.

  “Aye. But not much past it, to tell the truth.”

  “Super ace rad,” Nolie muttered as the boat continued to rock in the eerily still water. It didn’t even feel like the ocean anymore. She had spent enough time watching the Caillte Sea to know that it was rough with waves most of the time. This water was more like a lake, and something about it felt so wrong that Nolie swallowed hard, wanting to wrap her arms tight around herself.

  But the boat kept moving, and even though she was more terrified than she’d ever been in her entire life, Nolie couldn’t help but look at all that fog and think, We did it. Even just talking about it had seemed crazy, like something out of a scary story. Definitely not a thing people did. But they had. Her, Bel and Al. And suddenly, no matter how scared she was or how badly this might go—and Nolie was worried it was going to go really, really badly—she and Bel had been brave enough to try. Just like Albert had all those years ago.

  “I’m serious,” Nolie said, not quite so afraid now. “This is going to make the best ‘how I spent my summer vacation’ essay ever. Do y’all have those in—”

  The boat suddenly juddered, the bottom scraping hard against something, and Nolie let out a panicked shriek, grabbing the sides of the boat with both hands, the rough wood cutting into her palms.

  Al said something that sounded like a string of hissing and choking, so Nolie gue
ssed it was Gaelic, and probably pretty bad words in Gaelic at that, if his tone of voice was anything to go by. Only Bel was quiet, twisting around to look over her shoulder.

  Once she stopped feeling like she might throw up, Nolie also raised her head, following the direction of Bel’s gaze.

  For the first time, Nolie could see something more than fog—she could see rocky green hills rising up from the water, high enough that she had to crane her neck to look up at the top of them.

  And there at the top, rising out of the fog and mist, was a lighthouse.

  • • •

  “It’s real,” Bel said, her voice loud in her ears.

  It was a silly thing to say, all told, seeing as how the lighthouse was sitting right in front of them—well, in front and slightly above—but a part of Bel had believed there was simply no way this island and that lighthouse could be real.

  But now they had to light the light.

  And if the lighthouse was real, that meant that Cait was probably real, too. That somewhere up this rocky beach, there was an actual witch waiting for them.

  Bel bit her bottom lip. One thing at a time.

  Al was already climbing out of the boat, nearly stumbling because he was in such a hurry, and Bel followed a little more slowly, the cold water sloshing over her shoes. Behind her, she heard Nolie getting out, too, and she helped her friend tug the boat farther up onto shore. It was clear that Al wasn’t going to be any help with that. He was still staring up at the lighthouse. There was no sun here, no sky. Just the endless gray of the Boundary, wrapping around the island like a bubble, and Bel’s heart pounded hard in her chest.

  “It’s so quiet,” Al said, and Bel looked over at him. The air was still here, too, so there was no wind, no sound of surf crashing. “’Twas quiet the last time, but I’d forgotten.”

  “’Twas cursed by witch fog,” Nolie said, coming to stand between Bel and Al. “’Twas,” she repeated. “I’m going to use that word a lot more. Provided we don’t die here, obviously.”

  “Obviously,” Bel and Al echoed at the same time.

  Then they stood there a bit longer, still looking up at the lighthouse.

  Not surprisingly, it was Nolie who broke the silence. “So do we go up there first?” she asked. “Or look for the boats?”

  Al startled, like Nolie was waking him from a dream, and then he cleared his throat. “Up to the pair of ye.”

  Bel looked over at Nolie, and tucked her blond hair behind her ear. “Maybe we can’t find them without the light first,” she said. “So we should do that, I s’pose.”

  Nolie glanced up at the lighthouse. “Probably.”

  Al dusted his hands on his pants. “Aye,” he said, and Nolie repeated that word, too.

  “Before I leave here, I’m going to be saying all the Scottish words,” she told them, the three of them making their way up the rocky path from the beach toward the lighthouse.

  Bel was thankful for Nolie’s chatter, since it kept her from being scared. Well, kept her from being too scared. As they got closer and closer to the lighthouse, Bel’s mouth felt drier and drier, her knees shakier. The path wound around a bit, dipping between hills or boulders near the size of houses, but the lighthouse was always there, dark and unseeing.

  And then suddenly they were there, standing in front of the door. It was made of old, weathered wood, the handle a ring of rusting iron.

  Nolie stepped a little closer to Bel, her boots crunching on the path of loose pebbles. “Three of us,” she said. “Three is a lucky number.”

  Then she turned to Bel, raising her eyebrows. “I read that somewhere. Do you think it’s true?”

  Reaching out one trembling hand, Bel pushed the door, hearing it creak and feeling it give.

  “S’pose we’re about to find out.”

  CHAPTER 29

  STANDING JUST INSIDE THE LIGHTHOUSE, NOLIE LOOKED around. The air smelled heavy somehow, like a place that had been closed up for a long time, and her skin felt clammy and damp. Similar to the castle ruins near Maggie’s, the stones seemed to be holding in the cold, letting it seep out until she had goose bumps even though she was wearing a jacket.

  There wasn’t much to the lighthouse, really. It seemed to be just a tall, round tower. Stairs curled up one side, carved of the same dark stone as the rest of the lighthouse, and there were grooves in each step, like hundreds of years of footsteps had worn away the rock.

  Except no one had been in here in hundreds of years besides Albert and Maggie, and they’d only lit the light and left. Had it been the girl? The ghost? Pacing this dim, cold place?

  The thought made Nolie want to run, to get out.

  Behind her, Albert stepped closer. “What now?” she asked him. Bel was still standing just inside the door, looking out into the fog behind them.

  Albert looked up at the top of the tower. There were big, arched windows carved out there, letting in the gray light, and Nolie could see a sort of small platform where the steps ended. In what light there was in the tower, it looked charred and blackened.

  “We go up there,” Albert replied, nodding at that platform. “There’s a lantern. We light it, and then—”

  “And then we maybe get stuck in the fog forever trying to row out,” Nolie finished.

  “It let us in,” Bel reminded her, coming into the chamber. She left the door open, and the fog curled in after her, twining around her ankles like a cat.

  “We got this far, which has to mean something.”

  Nolie nodded. She was doing this for her dad, to save him, but what if she never got out, either? What would her mom do without her?

  “I’m surprised you didn’t bring a camera,” Bel said to her, coming up close enough to nudge Nolie with her elbow. “Bet your Spirit Chasers show has never been anywhere as ace as this.”

  Nolie smiled despite her shivers. “I don’t know, they did an episode in an asylum that was pretty freaky, but this would have to come in a close second. Could shoot up to first place if we actually see a ghost.”

  Albert was already walking toward the steps, but he paused, looking over his shoulder at both of them. “I never saw anything when I was here the last time, far as I remember. But maybe she’ll make a special appearance for you, Nolie.”

  “Yay,” Nolie replied, wishing she felt something more than scared. A camera would’ve been nice, actually, but not so she could record whatever happened. So she could have something to hide behind. Looking at all of this through a lens would’ve made it feel like a TV show, not the scariest thing she’d ever done.

  But as Albert began moving up the stairs, she made herself follow behind him, Bel taking up the rear.

  • • •

  “All for one, one for all,” Nolie said. “That’s from a book.”

  Albert gave her what she was now beginning to think of as his signature scowl, his dark brows lowering over his eyes, corners of his mouth turning down so sharply it was almost funny.

  “I know that,” he said. “That book is older than me.”

  Shrugging, Nolie shoved her hands in her pockets. “Just keeping you on your toes.”

  “Can all of your toes hurry up?” Bel said from behind Nolie. “The sooner this is over, the sooner we can get home.”

  “Do you remember this bit?” Nolie asked as they wound their way up. “I mean, the fog felt all familiar. So, does this?” The stairs were so narrow her shoulder brushed the wall, and while heights had never really bugged her, she kept her eyes firmly on Albert’s shoulders, not the ever-increasing drop on her other side.

  “Summat?” Albert replied, and Nolie guessed that was old-timey for “kinda.”

  “It’s like . . . you know when you wake up from a dream, and for the first bit you’re awake, everything you dreamed is clear? But then you lie there, and it all starts to fade? That’s what my memory of this pla
ce is like.”

  “It feels like a dream for me, too,” Bel said, and Nolie dared a glance behind her. Bel had paused a few steps back and was looking down toward the open door. More fog had slid in now, creeping along the floor, and Nolie had the uneasy feeling it was slithering after them.

  “Okay, let’s get a move on,” she said, fighting the urge to start shoving Albert up the stairs.

  They moved up and up until finally, just in front of one of the arches cut from the stone, the stairs stopped at the little platform.

  And there, in the center, was the light.

  Or what Nolie assumed was the light.

  “This is it?” Nolie looked at the glass cylinder on the platform. It covered a pile of sticks and rags, and it didn’t seem like a light strong enough to push away magical fog, but then, it was clearly magic, too, so what did she know?

  Taking the box of matches from Bel, Albert studied the lamp, but didn’t lift the glass.

  “What is it?” Bel asked. She was still standing behind Nolie, closest to the edge of the platform.

  Albert shook his head, his hair falling over his forehead. “Just . . . I got this far last time. I lit it. I remember that. And after . . .”

  He didn’t have to say what had happened after. They all knew.

  “Do it,” Nolie said, looking out the window. There was nothing to see, nothing but gray. No water, no sky. Just this endless fog, and in that second, she didn’t care if they never got away from the island. If the light would get rid of the fog, that’s all that mattered. Anything but this never-ending mist.

  Nodding, Albert reached out and lifted the glass.

  Suddenly, a wind blew in through the window. It was less like a breeze and more like a solid thing hitting them, smelling like the ocean and old stone, and it was hard enough to make Nolie’s eyes water.

  “What—” she started as she lifted a hand against it, but before she could say anything else, there was a cry from behind her.