“It means he’s in charge,” Hank said. “He’s like the mayor of Goldsport.”
“I told you,” Eliza said, shaking her head, “I don’t know what a Goldsport is.”
Again Astrid and Hank glanced at each other. Meanwhile, Eliza simply stood there and waited, patiently, to be let inside.
“Why don’t you . . . ? Why don’t you go and get my dad?” Astrid said to Hank. “I can stay with her.”
She could tell that Hank didn’t like this idea. If Astrid was being honest, she had some reservations too. There was something troubling about Eliza. But they’d asked her the question, hadn’t they? And she’d passed with flying colors.
“You keep clear of the gate until I get back,” Hank said.
“I will.” Astrid nodded as he left. “But she’s not going to hurt me.”
“I’m not,” Eliza said.
Astrid couldn’t be sure, but for a moment it almost sounded like a question.
• • •
As soon as Hank headed down the hill, Eliza’s awkwardness began to melt away. Astrid tried asking her once more about living on Puffin Island, and this time her question opened the floodgates. Eliza spoke about her parents and her sister and her sister’s husband. She spoke about the lighthouse tower, which was much bigger than Astrid had imagined—it had an engine room and an observation deck, yard-thick storm walls and bathtub-size lenses. Eliza spoke about the great flocks of puffins that nested on the western shore and the pods of whales that passed by every summer on their way into the bay. In fact, once Eliza really got to talking about herself, she seemed unwilling—almost unable—to stop. Her life story tumbled out in a frantic stream, the words “I” or “me” anchoring every single sentence. “I left.” “I wandered.” “I hunted.” Astrid imagined Eliza, alone for all those years. Outside of the walls and away from her island, she had existed to no one but herself. And now that she’d been found, she was suddenly real again.
Eliza had just begun to tell the story of her return to the coast when they were interrupted by a sound on the road below. Astrid turned to see three shapes in identical bee suits running up toward her, each trailed by their own personal swarm of singers. The shortest of them was her father. The much larger, pear-shaped figure beside him could only be Henry Bushkirk, which meant that the person trailing a few paces behind must have been Hank. Mr. Bushkirk had a rifle slung over his shoulder, and even at a distance Astrid could discern the rough outlines of a scowl through the crosshatched shadows of his mesh veil.
“Jesus,” she could hear Mr. Bushkirk exclaim, “she’s naked.” He meant Eliza—that she was out in the open without a bee suit.
“Get away from the gate, Astrid!” her father shouted.
“You don’t have to worry.” Astrid tried to calm them, but her words had no effect—they’d begun sprinting. Henry Bushkirk fumbled with his rifle. “She isn’t infected!” Astrid hollered, desperate now to stop them. “Dad! Listen to me!”
“I said away from the gate!” Her father reached the crest of the hill first, and he very nearly tackled Astrid. He wrapped his arms around her and pivoted, spinning her away from the shuttered gate and putting his body between her and Eliza. It knocked the wind out of Astrid.
“We asked her the question,” Astrid gasped, furious. The first vexed person she’d ever met, and now they were going to scare her away—or worse! Astrid tried to buck out of her dad’s grip, but couldn’t. She had no idea that he was still that strong.
“Hank,” she called out over Amblin’s shoulder, “didn’t you tell them?”
“I did!” Hank cried out.
Henry Bushkirk snorted. “What the hell do you kids know about the question?” He aimed his rifle at Eliza through the chain link. And just as before, Eliza didn’t flinch, or even seem to notice. She had her eyes on Amblin Gold.
“Dad . . .” Astrid was in a full-on panic, struggling against his grip. “She isn’t wicked,” she said. “She’s vexed, like me!”
“Easy,” her dad said. “Henry won’t do anything until he knows for sure.” As he spoke, Eliza’s interest in him seemed to grow. Her eyes widened, and her breath caught.
“Oh, I already know,” Mr. Bushkirk said. “I’m only double-checking for your benefit.” He stuck his hand up and wriggled his gloved fingers in the air to get Eliza’s attention. “Lady,” he said. “What do you want?”
Slowly the woman’s gaze turned from Astrid’s father to Hank’s. “I heard him call you Henry,” she said. “I used to know a man named Henry.”
“It’s a common name,” Mr. Bushkirk said. “But mine’s Dutch. Little different. Hey, speaking of that, what do you want?”
“I didn’t like that man,” Eliza said. “He came to town when I was a kid, and I didn’t like him one bit. His name was Henry and he was rude to my parents.”
“Sounds like a jerk,” Henry said. “Bet he’s dead now. What do you want?”
Eliza blinked for a moment at the dark mouth of his rifle. She seemed not to realize it was a device that with great ease could do her tremendous harm. Then her eyes returned to Astrid’s father. “I want you to say something,” she said. “I want to hear your voice again.”
“Not how it works,” Henry said. “What do you want?”
“I want him to speak to me,” Eliza said.
“Tell us what you want,” Amblin said.
“What’s wrong with you two?” Astrid tried again to escape her father’s grip, but there was nothing doing. She’d have to break one of his arms—or one of hers—to get out. “She answered the question!”
“Not yet she didn’t,” Henry said.
“Tell us what you want,” Amblin said again.
At that Eliza tipped her head into the wind and closed her eyes. She looked for a moment like someone trying to recall a piece of music. Then her eyes popped open again, and she grinned. There was still ice cream on her teeth—pink and white and brown.
“I knew it,” she said. “I knew it was you. Do you remember me? I’m Eliza.”
Astrid felt a jolt run through her father’s body.
“That’s outstanding,” Henry said. “Tell us, Eliza, what do you want?”
“I want something to eat,” she said, not missing a beat. “And I want to come inside the wall with you.”
“What do you want?”
“I want to talk to my mom,” Eliza said. “I want my sister.”
“What do you want?”
“I want everything to go back to how it was before,” Eliza said. “I want things to get better. I want real ice cream, and I want to watch TV all day.”
God, it was like torture.
“What do you want?” Henry asked again, bored and sadistic all at once.
Now Eliza paused. And she seemed, for the first time, to really think the question over. When the answer finally came to her, she smiled with undisguised relief. “I want you,” Eliza said, relishing the word. “I want all your bones. I want to open up your ribs and look at your heart. I want to feel what it’s like when you’re not alive anymore. I want to fill your skin with sand, and to stitch you closed, and to carry you into—”
She probably would have kept going. But then, Henry Bushkirk shot her.
PART II
PUFFIN ISLAND
CHAPTER 8
The Man in the Tower
THE TIDE WAS GOING OUT on Puffin Island, and it was getting to be time for Natalie to go and check the traps. Her mom knew it as well as she did, but neither of them spoke about it. Not during dinner. Not as they washed up. Not as Natalie gathered her gaff and nets or as her mother climbed the loft stairs and rolled into bed.
What was there to say?
Four whole days had passed since they’d caught so much as a crab. Two weeks since their last lobster. At this point Natalie was afraid that even thinking about those traps would be enough to jinx her. Her little family couldn’t handle any more bad luck than it already had.
She left shortly before dusk, hauling her gear out of
the bunkhouse and down the gravel path that led to the western shore. It was a fine evening, and the sea was so flat that the bells affixed to the offshore buoys had fallen silent. A good sign, Natalie hoped. But there she was again, hoping. It was a nasty habit.
Natalie could hear the puffins up ahead, grumbling as they settled in for the night. Their bright orange beaks flickered in the shadows between the rocks. Natalie’s path took her right through their nesting grounds, but the birds paid her no mind. They’d grown used to her over the years. It probably helped that her family didn’t eat puffin.
At least not yet they didn’t.
“Wish me luck,” Natalie whispered to the birds as she picked her way between their nests.
Good luck! came their reply. Bring us back some dinner!
“Catch your own damn fish,” Natalie said.
One of the puffins crawled out of the rocks and shook itself all over. Rude! the bird declared.
Of course, the puffins weren’t really talking to her. But when you live on an island with basically zero people on it, imaginary conversations are often all you’ve got. In Natalie’s head, the puffins sounded high-pitched and manic. At once sincere and unhinged. Exactly as crazy as Natalie sometimes felt.
The shore lay beyond the nesting grounds, where the outgoing tide had exposed a slick garden of kelp, gasping in the evening air. Natalie edged out across the slippery mess, using her fishing gaff as a walking stick. The kelp popped and hissed under her boots. Then, arriving at the water’s edge, she got down on her belly and shimmied out as far as she could. The sea rippled beneath her face. In it Natalie could see her own reflection—her wiry hair and purple eyes. They glowed back up at her from the surface of the water. The eyes of a vexed girl.
From here the lobster traps were just within reach. Natalie hooked one of the marker buoys with her gaff and pulled it in. Then she hauled up the rope, which got darker and more bearded with algae and barnacles as she went. Finally the trap broke the surface, and what did she find but a pair of decent lobsters! Their shells shined in the evening sunlight, and their antennae twirled through the air with buggish confusion. Natalie hooted. She moved the lobsters to her net and hooked another buoy with her gaff. A little more than ten minutes later, her net was brimming. Seven lobsters—the best haul they’d had in months. Good news for Natalie and her family.
Good news for the puffins, too.
Natalie rebaited the traps and then carried her catch back across the kelp and through the rocky nesting grounds. The sun was sinking fast toward the mainland, shining its last rays across Natalie’s home. She could see the entire island from here—not that there was all that much to see. It was basically a big pile of rocks, without so much as a single tree to liven up the view. That there weren’t any singers out here—the sea winds kept them away—and that it was remote were the only things to recommend Puffin Island as a home. Still, in the early-evening light it was beautiful. The lighthouse glowed orange, looking as though it had just been pulled from a furnace. Natalie ran her eyes up the tower, and when she reached the top she caught a dark twist of movement in the lamp room. She could make out a stooped human shape up there.
It was Natalie’s grandfather. He lived in the lighthouse.
Or, to be more exact: It was Natalie’s wicked grandfather. They kept him locked up in the lighthouse. For his own good, and for everybody else’s.
• • •
Natalie froze. She heard her grandpa’s voice every day, but it was rare to actually catch a glimpse of him. The old man seemed to be wrestling with the massive ornate lens in the center of the lamp room. He must have been up to his old tricks again—trying to get the lighthouse turned back on. He’d set himself to this task every so often, becoming suddenly obsessed with the ancient lenses and wiring. He hadn’t managed to get it working in a long time. A good thing, too. That lighthouse might as well be a dinner bell for the whole wide wicked world.
Here we are! it would shout for all to hear. Come and get us!
Natalie approached the lighthouse, craning her neck to get a better view. Her grandpa disappeared from the lamp room and stepped out a moment later onto the gallery—a circular metal walkway fastened about the neck of the tower like a dog’s collar. He stood out there for a moment, basking deeply in the day’s final light, breathing the fresh air with a look of contentment. For a wicked man, Natalie’s grandpa looked pretty good. His skin was pale from all the hours spent locked up indoors, and he was thinner than Natalie liked, but his eyes were clear and his back was as straight as the lighthouse itself. He held a wrench in one hand and went to work on a set of solar panels that were fastened to the railing.
Natalie got closer. She did this without any fear—the gallery was high enough that her grandfather couldn’t jump down. And the reinforced iron door at the base of the tower was locked securely from the outside. Up on the gallery her grandpa was busy removing the old solar panels, caked in a film of bird crap. He’d installed those panels to the railing himself some months ago, during a previous attempt to get the lighthouse working again. Now he hauled them back into the lamp room one by one. When he finally noticed Natalie down on the rocks below, he stopped what he was doing, grinned wide, and waved at her.
Despite his illness—or perhaps because of it?—Natalie’s wicked grandfather was always cheerful like that.
“Hi, Grandpa!” Natalie called up to him.
“I didn’t see you down there!” he called back. He ran the back of his hand across his forehead, blotting sweat.
“Well . . . here I am,” Natalie said. She lifted her net of squirming lobsters, still dripping with seawater, so that the old man could get a better look. “What do you think?”
“Lobsters—I love lobsters,” her grandfather said with a little laugh. He shifted his weight from foot to foot, like an excited little kid. “I wish you’d give me some. I wish you’d feed me.” He paused for a minute, as though thinking this over. “You never feed me anything, do you?”
“That’s not true,” Natalie said patiently. “I came by at dinnertime, remember? The egg and stuff?” Natalie meant the meal that she’d left on her grandpa’s windowsill a few hours ago. All of the lower windows were completely bricked up, save one on the ground floor, in which a sliver of space remained. It was through this gap that Natalie and her mother delivered food and water to the wicked man. It was also how they gave him everything from winter coats to the old magazines and coloring books that they sometimes salvaged on rare trips to the mainland. Dinner that evening had been particularly meager—a third of a hard-boiled egg, a mealy tomato from the greenhouse, and a scoop of coppery crabmeat that they’d tinned the previous winter. But it was no worse than what Natalie or her mother had eaten.
“I suppose?” he said. “I guess it could have been you. Honestly, I don’t find you all that memorable.” He paused briefly. “Maybe I should break your skull open. Then I would remember you probably.” Her grandfather’s smile and his open, airy demeanor didn’t change a bit as he said these words. To him, promises of violence came as naturally, as irresistibly as his own heartbeat.
Natalie was unfazed. Her grandpa had been like this since before she was born, and she’d long ago accepted that he couldn’t help himself. It was the wickedness. The disease claimed you, and it changed you. Natalie could hardly hold that against her grandfather. Though she did keenly regret that she never got to meet the person he used to be.
“I’m out of salt,” her grandpa said, as though this thought were a natural extension of the horrible ones that preceded it.
“I can bring you some with your breakfast tomorrow morning,” Natalie said. She tipped her head down for a moment to stretch her neck, which was getting sore. When she looked back up at the gallery, the wicked man had returned to work.
“So. Giving up on the solar panels?” Natalie asked.
“I’m taking them away!” her grandpa called down, sounding less than happy for the first time. He had both hands on the w
rench handle. The bolt must have rusted.
“Why?” Natalie asked.
“I don’t like them anymore,” he said. “They’re not doing what I want them to do, and so I don’t like them.”
“You trying to power up the lamp?” There was nothing sneaky about this question. Natalie knew that she only had to ask and her grandfather would tell her. That was just how the wicked were.
“Of course I am,” he said, his body twisting this way and that as he struggled with the bolt. “I hate it,” he said. “I hate it when stuff doesn’t listen.”
With that he suddenly paused, his eyes locked on the wrench. Even from so far below, in the gathering dark, Natalie could see a childlike look of discovery suddenly overtake her grandpa’s face. He always looked like that when he was getting an idea—sort of open and surprised and delighted. Like the idea came from elsewhere, an unexpected gift given by a kindly stranger.
Slowly Natalie’s grandpa removed the wrench from the rusted bolt and stood. Natalie had just enough time to realize that she should probably get away from the tower when he chucked the heavy metal thing down at her head. It came close—a rush of air blew across her ear as the tool whipped by. It smashed into the ground, cracking off a dusty handful of granite chunks before spinning away across the craggy surface of the island. Over on the western shore the puffins heard the clang and called out in alarm.
Natalie was so embarrassed by her own foolishness that she nearly dropped her lobsters. If her mother had been awake to see that, she’d have had a fit. Without saying another word, Natalie turned and began walking away from the lighthouse, her cheeks and forehead burning.
“Oh dear, I suppose I didn’t think that one through,” her grandfather called after her. He sounded embarrassed, too. “I actually still need that wrench. I need it to get these panels off.”
Natalie kept walking.
“I—hey!” the wicked man called. He seemed genuinely surprised that Natalie wasn’t turning around to help him. It was just a wrench, after all. Such a small request. “Could you bring it back to me, please? Could you just slide it through my window? I still need it is the thing.”
How We Became Wicked Page 6