SEVENTEEN
The cottage rattles from the wind, and I wake, gripping for something that isn’t there. I had been dreaming of the sea, of the weight of stones pulling me under, water so cold I coughed at first but then couldn’t fight it as it spilled into my lungs. A bleak, lonely death. My sisters only a finger’s width away as we all plummeted to the bottom of the harbor.
I rub my eyes, crushing away the memory and the dream.
It’s early, the light outside the cottage still a watercolor of grays, and Bo is stoking the fire.
“What time is it?” I ask, turning over from my place on the floor where I managed to fall asleep. He’s added several new logs to the fire, and the heat sears my cheeks and tingles my lips.
“Early. Just after six.”
Today is the summer solstice. Tonight, at midnight, everything will change.
Bo has been unsuccessful in finding a way to kill the Swan sisters without also killing the bodies where we reside. There is nothing in any of the books. But I knew there wouldn’t be.
And I know what he’s thinking as he faces the fireplace: Today he will get his revenge for his brother’s death. Even if it means killing an innocent girl. He won’t allow Aurora to keep on killing. He will end her life.
But I’ve also made a decision. I’m not going back into the water tonight; I won’t return to the sea. I’m going to fight to keep this body. I want to stay Penny Talbot, even if it means she no longer gets to exist. Even if it might be impossible—painful and severe and terrifying—I have to try.
Each summer, my sisters and I are given only a few short weeks inside the bodies we’ve stolen, making each day, each hour, precious and fleeting. And so we have a habit of lingering inside our bodies until the final seconds before midnight on the summer solstice. We want to feel every last moment above the waterline: breathe in our last gulps of air; peer up at the sky, dark and gray and infinite; touch the soil beneath our feet and savor the feeling of being alive.
Even when the draw of the harbor begins to pulse behind our eyes, coaxing us back to its cold depth, we resist until it becomes unbearable. We hold on to those final seconds for as long as we can.
And there have been summers past when we’ve pushed it too far, waited too long to return to the sea. It’s happened to each of us at least once.
In those times, in those seconds that ticked past midnight, a flash of bright pain whipped through our skulls.
But the pain isn’t all you feel; there is something else: a pressure. Like being stuffed down into the dark, into the deepest shadows of the body we occupied. When it happened to me many years back, I could sense the girl rising once again to the surface, and I was being crushed. We were swapping places. Wherever she had been—hidden, stifled, and suppressed inside the body—I was now sinking into that very place. It was only when I returned to the sea that I slipped free from the girl’s skin. The relief was immediate. I swore I would never cut it that close again. I would never risk being trapped in a body after midnight.
But this year, this summer solstice, I’m going to try. Maybe I can fight it. Resist the pain and the grinding force pushing me down. Maybe I’m stronger now, more deserving even. Maybe this year will be different. I haven’t taken a single boy’s life—perhaps the curse will release me, allow me this one thing.
Just like in the books I’ve read, about the mermaids and selkies who found a way to be human and exist above the sea, I’m going to stay in this body.
Even if Penny will be stifled indefinitely, I’m willing to be selfish to have this.
“I need to go into town,” I say, my voice scratchy. Last night, sitting beside the oak tree, I realized that if I truly want to have this life with Bo—if I love him—then I need to let go of the one thing I’ve been holding on to.
“For what?” he asks.
“There’s something I need to do.”
“You can’t go by yourself. It’s too dangerous.”
I pull down the royal-blue T-shirt that wrapped itself around my torso while I slept, tossing and turning fitfully as I battled my nightmares. “I have to do this alone.” I yank on the dark gray sweatshirt I was using as a pillow then stand up.
“What if one of those guys—Davis or Lon—sees you? They might question you about Gigi.”
“I’ll be fine,” I tell him. “And someone needs to stay here—keep an eye on Gigi.” He knows I’m right, but the green of his eyes settles on me like he is trying to hold me in place with his stare. “Promise me you’ll stay away from her while I’m gone.”
“Time is running out,” he reminds me.
“I know. I won’t be gone long. Just don’t do anything until I get back.”
He nods. But it’s a weak, uncommitted nod. The longer I’m off the island, the greater the risk that something bad will happen: Bo will kill Gigi; Gigi will seduce Bo and coax him into the ocean, where she’ll drown him. Either way, someone will die.
I leave the cottage, closing the door behind me. And then another thought, a new fear rises inside my gut: What if Gigi tells Bo what I really am? Would he even believe her? Doubtful. But it might edge a sliver of suspicion into his mind. I have to go quickly. And hope nothing happens before I get back.
* * *
The harbor is crowded, fishing boats and tour barges chugging out past the lighthouse. The clouds are low and heavy, so close it feels like I could reach up and touch them, swirl them with my fingertip. But no rain spills from their bloated bellies. It waits. Just like everyone is waiting for the next drowned body to be found—the last of the season. But I’m the only sister who has yet to make a kill, and I refuse to do the thing I know both Aurora and Marguerite want me to do: drown Bo.
It’s never happened before: a summer where one of us didn’t make a single kill. I don’t know what will happen, how it will change things—change me—if at all.
I feel the sea already, tugging at me, calling me back into the water. The need to return will grow stronger as the day wears on. It happens every year, a pulse behind my eyes, a twitch inside my ribs, drawing me back to the harbor, back into the deep where I belong. But I ignore the sensation.
The skiff motors past the orange buoys and through the marina, gliding into place at the dock.
Sparrow is teeming with tourists. Along the boardwalk kids run with rainbow-colored kites, struggling to get them airborne without any breeze; one is even tangled around a street lamp with a little girl tugging against the string trying to pull it down. Seagulls peck along the concrete for scraps of popcorn and cotton candy. People stroll the shops; they buy saltwater taffy by the pound; they take pictures beside the marina; they know the end is near. Today is the last day. The season is coming to a close. They will return to their normal lives, their normal homes in normal towns where bad things never happen. But I live in a place where bad things surround me, where I am a bad thing.
I don’t want to be that anymore.
I move in the opposite direction of Coppers Beach and the boathouse, and I head up to Alder Hill at the south end of town. The same part of Sparrow where I was supposed to deliver a vial of rosewater and myrrh perfume the day I met Owen Clement. I never made the delivery.
Blackbirds circle above, eyes roving the ground, following me. Like they know where I’m headed.
Alder Hill is also the location of the Sparrow Cemetery.
The graveyard is a broad, grassy plot of land encircled by a partially fallen-down metal fence overlooking the bay so that the fisherman buried here can watch over the sea and protect the town.
I haven’t been here in a very long time. I’ve avoided this place for the last century. But I find my way to the tombstone easily, my feet guiding me even after all these years, past graves covered in flowers and graves covered in moss and graves left bare.
It’s one of the oldest stone markers in the cemetery. The only reason it hasn’t turned to dust is because for the first century I made sure to keep the weeds from growing over it and the earth from pulling it under. But then it became too hard to come. I was holding on to someone who I would never see again. It was my past. And the person I had become—a murderer—was not who he had loved. I was someone else.
It’s a simple marker. Rounded sandstone. The name and date carved into the rock have long ago been smoothed away by wind and rain. But I know what it used say; I know it by heart: OWEN CLEMENT. DIED 1823.
* * *
After the day his father caught us together in the barn’s loft, Owen wasn’t allowed to leave the island. I tried to see him, I rowed across the bay, I pleaded with his father, but he forced me away. He was so certain I had cast a spell on Owen to make him love me. That no boy could love a Swan sister without the sway of some hex or wicked enchantment.
If only love were so easily conjured, there wouldn’t be so many broken hearts, I remember Marguerite saying once, back when we were alive.
I didn’t realize what was coming—what Owen’s father was plotting. If I had known, I wouldn’t have stayed in Sparrow.
Clouds hung heavy over the town the day my sisters and I were led from the courthouse down to the docks. Aurora wailed, screaming at the men as they forced us aboard a boat. Marguerite spit curses into their faces, but I remained still, scanning the crowd of gathered spectators for Owen. I had lost sight of him after we were taken into a small dark room at the back of the courthouse, stripped bare, and forced into simple white gowns. Our death gowns.
They knotted rope around our wrists and ankles. Aurora continued to weep, tears making lines down her cheeks. And then just as the boat pushed back from the dock, I saw him.
Owen.
It took three men to restrain him. He yelled my name, scrambling to the end of the dock. But the boat was already drifting too far away, with his father and several other men steering us out to the deepest part of the harbor.
I lost sight of him in the low fog that settled over the water, muffling all sound and obscuring the dock where he stood.
My sisters and I sat together on a single wood bench at the bow of the boat, shoulders pressed together, hands bound in front of us. Prisoners being led to their death. The sea spray stung our faces as the boat pushed farther out into the harbor. I closed my eyes, feeling its cool relief. I listened to the harbor bell buoy ringing at long intervals, the wind and waves gone nearly still. One last moment to breathe the sharp air. The seconds stretched out, and I felt as if I could slip into a dream and never wake—like none of it was real. It’s rare to know your death is approaching, waiting for you, death’s fingers already grasping for your soul. I felt it reaching out for me. I was already half-gone.
The boat drifted to a stop, and I opened my eyes to the sky. A seagull slipped out from the clouds then vanished again.
The men tied burlap sacks filled with stones to our ankles—the stones likely pulled up from a farmer’s rocky fields behind town, donated for the occasion of our death. We were forced to stand then pushed to the edge of the boat. Marguerite eyed one of the younger boys, her gaze clawing into him, as if she might be able to convince him to free her. But we would not be spared. My sisters and I were finally being punished: adultery, lust, and even true love would find atonement at the bottom of the sea.
I sucked in a breath of air, bracing myself for what would come next, when I saw the bow of another boat breaking through the fog. “What the hell?” I heard one of the men say behind us. It was a small boat, oars driving fast through the water.
Aurora turned and looked at me—she realized who it was before I did.
He stole a boat.
A second later, I felt the swift push of two hands against my back.
The water shattered around my body like razors, knocking the air from my lungs. Death is not a fire, death is a cold so fierce it feels like it will peel the skin away from your bones. I sank quickly. My sisters plummeting just as swiftly through the murky water beside me.
I thought death would take me quickly, a second, maybe two, but then there was movement above me: an explosion of bubbles, and a hand wrapping around my waist.
I opened my eyes and focused through the dark, speckled with bits of shell and sand and green. A haze dividing us. But he was there—Owen.
He grabbed hold of my arms and began tugging me upward toward the surface, fighting the cold and the weight of rocks around my feet. His legs kicked furiously while mine hung limp, tied together. His face strained, eyes wide. He was desperate, trying to save me before the water found its way down my throat and into my lungs. But the stones around my ankles were too heavy. His fingers worked at the rope, but the tension was too great, the knots too stiff.
Our eyes met, only inches apart as we sank deeper to the bottom of the harbor. There was nothing he could do. I shook my head frantically—pleading with him to give up, to release me. I tried to pry his hands off of me, but he refused to let go. He was falling too deep, too far. He wouldn’t have enough air to make it back up. But he pulled me against him and kissed his frigid lips to mine. I closed my eyes and felt him against me. It’s the last thing I remember before I drew in a breath and the water spilled down my throat.
He never let me go. Even when it was too late. Even when he knew he couldn’t save me.
We both lost our lives in the harbor that day.
The following summer, when I returned to the town for the first time—hidden in the body of a local girl—I walked up the steep slope to Sparrow Cemetery and stood on the cliff over his grave. No one knew who I really was: Hazel Swan, come to see the boy she loved now buried in the ground.
The day we both drowned, his body eventually drifted to the surface of the harbor and his father was forced to pull his only son from the sea. A fate that he had set in motion.
Guilt seethed through my veins as I stood over his freshly dug grave so long ago. His life had ended because of me. And that guilt quickly turned to hatred for the town. All these years, my sisters sought revenge for their own death, but I wanted revenge for Owen’s.
He sacrificed himself to try to save me, maybe because he felt he had betrayed me—for the trial, for confessing to having seen the mark of a witch on my skin. He believed he caused my death.
But I caused his.
I should have died that day—I should have drowned. But I didn’t. And I’ve never forgiven myself for what happened to him. For the life we never got to have.
* * *
I kneel down beside the grave, brushing away the leaves and dirt. “I’m sorry. . . .” I begin then stop myself. It’s not enough. He’s been gone for nearly two hundred years, and I’ve never said good-bye. Not really. Not until now. I lower my head, unsure how any words will ever feel like enough. “I never wanted to live this long,” I say. “I’d always hoped that someday the sea would finally take me. Or old age would bury me in the ground next to you.” I swallow down a deep breath. “But things have changed. . . . I have changed.” I lift my head and look out at the sea, a perfect view of the harbor and Lumiere Island, where Bo is waiting. “I think I love him,” I confess. “But maybe it’s too late. Maybe I don’t deserve him or a normal life after everything I’ve done, all the lives I’ve taken. He doesn’t know who I really am. And so maybe what I feel for him is also a lie.” The wind brushes my cheeks, and a light rain starts to scatter over the cemetery. Confessing this to Owen’s grave feels like a penance, like I owe him this. “But I have to try,” I say. “I have to know if loving him is enough to save both of us.”
I wipe a palm over the face of the tombstone, where his name was once etched. Now just a smooth surface. A grave without a name. I close my eyes, the tears falling in slow, measured rhythm with the raindrops.
Maybe I did die that day. Hazel Swan, the girl I once was, is gone. Her life taken on the same day as Owen’s. My voice trembles as the last word slips out—I say it to him as much as to myself. “Good-bye.”
I stand before my legs are too weak to carry me, and I leave the graveyard, knowing that I’ll never come back here again. The people I loved are gone.
But I won’t lose the one I love now.