Chapter Twenty
ANDA
I’ve done something wrong.
Hector doesn’t speak to me all the way back to the cottage. I catch him touching his lips, as if I’d somehow burned them with my touch. These things shouldn’t bother me. I have other concerns, like the St. Anne’s lost crew. They aren’t lost to me—in fact, I know that James Johnston’s bones are already beginning to show from the ravages of hungry lake creatures, and I know that Casey Merrick is partially buried in sediment churned up by the storm. Both are confused by the disengagement of life from their selves. Usually, I let their dreams intermingle with mine as their bodies fade, but I am not there in the lake, as I should be.
I am with Hector.
A stiff wind blows hard against me, making me list off the path home.
“Oops!” Hector reaches out to steady me. “Okay?”
It’s odd, how he checks in with me this way. He seems to search for an answer to satisfy him, like “Yes” or “No” or “May I hold your shoes?” I stare him down, trying to understand his intentions, and he looks away, discomfited by my eyes. He consciously steps farther away from me, and I don’t like this, either.
I don’t know what to do.
Because you’re trying to be something you aren’t. Stop trying.
But she’s incorrect. Part of me has always belonged in the realm of humanity, but I keep having to remind myself of this. And now I’m remembering things like mewling hunger, and clothing, and care. They are utterly complicated, like the English language and its mockingly arbitrary rules, but I am enjoying practicing this side of myself with Hector. I want to stay here. I should like to lick more chocolate off the corners of his mouth, if given the opportunity.
Yes. I would like to stay here awhile.
You’re making a mistake. You’ll suffer.
I ignore her.
“Look at this fellow.” Hector stops on the side of the path.
I step closer and see a tiny beautiful blue-spotted salamander among the sticks and detritus of fall. This time of year, they aren’t out and about. Their blood gets more sugary to prevent them from freezing, and they stay hidden beneath rocks.
The salamander is dead.
Hector points. “Look, there are more.”
And there are. Six or seven, out in the open, dried and dead from the cold and exposure. Usually the island creatures understand the timing of things. I make sure that the balance is kept, the cycles of renewal and slumber. But something is wrong. I didn’t sense that their death was coming. Worse, it has come too soon.
“They shouldn’t be out here where they don’t belong,” I say, more to myself than to Hector.
“Tell me about it,” Hector says, and I look at him sharply. The wind is strikingly quiet, letting me absorb his words for a change. She wants me to admit the truth, and also show me a warning. This is what might happen. This is what you’ve started.
Hector shivers from the wind at his back. A wind that I didn’t create.
“Let’s go home,” he says.
Home. Such an odd word, one that hasn’t fit into my world. The cabin has its moods and whims, and tolerates my presence. Father is not there. I am used to fitting into a space larger than anything a human conceives of—in crevices and pockets and atmospheres of pressure that aren’t comforting. But when Hector says home, for once I actually understand him.
“Yes,” I say. “Let’s go home.”
...
That week, I count down the remaining days to November. After the St. Anne, I am tepidly appeased, but it isn’t enough. The closer to November it gets, the more trouble I will have controlling myself. I had decided not to bend to my nature because of Hector, but as the hours go by, my needs will try desperately to surpass any rationality.
Hector spends hours listening to the radio. He watches the Coast Guard ships decrease in number and eventually leave the wreck site of the St. Anne, and he watches me, too. Furtively, out of the corner of his eye, such as when I’m eating. He doesn’t comment when I leave a plate of food alone.
I am hungry, and I am not.
It’s a strange thing, needing food. Listening to the complaints of your body all the time and obeying the whims and growls of flesh. But my physical hunger sometimes feels like a phantom, standing in for something far more nourishing.
Hector and I finish the last of the flour, making pancakes. Father knew how little I ate, and the food stores he’d left were more a token of care than anything substantial. There is no more jam, no sugar. The new provisions from the camp store are piled on the countertop, but it’s a small pile. Hector watches that, too, like it’s going to vanish if he turns his back. And yet when he spies me studying the pile from afar, he’ll quietly bring me a wrapped bar before I can ask if it’s okay to eat. Even though we’ve nearly outeaten the tiny house.
And not just that. The house has grown too small for us, though the math doesn’t work. We’re still just two people, yet together, we’ve managed to expand and become something that needs far more space than these walls. I bump into him constantly. The house seems keen on keeping me off balance. Hector doesn’t seem to mind; he cannot hide his smile every time we softly collide.
I look out the window, staring at the clouds, but they’re ominously silent. So I turn on the weather radio and sit with it for almost an hour. Hector thinks I’m simply concerned with the forecast.
West winds nearing forty-five knots by afternoon
Hmm. Already angry with me, it seems.
A slight chance of thunderstorms in the early evening
That’s a threat. Or an invitation.
Temperatures holding at forty-five, dropping to thirty overnight
It’s funny how I used to listen to the forecast to tell me what I already knew. It was a spineless friend that would parrot my own thoughts and feelings. Now I’m needing the radio to interpret for me. I’m becoming an outsider in my own life.
The day before November 1, Hector wakes up and makes a breakfast of oatmeal. He watches me carefully as I lift the spoon to my mouth. I swallow and repeat until the bowl is empty. He barely lifts his own spoon. His own gruel has gone congealed and cold as he watches me lick the bowl clean.
“That oatmeal was salted,” he says.
I blink at him, not knowing if I’m supposed to answer.
“I substituted sugar for salt. A lot of salt. On purpose.”
I blink again. What is he trying to say? But he only gets up to eat his oatmeal alone outside the house, staring at where the wreck of the St. Anne should be.
That’s when I realize he’s testing me.
He does it several times that week. Once, he tells me, “Anda, it’s windy outside,” when it isn’t. The air is so still, it hangs heavy like curtains in a shut room. It’s another test, only I’m not sure if I should fail or succeed. So I bring the wind. It hits Hector so hard that he trips and falls backward, agape.
“Yes,” I agree with him. “It’s windy outside.”
Another time, he remarks on how he misses the green leaves in spring.
“Fall is always so gloomy,” he says, which confuses me. A cycle is a cycle, and the cycle is magnificence itself. But it upsets him. When I don’t respond, he goes outside and paces next to the house. I’ve already forgotten that I need to be careful about what I do. I ought to conceal myself and what I am, but it’s not easy when I’ve never been able to hide from him. Not once.
I lift my forefinger, pushing against sleep and slumber inside the soil, and force a marsh pea vine into the cutting air, letting the pea flowers bloom with pink and purple duskiness. Hector sees it immediately. His eyes widen as he watches the display, before plucking the narrow stem bedecked with flowers. He stares and stares, turning it left and right. He stares at them so long, the sun sets hours later and he’s still fixated by their ghostliness in the dark.