Chapter Forty-Three
HECTOR
Teeth chattering, I change into a spare set of clothes. Mr. Selkirk unzips my sleeping bag so I can wear it as a blanket around my shoulders. He pours out two steaming enamel mugs of hot tea and hands one to me. When I stop shivering, he grabs the lamp and tilts his head to the darkened corridor. “Let’s go.”
I follow him through the house to the back. A narrow covered passageway leads to the door of the lighthouse. Inside, a metal spiral staircase climbs the interior of the octagonal walls. As I start up the steps, my hand goes to touch the sandstone bricks. Two crowded windows of thick glass reveal nothing outside.
“How tall is this thing?” I ask, wanting to say something. Anything.
“About sixty feet or so. Walls are double-built. Pretty solid.”
We’ve only gone about ten steps, but my legs are already fatigued from climbing. The lack of food has taken a toll. I try to hide my huffing and puffing once we’re halfway up. The staircase spirals narrower and narrower as we climb, and it’s just as cold in here as it is outside. Must be barely forty degrees.
“Seems like a miserable place to live,” I comment between heavy breaths.
“Yes, well. The second lighthouse keeper was warned it was lonely, so he got himself a wife before he started working here. Stayed on from May till December for thirty-two years. Had eleven or twelve kids, too.”
What a life that must have been. I can’t tease out if I’m jealous of that lighthouse keeper, or glad that wasn’t my life. But I’m no one to judge.
We finally reach the top and it’s open to the air, with nothing but an iron railing to keep us from falling sixty feet down. At the center is the light, pulsing into the darkness. It’s housed in an octagonal chamber built of iron and fitted with glass. The thing inside is blindingly bright as it goes on and off. I have to shield my eyes from the flashes.
“God. This thing is on every night, all year long?”
“Yes. Runs on solar. It changes its own lightbulbs when they burn out. It’s not even glass.”
“How far out can you see it?”
“Eh? Maybe ten miles or so.” But Anda’s dad doesn’t seem to want to talk about the light anymore. He invites me to sit down with my back to the powerful beams. We stay silent for a long time, and the sound of the water hitting the shore rises up to us. It’s windy and freezing cold, but I’m not budging until I hear what I need to know.
Mr. Selkirk fishes around in his pockets for something. “Did you mean what you said? That you’ll go home, without a fight?”
“I said I’d go. I didn’t say I’d go home.” I won’t meet Mr. Selkirk’s eyes. “But I’ll be off the island, if that’s what you’re asking.”
The truth is, I don’t want to hurt Anda. And if my presence means she might get in trouble, or something…else…can hurt her, then I’ll go, come what may. The idea of regular people trying to make Anda do anything she didn’t want to—it freaks me out and makes me want to hit things at the same time. “So…you said before that I had no idea what Anda was. You didn’t say ‘who.’ You said ‘what.’”
“That I did,” he says, staring out at the darkness. He seems to be concentrating on something specific, somewhere south of us, but everything is awash in pure black right now. His hand pulls out a package, and I smell an earthy scent wafting on the air.
“So what is she?”
“To be honest, I don’t exactly know myself.” Anda’s father holds up a wooden pipe and opens the small drawstring bag of tobacco. He starts taking pinches of the stringy stuff and poking it into the bowl.
What? “Well, where’s her mother?”
“She’s gone. Left even before she was born.”
I chew on that one for a while. “Wait. How could she…before…” I shake my head. “That’s not possible.”
For a few minutes, he concentrates on packing the pipe with the yellow-stained tip of his pinky until it’s just right. Then he takes out a tiny box of matches and strikes one. The spark brings with it the familiar, sneeze-worthy scent I love. He inhales so hard with the match that it makes bubbling noises until it’s lit. The smoke is enticing, brown and earthy. I’d ask him for a drag, but somehow I doubt he’d share with a kid. After a few good puffs, he starts talking again.
“I grew up in Canada. Dwight, Ontario, to be specific. Had a real love of water. I couldn’t get enough of it. I dreamed about spending all my days boating and got myself a regular obsession with Lake Superior. I read about the geology of how it came to be, the maritime history, everything. Finally moved here in my forties and spent every day on the shore, or in a boat. Then one day, a November storm hit me while I was chartering a ship full of tourists. We sank about three miles south of Isle Royale.”
“But you lived.”
Anda’s dad peers at me sideways. “Yeah, you’re a smart one.” He laughs roughly. “I shouldn’t have lived, though. I knew about every shipwreck that ever happened on these waters. Pored over them since I was a boy. I’d map them out, wrote tables and coordinates and saved the newspaper clippings. I think, in my heart, I wanted to die in this lake. Had an unnatural love of the Lady, if you know what I mean.”
“Lady?” Was that some sort of designer drug?
“The Lady. It’s what some folks call Lake Superior. She called herself a different name. Gracie.”
This. This is the other thing that’s been whispering in Anda’s ear, what she’s afraid of. Gracie? It seems like such a wrong name—too cute, too…religious, maybe. I’m not sure what to say, so I say nothing. Mr. Selkirk puffs on his pipe, and the bluish smoke rises into the sky.
“She’s a beautiful thing. Even when she’s angry. Even now, when she don’t have much to say.” He closes his eyes halfway and just listens to the water splashing in musically over the rocks. “I asked her for death when I hit that water. I said I’d like nothing better than to die in her arms. I had no friends. No real amours in my life. And so…she spared me.” At this, he turns his face away from me, listening to something beyond me.
“What is it?”
“Nothing.” He opens his eyes and smiles sadly. “I can’t hear her no more. Never stop trying, though. Back then, I did. She let me live, and I started to hear her voice. I’d dream about her. I’d see her in the trees, in the wind. I spent all my days talking to her, and she’d show me she’d been listening. Little things, like sending a little mist my way, or a wave of water at my feet. She’d even come visit my bed.” He shook his head, and I swear that if he didn’t have a beard and it was daylight, I’d see him blushing. “And then one day, Anda showed up.”
“Where?”
“On the beach. November first, it was. Freezing cold, and there she was, bare as newborns are, on the shore not thirty feet from my house on the Isle.”
“Wait, wait, wait.” I put my hand out and stanch the urge to jump up and run away. I’ve got to calm down. “Wait.”
“I’m not going anywhere, son. I’m in no rush. So stop telling me to wait.”
I want to laugh, but it’s not hilarious. “You’re telling me that…Anda’s mother is…the lake.”
Mr. Selkirk nods.
Whatthefuck. “So what does that make her?”
“Look. The shipwrecks on Lake Superior aren’t like others. I would know; I’d forget my own birthday before I forgot those dates. When the November gales come, they’re a special breed of storm. And they’re hungry and vicious and take ships like an island wolf could shake a coon pup. They have a name for this kind of storm. The Witch of November.”
I swallow, but my throat is so dry I could choke on the air. The light from behind my head pulses into the gloom. This can’t possibly be real. It just can’t. I stare out in the darkness, as if it could tell me that yes, I’m hearing what I’m hearing.
He looks at my unbelieving face. “I know you think it’s not possible. There isn’t a book in the world that’ll tell you what I know now.”
“That Anda is the Witch of November?”
Mr. Selkirk nods. “Yes. She’s my November girl. It’s not always November, but November’s always inside her.”
I grimace at him. “How do you know she isn’t…the Lady?”
“Aw. No. Anda and the lake aren’t the same thing. They need each other. Speak to each other. To the wind, and the storms, too. She has the lake in her blood, to be sure.” He splays his hand apart, showing me his coarse palms. “See, there are moments when Anda is in this world.” He shakes his left hand. “Human. But not often. She’s like a spirit, snagged on earth, I suppose. Most of the time, she can’t make sense of anything civilization has to offer.”
He shakes his callused right hand. “And the lake, and the wind and storms, they communicate with her. Or she controls them. When the season is just right…” He clasps both hands together. “You can’t hardly tell them apart.”
“You mean, in November.”
He nods.
“Which is why you left.”
He nods again. “She’s dangerous. Less human than any other time. She’s nearly killed me more than once. Sure as day is day, she can sink a ship anytime. But the storms in November, they’ve an energy like no other time of the year because of her.”
“Can’t she just stop it?”
“Stop sinking ships? You can’t hold down her nature, not with chemicals, not with ropes. Sooner or later, the dam breaks. Half of what she does is life, the other half is death. The living part, it bothers her the most. But she needs it.”
“What if she tried?” I persist.
“It can’t happen. Her sisters were the same way. Don’t know who the fathers were, but legend says her sisters were like Anda. And they kept killing every November, tending to the Isle until their human sides just faded. I don’t think there is ‘trying’ in this scenario, Hector. There is no good end to this story. But there could be one for you, and that would mean leaving.” He pauses. “I’m not being selfish about Anda. Truly. If you don’t leave, she’ll swallow you whole and spit out your bones. She’ll forget you meant anything to her by December.”
All this time, I’ve been hanging out with something that could kill me, but I thought it could end. That she could change. What was I thinking? Should I just get out of here as soon as I can? But then again, she didn’t kill me. She did the opposite. But how much longer can she hold out until I get hurt? Until I die?
I digest all this for several minutes.
“So why did you come back?” I finally ask.
“I knew something had affected Anda when she allowed that survivor. I didn’t expect it to be you. You’ve changed her, somehow.”
“You say that as if I’ve done something wrong.”
“You have.” He stands up, slowly, hand on hip as if his joints ache. As if the conversation just aged him ten more years. He starts to descend the metal staircase, lantern in hand. The light blinds me as I follow him.
“Wait. What have I done that’s so bad? She would have killed people. She’s a murderer, you’re telling me, right? She sinks ships for breakfast. So why the hell is it so bad for her to…not kill people? To be more human? Maybe none of her sisters ever tried hard enough.”
Mr. Selkirk turns around, and the lamplight shines upward, casting eerie shadows on his chin and nose and eye bags. He looks straight out of a Halloween horror movie, but when he lowers the lamp a little and the harsh shadows soften, he transforms back into a sad old man. Loneliness has carved out his cheeks, his temples.
“There ain’t no life without death. Always has been, always will be.” He shakes a finger at me. “And it’s not just that. Boats aren’t natural, Hector. Trying to use a hollowed-out hunk of metal to command something untamed like a lake, it isn’t natural. Men take and take of nature all the time. Oh, they think they’re being good and fair, lording over everything. That they deserve it all. But witches have been taking payment since we first started to challenge the Lady, back in the seventeenth century, the first time a schooner ever touched the water. And she don’t take much, to be honest. It isn’t up to you or me to decide the balance of things we don’t really understand.”
“But—”
“I find it curious that a fella running away from humanity wants someone like Anda to be more human.”
I shut my mouth.
“Anyways,” he adds, “time to sleep.”
Without another word, he descends. When we make our way back to the house, Mr. Selkirk helps set up the sleeping bags. Only two. I explore the other small rooms, but they’re empty. I run up the stairs, but the upper floor is empty, too.
When I come back down, I ask, “Where’s Anda?”
“Never you mind.”
I head for the front door, but Mr. Selkirk beats me there with a crooked few steps. He slaps his gnarly hand on the doorknob. “She’ll be fine. She can take care of her own.” He lies down on his sleeping bag and shuts his eyes. “You won’t see her until morning.”
Eventually, I fall asleep. And I dream of black waters, of my uncle looming in the recesses of my mind, sad and weary, but with a strange, starved look in his eye that I can’t wash off my skin. I dream of Anda, peering at me with her tireless, wide-open stare.
And behind her, a watery shadow that watches us all.