Chapter Forty-Four
ANDA
I’ll stay away all night. My presence is unwanted at the lighthouse, and there’s nothing like a lighthouse and closed door to drive me far, far away.
The sky is carpeted with a thin film of clouds. Layers, actually. Cirrostratus fibrous duplicatus. I love the names of every species of cloud. I’m thankful that science has categorized them like the living things that they are—each with their own temperaments and life cycles.
I have already reached the shore, only twenty or so feet from the door of the house. The water laps at my toes and begins to climb my ankles, coaxing me in.
I walk step by step until there is no need to walk. Until gravity falls away and there is nothing between me and the water. The surface of the lake climbs through the strands of my hair and cradles my scalp with icy fingers. And then I succumb to the liquid, letting it carry me into the deeper, darker depths.
Mother.
I want things I cannot have. I want to be something I cannot wholly be. I feel things that I could not before, and they gnaw at my untouchable heart.
I have done some terrible things that, perhaps, I should not have done.
What once was a simple question—how must I be with this boy?—is drowned by something far larger. What am I?
I don’t know. Oh Mother, I don’t know.
I’m afraid of what she will think of me.
I sob with my eyes closed. The lake is just a reservoir for my tears now. She’s cold at first, but like all mothers, she welcomes me back into her arms.
Welcome home, my dearest.
...
I stay the whole night, drifting in layers of silken, blanketed currents above and beneath me. Father understands my need for immersion; he’s seen me disappear into the water for days at a time.
The water soothes, but doesn’t quell my mind.
In Hector, I see what I can take, mercilessly, and what it would cost. There is beauty in keeping him alive. It also means keeping his pain aloft, perhaps forever. Death has always been a pretty thing to me. A relief. An exhalation. But I don’t want this. Not for him, or for us.
He’s broken you.
No. He handed me the glass; I let it shatter. Hector brought me closer to the other reality in my life that I’ve never been comfortable with.
Do you miss Father?
Yes. And no. I feel the loss of him every day, though he tries to stay close to me. But I am content to be, without him. It is our nature. We belonged to this world before we ever belonged to anyone else.
This is the price I paid to love a man. The pain. You are a price I paid, too. I knew you would inherit this legacy. Are you willing?
I don’t know.
Oh, Mother. I don’t know.
...
It takes a while for the morning temperature to penetrate the surface of the lake. It holds energy and releases it so sweetly. Just as it’s releasing me back to my father.
The stones of the lake bed touch me underfoot and I splay my hands out, balancing myself. My feet take one step after another as I rise out of the water. My body is drenched and so awfully heavy. So clumsy, this body on land. Eyes still closed, I let my face find the warmth of the risen sun to my right. East. The wind begins to dry the beads of water on my eyelashes and cheeks. The lake water leaves behind a film on my skin, an ancient perfume. I inhale the cold air and let my lungs fill, the first breath I’ve had in almost twelve hours.
“You aren’t even cold, are you?”
My eyes fly open. Right on the dense, wintering foliage of the island, Hector sits. He’s fully dressed, with a coat and a sleeping bag loosely draped over his shoulders. His expression is inscrutable.
He’s spoken to Father. They’ve spoken of me, of Mother, perhaps all night long. But I recognize the dark gleam in his eye.
He knows it all.
And here I stand, naked beneath my sodden nightgown after a night with Mother, who in the end, still left me with questions I must answer on my own. She left me the questions because we both know what the answer must be.
Oh, Hector. What must he think of me? Why doesn’t he run? Why doesn’t he attack me?
I don’t know what to say or do. I’ve forgotten his question already.
“Come inside,” he says impatiently. He stands up and gathers the sleeping bag in his arms in a gentle hug, and I suddenly know that maybe my life would be happier if I were such a sleeping bag.
I follow him obediently into the little house, though I know I don’t have to. The lighthouse glares at me, its eye within the octagonal chamber now dead for the day. I bare my teeth at it, before entering the darkened house.
“Your clothes are here. I’ll step out while you change.”
I spin around to watch him go back to the door. “Where is Father?”
“He went back to the island. He’s cleaning up the house and Washington Creek campsite where I stayed.”
“Oh.” I stare at my feet, afraid to ask the next question. It’s not necessary, though. He answers it for me.
“I’m leaving tomorrow morning.”
There’s a tumble of thoughts in my mind, but none of them make it to my lips. He hesitates, and when I say nothing, he leaves me in the dark and shuts the door behind him.
I should have said something.
It’s better this way.
“Is it?” I ask, aloud. But there is no reply. So I listen to the voice of my half-human heart.
Run. Run after him, Anda.
So I do. I reach for the door and bolt outside, where the sun’s light is already gaining muscle and warms the bracing breeze trying to nip at my ankles and wrists.
“Hector,” I holler. “Hector!”
“Geez, I’m right here, Anda.”
I spin around. Hector is leaning against the wall of the building, next to the iron acetylene shed. There is so much distance between us, growing rapidly even as the seconds tick by. My damp nightgown sticks to my legs and belly as I step closer. Hector crosses his arms in front of his chest and won’t meet my eye.
When I’m only inches away, I see that he’s breathing fast. I have this effect on him, and it warms me to know that I still matter. Perhaps it’s pure fear, but perhaps not. I put my hand on his chest and he freezes, as if I’d put a cold pistol against his temple. His heart beats so fast. I know the current of blood within it, the dance between valves and chambers, the laminar flow and miniature eddies that sing to a creature like me.
“Don’t,” he whispers, still looking away. He begins to tremble.
“I won’t be ignored, Hector,” I say steadily.
“But you aren’t real. And I have to leave.” His voice is hoarse, and he’s got purplish shadows beneath his eyes. He didn’t sleep well.
“My father said you have to leave, didn’t he?”
“It doesn’t matter what he said.” Hector can barely look at me. “I need to go.”
“Look at me,” I command him.
He does, but it takes a year and a day for his rich brown eyes to finally meet mine. They see me only superficially, not like how he looked at me before last night.
“I’m still here,” I whisper. My body leans into him, and I put my cheek against the hollow of his throat, listening to him breathe. I let my fingers skim up his arms and hook over his shoulders. And still he stays frozen.
“I know what you are. I can’t…” he whispers. “You aren’t real to someone like me.”
“I am. Right here. Right now.” I stretch up on my toes and let my hands follow the curve behind his neck. He closes his eyes, and I pull his face closer.
He is so beautiful. His tired eyes, dark eyelashes, his defeat, and the terrors of a life that drove him into my arms. The arms of a murderess.
I kiss him gently, warming his cold lips beneath mine.
Kiss me back, Hector, I beg. Please.
Look who has the power now. Is this what you want?
This is what I want. I want this strange, broken boy who could see this strange, broken girl. Even when he didn’t know what he was looking at.
I can linger forever, if need be, with my mouth waiting for his to speak against mine. I could wait a century, even as his bones crumble against my skin.
Slowly, as if melting drop by drop, Hector’s arms unglue themselves from his sides and encircle my damp waist. He embraces me and lifts me up, angling his face so he can fit my lips more perfectly. I hold his face in my hands, wishing I could control the kiss, when I know I have no power.
It is nothing like our first kisses. The ones where we stepped cautiously into each other’s sphere for a few short hours, testing the solidity of the plane between us. Now we’ve found that the ground is riddled like a honeycomb and we’ve fallen through.
Fallen. Falling.
After too short a time, he breaks the kiss, but not his hold on me. The embrace is so tight. He’ll be gone tomorrow, and his embrace says so. Finally, we breathe. Not a sigh of relief, but of something far more complicated.
“Oh God, Anda,” he whispers against my neck.
“No gods here, Hector. Only us.”
It’s a prayer, of sorts.
Or a curse.