Chapter Fifty-Two
ANDA
The water weighs me down, and I feel its strength against my legs. It reaches all the way from Menagerie Island to Isle Royale, and to the docks in Duluth and Copper Harbor. Gentle waves splash on the rare, frosted sea glass inside Whitefish Bay. It is calm. I’ll keep it this way until he’s safe.
There are more than a dozen boats afloat in the bay. So many others, along Marquette and Keweenaw Bay. There is a lone boat crossing the length between Isle Royale and Grand Portage.
Hector’s on board.
I make sure that the seas are placid ahead of the bow, and that the wind stays reined in. If I could push it faster, I would. If I could—
Wait. The boat has stopped moving.
The engines are in neutral. The ship bobs gently in the water, but unusual vibrations and irregular knocks communicate to the depths below, frightening the fish. Shouts reverberate and send rings of sound through the hull and across the surface of the lake. My eyes close and read the tale, like a book open in my hands, illuminated by a noontime sun.
They are fighting. Three, no, four, subduing the one. He’s fighting, not for life, but something else.
For me. For an end to it all. I squeeze my eyes shut, listening hard to the wishes of his heart. There is nothing but surrender and despair.
“Hector!” I cry out to the sky, panicked. And the sky answers.
There was a small storm that was due to come, but weakened. I gather its roots and glut it quickly with more moisture and warmth. The clouds above the lake condense with a roiling strength, moving and flowing across the lake, thickening into the troposphere. The storm drags its nails into the calmer air below, molding breezy puffs into muscular corridors of wind.
Waves rise quickly, from short swells into choppy, breaking crests. It will take time to grow them larger, but grow they will. Three-foot seas will turn to five-foot seas, and ten-foot waves will follow. I feel the energy from my skin to my bones, delving into my breastbone and spearing my heart. A heart that is now stuttering to a stop.
Hector.
Hector.
He isn’t safe. He isn’t free. He was supposed to go to Copper Harbor. But everything I sense under that boat—the boat heading for Grand Portage—is not dulcet or safe. Which means he’s with the police. Or worse, his uncle. What happened? What are they doing to you?
Rage percolates like acid in my blood, thundering in my temples. I open my mouth and the screech of a gale emerges, blasting the water around me into more mist, becoming a powerful rain that spreads, viruslike, to the miles and miles around me. The water around my waist rises as I flow forward. I look down and see my hands splayed out and reaching above the surface. My nails have blackened to obsidian, and my blood vessels darken to ink-like vines that trail upward toward my neck. I taste a sweet, oily darkness in my throat.
As my body slips beneath the water, time and distance disintegrate, too easily. Nothing but crumbs crushed beneath a boot. I am flying toward the boat, beneath the waves.
No; I am the waves. I am the witch. My sisters sense me and beg for release. For the first time, my hunger isn’t aimed at any boat, haphazardly chosen. Just this one. With surgical precision, I’ll pluck the lives one by one. I center my energy toward the craft. It’s only two hours away from the coast and one hour away from Windigo. One hour too far away. I laugh. There’s no safe haven any more. Not from me.
This isn’t your battle, Anda.
But it’s hard to hear Mother in the chaos of my mind. She has strength, but I have something powerful, too.
Anger.
As the weather shrieks its obedience to my call, my mind falters. The hollowness from the lack of recent sinkings dilutes my thoughts. Fury and hunger tumble together, a roiling clot of frenzied sensations. There is no clarity between them, and soon, no divisions. Warm, panicked, beating hearts call out. Only one wants me, but I’ll take them all in a single, yawning bite. There is nothing like the feeling of my watery hand, slipping around their throats and hearts, pressing down with the cold and impossible weight of my fingers. They will stop and be mine.
Somewhere in the recesses of my storming mind, there is a whimper. I cannot remember why I’m so angry. There’s nothing but the pull, the need. It’s so bitter and vivid, I know nothing else. I crave it.
I extend my arms. Soon, I’ll touch the boat, as a child might test the icing on a birthday cake. I shall pull it down, wrap my fingers around its hull, and keep it tethered to the bottom until nothing but bones remain. And even then, I won’t give up the dead.
Take them, Anda. It’s November. There is no choice in being what you are.
Yes. Yes. It’s time.