2 Liney To Pine
Liney
To Pine
“Elle would kill me.”
I won’t tell if you won’t.
I laugh, louder than I do in the lighthouse. It’s always too warm, too small, and too full of my sister’s fussing. The wind fills my lungs with cold on the dark rocks of the island’s northeast shore. Here I can say everything I’ll never tell my sister.
“I came out here to read the paper, Chamomile.” I flourish the well-loved pages between us until my face is hidden. Chamomile was created by my own loneliness, yet she moves as naturally as the choppy spray of sea-foam that threatens to gobble up my toes.
Yes, the news of the world and the news of your soul. Not so different, really.
The small paper is my only connection to the outside world, fetched by Elle on every supply run. While the mainland is still too dangerous for us both to go, this sampling of the comings and goings of life beyond our island bubble makes it bearable.
“Imagine coming back to society and knowing nothing of the latest fashions or the news of fighting in the south. I would be a social pariah.” I shudder. “See here, fortifications have begun in New Orleans, but they believe the city will be easily taken by federal troops.”
You have yet to answer the question, Caroline.
“Shall I recite the retrospective of Lord Byron’s work again? You enjoyed it last we met.”
I lower my paper to find Chamomile nearly on top of me, sticking her tongue out in my face.
Her tight, dark ringlets don’t move with the harsh breeze, unlike my unkempt, dancing, blond strands.
Her dress, a beautiful—if outdated—draping of red silks and delicate lace trimmings, is unspoiled by the pulses of waves that lap at her ankles.
“Don’t scare me!” I admonish her, holding in a laugh. Chamomile carries herself so loosely. She wouldn’t have fared well in the city.
Is my face so fearsome? She softens the crinkles in her pointed nose. Her hazel eyes stare doll-like into my soul. Am I putting you on edge?
I fold the newspaper and swat her shoulder playfully, but it passes through her.
I found her in the spring between the small island forest’s trees.
We barely got through our first winter, both from hunger and solitude.
I didn’t think I’d see another season, even as Elle filled my plate with freshly bought fruit.
I guessed that she was a wandering spirit, a haunting specter of a shipwrecked soul, a scorned wife of a lighthouse keeper—but Chamomile’s only answer has never satisfied me. I’m your friend, silly!
“You aren’t my problem.” I lower my tone. I won’t be distracted by other activities today. “It’s not one you can fix.”
Chamomile settles beside me. Her silks ripple over the small rocks like a second tide.
We both gaze into the mouth of Halifax Harbour.
From our little island, the forest tip of Eastern Passage, the larger McNabs Island in the middle of the opening into the harbor, and the coves and bays of the western side are all at the edge of view.
The city itself lies farther in, sheltered.
I’m left to imagine the white church spires, docks full of fishing boats and naval ships, and the great star-shaped citadel that looms above the city.
The lamplight glow appears only on dark, fogless nights.
My own lighthouse, warning me away from danger while taunting me closer.
“There’s a type of fish, deep in the ocean,” I say, “with a lamp attached to its head.”
Is this another story from your paper? Chamomile taps the tip of her bare foot against the worn leather edge of my oxford, but I feel nothing. I never do.
“No. Did you ever collect seaweed?”
You collected seaweed? Chamomile’s foot stills. Why?
“There weren’t many appropriate avenues for my biological curiosity.
My mother deemed plant lectures too graphic for girls to attend.
And could you imagine me hunting? Seaweed was found more”—I search for the right word—“acceptable. I’d go to the beach with a group of girls from church.
We pressed the seaweed like leaves and identified them based on color, shape, and texture.
Someday I can show you my book. I had the biggest collection. ”
My face flushes with the boast. When I was very good—still in church, quiet at home—Father would bring back samples from the shipyards.
How does that translate to lampfish? Chamomile yawns. I’ve failed to enrapture her with kelp.
“It shouldn’t,” I admit, then lean closer.
“But it was my entry. I listened in at the edges of conversation while we scavenged. A young boy and his father, a fisherman, often cast near our favorite seaweeding spot. Told him stories. The lamp is a lure in the darkest parts of the ocean. Fish follow the light, and it eats them with its protruding jaw. There’s never been a living fish found. Only specimens pulled up in nets.”
Chamomile sits straighter, interest finally piqued. What has you thinking of them?
My gaze doesn’t waver from the spot where Halifax would be if I could see past the jigsaw edges of the western coastline or Fort McNab.
Elle chose Devils Island for the isolation.
Far enough into the ocean for no one to bother with.
A spit of land good only for warning ships away.
Who’d suspect two well-bred girls would come to this place of wind and toil?
It was a miracle Elle managed to get us somewhere we can be forgotten.
While the island can feel more like a windswept prison away from everything that brought me joy, she did the impossible in saving me from the darkness that festered beneath the surface of our family.
And though I won’t tell her, there’s a beauty on these shores I can’t deny.
Something familiar pulls at my heart with every crashing wave despite never having been to this, or any, island before.
My home is split three ways: the city beyond my reach, my lighthouse sanctuary, and the waves that promise more with every surge.
“I was wondering how it must feel to be that little fish swimming to the only light it has ever seen, in all its life, at the bottom of the sea. The beauty it beheld before being consumed.”
What’s stopping you from leaving? she asks again. The question I’d never want Elle to hear.
The wind picks up as a wave splashes the edges of my dress. The sand beneath my feet pulls into the ocean. I scoot back to the smoothed beach stones, though another urge begs me closer to slip below the water. Chamomile remains stone-still.
“I have to stay,” I say as the gust gallops into the woods behind us like a feral animal. “Until Elle knows it’s safe.”
At least ask her to find a full paper next time, Chamomile suggests. That one’s so torn. Whole sections are missing.
I move the paper away from her prying. “She finds me what she can. We aren’t a family of means anymore. A secondhand paper is as good to me as new.”
I don’t know if that’s entirely true, but I’ve chosen to believe it. Elle’s heart is a timid thing, carefully shown and quickly hidden from the rest of the world, except me. Did she tear out articles that would upset me? I’m so fragile to her.
Chamomile lies back until her face is behind me. Is Elle not as recognizable as you are when she’s on the mainland? she asks. She wants my attention again.
“Elle disguises herself. They’re looking for two girls, not a single young man. She knows where to go and whom to avoid. It’s a system. It works.”
It has been a year. Is anyone still looking for you?
“Elle says they are. There are posters all over town with our likenesses. If the wrong person sees me, they could alert my parents. Or Thomas. Elle won’t take that risk.”
Our conversations usually keep my sanity intact when I need a break from my sister, but today’s strings my mind tauter. It’s as though there were two forces at work: the Chamomile who bids me stay and play in the sands and the Chamomile who wishes me to leave.
I wish you could have the world, Caroline.
“Me too.” I blow a long breath out. “The rowboat may be too dangerous for me alone, but I wish Elle would teach me to row. I wouldn’t go to the city. Only the ocean. A little more space. Possibility. Does that make sense?”
Freedom is a beautiful thing you are cursed to live without.
“Choice is a form of freedom,” I remind her. “I chose this life. Consequences don’t cause that freedom to disappear. The life I would’ve led? That was the curse.”
Mr. Thomas Seymour. Eldest son of Robert and Jane Seymour. American heir to the privileges, land, and coal mines of the Seymour estate. Betrothed to Mary Eleanor Forsyth—Elle. Until he chose me instead.
It was never a choice for Elle. She was placed on a path to wed and move our family from tradespeople to landed gentry.
She spent her whole life preparing, though she’d never had a personal ambition to become a wife and mother.
Elle much preferred the quiet of a study or curling up with me by the fire.
Elle was a master at shadows. The firelight would dance along the walls, and she’d create plays full of intrigue and danger with only her hands for actors.
Brave runaway heroines fought droves of pirates.
Queens survived court scandals. Fisherwomen banded together against tidal waves.
I never found a book she’d based them on.
She made me promise never to repeat them to our parents, which I accomplished with great effort.
I’d beg her to write them down, but she’d just grin and say the stories were so much better for their brief lives.
Like a spark from the fire bouncing over the iron grate only to sputter out on our side.
There are no shadow plays in the lighthouse. Gaiety is a luxury Elle doesn’t indulge in anymore. I try to understand, but no matter how many times I play back the moments that led us here, they don’t line up perfectly to create the woman my sister became.