5 Elle To Save
Elle
To Save
I could kill her if I weren’t trying to save her life.
Stupid girl. What was she thinking, racing up the stairs—away from me?
Beneath the quiet exterior, Liney can hold the hot poker of want as hard as I can.
I’ve noticed her glances out to the mainland.
How they tricked her with false promises.
It’s easy to forget how enticing the world can seem to a young woman free of guilt.
All I see on the horizon are the specters I’ve left behind.
Like that damned newspaper. Thomas’s words woven into sympathy.
How much did Liney read into them? Was there more that she didn’t show me, that I should’ve read before I burnt it? I can’t focus on what’s now ashes.
Liney was eight years old the last time she was in this kind of peril.
A physician had told my parents that the salt and breeze from the beach could be good for her asthma.
My only instruction as we were sent off with an older cousin was simple: Do not let your sister swim.
She was wilder back then, fighting for the life she saw other children taking for granted.
Too clever for her own good. She waited for our cousin to fall asleep under her parasol, then led me to the shore.
She revealed Mother’s stolen swim dress underneath her linens.
I tried to tell her no, but she pleaded and promised she’d stay close to shore. I was barely fourteen and lenient.
A riptide caught her. That moment sticks in my mind like a daguerreotype, preserved forever.
She swam only a few feet out before sun rays burst through the clouds and my vision blackened with dots.
She was easily ten times farther out by the time I’d blinked them away.
Only the crown of her head bobbed above the water, her hair like seaweed.
I stripped off my outer layers and dived in.
I swam in pathetic sweeps of my arms and legs.
The ocean rejected me. As if the water itself were pushing me out of the way.
I don’t know how Liney got so far in that current.
I hauled her out, nearly drowning myself in the process. The seconds before she spluttered to life on the sand were the longest I’ve ever counted.
“It was so quiet, Elle.” Her voice was dreamy through salt-cracked lips when she could finally do more than wheeze. “Like falling asleep.”
A tart, sweet scent captures my attention.
Douglas’s figure slowly emerges from the door.
First his long-fingered hands appear—palms out as though pushing the door.
Then his nose, followed by thick eyebrows and an illusion of ruddy cheeks from the color of the wood behind him.
The gash across his neck has burst again. It drowns his beard and neck in red.
I didn’t ask for his help, but he immediately went to check on Liney. Our mutual drive to protect her was enough.
“She collapsed,” he reports. “What did you do to her?”
“Nothing! Go back and undo the bolt, quickly.”
A spark of light and crack of thunder emphasize him.
“You think I didn’t try that?” He narrows his eyes. “I exhausted my physical connection going to the dock.”
I waste time in baffled silence. Seconds I could be spending getting to Liney. I slam against the door again, a panicked animal.
“Find something to break it down. Quickly.”
I swallow down my response—What does it look like I’m doing?
—and look around. My knife is too weak; the fireplace poker is too small.
I rush down to stand in the middle of the room and turn until I finally spot it.
Among a pile of nets and socks that Liney brought in, there’s an axe.
I pick it up, hefting its weight in my hands.
“Finally.” Relief floods Douglas’s voice. “Come—what are you doing?”
I ignore him. I have some natural strength, but even with an axe, it’s not enough to reach Liney through the door in time.
I must tap into the power that brought us here, lurking in my blood.
While the tendrils’ touch earlier may have been sensed by Mr. Pratterman as only an echo, calling on it directly is much more likely to take his notice.
But I’d sacrifice a thousand more souls to him if it meant saving Liney one more time.
This power was lent to me to protect her.
Am I not following our contract to the letter by using it now?
Rain pounds against the windows, loud and insistent. The storm will likely shift between water, ice, and snow falling on us to create a slick mess by morning.
I close my eyes. Douglas calls my name, but his voice falls away.
A familiar, uncanny chant has begun under my feet.
Resonant whispers climb from the deep, unnatural chasm.
A spiral of rock and devoured souls formed by the Devil himself.
I can’t understand the words, but their desire is clear.
Their fury wields me. My breathing, the rippling hunger pains—it all slips out of my focus.
Only what will get me to my sister remains.
Molten power from the spiral seeps into me. Tendrils become infernal veins. My hands warm the wood of the axe handle. The darkness of my eyelids changes to blinding red, like staring into the sun. Painful, dangerous, but beautiful.
The unrefined rage adopts my desperation. She’s no longer only my sister. She’s ours. We must reach her. My mind splinters down to its most basic, brutal components: Run. Strike. Snatch.
I open my eyes. The world is coated in red.
I sprint up the stairs. This power is unpredictable.
Explosive. With Liney on the other side, I must regain control.
I tighten my hold on the axe and swing down beside the door handle.
The wood flakes apart like soft cod. Boards splinter to the floor, scattering at my feet.
I hack until the lock mechanism is exposed.
Then I drop the axe and grab the metal. The black, burnished surface hisses under the heat of my fingers.
I take one readying breath. Both feet planted firmly on the small landing, I claw my fingers into the metal until they melt dents I can grip.
I heave. The lock sticks in place as the wood creaks around it, but then it’s dislodged and in my hands, and I’ve lost my balance.
I take a heavy hit midway down the stairs on my hip, then another against my forearm as I tuck in and roll.
I thud against a surprisingly soft landing at the bottom.
It’s a throw pillow that Liney sewed last summer.
That wasn’t there earlier. It was on the chesterfield.
The lock weighs down my stomach, making me gasp for air.
“Get up.” It’s Douglas, gruff and just as frantic as I am.
Did he use his small influence on the material world to protect me?
No. For Liney.
I throw the lock aside and haul myself up the stairs again. Six up one octagonal side, six up the second, and six up the third to the landing, this time meeting a hollowed-out door. A small window beside me flashes with another lightning strike. I pray hail won’t break through.
The door resists when I push. I peer through the hole. Liney is slumped against it. I must push her to edge my way in.
I press my hands on either side of the door.
One breath in. The spiral’s heat fills my lungs, twin flames surrounding my heart.
I pour that heat through my shoulders, into the sinew of my arms and out to my palms. Sparks fly from the edges of my fingers.
I budge the door one inch, take a step forward, another inch, then the weight gives as Liney falls forward.
I wipe my heated hands against my shirt and slip through, ignoring the burnt handprints now stuck to the broken door.
Liney lies in a heap, curled into herself. Another breath in like great bellows to a furnace and I have her in my arms, holding her close as I can without burning her. I hover over her mouth and hear the smallest rattling breath. I’m not too late.
The storeroom is suffocating her. She needs wind, sea air, and wide-open sky.
I haul Liney down the stairs. Douglas is gone.
I reach the front door and shuffle her over so that she’s perched on my shoulder.
Her weight would normally wind me, but she might as well be a doll while I’m tapped into the deep spiral’s infernal energy.
Like an inverted lighthouse, its coiled form reaches to the surface like a spring.
I unbolt the door with ashen fingers, swing it open, and stumble out into the evening.
The clouds have broken open above us into a blanket of stars. Dark edges hang on the horizon. Douglas was right. The storm won’t be kind. Did the island create this moment of respite? Hot air from deep below the surface surging up to create a protective, temporary bubble? Or is Liney just lucky?
I rush to the large flat rocks along our small beach and set Liney down.
Her eyelids flutter, but she doesn’t stir.
I prop Liney’s head up in my lap and smooth her hair out of her face, leaving gray marks along her forehead.
Water laps against the rocks. Each swell is closer than the last as though reaching for us.
The infernal heat subsides. If I don’t call on the spiral further, it will reduce to quiet pangs of hunger. Its whispers will become soft sea air instead of a cacophony.
The world’s crimson hue dims. Navy creeps into the churning water. I’m struck by an idea.
I place my hands against Liney’s collarbone.
She flinches, but her flesh doesn’t sear.
It’s only an uncomfortable temperature, like brushing a foot against the hot coals from a bedwarmer.
I diffuse the heat into the muscles of her shoulders, neck, and chest. Our mother used to warm blankets and place them on her torso to slow down her panic.
If she can relax, she can regain her breath.
A gull screeches as it flies over us toward the sheltered harbor to roost. Liney shivers in the cold, but I can’t feel it. The lighthouse’s mirrored lens doesn’t rotate a light above us.