5 Elle To Save #2
A failure, both as a sister and lighthouse keeper. My only excelling qualities are smothering others and siphoning the powers of evil. Yet it’s my only chance to hold onto the modicum of freedom against the men who would steal us back.
I breathe in the crisp evening air, begging Liney to do the same. If I touched anyone else while in possession of Mr. Pratterman’s power, they would burn. But not even he could force me to harm her.
For her alone, I can use this for good.
Slow as the tide turning, Liney’s breath deepens. I want to crush her in an embrace, but I wait until her eyes open. She stares up at the stars, frowning as she shifts focus to me. “Elle…?”
I shush her. Words can wait. I dissipate the heat into the air, steam-like. Just her sister again.
“I’m sorry,” Liney whispers.
She has nothing to apologize for. “I know,” I say instead. The relief of an accepted apology will help more than arguing.
The rest of the evening is quiet. We clean up the table.
I wash the dishes; she dries. Each plate and utensil passed between us is an extension of her apology.
I’m sorry for what I said. I’m sorry for ruining your special meal.
I’m sorry for running from you. We mend through the simple domesticity of doing what must be done.
Halfway through, she begins to hum, and we’re singing old church hymns together like nothing happened.
I leave Liney to change out of my burnt, asparagus-spoiled clothes and charge the light’s gearbox for the evening.
Normally this would be easy, but the spiral has drained me.
I clench the wooden handle tight, but my arms burn with each spin.
I’ve bought us a few hours, but then it will need another charge.
Lighthouse keeping truly begins at night. I sleep in during the day when I can so I can stay alert. The winter months are the worst. Long nights and unpredictable storms. Late October has already shrunk the daylight. We’re lucky to see the sunset stream through the windows with supper.
When I return to our living quarters, Liney is sitting in bed in her sleeping gown.
It was sewn hastily by my shaky hands using spare muslin from the lighthouse’s stores.
Liney is proficient at the needle, but she’s never fixed it.
Looking at her smile in the dying firelight, I know she keeps it as a piece of me.
“I can braid your hair?” I offer.
Liney nods and scoots, patting the space behind her.
Braiding is a sacred tradition, passed down from one Forsyth woman to the next.
My mother braided my hair, and I took on the task of Liney’s once I was skilled enough.
Hers is wilder than my own, prone to tangling but full and gold as the sun.
Mine is pale moonlight, making my features ruddy in comparison.
Liney hands me the comb. I stabilize every tug and apologize when she tenses. It’s a dance. Each partner needs to intuit the other’s movements. I gather her hair into glowing rivers in the firelight. The braid reaches her shoulder blades before either of us says another word.
“Do you really think I brought you here only for my sake?” I ask.
Liney leans her head back until it rests in my lap. Her face is half in shadow, but the fire reflected in one of her eyes flashes from dark brown to almost yellow. “No. I was mad.”
Relief courses through me. Liney shouldn’t be a prisoner here, but telling her the true dangers of the mainland—that I’m much worse than a runaway—could hurt her, and us, irreparably. What she doesn’t know keeps her safe and close.
“You know how much I care for you,” I say, tugging a little on her braid to make her laugh. “What you mean to me.”
Liney closes her eyes. She’s so pale. Traces of purple veins run shallow on her eyelids. Delicate, no matter how she protests otherwise.
“Of course. But it can be intense, Elle. Sometimes I want us to be…” She moves her hands as though they’ll finish her thought.
“Free?” I offer. I understand. She should be debuting in society.
I got to experience the rush of dancing, locking eyes with a stranger, buzzing with excitement at the touch of gloved hands on the railing of a staircase.
She only heard the stories in the early hours, rushed and slurred by me from the sherries and chocolates.
She’d been claimed by the man who should’ve been my burden to bear before her turn ever came.
“Equals.”
That hits me harder than my fall down the stairs. She’s young, beautiful, and kind. Easy to laugh and easy to cry. Tender, while my edges cut at anyone who gets too close. Liney is worth more than me; that’s a given. She’s everything I should’ve been.
“Sit up,” I say as soft as I can manage around the lump forming in my throat. “You’ll undo the braid.”
Thomas should’ve kept to my path. I’d have been his dutiful wife, playing along in public. Never giving the game away.
We’d never have come here. Liney could have kept a life safe from men, both suitors and monsters.
I tried praying. In church pews. In bed. On strolls between sunflowers in the back garden, glaring at the oak trees. I prayed for Thomas to become good, for Liney to escape his gaze, for my parents to see reason.
Nothing answered.
Instead, Thomas turned those terrible golden eyes to my sister.
“Don’t ruin your own happiness,” my mother advised. She’d ushered me out of my father’s study after I’d aired my suspicions that Thomas may have the wrong intentions. It was barely a fortnight before our wedding day. “We love Thomas. He’s already part of this family.”
So am I, I kept from saying. She brought me up to my bedroom, scolding me for my paranoia the whole way.
“We’ve always been gentle with you.” Sharp and still as stone, her dark eyes glinted in the candlelight.
Liney has her eyes, though they’ve never looked like my mother’s did then.
A woman peering into my future and her own past. “Too gentle, I fear. You believe the world should grant you utter safety, a fairy tale forever. That’s not the way of things. ”
I mustered the small, fragile strength I had left. What Thomas had broken apart piece by piece. “I think he may hurt me.”
“They hurt us all, darling.”