14 Liney To Smother
Liney
To Smother
Ocean sloshes from one side of my skull to the other. My head lolls along with its motions.
The steady arms of my savior keep me anchored to the world.
All I can do is, thankfully, breathe. My eyes refuse to open, but her floating hair framing her face in a dark halo seems etched behind my eyelids.
Chamomile’s curls never moved. This woman’s hair was so full of life, I could’ve mistaken it for seagrass.
Who is she? Another mental conjuring? Can I weather that? Chamomile was an illusion. My body pressing into this woman’s as she carries me, this is real. A real that Chamomile barely managed even in her final moments of destruction.
There’s no wind on my face anymore. Did I lose consciousness between the surf and the lighthouse?
She stops but keeps holding me. Relief trickles out of one ear along with the water.
Two voices mix outside my sea brain, loud but indistinct. The woman’s fingers clutch my shoulder and squeeze around my knees. No. I know this grip.
Elle. I want to reach up and hug her, but my arms are folded in tight to my chest, like a baby bird freshly hatched.
A voice whispers, harsh. At me? It’s distant, like listening through a window. My ears must be blocked. I twitch my head to the side to clear it, but the motion makes my stomach spin. I focus on breathing instead.
A dragging thud, a few steps, and I’m settled down on the chesterfield.
I force my eyes open despite their salt burn.
I squint up as I’m settled into a comfortable position.
Everything’s still blurry. My head pounds now that my drowning panic has subsided.
Elle steps away, leaving me dreadfully alone.
I open my mouth, but my throat only strains, useless. The old cushions sink under my shaking arms when I try to sit up.
“Are you safe here?” someone whispers. It should be Elle. We’re on the island; we’re alone. No, we’re not. A lighter voice. Dark hair under moonlight.
A cloth is pressed into my hand. I bring it to my eyes and dab the ocean water out. I’ve rubbed too hard, though, and all I can see are smudges of peach skin, black hair, and maple wood behind. I jolt, a ridiculous reaction, yet my senses are set raw as a scalding burn.
Safe here? I’ve lain here a hundred times. I sew here. I snack on cheese here while Elle works hard into the night. She braids my hair here.
This girl’s asking if my sister is dangerous. She could be, no question. But is she a danger to me? It’s a betrayal to consider it.
My sight slowly sharpens. The girl’s brows are thick and knit together. How far gone do I look? I should tell her I’m naturally this pale. That the bags under my eyes have more to do with a sickly childhood than my near drowning.
Am I safe with Elle? She was my sanctuary since before I could talk. She held me after nightmares and hoisted me on her shoulders to feel like I was running around the back garden. I could go to her for anything, until others intervened.
I once asked Elle the one question I couldn’t go to anyone else with when I turned fifteen. I’d crept into her room long after our parents had gone to bed. We hid under her covers. The candlelight flickered on the other side of her cotton sheets, casting soft shadows like a pond’s surface.
“What’s it supposed to feel like when you…” I false-started, tripping over my words with my heart racing.
Elle failed to hide a laugh. She was freshly engaged. I was as charmed as anyone else with Thomas. She seemed like a good source.
“When you like a boy?” she asked.
Blood drained from my face. I could’ve backed out, yet the prospect of turning from my one chance at learning was too dreadful.
I could thank and damn my curiosity in equal measure.
I shook my head and counted my own heartbeats in the thrumming against my temple.
Even with Elle this was a stretch of trust. Like telling her I’d fought someone or snuck a bottle of rye from Father’s study.
A bridge I wasn’t sure I could cross, yet already too far gone.
“When you like someone who is not a boy?” she ventured. Every syllable is a step on a tightrope, taut as the tension in our under-covers sanctum.
I nodded, tight-necked, following her lead.
“If you were to pick,” Elle continued slowly, “which would you rather spend your time with? Ladies or gentlemen?”
No question. “The first,” I whispered.
“And to be clear, by time I mean—”
“I know what you mean,” I hissed between clenched teeth.
“Who has you wondering this?”
I couldn’t stop thinking about a girl my tutor had brought with her to lessons for the last week.
Her home was being renovated, and she needed another space to study.
She was so clever and flushed with excitement at spending time with another girl her age.
I was smitten in minutes. But how do you talk to the most interesting girl you’ve ever met when your own week consisted of only resting, eating, reading, and resting again?
This realization had also come from years of glances across church pews at the few girls my small world allowed.
The way they spoke, their soft smiles, the prickle at the back of my neck when they leaned in to whisper a secret.
I gravitated toward them. Clumsily complimented the ribbons in their hair and listened to their every word.
“I can’t imagine a life with the boys I’ve met.
But with some girls, it feels right, even with all we’ve been taught.
I notice so much more about them. I’m excited to see them again.
” I almost said what our parents or the priest would want; I know it’s wrong or but of course I want to be a wife and mother.
But in this one chance with my big sister, all I wanted was to be honest. “Does that make sense?”
Elle was silent for too long. A twist in my stomach tightened, and I prepared to lie if necessary, no matter the crack it would form in my heart. I see them as close friends. A bitter taste formed on my tongue.
Finally, Elle smiled. “You’re lucky you’re the youngest. What’s she like?”
As I basked in relief, Elle formed a plan.
She’d marry Thomas. She promised that while she understood my attraction, she had no leaning toward any gender in particular, so it might as well be men.
She swore she’d shield me from marital pressure with her status as a wedded woman.
I’d live with her and Thomas, away from our parents’ meddling.
How could the only person I trust so wholly, who accepts me absolutely, be a threat?
It’s too much to explain, so here, lying waterlogged, I only nod.
“I’m Bridget,” the girl says. A name is too precious to have hoped for. I shift to sit up and try to talk, but a jolt pulls her from my view. She disappears somewhere behind the chesterfield.
I can’t lift myself to look. I can barely move enough to rid my ears of water. Elle’s instinct is to separate everything and understand each part individually. She must be just as surprised at a visitor as I. I should thank her for saving us both.
“I told you,” Bridget says behind me, her voice calm. “I found her in the water. Then I collapsed.”
I try to haul myself around to see them both, but my head keeps lolling back instead. There’s a newly stoked fire beside me. The warmth prickles my skin.
Is Elle saying something back? I wish I could concentrate. I need to remember the girl’s name. Bridget. Pretty. Like her. She wanted me to be safe. Is she safe? I stare into the dancing fire and lose the moment to its twisting flames and the churn of ocean in my head.
Protest, footsteps, sharp words that teeter on the edge of my hearing. Then the thud and click of the door. Did Elle kick her out? She saved me. Elle must misunderstand. I need to explain.
Elle stoops beside me, taking my coat off and removing my boots. Her gaze is glued to each task, never finding mine. This works, since the only noises that come from my mouth are painful groans.
Was this girl—Bridget—real? Chamomile was a vivid illusion, a poltergeist, a forerunner.
Yet I felt her in our final moments together.
Her hands pressed the life out of my throat.
I gently touch the skin and suck in a breath at the tenderness that will surely bruise.
That was real, even if she wasn’t. Is it so absurd to worry that the girl who saved me might not be flesh and blood either?
Elle sets to her next task: warming me. Her hand sears me when she presses it against my forehead.
I grit my teeth. She doesn’t notice. She builds up the fire and towels me down, removing my wet clothes.
She sets them to dry and helps me into the thickest clothes we own: a tightly knit sweater twice my size, three pairs of stockings under thick wool pants, and a hat that covers half my face.
She’s not done until she’s added another four blankets on top of me. I’m more lump than woman.
“Can you speak?” Elle asks, admiring her work.
I try. Only rasping coughs come out.
“Can you sit tight for a few minutes?”
I nod stiffly through my half-dozen layers. The heat doesn’t help my hazy presence of mind.
Elle closes her eyes, leaning her head back. Her body sags, shoulders to chest to knees. I never noticed how upright she always is.
“Shhh, I’ll be right back.”
She straightens, breathes in, and walks past me.
I’m reminded of one year ago, when I lay shivering in a rowboat instead of the lighthouse.
Elle tugged us onto the island by herself after hours of rowing.
The stars twinkled while she told me she’d go check if the lighthouse was ready.
It might take a while. I should bundle up and stay quiet as a mouse.
She returned hours later. She was different. Harsher. Quicker to anger. Scared.
What happened? I don’t know. It was an abandoned building holding on to a drowned man’s life. Sad but not terrible. And now she’s forcing the girl out into the cold for what—finding me first?