14 Liney To Smother #2
Elle: my smothering sister. My steadfast protector. My dangerous kidnapper. The three Eleanor Forsyths. A revolving kaleidoscope.
The question I can’t ask weighs on my tongue like heavy oil seeping down my throat.
Which Elle is with me now?
I spot the window with the broken-off shutter. A dark-haired head peeks into the bottom of the round window. Her! What was her name? It’s slipped out of my mind. It started with a B. I raise a hand and give a weak shake of my sweater-engulfed wrist.
“What are you doing?” Elle asks, sharp.
I drop my arm too late. She moves to the window as the girl disappears from my view.
I lie back against the cushions. Elle sets to fixing the shutter. My world outside my woolen coverings is all hammering, angry mutters and boards scraping against the floor. A headache throbs through my skull. It sets off dizzying waves in the water still trapped inside.
I shiver. Surely a bad sign. I shudder in my chrysalis of wool, teeth clacking.
I imagine emerging, new and changed. In a body that doesn’t fail me, with lungs that don’t collapse and a mind that keeps only to reality instead of inventing women to escape with.
The shivering finally fades when Elle kneels beside me once more. She’s in rough shape. Her hair, normally tightly woven into two long braids, is a mess around her face like frayed rope. Her eyes are bloodshot with deep, blue bags under each. One long vein pulses on her forehead.
“You’re safe,” she promises. She cups my cheek. Her hands are warmer than my layers of wool. “You’ll recover. Are there any others out there?”
Others? She must mean in addition to the girl I washed ashore with.
Where’d she go? Others. There was Chamomile.
Does she count? Surely not. And she won’t be returning, so it’s functionally useless to tell Elle except to make her question my dwindling sanity.
No one but the girl. Beatrice? Beulah? Bess?
Surely Elle saw her too. Weren’t they talking earlier?
I lick my lips and clear my throat. Everything tastes of salt while the room keeps tilting. I’ll sort my thoughts out later, without Elle’s wild eyes searching mine. “I don’t know. Tea?” I ask. My first words come out scratchy. Thank God I can speak at all.
Elle is best when given tasks. She rushes off, and soon the kettle screams. She’s using the kitchen.
I didn’t even think to worry about the body I’d left behind.
So none of it was real? Chamomile, my crushed windpipe, the knife in her throat.
Pain and torment by my own mind and hands.
Was that what I needed to finally end the fantasy?
And now have I started a new one, an ocean sprite to explain my survival?
Elle drags a small table beside me with a chipped teacup, no saucer.
I try to reach out, but my hands are buried in blankets and a sweater.
Elle smiles. It softens her eyes. They droop a little at the ends, as mine do.
She places the edge of the cup to my lips.
I sip carefully. Lemon, ginger, a drop of honey.
My favorite. I drain the cup, then another, then I’m ready.
Elle is clear-eyed enough to know exactly what happened.
“Did she save me, Elle?”
She flexes her jaw and rattles the china as she sets down the cup and refills it again.
“You saved me, too,” I add, a little louder. “There may be others out there if she survived. I’m proud of us, Elle. We saved somebody.”
“There were no others,” Elle mutters. “No one survived.”
I cough out a gulp of tea at that. Elle waits for my rattling gasps to slow.
“Are you sure there wasn’t—”
“You’re sick and delirious.” It’s sharp, and it hurts. She can cut me as easily as she can nurse me. “I barely got to you in time. What were you doing out there? Foolish. But I can’t blame you for speaking nonsense. Hallucinations are common with lack of oxygen.”
She doesn’t hear another word I say. She tips tea into my mouth and moves me to the bed once I’ve defrosted to her liking.
“Elle,” I say as she smooths my hair. She nods, but I wait until her gaze meets mine. “I need to ask you. It will sound mad. But I need to know. I can’t—”
A cough racks through me. Elle props me up and rubs my back until it passes.
“We can talk later,” she murmurs, back to combing through my hair. “You’re in no state to talk. I’ll read you something to help you sleep.”
Distraction. It used to work on me. When I was so self-interested that I didn’t see what was in front of me.
“What did you see in the kitchen when you came downstairs?”
The brush stops, midway through my hair.
“I didn’t see you.” Her words are measured, precise. “Which we will talk about later, Caroline.”
Another distraction, using my whole given name. But my shame didn’t survive the drowning. I imagine it sinking. An offering to roil in the waves in my stead.
“Answer me.” My throat protests against speaking louder.
She brushes again, rougher. “I saw the kitchen. I was a little preoccupied, searching for where you’d gone.”
“Nothing out of order?” I venture. Let me in, Elle, I want to scream at her. No tricks.
She tugs at my hair so hard that my head bobs back with it.
“Ow! Careful!”
Elle takes back her hand and sets the brush on the bedside table. I picture her fingers shaking. With anger? Fear?
“My knife was on the floor,” she says, quiet as a confession. “Why was my knife out?”
That’s all I get? I want to shake her. But if the fight was in my head, then that makes sense. All Elle would’ve found was what I touched. I don’t know how to answer. Tears well in my eyes.
“I’m so scared,” I whisper. How many more girls will my mind invent? “What are we doing here? What will become of us?”
This is what Elle is equipped for. She shushes me, comforts me, climbs into bed, and holds me. The picture of a perfect sister when I give her the right conditions.
I drift into sleep in her arms. Chamomile doesn’t appear. Neither does Bridget—that was the name! Is she a new incarnation of my imaginary friend? Or a real woman out on the island alone and surely scared?
I haven’t dreamed alone in months.
I float in swirling, quiet nothing. It’s my first moment of peace since I saw Mr. Croxton’s boat on the horizon yesterday morning. How much changes in so little time. There’s nothing in this dream but endless gray.
I wake too quickly. My sister’s arm is draped over me with a tension that betrays she’s awake too. My head is turned to the chesterfield, to its squat wooden leg closest to me. I’m at an odd angle, not natural to my usual sleeping position, looking somewhere I never have before.
Specifically, to the trapdoor the chesterfield stands on.