7 Liney To Fear
Liney
To Fear
I dream of parties.
Dancers pack into hazy rooms with flickering candlelight and pyramids of flutes overflowing with champagne. Mirror walls and debutants. String music soars into my heart.
I’ve missed music. Dishwashing humming doesn’t compare.
“You look beautiful.”
Chamomile. I turn and there she is, still in her old-fashioned red silk. The other guests between us move out of our way like puppets, faces vague and shifting. She takes my hand in hers and turns us toward one of the wall mirrors.
The warm light plays well off my rosy cheeks and dark eyes.
My hair is set in a complicated pile of braids and curls.
Pink flowers weave through the blond segments in silk ribbons.
The dress has a wide collar nearly falling off my shoulders and lined with delicate roses.
It cinches into a deep V at my waist, but nothing constricts.
Soft, short sleeves are edged with floral lace.
Bows and more floral accents adorn the skirt itself, which poofs out thanks to the crinoline cage beneath.
I’m a bouquet, beautiful as the illustrations in Godey’s Lady’s Book that I use to paint in vibrant colors in lieu of attending parties myself. I was too sickly for most of my adolescence. It wasn’t until deep into my sister’s engagement that I was permitted to attend.
“The next dance is about to begin,” Chamomile says softly.
The music floats down to a stop. Voices rise to fill the silence, but I can’t grasp their meaning, only their applause to musicians I can’t see.
Chamomile squeezes my hand in hers. I can’t take my eyes off myself.
I miss this. For the short time I was allowed, I excelled at society.
The dressing, the dancing, the merrymaking.
I’ve no head for figures nor a green thumb.
But I could make the sourest lord laugh when my family needed the social cogs greased.
No dance floor stood still once I entered.
The rare occasions I was invited—with promises not to overexert myself—I was finally alive.
Elle had her stories. I had a dance floor.
My eyes well with tears, but they’re not real. This is a dream. I can concoct an entire companion, but my mind can’t give into the temporary peace of believing this place.
“A little fun,” Chamomile prods. A single string of a violin quivers into music. Dancers shuffle into starting positions. “You deserve it.”
It’s everything I left behind. The rush of heat to my cheeks during a quadrille. The swirls of smoke above the dancers. The laughter especially. My own, Chamomile’s. The jubilation that comes only when you’re part of something larger than yourself.
Chamomile leads me to the dance floor between vibrant, anonymous pairs.
Up and down the aisle, we are a mix of dresses and suits, scattered in all combinations.
I dance in lanes with Chamomile, then another woman in a vibrant emerald suit, and farther down the line with an endless display of beautiful, faceless people.
But I’m too aware, even in this rose-tinted dream. Sweat and perfume mix into a heady sweetness, beckoning me deeper into the fantasy, but my melancholia lifts me back to the surface.
You deserve it. Chamomile’s words echo as I arc around a woman with butterflies in her hair, wings beating in time with the music. The dance lures me with the promise of everything I can’t have. My breath doesn’t heave, my feet don’t hurt, and I’m not promised to anyone.
Chamomile, my angler fish. I could drown in my want. To leave the island, to stop the storm, to hold my parents close again.
Chamomile appears before me again. We touch hands, hers in white satin gloves and mine trembling. Her hazel eyes reflect the firelight like a cat. We move in a small circle, the rest of the room dissolved into soft brushstrokes of chiffon, mahogany, and firelight.
My steps splash. Shallow water coats the dance floor. It’s rising.
I often dream of water swallowing me up, pulling me somewhere I can’t see. Ripples of the first and last time I swam. But my ocean and rosy dreams have never crossed before.
The water doubles the reflections around us. Chamomile is everywhere. Excitement has hitched in my throat into something dangerous. The water billows my dress around me. Chamomile hasn’t noticed how our rhythm has slowed out of pace with the music.
You’re me, I want to scream, reflected back. Nothing more. Nothing at all.
“You look sad,” Chamomile says. She searches my expression as the water covers our joined hands. “Isn’t this what you want?”
“I want to wake up.”
Darkness. Cold salt air against my cheeks. I miss the heat of the ballroom immediately.
My eyes adjust to the snow-reflected red light through the shutter’s cracks. Chamomile’s over me, her face inches away. The light’s color makes her eyes shine.
Despite the warmth of the blankets, my exhaustion, and the presence of my imaginary friend, the urge to get out floods through me.
You’re safe here, Chamomile whispers. I’ll keep you warm. How about a dream in the garden? Sunflowers, sunshine—
“Get off me.”
My sharpness and the weight of my words surprise her. My voice is usually airy, untethered. Unlike Elle’s deeper resonance or Chamomile’s sardonic tone.
Chamomile shifts to the other side of the bed. Her big, sad eyes are framed by curls my grandmother might have fashioned, and her silk dress only heightens how out of place she is.
You must be careful, she begins, but any more is lost as I throw off my blankets and place two firm, bare feet on the cold plank floor.
“I can handle a little cold.”
Elle has the wool coat upstairs. I fashion a robe out of a blanket and tie it with a spare bit of rope instead. My socks are warm from the fire’s embers when I slide them on.
Do you not like me anymore?
She pierces the armor I’ve made for myself as I reach for the staircase banister. She’s still on the bed, collapsed like a rag doll. That’s all she is, and yet—
No. Not another and yet. When will my self-infatuations stop? Do I really need to be the center of attention so badly?
“This isn’t about you,” I hiss. “You made me fight Elle. You filled me with resentment. I’m going to make things right.”
And you think you can just climb up there? Where you’re not wanted?
A cold, rushing wave surges in me at her. Like the ballroom water, waking me. This is the distance I need from Chamomile.
“I know my sister.”
I beg to differ. Has her voice always held this mocking?
“You want me to hate her.” The floor’s chill creeps into the soles of my feet. Everything in this room wants me cold. “You know I don’t need you, so long as I have her.”
These are your feelings, Caroline. It’s not my fault you don’t like them.
She’s right. While Elle’s rage comes out in heat, mine is ice shards that cut into my own heart. I love Elle for protecting me, but my love is tarnished with loss. She stole me away from the world. I cling to the idea she’s wrong about everyone—Thomas, our parents, even me.
Elle always believes me to be lively and cheery-cheeked. But this cold clenches my heart unless I shovel coal into everything I do. She can’t know the effort it takes to crack a smile through the ice. But I’m running out of fuel.
If I stop, give in to the frost, I may never thaw.
Chamomile calls sweetly to bring me back, but I see past her rosy dreams and soft words.
I’m quick up the stairs, only slowing when the spark in my lungs threatens to burn again. But there’s no danger here, save for my own actions. The water that covered our hands, rising, ready to consume us, begs to differ.
How can you run from the worst part of yourself?
I touch the storage room door. There are hand-shaped warps in it a few inches higher than my hands naturally fall. How did Elle do this? The splintered hole where the handle used to be accuses me of the fresh wounds between us.
Our destructions are opposite. Mine suffocates. A festering wound, easily hidden until it consumes. Elle’s engulfs, a fire storm that can’t be ignored. The door smells of smoke. She’s far above me but lingers here.
I open the door and cross the dark room. I reach out to the shelves until I find a box of long candles, placed beside a sliding box of matches. I can’t find a holder, so I strike the match and light the flame, holding the bottom as the wick wakes.
The stairs on the other side of the room are much longer. They spiral up to the lightroom. I’ve never climbed up there before.
Elle works the mechanisms, maintains the oil for the light, and watches for ships in the treacherous waters. Despite her efforts, the sea has claimed lives during our time here. She says sailors put their guard down, spying land for the first time in weeks and making fatal mistakes.
Complacency, she said, is deadly.
It is eerily quiet save for the echo of my footsteps in the hollow middle of the lighthouse. This purgatorial space between life and duty.
My breaths come shallow. The candle flickers with every step. Its light warps the stairs into uneven hills and valleys. I place a hand on the wall. Vibrations carry through my palm from the storm outside. It’s grown stronger—how could I have missed the wail before?
When I was small, I’d skulk out of my room at night.
I’d tiptoe down the stairs. It was a game between Elle and me.
She’d stay up late in the sitting room. I’d wait out our parents, then make my attempt.
If she heard me before I could sneak around the overstuffed green armchair she sat in, she’d rasp out, No living soul stays up so late, little ghost.
My giggling would give me away, and I’d reply, Then what are you?