17 Elle To Change
Elle
To Change
Can a lie become alchemized into truth?
Did I lie to Liney about the girl? Every action that night was focused on my sister.
I barely noticed the girl following us across the island, slipping in behind me.
I pushed her out of our home. Or did I? Was I as delirious as Liney?
I’ve been seeing visions too. Hers of girls to keep her company and save her.
Mine of one to threaten and scold. I can’t trust my memories of that night. They’re all tinged with red.
When I found Liney’s health improved during supper as we made idle chatter about the weather instead of the rotten fish I burned in a pyre outside and in the waning hours as she read quietly in bed, she didn’t mention the girl once.
If she wasn’t real, whose cries did I hear on the other side of the door while Liney slept on tea dosed with cough syrup?
My scavenging on the shores has found nothing. No tracks. No signs of life.
Douglas hasn’t shown himself. Of course he’s not here when he could actually be useful to tell me if this girl is real or not. The last thing he expressed was scorn at my plan to kill a girl I can’t find. Who may not be real.
Was my deception successful? Or was I deceived?
The narrative I’ve been spinning into a silken reality fits.
I saved Liney. I wouldn’t have felt the cold in myself thanks to the light’s infernal heat.
My arms still ache, either from dragging her across the island or from drowning dozens of men.
Is tending to her alone a memory or a figment?
Did Mr. Pratterman create an illusion for me to kill so when the first real person comes into my sight and I don’t fulfill my end of our new bargain, he’ll have me?
That’s how this works, isn’t it? He made me too comfortable with our arrangement.
Promised something straightforward. If he claims my soul, what will become of Liney?
I allow her to eat at the table today. She’s thankful for this extension of freedom and hungry for the promise of more.
“Have you seen anything odd lately, out the window?” I ask between mouthfuls of porridge. I relax, curious but not overly invested.
Liney cocks her head. “The one that’s boarded up?”
“The kitchen,” I lie. I set down my spoon and reach for my cup of half-drunk tea. “I wondered if a certain visitor had made their appearance again.”
Liney’s cheeks hollow as she chews on the insides, thinking. “Mr… What was his last name? Croxton?”
She assumed I meant a man. Does she know what I’m trying to discover? Or have I become so paranoid that I see even my sweet sister as conniving? I finish my tea, but the taste is lost to me. Rotting flesh lingers in my nose. Porridge is the only food I can stomach now.
“That’s right,” I agree, smiling. “I worry he may return now that the weather has cleared.”
Liney nods, then her attention returns to her food.
I mustn’t search my sister for false trespasses. Liney hasn’t earned that. I’ve thought so ill of her when I’m the one to blame. She wanted to save lives and nearly drowned for it.
She deserves a reward. I can keep a few promises I thought impossible.
“We’ll need to make a supply run soon. There was damage to the shingling, and I don’t see an easy winter with such an early first storm. I thought I could train you.”
Liney drops her spoon into her bowl with a splat. “Train me. For the mainland?”
That caught her attention. I nod, drawing out her anticipation.
“But it’s not safe for me.” Her gaze returns to her food.
She’s extra careful now. Good. It’s as though we were once again ourselves to each other, nothing dark or bloody at the edges.
“I didn’t trust you to take it seriously before. But I believe you’ve shown me now how much you care about our safety. I’ll show you how to dress and act so as not to arouse suspicion. Perhaps a haircut, even.”
If she covers the supplies, I can stay on the island and never see another living soul. Mr. Pratterman will have no cause to call on me. Our contract will be in limbo. Never fulfilled nor broken. I could live with that.
Can doing nothing, my antithesis, be my salvation? No more deaths on my soul. Douglas can rejoice. What a madwoman he must’ve thought me, declaring a death warrant on an illusion.
“We can get into the particulars later,” I dismiss the topic before Liney can pepper me with questions. “It’s an idea I’m considering. And I’ll continue to consider so long as you continue improving.”
Liney’s beam blooms hope in my chest. I can be a good sister when the circumstances present themselves.
“One request,” she begs. “It’d be good for me to walk outside. The air always does such good for my breathing, even Mother would let me walk in the gardens after an episode. I’d be ready for a journey much quicker.”
It’s hard to say no to Liney. Yet, despite every positive sign, my paranoia is slow to cool.
Liney must prove her seriousness to me, and I must prove my humanity to her.
Plus, this could be a test of my illusion theory.
Liney has no reason to lie to me about a survivor.
It’d be foolish for the girl to stay out in the elements if Liney offers our home.
If she comes back with a girl on her arm, I’ll know action is needed.
If not, she can enjoy the island as she always has and stay out of my hair while I plan our trip.
“Keep away from the harbor side. Stay in the forest. Mind any passing fishing boats. And not for long stretches, or when it rains, or—”
Liney springs from her chair and wraps her arms around me in a hug so strong it nearly chokes me. I can practically feel her smile pressed in my hair. So different from the night she shoved the table and showered me with sour asparagus.
“I love you,” she says. “Thank you, thank you, thank you.”
I can’t remember the last time one of us said that. My little ghost, my secret sunshine, the best thing that could’ve ever happened to me. She still loves me though I’ve clipped her wings.
“Oh, and Elle, I know you said no one survived,” she adds as she’s putting on the same jacket she wore the night of the storm, “but on the off chance I find someone, wouldn’t it be most prudent to bring them here?
I keep worrying that someone may steal our boat if they’ve been out there all this time. ”
She grimaces at me. It reminds me of a time, years ago, when she brought a dying butterfly to me in the garden.
The thing had come out of its chrysalis too early.
It was doomed. Yet she thought I could save it.
I told her to find the red can of powder in the kitchen.
It was just baking powder, but it forced her out of the garden for long enough that I could find another butterfly.
She thought it an act of magic. I buried the dead butterfly, still glistening from its semitransformation, in the shade of our oldest oak.
“You won’t,” I say, as much to remind myself as her. “I hate false hope, little ghost.”
“But if I—”
Something snaps. The tension of days without knowing if I’m lying to her or not. She’s got a point. If someone lives on the island, I need to know about it.
“Yes, fine!” Too loud, too sharp. She’s only a sick girl who wishes she could’ve helped. Nothing will come of it. That’s a lesson she can learn on her own. “Just go.”
I shoo her out the door, gritting my teeth until they slip and I bite my tongue.
I pound a hand hard on the counter to stop from making noise in case Liney can still hear.
My fist leaves a small dent in the wood.
I spit into the sink, mostly bright red with a few dark globs of something sticky, like a blood clot.
It smells off. Like rotting meat. Which of my bargains is this a result of ?
I carefully poke at my tongue. My canine sliced through the muscle.
It’ll heal, but it’ll sting and bleed plenty first.
It doesn’t take long for Douglas to appear. He keeps his distance, just on the edge of my vision across the room. What did he make of that conversation? I spit out another mouthful of blood, then swallow my pride.
“I’m sorry, D—Mr. Douglas.” Will some respect earn me enough goodwill to get the truth out of him? “For my assumptions of you and your intentions.”
He turns, moving to the middle of the room. He thinks himself noble, but the drama paints a different portrait.
“I’m no longer planning any…” I can’t say it. Murders. Killings. Slaughter.
“What was that?” he asks, putting a hand to his ear. “Any what?”
This is worse than confession. I should not care to even the score with a man beyond the grave. Not that he has a grave. He’s a pile of bones beneath us.
“I’m done,” I say through gritted teeth.
“I’ve found a solution. Liney saw an illusion, as she’s been doing for months without my knowing.
I saw it too, so it had to have been a trick.
Thus, I’ve not seen another living person outside my family.
I’ll send her on errands and never see another but Liney for the rest of my life. No one will pay for my misdeeds.”
He doesn’t relax or, as I dared hope, smile. Is that more tension in his shoulders now?
“What could you have to fault me for in this?” I ask, keeping every word quiet to fight my natural reaction to his sad eyes. Will he correct me? Mention a visitor?
He gazes back to the unmade bed. “Liney trusts you again, but I don’t.”
He’s impossible. I go against my nature for them both, and this is my thanks? I stand, begin pacing. There must be a way to explain this. I’m right. I’m doing the right thing.
“It’s a good plan. I’ll—”
“It’s still a plan, Elle!” he shouts. My name slips through. Not girl for once. It’s more than just his shouting that has my hair spike on my arms. “Yet another plan! A loophole, a scheme to avoid your fate. You couldn’t find it in yourself to do the right thing until it benefited you again.”
I stop pacing, staring him down from across the dining table. He won’t take it well if I ask directly. Yet he doesn’t understand.
“I shall never see another person. All my life. That’s surely a punishment fit—”
“That’s too rich. It’s a reward for you!
God above.” Douglas moves forward to lean his hands on the table.
We’re so close I can make out the frayed edges of his beard, his shirt, the gash across his throat.
The details forever immortalized from his first night with me.
“You stand there boasting of your cleverness while you hurt everyone around you.”
“How does this hurt Liney?” I ask, baffled. “I’m granting her more freedom, not less. And harm you? You’re well past that.”
It’s the wrong thing to say. My insides squirm with guilt I wish I didn’t feel. I’ve lost any goodwill that my strategic mercy would’ve earned.
Douglas’s jaw clenches. How must it feel to be without form yet still grind your teeth?
“Where is your remorse, wretch?” His face doesn’t seem transparent at so close a range. I can see every pore on the tip of his nose, each hair spread over his quivering lip.
I’m doing this all wrong. But like a fire, I can’t stop myself. “I just apologized to you—”
Douglas’s fingers clench atop the table. Does he imagine them around my throat? A trickle of blood begins anew down his neck.
“For calling me lecherous, yes. Trust that I don’t forget how low you thought of me. Can you not think of anything else, any act, any unchangeable fact, that I might be interested in?”
“The sailors—”
Douglas throws his head back and barks an astounded laugh, spraying dark drops of blood across the table. “For killing me, Eleanor!”
Oh. Right. That.
Douglas breathes ragged. How long has he waited to finally request this from me?
Suffering every day as I never gave him an ounce of regret for coming into his life only to end it.
While his bones can no longer feel pain, the soul before me does.
Eleanor. Pratterman’s the only one who calls me that now, said with a sneer like an old barb.
It hurts more when Douglas says it. Tender like a wound.
But I can’t apologize and mean it. I wouldn’t have done it any other way. That’s what it means to do what needs to be done.
Or would I? What might’ve happened, had I not slashed his throat open? If I’d explained our situation to him. If I’d requested his help in harboring us through the storm I’d wrought. My pulse quickens, and the room is all at once too cold and too hot.
I didn’t know he was a man of honor. I’m not sure I’ve met one before him. I keep my gaze steady on his gray, glossy eyes. Can a spirit cry? He begins to turn away. I may never see him again if we leave on these grounds.
That’s when it truly dawns on me. This tinge of fear at my throat. I want Douglas in my life. I’d miss him. I could be happy here with my sister and my ghost.
He’s right. Containment is a reward for me. If I don’t ruin it first.
“Don’t go,” I blurt out in panic. “You’re right. About it all. But there’s no forgiving what I’ve done. I thought it useless to try.”
“It’s the trying,” he whispers. His quiet is a sharper blade to my heart than any screaming could be.
“Then allow me this. To try.”
He stills. Relief flushes through me like the cool waves over magma that made this place. It may be selfish to want him to care about me, even in our twisted way, but it’s the truth of me.
“I’m sorry.” I pause, unsure how much to divulge of the depths of my cruelty.
“That I stole your future. Your chance at happiness. At a life dedicated to saving people. I know how much it pains you to watch me doom others in the same room where you would’ve protected them.
I’ve always known, and I haven’t cared, and for that I’m sorry.
I can’t give back what I took. I’m the villain of your life.
You don’t wish to be tethered here. But to me, it’s a comfort.
You’ve spoken of my sister only in kindness.
Even with me you remain as respectful as I could hope for.
In every way that matters, you’re more a gentleperson than I could ever be.
And you don’t deserve an afterlife stuck here with me. ”
I take in a rattling breath. The words came out in such a rush I didn’t know them before they were said. “I swear, James, on whatever tatters of a soul I have left, I mean every word.”
Douglas straightens. His face is unreadable, complicated by the transparency he’s fading into. But I search anyway because he told me to try.
“I believe you,” he says finally, a small smile on his lips. “But it’s what you do next that will tell the truth. Do what you will, but let it be with the full knowledge of its effect on us all. Especially on yourself.”
I’m left alone at the table, rose-cheeked and dry-mouthed. I lift the teacup to my lips with a shaking hand. When I sip, I finally taste only bitter, malty black tea.