33. Alistair #2
Because seeing people cry makes me cry, but I can’t shed tears while trapped in this monstrous body. Instead, they burn inside me, begging for a release they’ll never find.
And this hurt goes deeper. Because when I see Onyx cry, my mind thinks it’s Indigo weeping. And I am pulled to comfort her. Ease her pain.
They are sisters— twins. Onyx’s hair is longer, and she has a dimple in her chin, but she is otherwise identical to Indigo.
Or was identical.
Onyx is thirty-five now, whereas Indigo will forever be twenty-nine.
I close my eyes.
I’ve grieved her, my beautiful Indigo, with her keen humor and steadfast spirit.
The calm to my chaos. The steady beating heart of our relationship.
I’ve spent nights in a rage, hating myself for the part I played in her death.
Other nights, I’ve mourned, wishing I’d been the one to die instead.
If any magic existed that could trade one life for another, I would have gladly cast that spell.
But it doesn’t. And I can’t. No matter how I wish for it, I can’t trade fates with her.
I’ve pleaded for death to come for me anyway, to take me away from my broken heart.
I’ve hurt. And I’ve despaired. And I’ve healed. Accepted.
The final stage of grief, as they say.
I’ve accepted that I will never see her lazy smile, hear the syrupy drawl of her voice, or the pleasant way she hummed along to the Beatles.
Indigo never did anything fast. She lived her life like the flowers she adored—slow, and steady, and savoring every moment.
Her magic was that way too. Sluggish. Onyx used to joke that it was stolen magic, that Indigo had pilfered it from her in the womb. But it was just…Indigo.
I’ve accepted that she is gone.
I’ve healed as much as I could.
But I’ll never stop missing her.
I’ll never regret that I said yes when she suggested going with me on Saturn’s next voyage. Her way of trying to reach me, to talk to me, while I’d been in the bowels of my obsession.
I’d told her to get on that ship.
And then I’d been late .
I can’t even remember what I’d gotten held up with. A meeting, or something equally as stupid.
“The ship leaves in five minutes, Alistair. What do you mean you’re still at the office?”
“There’s been a crisis. I’m sorry, sweet, I have to get this sorted first. Can you see if they’ll wait?”
“They said they won’t.”
“Drat it all to hell. It’s okay. Listen, I can meet you after it sails.”
“Meet me?”
“Yes.”
“On the ocean?”
“Absolutely. All you’ll need to do is get the coordinates from the captain and I can teleport there.”
“Oh, Alistair. This is silly. ”
“You say silly, I say a fun challenge. I’ve always wanted to test my range.”
“And if you don’t have the range?”
“Then I guess I take a dunking in the sea, and you get to laugh at me. I think I’ve got this though.
You go ahead, sweet. Enjoy the start of the cruise.
Make sure you hunt down Rueben—he’s the best bartender.
And you can tell him I said that. Before you finish your first drink, I’ll be there, yapping your ear off. ”
“I’m going to hold you to that. You know I love your yapping.”
“I’ll never understand why, but I love that you love it. And I love you. And I’ll be there soon. I promise.”
Twenty minutes.
I’d been twenty minutes late.
The call had come just as I’d left the office and prepared to teleport aboard the fast-moving ship.
Saturn was gone.
Destroyed.
Ripped to pieces that the ocean all too gratefully devoured.
There was nothing left.
No bodies to find. Only fragments of bone.
No pieces of the ship to excavate. Only scraps of metal.
“She should never have gotten on that ship,” Onyx says.
“No,” I agree. “She shouldn’t have. None of them should have. She wasn’t the only one who died, Onyx. But the others keep slipping…”
I know them now. Ruben, the broad-chested bartender with his easy smile and big laugh.
The ship’s crew—some of them were so young, like Silvia, fresh out of college and weighing whether she wanted to become a nurse or carry on her schooling to become a doctor.
The passengers—a mere spattering of fifteen, including Indigo.
Friends and family of the crew, since Saturn hadn’t officially opened to the general public.
Sixty people had been on that ship.
Sixty people had lost their lives.
And then there were the others that were impacted. The families of the dead. My employees, innocent, but all punished alongside me.
On most days, the only one I remember is Indigo.
I hate it.
Hate that I’ve forgotten so many others.
But Onyx doesn’t care about them. She never had.
“Indigo is the one I dream about,” I tell Onyx.
“Every night, I watch her board Saturn . And I scream at her to stay on the land. I’m running for her, trying to stop Saturn from sailing.
But I can’t. I watch it explode. And I see her caught in the explosion.
She’s scared and crying and begging for help.
And I try to help her, but no matter how hard I run, or fast I swim, the sea takes her from me. ”
Tears rake across my brain.
Onyx’s eyes are cold, like steel, when I bring my gaze back to her.
“I have these dreams every night,” I say. “Even on the nights when I don’t remember what a ship is, or why she was on one.”
“Good,” is all Onyx says.
“I don’t know why Saturn exploded, Onyx.
I tried, for weeks , to figure it out. I ran through the blueprints and talked to the staff from its previous voyage, asked them if they’d noticed anything.
A flaw either in the magic or the technology, something that would’ve explained what happened.
They hadn’t. They said the ship had run like a dream.
I wanted to know why it happened just as much as you did.
But I never will, and it will haunt me. For however long I live.
There were sixty people on that ship, Onyx.
Their blood is on my hands. And I’ll never forgive myself. That day destroyed me.”
“Ach, it didna destroy much. Absolved of all blame?—”
“In the eyes of the law, only.”
“‘Twas an accident, they said. Bollocks. It was yer ship, Alistair. Yer invention. It killed my sister. And ye walked a free man.”
“The only thing that verdict did was keep me out of a physical jail. It didn’t absolve me of anything.”
“But it did. Everyone forgave ye, eh? Even the families of the other sods ye sent to die. They pitied ye. I seemed to be the only one to care yer were guilty.”
“So because I couldn’t rot in a steel jail cell, you trapped me in an aquatic one.”
“Exactly.”
“And what about the others? What unforgivable crimes did they commit to earn a place in jail beside me?”
She raises her chin. “They worked for ye, didn’t they? Helped ye with that ship.”
“Guilty by association, huh? That’s cruel, Onyx.”
She turns away from me.
“Have you found peace?” I press. “Now that we’re off the streets, locked away, where we can’t hurt anyone else?”
Her lip quivers. “Yes.”
It’s a lie.
I don’t need her ability to sense her pain.
“I hope you do manage to find that peace, Onyx. Life is too short and too precious to live it in turmoil. But you should let the others go. Keep me here, if you must, but free them. They’re innocent.”
There is remorse in her eyes. “I can’t.”
And I know why.
She isn’t the one who placed this curse.
She drafted it, I have no doubt. Onyx has a deep love and appreciation for magical history, and this curse is modeled closely after the one that struck the Scottish island all those centuries ago. The one that created the legends.
But Onyx is unable to wield the magic to enact such a curse. Someone else did. A Sorcerer, one powerful enough to weave an intricate spell, and reckless enough to break about a hundred laws and regulations.
A Sorcerer who will not willingly throw away the assets they risk so much for .
“Be careful, Onyx,” I say, “with whoever you’ve chosen to work with. I don’t want to see you get hurt.”
And I mean that.
I am angry. But I have no hate in my heart, even for the one who damned me.
She stands then, agitated and restless. “Does your new love ken? What ye’ve done?”
“I’ve told her what I am able to,” I say. “The parts and words I can remember.”
“Ach, well, could be she thinks yer a bleedin’ heart that needs her mendin’, eh? A pity project for her to nurse while she rebounds from that sodden headed oaf she’s?—”
“That’s enough.” I am gentle, but firm in saying this. “Pippi has nothing to do with our fight.”
“But ye’ll put her in the middle of it anyway, eh?”
“She is leaving at the end of the week. And I’ll be alone again. If you find yourself getting irritated with her, focus on how devastated I’ll be when she’s gone. That should cheer you up again.”
Onyx places her hands upon her hips and stares down at me, contemplating.
The magic she’s used to clear my head is fading. Slowly. Words haven’t begun to slip, but my brain grows sluggish. Soon, I’ll have only the fog again. And the feelings. And the few words I manage to cling to.
I try not to despair at that. But I do.
“You know,” Onyx says, “I dunna think it matters.”
“What doesn’t?”
“What happened to that ship. You coulda handed me sharp proof that it was not yer doin’.
That ‘twas a beast from the sea that killed me sister, not yer negligence. And it wouldna mattered. Because she’d still be dead, and ye livin’.
And I’d still hate ye for it. Now I’ve a ship to catch.
”She turns, preparing to climb back up the cliff.
“Be careful with that sweet little Sensitive of yers, Alistair.”