Chapter 26
Harper’s knees screamed in pain as she knelt on the darkened ship deck.
The air was cold and the salt spray mist filled the air.
Her arms were bare, and so cold they had turned numb from the chill.
Harper’s dream-self stared at the wooden deck.
A stain in the shape of a kidney wrapped its way around a warped board.
Was it blood? Had someone else suffered in this spot before?
Above her she heard the murmured chanting of women’s voices, and knew the man with the rough beard and foul breath was near.
Fire raced in lines across the bared skin of her back and she could see the lash coming down again and again, waiting for her to cry out, but she gave them no such satisfaction.
Sets of eyes watched her from the shadows, witnessing her pain and humiliation.
How long had she been in this place, her knees locked in position, her raw skin stinging from the salty air?
Days? Hours? How long would this torture endure?
She felt a fear in her heart, but not for herself, it was for the man with the apple-green eyes.
What had become of him? Harper’s dream-self shook with pain and shock as the lash descended yet again.
She could hear the words that filled the air around her.
Whosoever lieth with the Beast, shall die the death
Whosoever lieth with the Beast, shall die the death
Whosoever lieth with the Beast, shall die the death
She screamed, but no sound escaped her throat, her heart felt like to burst from her chest. She was beyond panic, what she felt was the weight of inevitability.
Tears streamed down her cheeks, but not fear, not pity, it was anger.
Harper could feel anger like a stew pot boiling over in her gut; she hated every single soul that was party to this, she wished for their deaths, for fire, for screams and pain.
Harper clenched her fists, fingernails digging into the palms of her hands.
As the lash descended again and tore through her flesh, Harper awoke with a jolt.
Polly regarded her from the foot of the bed.
She watched Harper with an all-knowing calm.
She had seen the nightmare, had witnessed the scene.
Harper fumbled with the bedside stand and turned on the small reading lamp.
She laid back and stared at the ceiling as Polly settled on her stomach, a welcome weight, a reminder that this dream world was not her reality.
“Jesus,” Harper whispered. She examined the palms of her hands where angry scratches crisscrossed her skin.
Her jaw ached from grinding her teeth and screaming in her dreams. Harper turned the reading lamp off and stared out the window at the moon, a crescent sliver of silver in the sky.
Harper tried to steady her breathing, filling her lungs and counting to five before releasing like a sleep therapist had once told her.
It didn’t help, it never had. Harper buried her aching hands in Polly’s fur, who responded by curling into a tighter ball and purring deeply.
Dawn would break soon, that was the way with these dreams. They always seemed to wake her right before the sun.
Harper mused that it was probably the reason she had started running—up anyway, she had tension to release.
It had been better for a while with Leia, in the very brief few months where she’d sometimes wake up in Leia’s midtown studio overlooking traffic on Boylston.
During that time, sometimes, not always, Harper would sleep through the night and not remember the dreams. She would wake up and not feel the dream-child’s small hand in hers, or smell the salt air, or the cookfire.
For a time, she just slept, and woke up to the scent of Leia’s honeysweet shampoo on her pillow, and a feeling that even for a moment she belonged in that place.
It hadn’t lasted. No one was surprised, least of all Harper.
There were no fights, no angry words, no ugliness, just a realization that Harper could never give what Leia needed—presence.
Leia needed someone who was fully present, feet on the ground, in the moment, focused.
Harper was not that, hadn’t been since she was thirteen and after, after she drifted even further, became unmoored, a ship wandering the mists.
Leia had never known her in the good times.
She had only met the lost Harper, the one who looked to the shadows and the corners of the room for anything that might mean the reality she faced wasn’t hers.
Leia had been stuck with a girl who locked all her love in a deep vault and did not know how to find it again, a girl who craved the physical touch, the sensation of feeling but could never reciprocate, not fully.
So Harper left. In the aftermath, she found a way to act normal so Carli, her colleagues at Okeanos, research teams, would think she was adjusted and centered, not whatever it was that sat in that boat, floating through the waters, impervious to the cold.
Her true self held no shape, more shadow than form.
Except here. Harper adjusted her hips slightly and Polly looked up, locking her tawny eyes on Harper’s.
Here was different. Here on Bell everyone seemed to exist in the shadows, they seemed to recognize her, see past the social cues she had learned to display, and see her. Maybe there was a way through the mist.
Harper shook her head, frustrated, the last bits of her dream clinging to her skin.
She would leave here in a matter of weeks, if not days.
She knew Okeanos would pull the plug on this project if they kept running into problems. She was honestly surprised they were investing in repairing the boat.
It was a matter of time, and she could not stay here indefinitely.
But the idea of leaving seemed unbearable, overwhelming; the life she’d had in Carli’s loft, her studies, the day to day, it was a half-life.
She could live here on Bell, work in Hedy and Sven’s grocery, take care of Polly, run fishing boats with Murphy, have coffee with Einar and gaze at the outline of Bell Manor atop the hill at night.
And finally learn what Lady Bell had yet to tell her.
“I need coffee,” Harper whispered, and Polly responded by standing and stretching.
As she tied the laces on her running shoes, preparing for the dawn, Harper tried to shake her waking thoughts.
It was all a fantasy, none of it real. Maybe that was the real magic of Bell Island: the idea that you could lose yourself, leave the parts you didn’t want to carry behind.
Harper quietly closed the front door behind her and started off at a brisk pace as the sun rose in the sky.
She sped up until it was impossible to think of anything other than the burning in her lungs and legs.
She flew through the town. Hedy gave her a nod from the brightly lit window of the grocer.
Harper responded with a wave. She passed the theater that advertised The Avengers in worn marquee lettering, a shop that sold thick woolen jackets and caps, a coffee shop, Bennie’s Diner, The Aboveboard, all of it rushing past, no more real than her dream.