Chapter 53
Lady Bell was sitting at Nora Grey’s table, a cup of tea at her side, reading glasses on her nose, stacks of receipts and a ledger in a muddled pile.
“Are you quite alright, dear?” she asked without turning her head. “I heard a loud crash.”
Harper crossed to the table and sat in the seat across from Lady Bell. “I nodded off while reading and had a nightmare … I …” Harper struggled to find the words, a lump forming in her throat.
Lady Bell took off her reading glasses and looked across the table at Harper, studying her. “Just a nightmare?”
“I don’t know … it was more than that, it was real,” Harper said in an unsteady voice.
“My mother had waking dreams, and I have them too,” Lady Bell said in a gentle voice. “They aren’t always nightmares, but they are more real than life itself when they hit.” Lady Bell stood and took Harper’s hand, pulling her to her feet. “Come, sit with me and tell me what happened.”
Harper sat in the lush chair in front of the library fireplace while Lady Bell poured her a cup of tea.
Harper stared at the fire. It crackled and sang, the same song that Meg heard in the sea beneath The Mary Clarence, the same song that her mother heard as a girl on the shores of Bell Island, the last song that carried them to the bottom of the Atlantic, away from the burning wreckage of their ship.
“You’re going through it, aren’t you?” Lady Bell said gently as she set a cup of tea next to Harper.
“I had a dream of my father, and my mother,” Harper said softly, staring at the fire.
“Sweet Kristín, she was kind, and smart, and funny, and prettier than anyone has a right to be,” Lady Bell said with a smile.
“You knew her?” Harper said with surprise, breaking her gaze from the fire to look into Lady Bell’s amber eyes. “I mean, of course you would know her. Everyone knows each other here.”
Lady Bell sipped her tea. “I did. We went to school together. She was a bit younger than I was, and smarter than all of us put together. I wasn’t surprised when she left for college straight away and never came back.
But Bell calls to its own, and you are your mother’s daughter.
Your grandparents were my friends as well.
I am so very sorry you never had the chance to meet them.
You are Bell too, your blood is here, your soul roots. Those things are eternal.”
“I stopped myself from remembering so much. I locked so much away after … after I lost them.” Harper’s voice cracked and she swallowed hard.
“But it’s coming back, isn’t it?” Lady Bell said softly.
“A félagsráegjafi, a social worker in the States … she told me that their boat exploded, a gas leak ignited by a loose spark, a freak accident. She said they were gone instantly. There were no bodies at the funeral. They sent me back to school afterward and it was just supposed to be over, just like that. I didn’t have any other family.
I snuck out and caught a bus from Grindavik to Vik.
I hiked all the way to Reynisfjara.” Harper stared at the fire and chuckled darkly at the memory of her thirteen-year-old self in her parka and wellies, trudging along the well-worn path across the Icelandic countryside.
“I stood in the black sand and watched the ocean. I didn’t even cry.
I didn’t cry.” Harper looked at Lady Bell plaintively, the tears she had held then building in her throat.
“Why there?” Lady Bell asked.
“The basalt pillars, the ones you see in all the pictures of Reynisfjara, they are said to be dark elves who were caught in the sun and turned to stone. We used to go there on holiday and my father used to tell us that story at night. He’d say that the sea cavern where the dark elves live was sitting empty, waiting to be discovered, and if we were lucky, one day we might find that cave, and the secrets to the sea.
” Harper could hear her father’s deep voice, and a twisted smile found her lips as she remembered.
“I was in so much trouble when I got back. But it was where I wanted to say goodbye—this place where the waves could carry you away in a heartbeat. I suppose I wanted to join them. Even then, I think I could feel Bell anchoring me here, though I didn’t have the words for it then. ”
“And now you’re here,” Lady Bell said gently.
“And now I’m here,” Harper repeated softly.
“You’ve found your anchor.”
Harper gave a small nod and closed her eyes.
The waking dream flashed before her eyes—the men, the words, the motorboat disappearing into the distance, the outline of the Bell shore.
She looked up, the images swirling in her mind’s eye.
“I can’t tell what’s the now and what is the then, and what I might be imagining entirely. ”
Lady Bell simply nodded. “You’re the only one who can find your way through that maze. But you need to trust yourself, follow your instincts.”
Harper gazed into the fire, the smell of Earl Grey mixing with the pine of the fireplace and the ancient musk of the books that surrounded them.
One absolute truth was clear in her mind.
She was home, and whether it was the manor or the village, she would never leave Bell Island as long as she lived.