CHAPTER 5
She collected some fresh supplies—at a certain point in the month, as it got further and further from her last supply shipment, she lived almost exclusively on tinned food and fish, so she was not about to pass up this opportunity for something fresh—before heading to the docks with Mr. Wilson to get the boat.
After a little bit of small talk, he saw her off, waving to her until he was just a speck.
It was an easy enough ride back, even if her muscles ached from all the rowing the night before.
The sea was different today, like a different entity entirely, and though it was still a bit choppy, it didn’t even slightly resemble what she had seen the night before.
She was glad it didn’t; otherwise she might have had to stay with Lionel and his wife for she did not think she had the strength to fight like that again so soon.
She’d have to start rowing more often so she would never be caught off guard again.
It was late afternoon by the time she returned back, and after eating some of the biscuits Rose had packed for her, she lit the light and started her watch.
---
The next day the sea looked strange to her as she sipped her morning tea. It looked strange as she ate the last of the biscuits. It looked strange as she polished the glass of the light and fixed a crack near the foundation. It just looked strange.
There was nothing she could pick out specifically though.
The color was normal, a deep turquoise blue.
The waves were back to being friendly and rhythmic.
The gulls floated lazily overhead. Fish jumped.
Pelicans swooped. Dolphins played, and the water sparkled as it dashed against her favorite rocks. Everything was as it should be.
Except that it wasn’t.
She couldn’t unsee those sailors’ faces.
She couldn’t help but want to turn her head from the shoreline lest she see their broken bodies.
She knew the sea was unkind and demanding.
That was one of the rules of nature and she had seen it play out a thousand times with the birds and the fish and the whales.
She knew Father had lost men before. Hell, she had too.
Sailors she rescued would list missing men in the hopes that miraculously they had survived and would be found.
She knew they never were. And though she knew she had saved over twenty, she dared not think how many she had unknowingly lost.
The only reason that she could imagine for why this time was different was that she had seen their faces and heard their voices.
Or perhaps it was because her own survival had been so unlikely, so improbable, that it seemed unfair that she should live and they should die.
And now, staring at her closest—and really only—friend, the sea, she felt… betrayed.
The realization came slowly and it felt ridiculous.
What right did she have to be mad at the sea after all it had given her?
How could she be mad at something for its own tumultuous nature?
That was how the sea was. It churned and it changed, never the same from day to day and never leaving what it touched the same either.
But why would it let her live and not the others? It made no sense and it actually hurt to think about. For even if she considered the sea her friend, she knew it didn’t think the same. It should have been as impartial to her as to them, so why, why, had it claimed them and not her?
She wondered if the guilt she would have felt if she had not gone out would have been the same as this. The result was certainly the same, but she imagined if she hadn’t stepped up when needed, she would have never been able to face this lighthouse or the sea again.
So now all she had to face was the haunting ghosts that lived in her memories.
She circled her small rocky island and forced herself to face her discomfort and look out to the sea in search for bodies. The island sat some twenty-plus feet above the water level, giving her a good view out over the distant shore.
She saw nothing at first. Nothing. As if ten men hadn’t lost their lives just some hours ago. As if the sea had not become their murderer. And their grave.
But nature was even crueler than killers. Unlike them, it wouldn’t remember these men—or her—at all. No matter how much time she spent with it or how often she spoke to it or sang to its waves, it would forget her the moment she was gone. And it wouldn’t even miss her. What a faithless friend.
So why had it saved her?
She believed in God as much as any man should, but still, she reckoned it had to be the sea, not angels or the Lord’s own hand that had saved her.
Somehow she must have drifted to shore…all the while keeping her head above those fifteen-foot waves and timing her breath just so when they pummeled her?
No. It didn’t make sense. Maybe it was angels.
She froze. There was something in the water.
Something light. Something about the length of a human.
It was under the water maybe a foot—which really made all too much sense considering she expected only bodies—and it was moving.
Moving? Yes, somehow, it seemed to be moving steadily southward, faster than a current would usually take it.
She couldn’t think of any animal that dragged its prey like that, especially dead prey. But she couldn’t think of any other reason either.
She found herself heading to her father’s boat without any real knowledge of why.
Yes, it was heading toward the lighthouse, and given its speed and how fast she could row, she was sure she could intercept it, but did she want to intercept such a beast?
If it really was something dragging human prey, she hardly wanted to be nearby lest her freshness tempt it otherwise.
But she was already rowing. What could it be? she wondered. She hadn’t seen anything like it, not in the twenty-three years she’d been staring at the sea. She couldn’t just let it go.
So doing what she was sure the clerk had warned her about this very morning—acting recklessly—she paddled harder.
Maybe it was dumb. Hell, maybe the fishers were right and she was, but she had to know, and if the best scenario was that she’d find a body, well, so be it.
Though she didn’t relish the idea of touching a dead man, she was sure his family would be thankful he wouldn’t become fish food.
But once she had paddled out to where she thought she should be to intercept, she saw absolutely nothing. Even standing on the wooden beam of the seat, she saw nothing odd in these waters at all, nothing human shaped, nothing white.
Sighing, she sat down. Had she imagined it? Unlikely. She had hit her head certainly, but she wasn’t crazy—or at least not crazier than normal. She had seen something, but if it was some sort of animal, she supposed it wasn’t surprising that her boat and her rowing had scared it away.
Sighing harder, she looked back to the lighthouse and was swept away with a wave of melancholy.
It wasn’t far—maybe a quarter mile or so—but it looked small while the ocean hadn’t changed its size at all.
No, the ocean was looming, endless, overwhelming, like it would swallow her without needing to chew, like it could break her without needing to even move.
She had never felt this way before. She’d always known its expansiveness—it was one of the things she loved about the sea for she had loved how it showed the world was full of limitless possibilities and discoveries—but it had never made her subsequently feel small.
Not before. But now it did. Now she felt like a turtle facing down a lion—or perhaps a dragon—and she was sure to lose.
She let out a bitter laugh. How ridiculous, to let one night sway her so. It was still the same ocean. She was still the same girl. Nothing should have changed.
How funny that should have’s so rarely happened.
She leaned over the edge to stare into the water—she refused to be afraid of the only thing that gave her comfort—and gasped so hard she stumbled backward.
There was a face—a ghostlike face with white, nearly translucent hair.
It hovered an inch below the surface like a spirit trapped in a mirror longing to be free.
Her mind told her she had seen it last night, and then like a flash she remembered red eyes staring back at her seconds before the darkness hit.
She didn’t have long to remember nor had her luck seemed to improve for in her recoil, she staggered back, her foot caught something, her weight flung her sideways, the boat tipped, and once again, she was unwillingly in her beloved sea.