Saundra Mitchell - Mistwalker

“Willa, I’m—”

“I said get out!”

I may as well have slapped Seth, because he couldn’t have looked more wounded. But he didn’t have a right to be sad and sorry in my direction. He wasn’t gonna cry. The only time he misted up was at the end of war movies, when it was clear that everybody was going to make it home or nobody was.

His spine straightened. Seth slid back into the truck and dropped both hands on the wheel. He could see me glaring at him, waiting for him to go. Finally, he reached for the key. “This isn’t what I wanted.”

“Well, this is what you bought.”

Hiding under my hurt was sympathy. Or compassion. Whatever it is you feel when someone you love is in pain. Didn’t matter that I was part of it, or that he’d brought it on himself.

Because I could trace it all back: I was being a pain in the ass. And I was a pain in the ass because I’d done a terrible thing. So that explained why I was a bitch, and why Seth needed somebody sweet. None of that excused it. Nobody made him open the passenger-side door for Denny Ouelette. That was all on him.

So I watched Seth drive away. I stood in the middle of the street doing it too. Under my breath, I swore I’d be fine.

A fragile, just-been-shattered layer moved under my skin. It’s exhaustion, I told myself. I was tired and cold, and I wasn’t going to break down in the middle of Thaxter Street.

I was breaking down in the middle of Thaxter Street. I was the one making those awful, animal sounds. My belly wrenched, and my throat clamped shut. It wasn’t a pretty cry, a crystal tear slipping down my cheek. It was crying like vomiting. There was no fighting it; it came up on its own.

Seth and Bailey were my constants. My anchors, twin points that came together to be my north. I didn’t know how to be without them. When I looked up, all I saw was the nothing coming. The future where Seth drove around with other girls and Bailey went off to college and never came home.

That same future with an empty place at the dinner table, and half as many Christmas presents under the tree. The one where I stood on land and watched the tide go out without me.

Nick was wrong. July twenty-third wasn’t over.

And it wasn’t ever going to be.

Defeated, I walked inside. I heard a TV upstairs, and I followed the sound. Down the hall to my parents’ bedroom, I peeked around the door. My mother sat propped against the headboard.

A crossword puzzle book lay in her lap, her place kept with a ballpoint pen. She didn’t look at me, but she knew I was there. She patted the place beside her.

I didn’t ask where Daddy was. I didn’t want to know, and since she was sitting up late, she probably didn’t have an answer.

Sliding in beside her, I fit my head in the crook of her shoulder. Somebody else’s cigarette smoke clung to her skin, half met by the scent of her soap.

“How was the party?”

“It sucked.”

She hummed a reply. Trailing her hand over my hair, she started untangling it. It was an idle touch. One that moved because her body knew how to do it. Maybe we were all stuck.

Those thoughts didn’t get far. They crashed into the numb that spread through me. It started at the top of my head and drifted ’til I knew I had toes but couldn’t feel them.

Even my voice sounded detached. Mumbling against Mom’s shoulder, I said, “I thought you hated this show.”

“I do.”

It was on for the sound. Or the company. It was on because the house was too quiet. It was always too quiet now.

Squeezing my eyes closed, I burrowed closer to her. I wanted to be ten again. When I could lay my head in her lap and every bad thing slipped away. She combed her fingers through my hair then, too. She used to cure a bad day with idle touches while she read a magazine or watched shows she did like. I wanted it to work again.

“Seth could have come in,” she said.

I froze. Did she know he’d been sitting in the driveway? An ugly, tangled knot filled my throat. It choked me, and I wished for ten years old again. Tikki-tikki-tembo, Seth Ar-sham-bow: that was the worst of my problems then.

It was a relief when she added, “I know it’s a small town, but I feel better knowing he’s driving you back and forth from these parties.”

Shock and tears and all kinds of God-awful feelings threatened to spill out of me. It was on my tongue to tell her we broke up, but I bit down instead.

She’d want to know why. I’d have to dissect it. Sugar-sweet Denny Ouelette being mixed up in it would piss her off. But she wouldn’t understand just how deep that cut went. Maybe she’d think it was my fault. Nick did. Daddy did.

Strangling myself on all that, I shrugged. Made myself sound normal. “He had to get home.”

Swirling her fingers, she started at the crown of my head again. “All right.”

“He said hey.”

“Next time you see him, tell him I say hey back.”

With a nod, I agreed to carry that message. For a second, my life was normal again. Cuddled up with my mom, the TV playing on. Her fingers in my hair; a distracted message to carry like always. Normal. I had to lie to get there, to myself and my mother, and the whole world.

But it was better than falling apart, piece by piece.

I melt into mist so it will heed my call. I gather it, from the sky, from the sea. I wind it tight and pull it close.

This is my purpose, after all. I am the lord of nothing but the mist. It’s mine to bend as I will—to bring salvation or destruction. All these years, I’ve held it at a distance. Felt its liquid ache instead of my own blood.

Now I need it. It spills across the water, then rises. It undulates, a living thing. Shadows swirl within it, it makes new shadows. Strange lights reflect in it, exploded to a silvery glow. One by one, the streetlights in town blink out.

The houses huddle before they’re swallowed. The cliffs fade—though they’re greater than mist and refuse to disappear completely. There’s always something greater, something larger—I wonder if there’s some earthcaller out there, wondering what’s happened to herself. If she’s cursed to raise the dust—but somehow, I can’t picture it.

Though my wishes never revealed every detail of the curse, it grants me folklore. Myths. I have books upon books upon books. There’s a Grey Man on Pawleys Island in South Carolina, but he’s only a harbinger. He warns of hurricanes, nothing more. The Irish have far liath, but they abound and care nothing for souls. They seek no release.

I’m alone. Again, more than I was before. I’m taunted; that makes me lonely. I run mad.

So I retreat to the only power I have. I call it all, I bid it come. I beg it stretch the whole length of my light. The air is nearly solid now, a shroud that falls over my island and her village at the same time.

She’s blotted out now, and I can rest.

I didn’t have to ditch school again. It was canceled because of the fog.

Thick and cold, it clung to the streets. Sunrise didn’t cut it; neither did headlights. Every thirty seconds, the foghorn blared in the distance. It echoed through the haze, alien and removed. I lingered by the front door, listening to the radio going in the kitchen.

“. . . confluence creating a dew point higher than usual,” a mechanical voice droned.

The Weather Service had a bot, and they could program it to say anything. It was the voice of the fleet—Mom used to call it Dad’s Girlfriend. Dad’s Girlfriend is calling for rough seas today. Dad’s Girlfriend says we’re waiting for a nor’easter, better buy milk and bread.