Saundra Mitchell - Mistwalker

Was it? I’m still not sure what has changed, but I’ll have plenty of time to puzzle it out. She’s here now. She wants an answer; she wants something from me, and I have to give it to her. Reaching past her, I take the box and lift its lid. A few notes linger in the drum. “She Moved Through the Fair,” of course. How could I forget?

“I want to hear you say it,” I tell her, and offer the box again.

Wary, she doesn’t reach for it. Much wiser than Persephone; she knows not to take gifts from the Underworld. But my curse isn’t contained in gifts or pomegranate seeds. She gives me what I need anyway, the first turn of the key. Something personal. Her name.

I will make her love me.

I didn’t believe in the Grey Man, and I did. Something, somebody, stood in front of me. With my own eyes, I saw him come up out of the fog.

He brushed past me, and I tried to get a better look. Up close, his skin was skin, his hair was hair. It cascaded down his back like a wedding veil. Its silky wash finished in haze. Curls of mist trailed on all his edges. His fingers. His collar. His lips, when they moved.

“Forgive me,” he said. “Can I get you some tea? It’s been so long since I’ve had a caller.”

“I don’t really drink tea.”

He turned back to me. “Coffee? Cocoa?”

“I don’t—”

“Then come sit by the fire with me.”

When he waved his hand, I saw a doorway I hadn’t seen before. A vibration ran through the music boxes. Ghostly notes murmured, running all the way around the room before stopping. Grey walked away, and the weight melted off me. I didn’t want to be alone in this place.

The lighthouse was like the Tardis: bigger on the inside. It didn’t make sense to have a foyer filled up with music boxes and then a doorway out of nowhere to another round room, but there it was. Warmth poured from it, and it smelled good. Fresh bread and cinnamon. Vanilla.

Neat stacks of dishes glinted from uneven shelves. Brass pots dangled from a rack overhead. On one wall, an old-fashioned stove, black and potbellied, took up the space.

Grey pulled it open with a hook, then threw a couple of sticks of wood inside. He moved like liquid, flowing through the kitchen. His fingers swirled around a dark brown tin. They pooled around a spoon handle.

He was pearly white—not pale pink, not even goth pale. And as weird as that was, what distracted me was his posture. When he stood, he held his shoulders back and his jaw straight. Nobody I knew stood like that. We were all bent over from hauling gear and pulling bloodworms. But even in magazines and movies, nobody stood like that, not that I’d ever seen.

“Two cups or one?” he asked.

“You’re seriously making cocoa?”

From a box along the wall, he lifted a pitcher. Condensation clung to the porcelain. It streamed down the sides when he touched it. Pouring milk into a saucepan, he glanced up at me.

“Am I very serious? I could cheerfully make it, if you like.”

It took me a second to realize he wasn’t joking. Smoothing my hand across the table, I sank into a chair. “How long have you been out here?”

“One hundred years,” he said. He put the pitcher aside and reached for a wooden spoon. “Since 1913.”

It was too precise, that answer. If somebody asked me how long I’d lived in Broken Tooth, I’d have said all my life. Or about seventeen years. Or a while. And he was supposed to be a thing. A creature or something. Maybe a revenant. Fanning my fingers on the table, I said, “Can’t be. My granddad told me about the Grey Lady, and he heard about her from his dad.”

Stirring the milk, Grey raised his eyes to meet mine. They were crazy dark; not brown, no pupils. Almost smudges that went on forever, staring past me, or worse, through me.

“That was my predecessor.” He gestured at his clothes: vest, jacket, tie. “As you can see, I’m hardly a lady.”

My throat tightened. He had rules. Logic. It peeled the soft, curious numbness from me. It hurt, almost, like a skinned knee. I felt too full, trying to make sense out of something that should have been impossible.

Back when the world was flat, sailors fell in love with mermaids. They threw themselves into the water and drowned trying to get to them. But those mermaids were just manatees, fat and fleshy. They looked like finned women at a distance, if you’d been out to sea too long, if you couldn’t remember what a real girl looked like.

Isn’t that what they saw? Manatees? Fantasies? I wasn’t sure anymore.

Grey slid a mug in front of me. Chocolate dust puffed over the rim when he poured the hot milk in. “Stir it quickly, unless you like lumps.”

A little bit of hysterical laughter caught in my throat. This was crazy, sitting down having some hot cocoa with the Grey Man, chatting about his past. Suddenly, my heart raced, running so fast I felt lightheaded. Pushing the chair back, I got to my feet and backed toward the door.

“I musta hit my head.”

Grey put the saucepan aside. “Then rest.”

My body recoiled. All my muscles went tight. My spine felt like glass, and my stomach rebelled at the idea of lying down here. Staying here. The music boxes hummed as I hurried past them. “Thanks, but I’m thinking I should go home.”

Suddenly, Grey was in front of me. But instead of stopping me, he opened the door. Pressing his body against it, he stood there, waiting for me to step outside. When I passed him, I shivered. I felt him; he was solid. But he was cool and soft, too . . . like walking into fog.

“Don’t you want something from me?” he asked.

Barely down the steps, I stumbled, then righted myself. His voice was a whisper. It slipped into my ear, twisting through my head. All good days, no bad weather, I thought. I pressed my lips together to keep that wish from getting out. To answer him, I shook my head.

He didn’t follow. He didn’t even reach for me. The dark smudges of his eyes were wells of sadness, an uncontained grief spilling over. That made his smile, faint as it was, frightening. “Go if you must.”

The path through the trees opened as I bolted for them. I didn’t know what I was running from. The island or myself; a bad dream. A bad trip. But not him, because somehow, my skin and bones both knew he wouldn’t follow. As I tripped and stumbled my way through the brush, I clapped a hand over my mouth.

I was afraid I would talk out loud. Ask for magic. Beg for that good season, and I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to stop myself. If he was real, he would hear.

The panic in my head howled, screaming rules for superstition at me. Genies took your wishes the worst kind of literal. Faeries were monsters; I needed a piece of iron. I needed to get myself together.

When the tree line opened to the shore, I skidded on the stones. My tennis shoes were slick, and I hit the ground hard. Lungs clamping down, I lay there, hurting, not breathing. The ground was so cold, the stones sharp. When I pushed onto hands and knees, a warm ribbon of blood flowed down my arm. Shivering, I raised my head.

There, in the parted mist, was the boat. Waiting for me. No mistake about it. My name flickered on the stern, kissed by cold October seas. I stood and looked back. The fog had filled in behind me. It was a wall, grey and impenetrable. If he was watching me, I’d never know.

Except I did know. I felt it. I felt him, a nagging sensation, like a stone in my shoe. Squeezing my eyes closed, I stepped into the boat and prayed all the way home.

My phone was burning up. As soon as I set foot on the mainland, it chirped for about a minute straight.

Texts popped up one after the other, and a missed call. Where are you? Are you there? Hey! Are you ignoring me?Those were from Bailey, and then two from Seth that both said, Are you there?Missed call, missed call, then my mom all in caps: COME HOME RIGHT NOW.