Ashes on the Waves (33 page)

Hearken! and observe how healthily—how calmly I can tell you the whole story.

—Edgar Allan Poe,
from “The Tell-Tale Heart,” 1843

N
umb, I sank into the chair by the window, the very one in which I had imagined my mother reading.

“She came here to save me,” Miss Ronan said, folding the paper and returning it to her pocket. “We grew up in an educated and powerful clan t怅hat resides far up the Canadian coast. More and more of my pod were turning from the old ways and adopting the easier, simple life of the seal.”

She grabbed several books and shoved them to the floor. “This troubled my father, who was their leader. Being the oldest of his offspring, I went in search of an island we’d heard of on which the villagers still honored the Otherworlders. Once it was found, I would return and lead my people to it.”

She laughed, and my stomach churned at her crazed demeanor.

“Fine dream,” she said. Another pile of books hit the floor. “When I arrived, I saw a human male on the jetty—a fine, strong, beautiful male who intended to throw himself into the sea. The Na Fir Ghorm, of course, were there to help him with this effort. I shed my pelt and kept him from destroying himself.”

The look on her face softened as she stared out the window. “Never had there been so tragic a creature. He had lost his beautiful wife and was completely broken. I thought I could fix him.”

The sharpness returned to her voice. “I lived with him for several years and fell hopelessly in love with him, thinking he returned my love.” She flung a stack of books from the shelf. “He didn’t.”

My muscles tensed. She was surely on the brink of insanity.

“I longed to return to my pod, but he had found and hidden my pelt, which made me his prisoner.” Another pile of books hit the floor. “Years later, my dear sister came in search of me, fearing rightfully that I had been captured. My father sent with her an amulet bestowed on our pod by Manannán mac Lir himself that gave the wearer immortality to use if either of us needed it.”

She leaned against the desk, staring over my head as if she were witnessing the events as she recalled them. “I should have sent her away the moment she arrived, but I was overjoyed to see her. As we embraced by the sea, Frank took her pelt from where she had abandoned it at the water’s edge.”

I held my breath as she cleared several more shelves with terrible violence.

“He told me he did it for
me.
He wanted me to have company, and being in love with him, I believed him. He let us spend time together and we were happy. She told me all about my family and we talked about what it would be like when we returned to them. I had dreams to escape this island.” Her eyes met mine. “Just like you do.”

She rolled a ladder attached to a brass rail at the top of the bookcases to the next bank of shelves and climbed it. “He moved her from my room to the one next to it telling me it was so that he could be with me at night again.” She shoved half of the shelf off and the books crashed to the floor, startling me enough to cause me to jump to my feet. “But he never came to me.” More books cascaded down. “He went to her instead. But she didn’t want him.” She slumped against the ladder. “I could hear her screams through the wall. I tried to get in to help her, but the door was locked.”

After several shaky breaths, she moved down the ladder to the next shelf. I took a couple of steps closer to the door.

“The next morning, he began calling her by his dead wife’s surname, MacGregor. He told me if I tried to interfere again, he would kill her. He told her that if she ever screamed or resisted him, he would kill me.” A tear rolled down her cheek. “She never uttered another word from that day forward.”

She cleared that shelf and the one under it, not speaking.

“What are you looking for?”

“Her pelt.” She rolled the ladder aside and emptied the one at eye level. “The note you found was the clue to where she hid it.”

“I thought Frank took it.”

“He did, but he got sloppy. He fell in love with her the way I had fallen in love with him. One day he insisted on painting her wearing her pelt over her shoulders and she saw where he hid it. She later recovered it and stashed it where he would not find it.”

She took several books and slammed them on the desk. “She wouldn’t leave. I begged her to go, but she remained because of me.” She kicked some books out of her way. “She offered her pelt to me, but there was no way I could leave her with him. It was my fault she was his prisoner.”

I tried to recall the wording from the paper, but couldn’t. “What makes you think it’s in here?”

“The clue on the note, but it’s hard to believe. I don’t think she was ever in this room alone. He always came with her. And he locked her in her room at night.”

She knocked the books off the next shelf down.

“What exactly does the note say?” I asked.

“It is where my spirit found escape,”
Miss Ronan recited from memory. “This is the only place she found escape. Through these books.”

Again, I imagined her reading in the chair near the window. I studied it from where I stood near the door. It was the only soft surface in the room. It was certainly where she would have read and found escape. Ronan was thinking too broadly.

As she continued to unload the shelves, I made my way casually back to the chair and stared out the window. I didn’t want to help her to find the pelt, but I wanted to locate it in case it could be used as a bargaining tool. I was certain she was behind Frank’s murder and perhaps my mother’s as well.

“What happened next?” I asked, hoping she was still in a talkative disposition.

“She came up pregnant, of course.” She shoved books out of her way with her foot. “Frank was pleased. So pleased, he lavished her with gifts. Then he got word the family was coming. He was only allowed to stay here by their good graces. He was afraid they would discover what he had done and throw him out, so he asked me to move her from the mansion temporarily until the season was over. I was thrilled to do so because it got her away from him.”

I lowered myself into the chair as she moved the ladder to the next bank of shelves.

She climbed several rungs. “He sent for her at the onset of the weather because he knew the family would not come back until spring.” Miss Ronan gave a sharp laugh. “She refused to come back. He could not have her bodily removed without the villagers figuring out what had happened. They believed she had been fired because of her unfortunate condition, and he was worried they would tell the family somehow. He was forced to leave her there.”

When I was sure she wasn’t watching, I ran my fingers under the edge of the seat. Sure enough, there was a torn spot.

“When her time came to have the baby, she tried to get to me but only made it as far as the edge of the woods. I heard her screams from the porch. I ran as fast as I could, but by the time I reached her, it was too late. She spoke to me for the first time since that horrible day and she begged me to save you. So I did, p. So I draying you were Selkie, but you weren’t.”

She turned her back to climb the rest of the way up the ladder. I stuck my fingers in the hole in the lining under the chair and felt silky fur within. The pelt had been stuffed into the cushion from underneath.

“You were in there wrong and wouldn’t come out,” she said, “which is why she died. Once she no longer lived, I had no other choice. I did what it took to get you out.”

I put my hand in my lap. “So you made the claw marks, not me.”

She said nothing as she dumped the contents of another shelf.

I stood. “I’m not a demon, you are.”

Still on the ladder, she twisted to face me. “No. You are the worst kind of demon. You are a sickening reminder of what he did. His evil has passed straight down to you and I won’t allow him the joy of ever seeing your face. You even look like him.”

She turned away and grasped the ladder, sobbing.

A horrible realization hit me and tingles crawled under the surface of my skin. He was still alive somewhere in this house. “Where is he?”

“I don’t know!” she screamed.

I backed toward the door. “What happened?”

She climbed down the ladder and grabbed twisted finials on the back of the desk chair. “Sometimes it’s impossible to stop loving someone. No matter how horrible he is, you just can’t stop.”

She sat in the chair and buried her face in her hands. After some deep breaths to compose herself, she continued. “Six years after my sister died, it was clear he didn’t love me and would never love me, despite my feelings for him. I offered him the amulet in exchange for my pelt. Immortality for freedom.” She took a shuddering breath. “He then informed me that he had destroyed my pelt.”

She folded her hands in front of her on the desk, the distant, crazed look returning. “I planned my revenge for weeks, waiting for the famil
y to leave.” She met my eyes. “That’s the summer you met Anna.”

After pulling several hairpins from her unraveled twist and dropping them on the inky surface of the mahogany desk, she ran her hands through her hair. “I put him in a place where he would long for the light the way I yearned for the sea. I would leave him in there as long as he had held me captive to that point. Thirteen years.”

She was undoubtedly mad and capable of terrible acts. Fear flooded my body in a nauseating rush as the implications of her insanity crystallized. “Where is Anna?” I whispered.

As if I hadn’t spoken, she continued. “I made a bargain with the Na Fir Ghorm. If they would lock him up in a place with no light for thirteen years, I would do their bidding for the duration.” She laughed and stood. “With the amulet on, he could not die. He could only suffer . . . like me.” Purposefully, she rounded the desk and stopped right in front of me. “Like you.”

I grabbed her arm and gave her a shake. “Where is Anna?”

“She’s sleeping,” she calmly replied.

Staring into her glazed eyes, I had no doubt she had fallen into madness. “Where?”

She remained completely calm—eerily and unnaturally detached. “Something happened in the night and she never awoke. The priest came this morning and they buried her in the family crypt behily cryptnd the house.”

And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side

Of my darling—my darling—my life and

my bride,

In her sepulchre there by the sea—

In her tomb by the sounding sea.

—Edgar Allan Poe,
from “Annabel Lee,” 1849

I
shoved Miss Ronan away and sprinted to the front doors, ripping them open as the pain ripped my heart apart. I ran around the corner of the house and past the fountain to the back side of the mansion. I’d never been behind the structure.

Three crypts stood side by side. All three structures were constructed from slabs of weathered white marble with thick, arched iron doors that overlapped, meeting in a sharp point. Heavy locks held the doors in place. Carved angels in various stages of mourning stared down in mock empathy from the apexes of the crypts’ roofs.

“Anna!” I screamed, mindlessly yanking the doors of the first structure and then the second. “Anna!”

Flowers lay strewn on the step of the third one. Lilies. She had to be in there. I pounded my fist on the doors and they clanged under my blows. “Anna!”

Terror-induced delirium collided with my rational thought, driving reason into oblivion. Surely this was a nightmare from which I would awaken at any moment. Anna had been fine when I last saw her. The doctor said she was going to be well in a few days. I banged on the doors again as if I expected her to rise from death and throw them open from within.

My Anna was inside the crypt, locked away from me.

Dead.

I’d never hear her voice or her laugh. Never touch her body or breathe in her lily scent again. I slumped down, laying my cheek against the cool metal door of her tomb. “Anna,” I whispered.

The sea wind gusted and a gull called from overhead as if the world, unlike my heart, had not just shattered into millions of irretrievable fragments.

“A craftsman will be flown in to carve her name next week,” Miss Ronan said from behind me.

It was impossible to breathe. My thoughts whirled in an incoherent tangle through my brain.

“This was where Frank was to be laid to rest,” she said. “Suiting, don’t you think?”

Suiting? I stumbled to my feet, discordant rage pounding at my brain, begging me to grab her. To hurt her. “You’re behind this. You killed her, didn’t you? You’re in with them on this wager?”

She held up her hands. “No. I didn’t kill her. Otherworlders are forbidden to kill humans.” She shook her head. “I warned you, didn’t I? I didn’t kill her, you did. With your selfishness. I told you to stay away, but you just kept coming back.”

The rage subsided, displaced by a sorrow that caused my body to ache as if I’d been thrown against the rocks by the waves. A sob welled up in my throat. If only Anna had stayed in New York. “Who has the key?” I asked. “I need to see her.”

Miss Ronan turned and headed away, loose hair whipping in the sea wind.

“I have to see her!” I shouted to her back, unable to move. When she disappeared around the corner of the house, I slumped down on the marble stoop, no longer able to stand.

My misery was all consuming, reaching deep within and ravaging everything in its path. No part of me, body or mind, was spared from its devastating power. The pain had no ebb or flow. It was a constant ever-increasing knell in my chest, timed to the beating of my broken heart. “Anna,” I whispered again.

Too overcome to move, I remained huddled at her crypt door begging death to take me as well. But death was deaf to my suffering, and so I remained like this until well into the night.

Lying on my back, I could imagine Anna looking down at me from the stars that winked between clearings in the night clouds.

“Anna!” I screamed to the sky.

I rolled in a ball on my side, fighting the pain in my chest that threatened to rip me apart.

“Liam.”

It was faint and sounded as if it rose from the very earth itself. I was dreaming awake. “I love you,” I whispered. A tear made its way to the ground under my cheek.

“Liam,” her voice called again from my foggy imagination.

“Yes, I’ll be there soon,” I answered.

* * *

“We should not have moved the girl,” one of the Na Fir Ghorm said.

“Shut up,” the leader replied. “Ronan will now be indebted to us again. She was very useful in helping us with the wager.”

Muireann shot to the surface, gulped air, and returned to the cave opening.

She missed the first part of what one of them said, but it ended with, “He still loves her, so we have lost anyway.”

“It isn’t over,” said the leader. “When we send the Selkie this time, he will have no reason to resist. Human lust will dissolve any love that remains. He thinks her dead.”

This was totally news to Muireann. She had seen the flying machines come and go delivering and taking strangers away, but she had no idea what had occurred. So it seemed Anna wasn’t dead, but Liam thought she was and the Na Fir Ghorm had moved her somewhere. Where?

“Why didn’t you retrieve the amulet?” the leader asked.

“We needed to get in and out as quickly as possible. Crossing the beach in daylight is risky. We almost couldn’t move the boulder even with all of us pushing. We called, but the male locked within didn’t answer. It was too dark to see inside. We just put the girl in the pit and sealed it back up before Brigid Ronan’s sleeping potion wore off.”

“Go find the Selkie,” the leader said. “We’re sending her up again.”

Muireann bolted as far away from the cave as possible. She needed to get to Liam and tell him what she knew. She surfaced and took a deep breath. The full moon gave her a clear view of the large dwelling. Most of the lights were off.

And then she saw him. As if in a daze, he stumbled along the trail toward the jetty.

She darte-1">She d along the edge of the rocks, barking. He didn’t even look over at her.

Tripping and falling, he made his way over the jetty toward the end. She needed to transform to get his attention but was certain she wouldn’t be able to climb on the jagged, slippery rocks with her human legs.

She swam to the end and waited, knowing that would be her best chance. Hopefully, he wouldn’t plunge off the side before he reached her.

* * *

A shooting pain seared the flesh of my calf when I lost my footi
ng again and slammed into the sharp edge of a rock. I just needed to make it to the end of the jetty. Then I would be with her. “Anna!” I shouted. This time, I didn’t hear her faint call in return.

Finally, I reached the end. “Anna!” I shouted again. I stumbled to a rock closer to the water. It would be awful to only knock myself unconscious and not make it to the sea. I was determined to never wake up without her again.

“Stop!” a girl’s voice called. “Liam, no!”

I teetered on the edge of the rock, taking a step back to check my fall. Shaking my head to clear it, I focused on Muireann’s face. She had half transformed and shouted to me from the water. “Anna’s not dead. Do you hear me?”

Another trick by an Otherworlder. She was probably in on the wager too. I moved back to the edge of the rock near the water.

“No! Liam. Brigid Ronan gave her a sleeping potion. She’s not dead. They moved her to another location.”

As if slapped in the face, I sobered from my stupor. “Where?”

“I don’t know. They called it a pit. It was in a cave under the house.”

Every sensation was heightened as adrenaline coursed through me, pushing the misery aside and replacing it with hope. “Can you help me?”

“Yes!” she said. “I’ll meet you on the beach where the two of you were bonded.”