He was going to a lot of trouble to set everything up. He must really love her, or think he does.
I hear footsteps on the deck. I’d best go and greet her…
The rest of the page was empty.
I guess that’s understandable. What man would interrupt an evening of love making to record it in a book?
A book that others might eventually read.
Yawning, Grace turned the page. It was written in the same style script, but the lines wiggled, as if the author could not properly hold a pen, or a quill—given the dates. This entry was dated 11 December 1814 and notated Early Morning.
The moon is setting, and I am having some difficulty controlling the quill.
Wait, what’d happened with him and his lover?
Did she stay?
Will she marry you?
How could he not write about that, at least after the fact?
If someone had told me yesterday, I’d live a cursed existence, I’d not have believed them. Today, I must believe. I watched as Mawu, a woman who evidently loved me—I did not love her—laid down her curse, stabbed herself, and used her bloody blade to inflict equally gruesome wounds on the gris gris she’d made of me. I saw the blood of the wounds given the VooDoo doll appear on my shirt, but no wound appeared on my body. I felt weak and was forced to crawl into my bed while my brother and first mate dealt with the dying woman. I know not, what happened to Grainne, who after so many years, had finally found me and yielded to my pleas of undying love. I write this now little more than one day after those events. I can see the quill move, the ink forming letters, but I cannot see my hand. I looked in the mirror earlier but saw no reflection. Yet, I’ve felt hunger, and sorrow, and a fear beyond any I’ve ever known. I’ve felt intense pain too, as if I’m being torn in two directions at once.
How can I grip this quill without seeing the hand that holds it? How can I be alive but not have a body? How can I ache in every bone and sinew when I don’t exist?
“Impossible,” she whispered. Grace wasn’t yawning now.
This book had to be a fake. Why hadn’t she taken it to New Orleans for appraisal?
Because she’d thought the book was adding to her stress, making her crazy.
She turned the page. At the top the date was 23 December, 1814.
I’ve figured it out. I know why I couldn’t see myself. Two factors are involved. First, I had no idea how to see a phantom. Yes, I am a phantom, a specter—most of the time. However, tonight is a full moon. I not only see myself; I can feel. My senses, sight, hearing, smell, touch, taste all are as they were the day after Mawu’s death, some even more so. The pain I feel from existing in two worlds at the same time is less intense than before.
I truly am cursed, and it is the curse that now rules my life.
When she intruded on Grainne and I, Mawu was furious. She blathered about saving me but cursing me instead because I had betrayed her and broken her heart.
I never promised her anything. Whatever feelings she believed I had for her she imagined for herself. Grainne is the only woman I have ever truly loved. What happened to her that night?
We were in bed together. Mawu burst into the alcove. Grainne called me ‘her love’ and said I should go to Mawu because the woman was in pain. I did as my beloved asked, of course. I approached Mawu, who was threatening me. I don’t recall those words precisely. However, I recall her curse perfectly:
“This ship is your life, but to women you are as inconstant as the moon. So shall you and your ship be until you earn the heart of a woman who has none…only then will you once more see this light of day.”
I am cursed to exist as inconstantly as the moon. I have a body, but I’m only completely corporeal during a full moon. That is the reason, I appeared from thin air, when I met with my brother after the curse. The moon was not yet full but waxing gibbous—becoming full. I was becoming but was not yet fully corporeal. I suspect that when the moon wanes completely, I shall have no physical being or appearance at all. It will be interesting to learn what other changes happen to me as the moon moves through its cycle.
I miss Grainne, deeply. However, I am glad she disappeared. How she escaped unnoticed is beyond imagining. Most likely, she somehow vanished as a result of the curse. I will ask Cal to seek her out once he returns to England. If she can be found, he must watch over her, for I cannot.
Grace sniffled back a tear and swallowed the urge to weep. The author knew how to turn on the emotional spigots, but it was all fiction. It could not have happened. Ever. The next page would prove it.I’m sure.
The page was blank as were the subsequent four. She blinked.
Why would anyone write such obvious fiction and not explain?
“Because it’s all true.”
Her head shot up, and she gasped. Lucien Flynn stood in her open window.
