“You keep a lighthouse, Lambros—right here. Drawing the broken to a sanctuary.”
His face melts into warmth. “A lighthouse. Yes.”
Lighthouse. My mind registers another image near the castle I cannot seem to find—a lighthouse. I can see it in my mind’s eye, the light revolving in the dark.
I’m close. I can feel it.
Lambros struggles to rise, and I help him up. “Is Dunn House a lighthouse?”
He stills. “Why would ye be asking about that place?”
“Is it near here?”
He hesitates. “Quite. What’s left of it.”
“Has it been damaged?”
“There was a fire. Burned many years ago.”
Burned. The word shudders through me.
“You’ll find the site on the headland of Clodgy Point, just outside of St. Ives.” He moves away and shoves fists into his back, clearly ending the conversation. “Ye come find if ye need more of this,” he says, pointing at the bowl. “I bring more.” Then he limps out of the church, leaving an air of gentle wisdom in his wake.
I walk outside and sit on the broken steps, the wind off the water ruffling the pages of the book AJ gave me, and I capture the fragments of story I still possess.
Life is a desperate scramble to order the pieces of our life into the sort of picture we desire—believe we’re owed, even—but what about when a different picture emerges? Perhaps we will never see it for what it is, only what it isn’t. And therefore, the true picture will always appear to be a disappointing collection of broken stones.
Today when I find my home, my Dunn House, I shall place a great many stones into the picture. My mind is hungry for a glimpse of it—yet dreading what I shall see.
When AJ wakes, I give him the extra bowl of porridge, and then we set off across the windswept knolls. We walk for hours along the rugged southwest coastal path that rims the shoreline, always with the sea to our right, until there’s a tug of familiarity. Like a gentle undertow it grows stronger as we wade deeper into it.
It has been forever since we left the church, but we’ve hardly spoken. AJ has something to say to me—something important—but I cannot bear more important things. So I focus on walking…and remembering.
We pass through the busy town of St. Ives, where fishermen perch on the rocky outcroppings, mending nets and shouting toone another. The cadence of their voices rings with familiarity. Sailboats and fishing vessels clog the narrow inlet.
Then, like a hound following the fox’s scent, I make my way up the cliffs on the other side of town, over the rugged headlands, following signs to Clodgy Point. The sea has begun to feel like home, but this precise view makes my heart pound. “We’re close, AJ. I can feel it.” I check for a castle on the water. I visualize those lines carved into stone. My mind fingers each shard of memory, twisting and turning them, arranging them this way and that.
AJ follows, his lips in a grim line. He dreads what we’ll find as much as I do. What I gather along this shoreline will either cement us or tear us irreparably apart. AJ pauses, hands shoved in his pockets, and looks out over the water. The wind ruffles his clothing, his hair. He looks so foreign in my Cornwall, as if he doesn’t exactly belong in the picture of who I was.
I push on, around an overgrown hedge and around a corner and then I freeze on the path.
There before me, in all its windswept glory…is a pile of rubble.
Forgotten, overgrown, and vacant. “Dunn House,” I mumble. Lichen-covered granite footings trace the outline of what was once several hearths, and blackened shapes mostly reclaimed by nature. It isn’t a recent fire—perhaps not even in my lifetime. No Dunns have lived here in a very long time.
Yet it’s the only lead I have.
My heart plummets into the swaying grass around my feet. Emptiness rattles through my soul. But then in the distance…a noise. The cry of gulls and thewhopof waves finding the hidden caverns below. I know those sounds, much as I know there’s a footpath hidden in the vines below.
While AJ is distracted I clamber over the rocks and down to the edge, breathless at what I might see. What I might not wanthimto see. I feel my way down the embankment and find the remains of a well-worn footpath nearly hidden by overgrowth, twisting down along the cliff face. I climb around boulders, descending onto that narrow path forgotten by the world.
“Merryn. Wait!” AJ’s shout sounds overhead, but I’m following my footpath, feet on the fine-grain sand warmed by sunshine. I know the way. I’m in the past again, moving toward something that’s mine. The way is lush and overgrown with thorny vines and the lacy purple sea thrift. Heather blankets each narrow ridge as the secret footpath continues around the front of the rock face.
Soon the slate roof is in view against the rocky cliffs, as if it has grown out of the rocks themselves. I descend farther, round a narrow flowered knoll, and there, nestled onto a ridge on the cliffside is a tower. A tumbledown, forgotten old stone mess built right into the cliffside, with a small cottage at its base and ten cracked steps leading up to a heavy green door. No one would ever see it from above, or perhaps not even from the water, as if it wishes to keep all its secrets to itself.
My pulse triples as I look up at the place as much a part of me as my name. This…this is DunnCottage.
Green shutters I once closed hang at odd angles and roses twist up the walls, curling delicate fingers into the mortar. Two top-floor windows look upon me with friendly welcome as the sea air wets my face in a way that feels incredibly right.
