It’s nearly too dark to see anything in the basement. Nothing but damp stone walls. I nearly trip on Douglas’s bones. He doesn’t appear. Nothing illuminates the room.
I stamp my feet against the stones on the floor, seething at the burn blisters that have begun to form, and grasp any edge on the walls. Nothing budges. If there’s something bigger than this place, it’s beyond what my bleeding, mortal fingers can clutch.
I need another plan. If that doesn’t work, yet another. I channel Elle’s resolve. I understand now how it feels to need someone. How that urge can rot you from the inside out.
I close my eyes. Nothing has granted me power. I don’t commune with a deity or demon. I won’t open another opportunity for Chamomile’s meddling. While Elle may control, somehow, the island and the lighthouse, I center myself on my constant. My fear, my refuge, and nearly my final resting place. Nothing of heaven or hell. Only the sea and the woman I want to cross it with.
The crashing waves, the whitecaps, the rain that melts snow, and my tears that returned to the ocean. All of its eternal cycle. Could an ounce of its strength grant me clarity? I imagine it drinking my sorrows, nearly consuming me whole, and coming to my aid.
This harbor is the deepest in the world. If anything can touch where Bridget’s been taken, it’s here.
Something bright makes me open my eyes. A brilliant line traces up and down the wall like cracks in a dam. It reaches out through the wall yet not into the ground or ocean beyond. Are these the layers that Douglas spoke of?
The seam glows. First the red I’ve loved and feared, then it settles on a color I’ve grieved for: the lavender of home, of her.
She comes barreling out, feet first, tackling me to the ground with her force. She’s here, she’s breathing, and I’m cradling her to my chest. I glance up long enough to see something dark on the other side of the seam, but then it closes, and the world is only us.
Bridget clutches me, wild-eyed and panicked. I soothe her, or try to, but I’m also scrabbling to make sure she’s real. Her arms find my waist, and she buries her face in the crook of my neck. I hold her close on the basement floor until our heartbeats fall back into a seminormal rhythm.
“Let’s get upstairs,” I whisper.
I rise, so does she, and we leave the basement. Bridget’s legs are unsteady on the ladder rungs. When I take her to the chesterfield and sit her down, kneeling before her, I want to burst, to tell her what I learned, of how I’m a waterfall and a flood and a stream all in a person. But the expression in her eyes isn’t one of joy. There are edges of relief but something darker too.
“What happened?” I ask.
“That woman dragged me to hell, I think. I don’t know. She brought me to a man I’d never seen before. I tried to get away when she handed me over to him, but his grip was even tighter than hers. He didn’t say a word to her, just turned around with me in tow. But I saw her change. Not a woman anymore. A doll. Ceramic, maybe? Something a child plays with, tossed aside in the tunnel. He brought me to the edge of this huge underground lake. Elle was there, waiting.”
Chamomile was a doll? A tool against me and my sister, wedging us apart. A trick.
“He spoke to Elle like he knew her,” she continues, shaking her head. “Like he could control her. It wasn’t Mr. Douglas. Someone else.”
Thomas?“What did he look like?”
She describes ash-white hair, a gaunt face, and bright eyes with no color. Not Thomas.
“He said a lot I didn’t understand,” she admits, as though it were aflaw not to process otherworldly horrors. “But the important thing: He told her to sacrifice me. To create…more of this place. A…a network of…suffering, I guess? But she didn’t, Liney. She saved me.”
It’s not in me to hope anymore. “Who?”
“Elle! She did something, opened something so I could—”
“No, that was me!” I can’t get the words out fast enough, rapids of excitement course through my veins. “I can’t say how. I concentrated on the ocean, and you, and suddenly—”
“You what? Slow down. Come here.”
She holds me as I explain the phenomenon.
Bridget’s brow furrows. “That’s amazing. Truly. But…are you sure it was you?” She explains Elle creating something in the floor, telling her to find me.
“A seam beneath you?” I ask. The more I think on it, the less it makes sense that I’d done anything but hope.
Bridget squeezes me again, seeming a little amused at my disappointment. “Do you think”—Her brow knits—“Did you both make it? Together?”
Was this the last effort I made with my sister? Working together to guide her chaos to my heart?
Bridget grabs me and holds me tight. I lean into the embrace. She’s safe. That’s what I need to focus on. The currents in me flow at dizzying speed with her so close, a whirlpool.
“You’re sure she did that intentionally?” I whisper, as though if I’m quiet enough it might be true. “Brought you here? To me?”
