“Is there a block in the lamp oil?” I stand before the mirror lenses. Their prisms turn slowly, reflecting only the dim lantern beside me.
“We can’t,” Elle whispers.
Her brain must be scrambled. Ocean madness has taken lighthouse keepers before. Was it our fight that tipped her over the edge? Or something out in the darkness?
I study the light. While most of the oil is stored in the locked basement, a reservoir hangs above the lens. She explained it to me when she first began keeping the light. A trickle of the oil falls in a spiraled pipe, slowly keeping the flame lit.
“I’m going to check if the oil is out,” I tell her. “If it is, I’ll need the key to the basement. If it’s not…” I’m hoping to prompt her.
Elle continues mumbling. This is more worrisome than her unconsciousness. I didn’t know Elle could be anything other than assured or angry anymore. It’s been a long day. She’ll come back to her senses with rest. But I don’t have time to wait for her.
I scurry under the lens, careful not to get my hair caught on its prismatic edges. The lamp swings slightly in the center, attached to the ceiling with metal rods, but no flame is in its burner. Above, where there should be a reservoir, there’s nothing but ceiling.
I misunderstood the placement of the oil well. When Elle said gravity, I assumed it was above, but I can’t remember her exact words. I scour the lamp’s surface. There’s nowhere for oil to enter.
“Where’s the oil?” I call out.
A violent thrust of wind whips ice shards at the northern window, shocking a shriek out of me. Is she speaking Latin? She never learned Latin. I’m wasting time. The ship could collide with our rocky coast as I stand listening to her ramblings.
I can’t peer into the lamp well within the cloister of the lenses. Its cotton wick is intact between the half sphere where the oil should feedinto the wick and the rest of the burner. But to know for sure, I need more light.
The lantern. We use the same oil for every flame in the lighthouse. The reserve it contains might be enough to show them where to avoid. I scuttle underneath the lens again and come face-to-face with my sister.
Her eyes are no longer closed in prayer. They stare into the floorboards. While her mouth moves in whispers of a language I don’t know, it is those eyes that stop me.
They are no longer the welcoming amber that’s always felt like home. Instead of honey, they burn in twin crimson flames.
8Elle
To Commune
I won’t let my sister ruin her own salvation.
Heat flows through me from the heart of the Devil’s power, a spiral into the depths. The fuel of the island. My fuel. Its connection lights an ambition in me for, in some small way, my own revenge. I whisper his incantations, the words and intentions he taught me to memorize for a sacrifice. I don’t need to pierce their hearts or break their ship’s planks by hand. I need only bring the tendrils to ensure their demise. Easy if Liney doesn’t interfere.
She asks about the oil. She kneels beside me. Cries. She’s only a red silhouette, warped and out of focus as I commune with the spiral of torment. A smudge, like the distant fog light of the ship through the old glass panes.
The oil in this lighthouse is useless save for our lanterns. It doesn’t fuel the main light. Not anymore. The power that flows through the island into me now instead of the lamp isn’t of sperm whales or black minerals beneath distant sands. It is a fuel made of suffering, sin, and sacrifice.
Liney’s still talking, indistinct but distracting. I place my hands on the floor, fingers spread.This is for your own good,I want to scream at her. But I can’t break concentration. Deaths without sacrifice are cruel, and worse—wasteful.
Tendrils of power from deep within the cave breach the surface, unaffected by the thrashing waves of the storm. They’re immense, their dense substance dizzying as an extension of myself. I don’t control them directly, merely channel the alchemical transformation that turns my intentions into action.
“You’re scaring me, Elle.”
I look up. She’s no longer a red smudge. She’s my sister again. The only person who’s ever mattered, cowering from me against the mirror lens.
This should quell the heat. Her shaking voice, her face crumpled in concern. I’ve always been able to swallow the coals of rage for her sake.
But I’ve never been interrupted up here before. The spiral presses with every burning breath. It wants me to ignore her, continue my work uninterrupted. All I want is to save her soul. She’s why I’m here, no matter what the tendrils coiling around my mind wish.
There’s a balance I must make for my monstrosity to be worth my living. I stretch between this power and the girl I took it to protect like molten glass. The red-hot rope becomes more brittle the longer I sustain it. Should my tie to Liney break, I won’t merely be a person who consorts with the darkness of the world: I’ll become that darkness. No more distinguishable than a shadow within a shadow.
I close my eyes. The fire within threatens to singe my eyelashes. I smother the heat deeper within me. I peel the tendrils from their grasp around my mind and instead attach them to my spine, removing the flames from my gaze. The spiral below is fully uncoiled now, performing its work thanks to my guidance. My final task is to hold onto the devotion. The desire to devour is a thread between the damnation and my body. It could just as likely snap as weave tighter.
Eyes open again, I look to Liney. She’s so small in Douglas’s coat. Her braided hair is loose from sleep, golden strands spilling across her shoulder. Her lower lip wobbles.
“You’re babbling.” I remove the fire from my voice. As though scolding her for forgetting to wring out a washcloth or bring in the laundry before a storm. “You don’t know the first thing about this room.”
