It was a miracle Elle managed to get us somewhere we can be forgotten. While the island can feel more like a windswept prison away from everything that brought me joy, she did the impossible in saving me from the darkness that festered beneath the surface of our family. And though I won’t tell her, there’s a beauty on these shores I can’t deny. Something familiar pulls at my heart with every crashing wave despite never having been to this, or any, island before. My home is split three ways: the city beyond my reach, my lighthouse sanctuary, and the waves that promise more with every surge.
“I was wondering how it must feel to be that little fish swimming to the only light it has ever seen, in all its life, at the bottom of the sea. The beauty it beheld before being consumed.”
What’s stopping you from leaving?she asks again. The question I’d never want Elle to hear.
The wind picks up as a wave splashes the edges of my dress. The sand beneath my feet pulls into the ocean. I scoot back to the smoothed beach stones, though another urge begs me closer to slip below the water. Chamomile remains stone-still.
“I have to stay,” I say as the gust gallops into the woods behind us like a feral animal. “Until Elle knows it’s safe.”
At least ask her to find a full paper next time,Chamomile suggests.That one’s so torn. Whole sections are missing.
I move the paper away from her prying. “She finds me what she can.We aren’t a family of means anymore. A secondhand paper is as good to me as new.”
I don’t know if that’s entirely true, but I’ve chosen to believe it. Elle’s heart is a timid thing, carefully shown and quickly hidden from the rest of the world, except me. Did she tear out articles that would upset me? I’m so fragile to her.
Chamomile lies back until her face is behind me.Is Elle not as recognizable as you are when she’s on the mainland?she asks. She wants my attention again.
“Elle disguises herself. They’re looking for two girls, not a single young man. She knows where to go and whom to avoid. It’s a system. It works.”
It has been a year. Is anyone still looking for you?
“Elle says they are. There are posters all over town with our likenesses. If the wrong person sees me, they could alert my parents. Or Thomas. Elle won’t take that risk.”
Our conversations usually keep my sanity intact when I need a break from my sister, but today’s strings my mind tauter. It’s as though there were two forces at work: the Chamomile who bids me stay and play in the sands and the Chamomile who wishes me to leave.
I wish you could have the world, Caroline.
“Me too.” I blow a long breath out. “The rowboat may be too dangerous for me alone, but I wish Elle would teach me to row. I wouldn’t go to the city. Only the ocean. A little more space. Possibility. Does that make sense?”
Freedom is a beautiful thing you are cursed to live without.
“Choice is a form of freedom,” I remind her. “I chose this life. Consequences don’t cause that freedom to disappear. The life I would’ve led? That was the curse.”
Mr. Thomas Seymour. Eldest son of Robert and Jane Seymour. American heir to the privileges, land, and coal mines of the Seymourestate. Betrothed to Mary Eleanor Forsyth—Elle. Until he chose me instead.
It was never a choice for Elle. She was placed on a path to wed and move our family from tradespeople to landed gentry. She spent her whole life preparing, though she’d never had a personal ambition to become a wife and mother. Elle much preferred the quiet of a study or curling up with me by the fire. Elle was a master at shadows. The firelight would dance along the walls, and she’d create plays full of intrigue and danger with only her hands for actors. Brave runaway heroines fought droves of pirates. Queens survived court scandals. Fisherwomen banded together against tidal waves. I never found a book she’d based them on. She made me promise never to repeat them to our parents, which I accomplished with great effort. I’d beg her to write them down, but she’d just grin and say the stories were so much better for their brief lives. Like a spark from the fire bouncing over the iron grate only to sputter out on our side.
There are no shadow plays in the lighthouse. Gaiety is a luxury Elle doesn’t indulge in anymore. I try to understand, but no matter how many times I play back the moments that led us here, they don’t line up perfectly to create the woman my sister became.
Thomas and Elle sat in the parlor the first time he came calling after an exchange between our fathers. I peered at them between the sitting room’s curtained window. My mother had given Elle a fan and instructed her in the ways of holding it to convey flirtation. Elle gripped it with white knuckles. She flicked it so forcefully that she threw it halfway across the room.
The marital burden never fit Elle, like her old dresses didn’t fit me. But she wore it dutifully so I didn’t have to. When she woke me, promising escape, I agreed without hesitation.
We chose this life together. While Chamomile is my confidante, she’ll never understand the world we turned away from. The world that I, in my weakness, want back.
Chamomile has spoken, but I’ve missed it.
“What?”
You could ask her to teach you to use the rowboat. Or I could teach you.
“You know as much as I do!”
Chamomile rolls over and mimes poking at my side until we squirm in a fit of giggles. Her face is only inches from mine, sharp and red- cheeked. She turns serious.You could learn to swim. Begin with small distances. Soon you’ll swim across the whole harbor!
It’s tempting. And forbidden. I’ve only swum in the ocean once, and I ended up dragged into a riptide. I would’ve surely drowned if Elle hadn’t been there. The problem is also in my lungs. I’ve always been told not to physically exert myself, for fear of my asthma. The few times I was given enough freedom in my childhood to run and play as others did, I was soon doubled over and desperately swallowing for air my lungs wouldn’t accept. While Elle developed tall and broad-shouldered, a paragon of health, I remained slight and pale. My mother would call me Elle’s little ghost.
Imagine,Chamomile continues,swimming to McNabs, crawling up to the fortress, dancing with the officers in the light of their bonfires.
