Of Sea and Sky: Part 8

            “You’re silent as stars,” Caspian said, coming up the cliff behind Lani on one evening when fall was very near. The sun clung to the sky, casting its desperate fingers over the water, over Lani, over Caspian.

            “I found it,” she answered, corralling her hair over one shoulder so that it would not whip him in the face when he came near. From within the fold of her voluminous robes, she withdrew a coarsely wrapped object.

            “You found what?”

            “The wish.”

            Caspian took it with fumbling hands, wondering why the feeling behind his sternum felt more like desperation than joy. He had to see it. And then he did. It was a piece of glass.

            “Something of sea and sky,” he murmured, smoothing fingers over it.

            “Made by lightning, smoothed by the ocean.”

            “How is it a wish?” He handed the shining glass back to her.

            “I’ll show you.” Her voice was very sad.

            Lani held up the mirror toward the waning sun, which glinted off the ocean-polished surface to catch the eye of the last of the summer trade boats. There was a series of flashes in return.

            “If I flash back, they’ll come for us.”

            Though she made a move to do just that, Caspian’s hands were in the way.

            “Don’t.” His heart was tapping enthusiastically against his chest, and when he looked at the boat, all he felt was sickly sweet dread.

            “Don’t?”

            “You said we’d wish for the same thing, in the end. All I want is to stay here. With you.”

            Though the muscles of her face wanted to stretch with contentment, Lani held them in check.

            “I’d go with you, if you went,” she clarified. Caspian shook his head, terrified now. Without thinking, desperate, Caspian’s hand darted out to take the glass and throw it into the sea. It gleamed like a falling star as it went.

The End

Of Sea and Sky: Part 7

            Lani waited for the boat to sail away before she went home. It had touched the island’s shore, the flames had gone out, but she had not seen who was on it or what they did. She glanced at the memories on the sand dune, the cliff. Reflections of shadow through glass.

            She stood in her doorway, feeling like one made of sticks—stiff and fragile and very hateful toward fire. Lani paced the shack four times, noting idly that she needed new flowers. Without further thought, she slipped into the sweet evening air. It was getting so cool, so quickly now.

            It was night before she made it to the center of the island where the jasmine bloomed. She’d never brought Caspian there and it was free from shadows. Her practiced hands plucked the flowers, but her old, mad peace was gone. The island queen was unsettled.

            “So this is why you always smell of jasmine,” a deep voice spoke from behind her, back the way she’s come. Lani whirled, spraying jasmine petals in a wide circle.

            “But you left!”

            Caspian sighed, “I tried to.” He stalked toward her, long strides that no longer stumbled in the fine sand. “But then I realized, you’re my lighthouse, Lani. I wouldn’t make it without you.”

            “What makes you think that?’ Lani asked, but she was teasing. Her eyes sparkled and flirted now that she allowed them to. Caspian scooped her close, looking down on her with a smirk.

            “Because it’s impossible.”

            “Oh,” Lani nodded in understanding, but Caspian was very talkative and could not contain himself.

            “I’ve never seen anything so clearly as when I’m with you, even the shadowy things.”

            “I don’t think I’m meant to guide anyone, though. Lighthouses do that.”

            “No,” Caspian shook his head. “They sit on the rocks and don’t let anyone near.”

            “I suppose I’ve done enough of that.”

            “I suppose you have.” He kissed her.

Of Sea and Sky: Part 5

            They didn’t talk about it, pretended it hadn’t happened. But after that day, Caspian began building a signal fire. It was done in secret, furtive movements, in fake bathroom trips and extra supply collecting. In between, Lani was more and more herself, a self that Caspian had never thought to reach. He felt like a sea rat. But Lani might never have found out. Except she did.

            Her face blanched like cinder bone when she saw the pyre. She’d worn the dress, he thought, the first thing he noticed, a short sun-dress thing that bared her long legs. She’d caught her hair up too, using an assortment of island things to hold it--shells and starfish and flowers--and revealing a slim neck. Caspian felt his insides being dragged out to sea. He was a rat, a plague carrying boat rat. Breath coming long and slow like the tide, Lani watched him. The island queen’s face read disdain.

            “You lied.”

            “Lani, I didn’t—“

            Slowly with great dignity, then fast and stumbling like an idiot, shipwrecked boy, she made her escape. Caspian practically leaped over the pile, racing for her. He caught her on the high sand dune where they had first met.

            “Wait!” His eyes were wild, hair crazy. She was poised and sad. The island queen and her savage.

            “You don’t believe me. You think I’m crazy.”

            “No, I don’t. I don’t think—“

            But now Lani’s chest was heaving with the sobs she hadn’t spilled for her lost family or traumatic past. Crumbling, knees in the sand, she stared out at the water and grieved.

            “Lani…” Caspian spread his hands helplessly, looking down at her.

            “Light your fire, Caspian. Go! The sea is salted with bones, and I hope yours join them.” But her voice broke enough to tell him she lied. Caspian’s extended hand on her shoulder was shrugged off. Back at the shack, a flowing robe covered the dress and tea was made for one. Caspian went down to the beach and lit his fire.

Of Sea and Sky: Part 3

            Apparently, making wishes involved a lot of searching for things in the sand. Caspian followed Lani from one end of the island to another, dragging his feet in the sand. She’d explained patiently that what they searched for was something of sea and something of sky that, when mixed together, would yield a wish.

            “Why will this work again?” he asked on the second morning of hunting.

            “Because it is impossible. The universe in a tea cup.” That was all she would say on the subject.

            But as the days past, Caspian found he didn’t mind quite so much. If their task was futile, it was no more futile than any other means of being saved. Besides, Lani looked quite beautiful on the beach, toes in the water, sun on her skin. She looked even more beautiful when he tucked a flower behind her ear, one from the trees on the far side of the island, which she loved.

            “You are so quiet, Lani,” Caspian said one night. They sat on a rocky cliff, a fire behind them and the stars beyond. The ocean churned with a storm approaching. “So quiet all the time.”

            Saying nothing, Lani looked out at the sea. Brow furrowed, she might have been listening to a song there. Her shoulders were bare to the fire glow, her dress a flow of wispy fabric. Raising her hand, she flicked at her face, the tear removed catching fire as it fell to the sand.

The faint scent of jasmine reached Caspian’s nose, made bumps dance down his arms. Capian rose to his feet, grabbing that teary hand as he did. He drew the island queen to her feet.

“Show me,” he said, refusing to allow her hands free. With a sigh of defeat, Lani nodded. And Caspian had been right; she was a dancer.

There's still a few parts to go.

Of Sea and Sky: Part 2

            “So how do we make a wish?” Caspian asked again, almost failing to notice that they had come upon a little sea shack in his desperate single-mindedness. Lani turned at the entrance to the lopsided home, letting the armfuls of flowers she had collected on the way fall to her bare feet.

            “There is a special formula. I’ll teach you, if you like.” Her raised eyebrows were tentative, revealing something sharp and sad behind blue irises.

            “I’d appreciate it,” Caspian replied. Darting forward, he kneeled to collect the flowers she had dropped.

            “No,” she smiled down at him. The silk of her robe brushed against his face, making him light-headed. “Leave them.”

            “Are you sure—“ Lani abandoned him at the threshold, gliding into her dark, two-room house on legs that—revealed through a slit or fold in her many patterned fabrics—might have been a dancer's. Without further protest, Caspian followed, finding as he did that the entire floor of the sea-bent home was covered in similar blooms.

            Lani crossed to a teapot by the rough-cut window. It was a badly beaten thing, warmed by a tiny fire on a makeshift stove. Caspian eyed the strange space that contained a pile of chipped china, a trunk with travel stickers, two wooden chairs, a matching table, and a door that presumably led to a bedroom.

            “Was all this here when you got here?”

            “Most of it,” Lani’s voice had drawn thin.

            “How did you get here?” Curious, he’d moved nearer to her, near enough to see the tension enter her back.

            “How did you?”

            “I thought it would be obvious from the stench of seaweed,” he joked.

            “A shipwreck?”

            “Yeah.” Rubbing the back of his neck with one hand, Caspian accepted a cup of tea with the other. He hardly knew what to make of this strange, distant girl.

            “Are you all alone here?”

            “I am. Do you want to start on the wishes now or later?” Cocking her head to one side, the island girl watched him.

            “Now, I guess.” Together they sat down at the wooden table. Lani wrapped long-fingered hands around her mug, some of the tension leaving her body.

            “What will you use it for?” Caspian asked because he was fresh from society and couldn’t bear the quiet that had fallen between them.

            “The same as you, I suspect.”

            “You aren’t very talkative.”

            “You’re very talkative.”

            Caspian laughed, and because he had not expected to laugh on a lonely island after a shipwreck he laughed again. As the chortles shook his battered body, Lani watched him with the expression of one who is trying to remember a word in their native tongue after long speaking in a foreign one.

Of Sea and Sky: Part 1

She was a queen, a lonely island queen quite solitary on a rocky dune with summer sand grass itching her bare ankles. He was a shipwreck, made of sticks and cinder and seawater, wobbling down the beach with sand in his eyes.

“What are you doing?” he asked the island queen. Her dark hair danced on the wind against the pale blue sky. The queen did not reply.

            “Something of sea, something of sky…” she murmured, bending over to search in the long grasses. When she clutched at her long garments that flowed about her in the same way as her hair, it revealed that she was not a grown woman but a young one. She looked up from beneath that shaggy, dark canopy and caught sight of the young man whom the ocean had spit up.

            “I’m making a wish,” she answered. There was something of ash in her voice, like perhaps she too had been a shipwreck once.

            “And how does one make a wish?” the boy asked.

            The queen squinted at him with surprising dark blue eyes that did not belong with her tan skin and dark hair. Standing straight again, the top of her head only came to his chin, but she seemed far more imposing than her stature suggested.

            “You could use one too,” she decided. The girl brushed past him in a wind of jasmine and firewood.

            “I’m Caspian,” he called, stumbling in the sand to follow her.  Wind catching at her clothing, the girl, who was a stark whirl of colors against the pale landscape, turned.

            “I’m Lani,” she answered, and a smile began to curl the edges of her mouth. A shake of her head had her turning again and Caspian struggling to follow in the fine, shifting sand.

Working Title. Let me know what you think!

Everly's Walk: Part Seven

Everly Carrigan met him again only once. And she was cold. Except when she wasn’t. There was fire as she screamed at him, made her throat raw with hurt and humiliation and rage. Caspian screamed back, of course, but by then both their hearts had accepted the breaking to come. She tried to fight him, but he stayed her hands. He tried to touch her, but she flinched away.

The parted ways as enemies up on the cliff tops where the wind clawed at Everly’s hair beneath the gray sky. Caspian walked one way. Everly walked another. She walked across the scrubby plains, a lone spot of scarlet in the gray and green. She walked to her lands and there she started to cry. Or maybe those were rainclouds on her face. It stormed often on the sea shore. 

She walked to where she saw her home in the distance. It was beautiful, finally complete. She pretended that she had not been harboring familial images in that setting as she walked on. The thought of that horrible Blythe-Cameron name inside a Carrigan house was rather ridiculous after all. She walked onto the narrow bridge to Carrigan’s Cliff, rain making the path slick. Thinking of the spiteful promise she had once made Caspian, she still tried not to stumble.

She walked on, but she never set another foot inside of Carrigan House. Everly Carrigan fell to her death from Everly’s Walkway that night in the rain. 

Except that’s not how the story goes: she leapt. 

Except no, actually, she sat down and slid off. 

But then, she never fell at all, simply ran away to a place where she would never have to hear the whisper-screamed longing in the voice of the green ocean. 

But who could know, as she was never heard from again? 

Except when the townspeople heard her ghost screaming and hollering up on Carrigan’s Cliff each night. No ghost can step foot on holy land, so if Everly was a ghost, that alone explained why she never tore down that horrid expansion that some distant relative--

Descendant? Some say that a boy showed up one year, bearing the Carrigan name and a peculiar penchant for merfolk paintings and stylish suits--

that her relative built on Carrigan Cliff.

And as for Caspian Blythe-Cameron--who would have loved the expansion as it housed an entire room dedicated to strange sculptures and art--, he never married that wretched French girl. He never finished his castle either; it wasn’t as fun without Everly around to dissapprove of it. In fact he stopped dropping his bread crumb trails, packed up his suits and went on holiday, finally disappearing a few months later on a hunt in some far dry land where there was no green sea. (It’s funny, but some say that the boy Carrigan who came years later spent many holidays in that land.)

All that can be said for the Carrigans and the Blythe-Camerons after that is that they left a lovely legacy (apart from a new, far more haunting name for Everly’s town), stories to be bought and sold as economy--since they’d built up their towns so poorly. Or perhaps it was the crumbling rock at war with the green sea that was poor in the first place.

Only one more part to go. Not that anyone is reading this anyway.

Everly's Walk: Part Six

Everly made inquiries as her carriage drove them bumpily over the so-called plains between Carrigan and Blythe. Elsbeth complained noisily, muttering unlady-like things in French which she was sure Everly did not understand (Everly did). But between the cursings, she managed to spill a secret or two. It seemed that Everly’s traveling companion simply loved to talk about herself and her dear Caspian. Everly was assured the Caspian was probably waiting at the port in Blythe to greet her. Probably distraught, he was. And oh, but she’d had to leave a dozen trunks behind for the journey, and wasn’t that dreadful? But hopefully her darling Caspian would replenish what she had lost. You’d think he would, you know, considering they were to be wed--

Cold. Everly resolved to be cold. It was all she thought on that long journey to see the man-she-loved-who-was-promised-to-another. If Elsbeth noticed Everly’s sudden silence--No, she hadn’t noticed or she would have taken advantage of what it implied.

Cold. When Elsbeth stepped from the carriage, Caspian’s expression changed from curious, even happy, to confusion, to shock, to--there it was--the flinch of fear. Everly removed herself from the carriage as well. Cold, she reminded herself. Pleasant. Polite. It was fire that had gotten her into this mess in the first place.

Caspian Blythe-Cameron tried valiantly to meet her gaze, but she went home without any explanation from him. It wasn’t as if he had a good one anyway. He did try though, a missive or two dashed off desperately after now-finished-house calls went unanswered. 

It wasn’t as if he didn’t try, with his fancy suits out in the rain that poured for three days and nights after Elsbeth came into town. That was probably the only reason he didn’t pack her off on a boat out of Blythe on the spot under Everly’s aching gaze. Then, after the rain, he’d simply forgotten about Elsbeth Deverauz entirely. He’d never liked her all that much anyway (though his mother had insisted), not in the way he’d hated (loved) Everly Carrigan.