Instead I heard about Ariel, the mermaid who was given the gift of life on land, the ability to breathe air, and two human legs — for a terrible price. Everywhere she went, for the rest of time, she felt as though she were stepping on shards of broken glass. In your favorite take on The Pied Piper, the flute player did not lead the children away from their homes, only to return them again to their jubilant parents. Instead, he guided them all into the river to drown. In your version of Cinderella, the wicked stepmother was never offered forgiveness. She came to Cinderella’s wedding feast, where a pair of iron shoes was clapped onto her feet, red-hot from sitting in the fire. In those shoes, she was forced to dance until she dropped down dead.
These days, I wonder whether you may have been onto something. Modern fairy tales have been altered, over the years, to paint a picture of a safe and ordered world. There is magic in these stories, to be sure — witches, ogres, and giants. And yet, even the supernatural takes its place in the greater scheme of things, the moral arrangement of life. Virtue is rewarded, malice punished. Good people prosper; bad people do not. In the newest version of Sleeping Beauty, the benevolent fairies are recompensed for their integrity, living a charmed existence. The more enigmatic witch of The Snow Queen, on the other hand, suffers to a certain extent, yet survives. And the most evil creatures of all, like the hag in Hansel and Gretel—monsters who lie and cheat and have a penchant for cannibalism — are slain without mercy. In modern fairy tales, karma is a bitch.
But you had no time for such whitewashed fables. You preferred stories that were chaotic and enigmatic. The world of your fairy tales — though magical — showed the world as it actually is. Secrets flourish undiscovered. Loved ones die. Danger is not always perceptible. Evil goes unpunished. There is no order; there is no safety. I believe this is what you were trying to tell me.
I HAVEN’T THOUGHT much about my conversation with Charlene. I have not wanted to consider it. And yet, against my will, it has never been far from my mind. It is like a bright light in the corner of the room — too bright to look at directly. Though I have been keeping my gaze averted, I am still aware of that uncomfortable glow.
I know what she was suggesting. I have even dreamed about it. Andrew on the rocks, facing the sea. His skin agleam. His breath steaming the air. A dark figure behind him, rising up. Stone in hand. I have heard the grunt of pain. I have seen the splash of blood. I have watched Andrew’s body tumble down.
What I have decided, finally, is that Charlene was wrong. Charlene was mistaken. The cabin is old. Sounds carry unaccountably between the rooms through the pipes and heating grates; I have noticed it before. Once, as I was sitting at the table, I realized that I could hear Lucy gargling in the bathroom upstairs as clear as a bell, while in the kitchen the bang of pots and pans seemed muffled. On the night in question, something similar could have happened. Charlene might have heard Andrew on the porch, along with Mick and Forest murmuring in their bedroom. She might have conflated two different events: footsteps outside the house, voices inside the house.
Or perhaps it was the ghost. I have dreamed about this too. Andrew slinking along the shoreline in the moonlight. A shimmer in the air beside him. A woman’s figure. Her body solidifying out of the mist and rain — out of nothing. I have seen the haze of her nightgown. I have seen the swing of one pale arm.
MICK CAME BACK today, along with Lucy and Forest. This caught me off guard. It is hard to keep track of time on the islands. Calendars, clocks — these things seem so arbitrary. An artificial construct. There is a timelessness about this place. The seasons are measured not by a variation in the weather but by a variation in the animals. Winter is when the whales and seals breed. Summer is Bird Season. Autumn belongs to the sharks. Night does not follow day, not really — that would imply that one occurs before the other. Instead, day and night are a great wave, beginning at the base, the bright dawn, and sweeping up through the long golden afternoon to crest in the evening and crash down again into darkness, where the cycle begins anew. Time on the islands has become, for me, self-contained and unchanging.
And so, this morning I missed any number of clues that something was going on. To begin with, I slept through the early call on the radiophone. (Before Andrew, I had always awoken with the birds. Now, though, After Andrew, I was as fatigued and somnolent as a teenager.) During breakfast, I didn’t happen to glance out the window and see the ferry approaching the islands. I didn’t observe Galen slipping out to meet the boat when it dropped anchor. I didn’t even hear the voices carrying on the wind from East Landing, where Lucy, Forest, and Mick had been deposited by the Billy Pugh, breathing in the salt air with smiles on their faces. During all this time, I was lying on the couch, leafing through a book on pinnipeds. When I heard a clatter, I shot a look at Oliver the octopus, who was floating in his tank, his skin a delicate mauve.
There was a crash, and the front door flew open.
“Woo-hoo!” Mick shouted. “Home at last. Thank the lord!”
I had forgotten how very big he was. In two strides, he had crossed the room. I found myself being swung in a circle like a rag doll. The walls pivoted around me. When he set me down, I stumbled and almost fell. Mick laughed and planted a kiss on the top of my head.
“I missed my little mouse girl,” he said. His gaze wandered down my frame, drinking me in. As he stared at my torso, I saw his brow furrow quizzically for a moment. Then, however, Charlene came hurrying out of the kitchen in an apron, her arms sudsy and glistening from washing dishes.
“Hey, you!” she cried. “I thought to myself, either there’s a herd of elephants in the cabin, or Mick is back.”
THAT EVENING, LUCY took Oliver out of his tank. She played with him, transferring him from hand to hand, wetting the floor. She seemed to be lost in pure delight, as if she had missed him terribly during her time away. She, Forest, and Mick were all in this state — so happy to be back on the islands they were almost weightless. The mainland had been a fine respite, but they had all talked about the shell shock of returning, however briefly, to civilized life. Forest had been on the islands for five years, Mick almost as long. Lucy, a little younger, had come here straight out of college, a year or so ago, dragging Andrew in her wake. Since their arrival, all of them had voyaged home to the mainland now and again. Each time was the same. They would be baffled by the sheer quantity of land, our blue planet replaced by a carpet of grass and concrete. They would be unsettled by commonplace things. Fire hydrants. Central heating. A car horn. The gleam of jewelry. The sugary odor of a bakery on the breeze. The squeal of a bicycle braking. They would find themselves out of step, out of place: waking too early, eating at the wrong time of day, overloaded by the simple fact of a telephone ringing. They would return to the islands like elephant seals reentering the ocean. Back in their natural habitat. Back where they belonged.
I was sitting on the couch, the others distributed around the living room, all of us watching Lucy as she lifted the octopus high. She rolled him down one arm, giggling at his confusion. Oliver flashed through a rainbow of colors. His suckers wriggled and groped, trying to find purchase on her sleeve.