The air inside the room condensed, the damp walls stiffened. The yellow finch caught in the rafters fell quiet. Not even the floorboards creaked as Owen was pulled by his father to the front of the courthouse. Hazel Swan looked as if she might faint, her complexion drained of all color. Not from fear for herself, but fear for Owen.
“Tell them!” his father barked.
Owen stood stone-faced, eyes locked on Hazel. He would not.
His father marched up to where the sisters sat in a row, hands bound by rope. He drew a large knife from the sheath at his waist and placed it to Hazel’s throat, blade pressing against her alabaster skin. Her breath hitched; her eyes quivered but did not stray from Owen’s gaze.
“Stop!” Owen cried, stepping toward Hazel. Two men grabbed his arms and held him in place.
“Tell us what you’ve seen,” his father demanded. “Tell us of the marks that riddle this girl’s body.”
“There are no marks,” Owen shouted back.
“Her spell on you has made you weak. Now tell us, or I will cut her throat and you will watch her bleed out, here in front of everyone. A painful death, I assure you.”
“You will kill her anyway,” Owen said. “If I speak, you will accuse her of being a witch.”
“So you have seen something?” the half-blind elder asked.
Those in the room that day would later say it was as if Hazel Swan was conjuring a spell before their eyes, the way she peered at Owen, forcing his lips to remain silent. But others, the few who had known real love, saw something else: the look of two people whose love was about to destroy them. It was not witchcraft in Hazel’s eyes; it was her heart splitting in half.
And then Hazel spoke, a soft series of words that sounded almost like tears streaming down cheeks: “It’s all right. Tell them.”
“No,” Owen answered back. He was still being held by the two men, his arms tensed against their grip.
“Please,” she whispered. Because she feared he might be punished for protecting her. She knew it was already too late; the town had decided—they were witches. The selectmen just needed Owen to say it, to prove what they already believed. He only needed to tell them of one little mark; any imperfection on the skin would do.
His eyes watered, and his lips fell open, the air hanging there for several breaths, several heartbeats, until he uttered: “There is a small half-moon on her left ribs.”
A perfect freckle, he had once whispered against her skin in that very spot, his lips hovering over it, his breath tickling her flesh. She had laughed, her voice bouncing along the eaves of the barn loft, her fingers slipping through his hair. He had wished on that half-moon many times, silent desires that someday he and Hazel would leave Sparrow, steal away on a ship bound for San Francisco. A new life far away from this town. Maybe if she really had been a witch, his wish muttered softly against her flesh might have come true. But it did not.
A gasp passed through the room, and his father lowered the knife from Hazel’s throat. “There it is,” his father proclaimed, satisfied. “Proof that she, too, is a witch.”
Hazel felt her heart sink into her gut. The room echoed with murmurs. The finch resumed its chirping.
The half-blind elder cleared his throat, speaking loudly enough so that even those outside the town hall with their ears pressed to the doors would hear. “In our small town, where the ocean brings us life, it shall also take it. The Swan sisters are found guilty of witchcraft and sentenced to death by drowning. To be carried out at three o’clock this afternoon, on the summer solstice. An auspicious day for the assurance that their wicked souls will be extinguished permanently.”
“No!” shouted Aurora.
But Marguerite’s lips pinched shut, her cold stare enough to curse anyone who dared look at her. Hazel remained quiet, not because she wasn’t afraid, but because she couldn’t pull her eyes away from Owen. She could see his regret, his guilt. It wrenched him apart.
But he did not condemn her—she and her sisters were doomed the day they arrived in this town.
The men seized the three sisters before Hazel could mutter a word to Owen, leading them into a back room where five women stripped them naked of their clothes, verified the marks that had been claimed against them, and then dressed them in white gowns to purify their souls and ensure their eternal and absolute death.
But absolute, their death was not.
SEVENTEEN
The cottage rattles from the wind, and I wake, gripping for something that isn’t there. I had been dreaming of the sea, of the weight of stones pulling me under, water so cold I coughed at first but then couldn’t fight it as it spilled into my lungs. A bleak, lonely death. My sisters only a finger’s width away as we all plummeted to the bottom of the harbor.
I rub my eyes, crushing away the memory and the dream.
It’s early, the light outside the cottage still a watercolor of grays, and Bo is stoking the fire.
“What time is it?” I ask, turning over from my place on the floor where I managed to fall asleep. He’s added several new logs to the fire, and the heat sears my cheeks and tingles my lips.
“Early. Just after six.”
Today is the summer solstice. Tonight, at midnight, everything will change.
Bo has been unsuccessful in finding a way to kill the Swan sisters without also killing the bodies where we reside. There is nothing in any of the books. But I knew there wouldn’t be.
And I know what he’s thinking as he faces the fireplace: Today he will get his revenge for his brother’s death. Even if it means killing an innocent girl. He won’t allow Aurora to keep on killing. He will end her life.
But I’ve also made a decision. I’m not going back into the water tonight; I won’t return to the sea. I’m going to fight to keep this body. I want to stay Penny Talbot, even if it means she no longer gets to exist. Even if it might be impossible—painful and severe and terrifying—I have to try.
Each summer, my sisters and I are given only a few short weeks inside the bodies we’ve stolen, making each day, each hour, precious and fleeting. And so we have a habit of lingering inside our bodies until the final seconds before midnight on the summer solstice. We want to feel every last moment above the waterline: breathe in our last gulps of air; peer up at the sky, dark and gray and infinite; touch the soil beneath our feet and savor the feeling of being alive.
Even when the draw of the harbor begins to pulse behind our eyes, coaxing us back to its cold depth, we resist until it becomes unbearable. We hold on to those final seconds for as long as we can.
And there have been summers past when we’ve pushed it too far, waited too long to return to the sea. It’s happened to each of us at least once.
In those times, in those seconds that ticked past midnight, a flash of bright pain whipped through our skulls.
But the pain isn’t all you feel; there is something else: a pressure. Like being stuffed down into the dark, into the deepest shadows of the body we occupied. When it happened to me many years back, I could sense the girl rising once again to the surface, and I was being crushed. We were swapping places. Wherever she had been—hidden, stifled, and suppressed inside the body—I was now sinking into that very place. It was only when I returned to the sea that I slipped free from the girl’s skin. The relief was immediate. I swore I would never cut it that close again. I would never risk being trapped in a body after midnight.