Mistwalker

NINE Grey

Suddenly, I have to make decisions.

Inwardly, I tremble. It’s too much emotion for my uncertain skin. I feel like I’m nothing but seams and cracks, waiting to break. On my plate at breakfast, I had no box, because I’d wished for a way to end it.

The magic that drives the curse ignores wishes that undermine it. In the beginning, I tried bargaining with it. Every day for a year, I wished for someone to come to the island, all for nothing. I’d written messages and put them in bottles, only to see the bottles melt to fog when they touched the water. I wished for freedom. Death. Anything.

Funny how literal magic can be—last night, I wished to end it. Nothing arrived on my plate. Instead a mistwalk from the island to the shore had opened and let her come to me. She came to me!

She’s on my island, and I finally see her the way Susannah saw me. Escape. She’s a door to unlock, and how best to do that?

It startles me that she’s not just light anymore. Across the waves, down in her boat, she is shaped light. But as I loop her arm in mine, I see every shade of her. She’s autumn in watercolor, hair and lips and eyes.

Cruelly, I will never know her fine details. This is yet another delight delivered by my curse: complete isolation. There will be no familiar faces for me, either at a distance or within grasp. I see Willa as if she stands on the other side of greased glass. She’s a shape. Colors. Impressions. Nothing more.

If she’s beautiful, I cannot discern it. Perhaps a blessing; if she’s ugly, I don’t know that, either.

“Come in,” I say, and she nods.

She’s no delicate thing in a wispy gown. She wears breeches and boots and doesn’t trail behind me. I know things have changed in a century. I’ve seen glimpses through strange windows, but she’s here. She’s real. She’s framed in the doorway to my lighthouse, letting her arm slip from mine.

Looking to me, she smiles curiously. “So who are you, anyway?”

That’s a question with too many answers. I’m a wraith that haunts the lighthouse. A son with no parents. A lover with no heart. There must be a right answer, so I wait for her to step inside. Let my home speak for me.

She stops in the foyer and tips her head back. My shelves climb the walls, filled with music boxes. They gleam and quiver. Each has a key that wants turning. Just like her.

Gesturing to my collection, I say, “Choose one.”

But she’s not biddable. She faces me, a shadow crossing her brow. Though a glow surrounds her, I make out freckles and a silver scar through her eyebrow. Pursing her lips, she says nothing, then says everything. “What’s your name?”

I haven’t forgotten. A hundred years isn’t that long. I can’t remember my mother’s face or what it was like to walk in the sunlight. There are songs that I know the tunes to but not the words. But a hundred years isn’t so long to forget who I once was, no matter who I’ve become. I close like a clam around my name; that’s mine.

“Don’t you know?” I ask her. “I’m the Grey Man.”

She takes a step closer. “So if I wanted to write you a letter, I’d start it with ‘Dear Grey Man’?”

I haven’t had a letter in so long. It hurts to want one, so suddenly, so completely. She has no idea what she’s doing to me. What she means to me already. So I force myself to smile. “I suppose that’s a bit formal. ‘Dear Grey’ would do.”

“Huh.”

When she turns back to my collection, I resist the urge to plunge my hands into the autumn glow that must be her hair. My cold and numb flecks away, ice slipping from frosted walls. She’s warm, and I want to be warm too.

This is what Susannah felt, when I was flesh and she was fog. No wonder she let me kiss her. No wonder she swore she loved me too. I will say anything right now to get this girl to turn around and touch me again. Should I be a beast or a prince? It’s so hard to decide.

Finally, I say, “You have mine now. Tell me yours.”

“Is that how it works?”

I nod, because it’s easier than choosing a part to play.

She trails a finger on the shelf, then stops in front of a heartwood box. I laid gold threads into the lid, loops upon loops that catch the light at certain angles. I can’t remember what it plays, and she doesn’t wind the key. It seems like she wants to touch it, but she restrains herself. Concentration marks her; she doesn’t look at me, but she does, finally, part her lips.

“You should know. It was on the boat.”

Was it? I’m still not sure what has changed, but I’ll have plenty of time to puzzle it out. She’s here now. She wants an answer; she wants something from me, and I have to give it to her. Reaching past her, I take the box and lift its lid. A few notes linger in the drum. “She Moved Through the Fair,” of course. How could I forget?

“I want to hear you say it,” I tell her, and offer the box again.

Wary, she doesn’t reach for it. Much wiser than Persephone; she knows not to take gifts from the Underworld. But my curse isn’t contained in gifts or pomegranate seeds. She gives me what I need anyway, the first turn of the key. Something personal. Her name.

I will make her love me.