Mistwalker

TWENTY-ONE Grey

I’m in no state to have callers, but Willa bursts through my door all the same.

She’s soaked and maddened, and so exquisitely in focus. Cruelly, wonderfully, I see her in all her details. The freckle in one eye, the hundredshade of her red hair. What a pretty, pretty girl she is—when she’s not raving.

Skidding to a stop, she holds up her hands. Broken music boxes surround her—there’s a chance I lost my temper and smashed them all. Soul jars, music boxes, windows, too. Even the computer, for that was a rather disappointing window indeed.

Once I would have been embarrassed to receive a lady in my current state of undress. But cotton breeches and little else at least nod to my modesty and allow her to witness the whole of me in all my hideous natural state. I’m whitewash poured into a man-shaped glass. My head is—to be fair—not smooth, but quite round now. Quite evidently round, with all my hair shorn.

Her eyes widen as I approach; I frighten her. I should frighten her.

“Bring in the fog,” she says. Her voice quavers. Her fingers curl into claws when I get closer. She really is horrified; wonderful! “Please, Grey, please. I’ll stay if you want, I’ll . . .”

I press a finger to her lips. “No, thank you.”

“There’s no time, please. Please. Help me, and I will make it up to you.”

Spreading my arms wide, I shrug. I feel mercurial, just like the wind. The water. The sea, the sky. Flowing through the room, my feet cut a swath through shattered glass and twisted metal. I turn to her, and I would apologize, but there are no apologies left in me.

“It can’t be done. I’m surrendering, you see.”

Her eyes aren’t black. They’re brown, streaks of amber, flecks of green—that one dark spot that distracts me. There’s a light on in there, behind those lashes. She’s thinking, working, then suddenly, she throws herself at me. “Make me the Grey Man.”

“Willa.” I laugh. “That’s fundamentally impossible.”

“The Grey Lady,” she shouts. “You know what I mean!”

She puts her hands on me; she shakes me. Oh, how I longed for that before today, though not like this. Not hard and furious. Would a gentle touch from her have been so very hard to offer? Delicate fingers to trace the illusory veins in my wrists, a loving touch to warm the back of my neck?

Yet, there is a spark. Just as the beacon above comes to life when it’s needed, I feel something within me turn. Catching Willa’s elbows, I seize it—before my muddled thoughts distract me entirely. It’s a faery story after all, perhaps ending happily ever after for me. But this one does not begin once upon a time. It begins—

“Will you die for me?”

Willa shakes her head, stubborn to the last. “Not for you. For my family I will. But not for you.”

It’s within my grasp to toy with her. Torment her as she has tormented me. To hold out hope before her, just to snatch it away. I burn to do it; she’d deserve it. Instead, I cradle her face with my hand—I can be tender. I can be gentle.

I’ve been honest all along; my honor is mine and it’s intact. Her suffering will come later. I’ve no need to exact revenge now. Not now.

In the end, I was right. She was thinking of me. She came to me. And now she sets me free.

Her lips are stone, but I press mine to them all the same. It’s the only way I know how to give her this gift. At first, it seems I have only stolen a kiss. Then, a spike of light rips through me. My black-and-white world starts to bleed; my insubstantial body becomes flesh.

Dropping to my knees, I wrap my arms around myself to hold in the rising agony. I burst from the mist shell that’s held me all these years. It’s nothing but pain at first. I gasp and fall to my side. Music boxes jangle; they jab my flesh. They pierce me and I gasp. Breath hurts; the light hurts my eyes. My heart lurches into a pounding rage as sweat freshens me.

Writhing, I shudder and collapse again. I gape like a fish and gasp at air, real air, for the first time in a century.

And above me, Willa stands, washed in fog. Though I saw her in all her colors, she’s grey now. White hair, grey lips, black eyes. She’s a fearsome kind of beautiful, her edges trailing away as haze. Susannah was a delicate, fragile ghost. Willa is an avenging wraith—prepossessed and mighty.

She steps over my body, and a staircase appears as she raises her foot. The dregs of my reign melt like wet sugar. The music boxes, the shelves, all the disaster I wrought, fade with each step she takes. And when she disappears, I realize the silence in my head.

The cold on my skin.

The twist of hunger in my belly.

I could no more call the mist than I could fly. There’s a Grey Lady in this tower now, a new mistress on Jackson’s Rock. Though I’ve walked its shore a thousand times, my head aches imagining the borders of the island.

Struggling to my feet, I realize I’m no longer bare. Denim dungarees, a blue cotton shirt that clings to me. Shoes with laces, a curious jacket with a hood and zipper. Hunching into myself, I creep to the door. I close my eyes and say a soft prayer before I open it. Please let this be real, I murmur.

Then I step into the real world, a rocky shore that leads to the water—a boat waits for me there. It turns its bow to the distant shore. In the haze, its name wavers and changes. When the letters reshape themselves, it’s then that I know I am free. They read

Charlie