Mistwalker

TWENTY Grey

Here I am, rampant.

I stand in the lamp gallery, a jar in hand. The light inside it doesn’t glow so bright as the one that spins behind me. When I hold the jar high, it seems almost empty.

Four in a hundred years. It’s an impossible task, and it always has been. Sisyphus and his rock. My humble self and these souls. I’d laugh, but nothing’s funny anymore.

I keep throwing myself off the lighthouse. Again and again, I plunge into the sea. Ripped apart and reincorporated, I find the smallest pleasure in the fact that it’s starting to hurt. My veins bear no blood, my flesh contains no bone. But whatever magic keeps me together, it’s exhausted and aching.

The masquerade of breakfasts and dinners is over. If I were a real boy, I’d be parched. Nothing to drink for days—could be a week or more. Letting time slip away is a gift to myself. Better than music boxes or books or nonsense, all the nonsense I used to wish for.

As autumn cedes to winter, I cede to the mist.

Like a monk, I shaved my head. Like an ascetic, I stripped to the waist. No shoes, no gloves. No tie, no hair oil. Now I realize the true choice I had when I took Susannah’s place. The soul collection only distracted me. It was more fundamental than that. Or should I say, more elemental.

Be human or be mist. Lure the next Grey to the island or surrender. All this time, the island knew, the lighthouse knew, that I was meant to succumb. Magic mocks me. It laughs and echoes through the trees.

The only reason Willa came was to put on a show. To delight whatever ancient god or demon that resides within this rock.

Reason tells me she was a pawn, but the elements have no reason. They’re capricious and unknowable; they contain no conscience. I hate her, I curse her. I stand here at the edge of my world with her brother’s soul in the palm of my hand.

I’ve no idea what will happen if I break the glass.

What happened when I captured him? It’s a question that only now occurs to me. Did I impede his progress to heaven or hell? Do those ethereal realms even exist? This bottled light could be anything—a breath, a thought. The whole sum of a being, and I keep it in a cupboard, like last summer’s jam.

Leaning over the rail, I hold the jar aloft. The lighthouse groans, the beam making another pass. When the light drowns me, I drop my prize. My whole purpose for being. Four souls in a hundred years; now I have but three.

The sea roars, and the gears grind. Everywhere, wind swirls and whispers. These raw aspects of nature clamor; they devour the sound of glass breaking on the rocks. Avidly, I watch. But there’s no light lifting ever skyward. No flicker delving into the deep. It seems—when I set free a collected soul—that nothing happens at all.

I’m disappointed.

Because I can, I call the fog until it’s thick around the light. I, too, am capricious, so I banish it by sheer force of will. Then I fling myself over the side again. The sensation of gravity gives way to a sudden, concussive ache.

When I come back together, I find myself standing in front of the cupboard. My remaining three jars tremble. Pulsing with light, they seem to react to one another. And when I reach for one, the lights within them dim. Perhaps they realize what comes next.

Perhaps they realize that I’m the monster on the rock.