The Lighthouse Witches(40)



One night, when I’d decided to give myself the evening “off,” there was a knock at the door of the bothy. I thought it might be Finn, eager to get going at the new section he’d finished plastering that day.

But it wasn’t Finn. It was a group of chatting, excited women. Isla stood at the head of them.

“We’ve come to show you the mareel,” she said grandly.

“The what?”

“See for yourself,” one of the other women said, sweeping a hand toward the bay. I stepped outside to see what she was referring to. The tide was shimmering with an astral blue light, as though it was filled with fireflies.

“The mareel, also known as sea sparkle,” one of the women said. “Scientists know it’s caused by bioluminescent microorganisms.”

“It means good fortune for those who see it,” said Mirrin, a short, stout woman with a mane of gold hair, “and even more for those who swim in it.”

Isla held up a wet suit and winked. “Well now, isn’t it lucky I’ve got a spare? Come and join us. I insist!”

I got changed quickly and followed the group to the beach, where the ocean greeted us with softly rolling waves, iridescent with trapped, glowing light. There were eight of us in the group. Mirrin, who worked part-time at the grocery store in town and sold paintings in the small art gallery owned by her partner, Greer, who was also there. Ruqayya was a widow who ran the island’s mobile library. Ling was a shaman, yogi, and sculptor. Both Ailsa and Louisa were veterinarians who had relocated from England twenty years ago to run a small animal sanctuary on the west coast of Lòn Haven.

“How often does it happen?” I said, clasping my arms across my chest. The icy water was only up to my ankles but I was shaking from the cold.

Ruqayya stood next to me as she tucked her long gray hair into a swimming cap. “Once or twice a year,” she said. “We always make sure we try and swim in it. The Vikings believed it was a healing tide. That if you have an affliction, mental or physical, and you swam in it, you’ll be healed.”

“Do you believe that?”

“Not when I first moved here,” she said. “But I had terrible arthritis. My fingers were all twisted. And now look.” She held out her hands. They looked strong and perfectly straight.

She stepped forward and lowered herself to swim. As her body moved, the water responded, each stroke of her arm streaking the water electric blue.

“Come on,” another woman urged gently from my left. Ailsa. She threw me a bright smile, her face lit up by the glow. “You don’t know how long it’ll last. And you’ll miss your chance.”

The cold water felt like a bite, fierce and swift. Isla cheered and clapped as I pushed my arms out in breaststrokes that created vivid neon arcs in the water, as though I was writing on the waves, imprinting the sea with my body.

I was mesmerized by the mareel. The ocean, it seemed, had become conscious, mimicking the northern lights. Some of the women were dressed only in a cap and swimsuit yet braved the water without hesitation. I tried to think of the last time I’d been in the sea—it had been at least twenty years. I hadn’t had a holiday abroad since having children. I hadn’t laughed with a group of women like that in a long time. Having a child so young had ostracized me from my friend groups. And who has time for a social life when you’re eyes-deep in nappies and teething?

I stayed in the water for as long as I could, secretly pleading with it to heal me. Any other time, I’d have rejected the idea of a “healing tide,” of anything but medicine having the power to cure. But belief is a powerful thing. Maybe, I thought, if I put aside my skepticism and willed myself to believe that the cancer could disappear, it would.


II

In the days after that night in the mareel, I felt a lot better. The blood in my urine cleared up; I stopped getting backaches. I didn’t dare believe that it had anything to do with swimming in the mareel, but I was delighted all the same.

I took to joining Mirrin and Isla for a swim first thing every morning before the school run. Even in brisk winds, the icy sleeve of the waves around my body was exhilarating. I felt like I’d discovered a rare secret, the thrill of immersing myself in the thrashing wilderness of the Atlantic Ocean. Maybe, I thought, the diagnosis was wrong. They get things like that wrong sometimes, don’t they?

Isla invited me and the girls to join her for dinner. We ate in her dining room, which was the size of all the rooms of the bothy combined, with an oval oak table in the center and a fireplace that I could easily stand up inside. Rowan and Saffy sat next to each other. I’d hoped they’d be friends, but now I could see the reason why they hadn’t clicked. They were like chalk and cheese. Rowan wore a vial containing wolfsbane—“It kills werewolves, and you never know”—and a floaty purple dress embroidered with mystical symbols. Her fingers were covered in heavy silver rings and she talked in her high-pitched voice about tarot and a retreat to Iceland she wanted to take to meet with a coven. I spotted Saffy rolling her eyes more than once. She was dressed in a thrift store lumberjack shirt and ripped jeans with nine-hole Doc Martens boots with yellow laces. Her blonde hair hadn’t been washed in a week and she’d piled it up on the top of her head with a pen spiked through the nest of it. She stifled a yawn, and I realized suddenly how tired she looked.

“And how is school, my lovelies?” Isla asked Clover and Luna when the conversation began to flag.

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