The Lighthouse Witches(94)

She refused to be discouraged. The Facebook page proved that Luna had been looking for her, that she was out there. Perhaps, she thinks, if she retraces her steps, she’ll find her family.

In a public toilet she changes out of her school uniform into jeans and a shirt, then checks the cash she’s been squirreling away in her purse. The McKennas give her a weekly allowance on a credit card, but she’s been drawing it out. It’s taken such patience to do this instead of just bolting, but a credit card can be traced. She knows the route she has to take—a bus, then a train, then a ferry. And then she’ll be on Lòn Haven.

As she boards the bus, she checks the route on her phone, running a thumb over the image of the island. Her heart burns to find her family. How ironic, she thinks, that the whole time she was on Lòn Haven, she fantasized about running away, about leaving her mother and sisters, and now all she can think about is going back.

About throwing her arms around her mum and apologizing for being such a diva. About telling her sisters that she loves them and she’ll never, ever shout at them again.





LIV, 2021


A limpet is a creature without eyes, limbs, without so much as a brain, and yet it creates for itself a spot on the rock that is its home. It leaves its mark on that spot, wearing away the rock until its shell forms a perfect seal. The home scar.

Maybe time is like that. Maybe we always move exactly to where and when we belong, even without realizing it. It certainly feels like that for me. As though everything in my whole life has led me to where I am now.

Finn found me that day on the beach. Finn, who had left Lòn Haven for New Zealand many years before, who hadn’t so much as visited in twenty years, after being accused of having an affair with Saffy. Even after Rowan confessed to slipping the Polaroids through a gap in his car window, the rumors spread. He’d stayed in Auckland for twenty years, then decided on a whim to fly back to Lòn Haven to spend Christmas 2021 with Cassie. And that morning, he’d felt a pull to walk along the bay next to the Longing.

He saw a strange creature drag herself up the beach. He saw that she was injured, a horrific wound in her back, rough stitches holding together a hole the size of a fist. And when he bent down, he recognized me.

I used to tell myself that I regretted the choices I’d made in my life. But every choice, including the wrong ones, made me who I am. And the same applied to you, Luna, and you, Saffy, and you, Clover—both the good and bad experiences strengthened you, shaped you. We are not just made of blood and bone—we are made of stories. Some of us have our stories told for us, others write their own—you wrote yours.

Finn took me to the hospital, where they pumped me full of antibiotics and wheeled me into surgery. When they told me what year it was, I thought I was hallucinating.

2021.

I didn’t believe them until they showed me a newspaper with the date printed.

And the world had changed beyond recognition.

I drifted between consciousness and a black hole in which I was falling endlessly. When I woke, I tried to piece together the truth. The police came. They told me they’d found a burn on my shoulder, numbers painfully scored into it. I said that Patrick must have done it. He’d removed three of my ribs—what was a few small numbers carved into my skin? But they said Patrick Roberts was dead. He had been dead for years.

I remembered the numbers I’d found scratched on your leg, Luna. I’d thought they meant that you were a wildling. But I now had the same mark, numbers on my shoulder. The cave had done it.

The mark signified the year you’d been thrust into by whatever magic lingered in that cave.

Twenty-three years. I had been gone for twenty-three years.

I can’t tell you the grief that accompanied this realization. Finn told me you were all alive. The relief brought by this news spiraled quickly into sorrow. Who had raised you all these years? What had happened to you in the time I’d been absent? What must you all have thought?

I thought of the little boy I’d discovered in the cave. And all the children who’d gone missing on Lòn Haven. The wildlings. Most likely, they’d simply gone into the cave to explore. Then they’d fallen out the other side to another time. A day in the past, a century in the future.

The wildlings that people had murdered were their own children. They just didn’t understand how. The stories that had been passed down year upon year had given the people of Lòn Haven a way to make sense of what they saw: whenever a child disappeared, the stories of wildlings and witches provided a way of making connections between past and present.

But I’ve learned to be wary of easy connections. The best way to tell a false narrative, I think, is to consider how neatly cause and effect have been fastened together.

While I was in the hospital, they told me the cancer had spread to my liver and stomach. All they can do is extend my time. Is it weird that I found this ironic? I said yes to chemo, of course. I’ve been allowed to have it at Cassie’s home.

So you see, I kept my promise. I saw someone.

Finn tells me that Cassie had managed to track you down. He tells me, Luna, that you’ve just had your son, Charlie, and that Saffy and Clover are both with you. I can’t tell you how happy I was when he broke this news to me. He says you’re heading to Lòn Haven, even as I write. I know the ferries have had to be canceled on account of the winter weather; I’ve been thinking of that night the four of us had to sleep in my old Renault 5, the wind shaking the roof and the rain beating against the glass. I hated it at the time, and now I’d give anything to go back and spend one more second with you all.