Ocean water soaked her dress, gobbling the tissue-thin fabric. The yards of marigold and honey grew darker beneath the water, skirts belling like a massive jellyfish a breath before the rocks in her pockets pulled. Luci followed the pull, exhaling into deeper waters, allowing gravity to have its say. It was time, she knew it in her bones — Emelia and Ryder would beg her to stay, but she couldn’t come through that whole. She was already sick but they would wear her down, win her over.
She closed her eyes, the water rising over belly and breasts. A committed hand enclosing her neck, she let the wet pull her down and down, beneath the surface where the world was, for once, quiet. She swam deeper, toward the darkening depths that were both familiar and unknown, and the rocks carried her down and down, until the fabric of her pockets tore and the rocks tumbled free, one scraping a long bloody line down her shin. Luci grabbed for the rocks, but they were already gone, tumbling faster now that they were free of her. The ocean filled her skirts again, belling her toward the surface. She broke through with a sob, and floated into water brightened with sunlight.
The ocean spat her out. The gray stones bit into her cheek as she rolled in with the tide. Hair spilled like seaweed, skirts deflated and suffocating, water beading, running off, away, mud squelching between toes, fingernail-shells crusting eyebrows, sand bejeweling lips and breasts, the frantic scamper of something still alive down her bare arm, the splash of it back into the ocean that had rejected her.
Hunger, all-consuming. Luci’s eyes sought the thing that had fled into the shallows, and plunged her hands in, down, not knowing what it was, but she caught it, and it fought, and she hauled it out and subdued it with a bite, jaws closing around its compact head, breaking skin and bone and muscle and vein, and the blood was salt against her lips — she needed copper, but she didn’t stop, needed something inside — didn’t stop until it was inside her, belly-buried and cold as the water, cold as the stars that now prickled the sky above her.
Time had a way of doing that now, it slipped like a foot on wet, rotting wood, until it was upside down from where it had begun. Luci stared at the stars and she knew what they were but she also didn’t know, couldn’t remember, and it was how she’d known she was sick to start, had gone grotesque despite her best efforts to keep the plague outside of her skin. It was exciting — it should not have been — to have it part of her, to know the horror was right there now, close to her own heartbeat. She didn’t want anyone else to have it — but the year would end as it always did, at Watch Point, with Ryder and Braga, because she had an oath to keep.
They’d all taken it, on the beach with fires roaring to keep the grotesques away. Humans could abide fire, but not grotesques. On the beach between deadwood and shell, Luci had promised, had sworn, had drawn her own blood from her mouth and smeared Ryder’s naked body with it; Ryder and Emelia and Braga and Avery and Charlotte, and Mya — but Mya had given up first, and eventually the others had gone too, all of them except Emelia and Ryder and Braga, those who knew what it meant to keep an oath. An oath was blood, was hunger, was forever. Forever wasn’t so long to keep in this world.
The hunger pursued Luci out of the water, but at her small cave it grew quiet. She sank to the ground, shivering, but she could not build a fire — it would burn too brightly, for wasn’t it a star — or was a star fire, she could not remember and it did not matter so she left the beach, because it echoed empty when she cried out. No grotesque called back to her, reassuring her that she wasn’t so far gone yet. She could do this — she could end the year with Ryder, but if she touched him… If he filled her to overflowing, then he too would have the contagion inside him, and her greedy greedy heart wanted no other to have it. She had betrayed her oath like the stones falling into the depths without taking her along, but no, no, no. Luci told herself no until she believed it. Her heart was still beating, she wore her finest tissue gown, she was nothing like the grotesques dissolving in the streets — would never be that, black goo whisked beneath the wheel of a passing car. Carriages now, but cars before. She could remember some things about the world before — cars and premieres and diamonds on her fingers like stars — she was nothing like them. Nothing.
The streets were empty and the farther she got from the water, the better she felt. She walked until her skirts dried and then, barefooted, turned up the walk to the house before her. There had been a key once, but this world was beyond keys now. Grotesques had only hunger, no need for doors. Their hands only good for tearing, not turning a knob.
Luci opened the door and closed the door, normal as yesterday, and walked into the kitchen, and if saltwater beaded on the floor in her wake, it would be gone when time flipped again so she didn’t fret over it, only walked up the back stairs and found her way into the room where she slept. It was not hers, but it was where her things were, the things she could not carry to the cave lest the ocean tongue them away. She lay down and she closed her eyes and time flipped, she could feel it in her head, a spinning that was done in a breath, and she rose to the golden sun, to peer out the window and be sure Watch Point was where she had left it.
A knock on the door — but whoever had come was gone before she’d gotten down the stairs. Salt residue on the kitchen floor scratched at her toes, but she skipped away from it, to pluck the envelope that had been left in the door’s rusting screen. Sepia marked the paper where Luci unfolded it.
In the house, she remembered how to read, remembered books and class and homework and love notes and song lyrics, and so she read the words written to her. Dearest, Ryder’s handwriting said, Watch Point commands you. The breath went out of her and something from before crept inside her — thrill, delight, anticipation — but those words felt wrong. Hope. She spoke the word and tasted blood, tasted like the summer day she and Emelia had leaped from the treehouse holding hands, only to break apart on the ground, lips bitten. She swallowed the memory and set the letter on the counter. She smoothed her ocean-styled hair over her shoulders and straightened her posture. Watch Point commanded her, and she would go — she had made an oath — but she did not want to, did not want Ryder to see her falling apart, did not want any of them to know what was inside her.
In the house, she was careful, but when time flipped and the moon swallowed the sun, Luci left the house, left all cares, and went back to the water, to the slick gray stones. She picked them up and shoved handfuls into her pockets, only to have them rain onto her feet, for her pockets had deceived her, had hidden their truth in the bounty of her skirts. She cursed the stones, picked them up again, shoved them back in, and back out they came. Luci screeched to the sky — the stars were awful, she thought, staring like that — and ran for her cave. Slipped in the muck of the seaweeds and shells, she fell to her knees, dug her hands into the coarse sand, crawled into the shelter, and hid away from the gaze of the sky. Blood — there was blood, but she didn’t know from where. Didn’t care. She licked at it, hunger clawing out her throat until she felt the flutter of wings, the breath of another being. The butterfly was black, marked with golden stars and she batted it away — how dare the sky send such a thing to look at her — but the butterfly did not go. It looped in the air and came back to her, alighting on her arm where it tiptoed its way up and up, across her sleeve, across her bosom, and up her neck until it perched on her cheek and tasted the blood at the corner of her mouth.
Luci had not been touched in—
Time made no sense so she pushed it aside. She had never been touched and this first touch was wrong, electric; and no matter how slight it was, she leaned into it craving more, more, more. When more came — broad fingers sliding across her shoulder from behind — she startled, but could not scream, for a mouth covered hers, swallowing all sound. Braga smelled like the old world — like cigars and wine, like the ash of a fire burned too long — and Luci fell into it, into him, willing time not to flip. This touch, she wanted just a little more, but someone was whimpering and it was her, crying when Braga lifted his mouth, stepped away from her in horror. No — that wasn’t it. Wonder.
Braga fell to his knees in the wet sand and rocks, raising his arms to her. As clean as he smelled, his trousers and shirt were a mess. Seaweed draped his arms, twined around his legs; sargassum had caught in his collar, black with rot, but still gold at its tips. In the before, it had been toxic, but he wore it like a fur stole, proud like a king. Clam shells rattled in his pockets a second before he threw them at her sand-crusted feet, a tribute.
“Watch Point commands you,” he said.
Luci shook her head and took a step back. Words — language — was foreign here, Braga’s voice like a bullet in her breast. It hurt, it was hot, it burrowed into her, and flipped her stomach over. She opened her mouth to say something, but only silence slid out. Braga lurched forward and it drew a scream from her. She held a hand up and he fell back to the stones and shells.
“I’m—”
The word choked her throat. She thought it, but could not say it.
Braga watched her the way the sky watched her, until she flinched. He rose slowly from the cave floor, and offered her a hand. Luci didn’t know if she had already contaminated him, cursed him, but she was compelled to take his hand. He gently pulled her from the cave and though she cowered under the sky’s impudent gaze, followed him.
He guided her away from the ocean, but not far. He took her where the tide collected in shallow pools and she fell to the sand to gaze at the life beneath the water, the small green crabs, and the scallops looking back at her with a dozen opal eyes, and the clams closed tight and praying for a higher tide, and the things she could not name, but still reached for anyhow until Braga caught her hand and she saw the reflection in the water’s still surface. For a moment there was only the empty eye of the sky, partly blue and partly grey, but then something darker strayed into her vision, and it was a horror, something going black with rot, the tide having eaten hollows into the cheeks, giving sight to long teeth that looked barely anchored in their slimed bed, but held there behind a tendon, a muscle; and Luci dared to smile and it was that motion that told her this reflection was her own — that Braga had seen the rot of her, that she didn’t have to say the word —
—grotesque—
—but she tried anyhow, and air wheezed through her cheesecloth cheek, and she crumpled closer to the water, not to see the horror of her own face, but to drown herself yet again, but it was Braga betraying her like the stones had, wrapping his arms tightly around her until she could not breathe, but neither could she bury her face in the sand and water.
“Let,” she said.
“No,” he said. “Watch Point commands you.”
“Ryder—”
“Will take you as you are.”
It felt like yesterday, those words, and Luci pushed at Braga until he freed her. She got to her feet, stumbled through the tide pool and looked out at the ocean that would not swallow her and she did not know how Ryder or Braga could, would.
An oath. Salt tears stung her tattered cheeks and she stood crying until time slipped away again and she was alone with the stars beginning to reveal themselves. The water swallowed her ankles, and though she lay down and bid the water cover her entirely, it did no such thing; and she tried to scream at the sky, but her throat was grotesque and did not work as it once had. She splayed on the beach and silently begged, but the ocean did not claim her.
Beneath the brightening stars she walked home, and found the paper Braga must have left on the kitchen table. Three squares held numbers, the final square holding a big red X, and she knew what it meant, because reason returned in the house; the house contained yesteryear, and this simple calendar, telling her how much time she had before she had to enter Watch Point and give up her best dress.
The house could not contain time, though, could not stop its flip, so there she was, entering Watch Point barefoot and bedraggled—
—grotesque, the world whispered —
—but it was like no Watch Point she remembered and she laughed because what was memory anymore, yesterday was gone, there was only today and the desperate call of the ocean. The house had been remade, the ocean flowing where it would through the stately halls. She lifted her skirts, meaning to stay dry and beautiful for Ryder, but the ocean surged higher, the tide licking her thighs. Her knees buckled and she went down into the water, the salt biting every rotting part of her. Blood swirled in the seafoam, and she choked on a sob, wishing the ocean would carry her away, out of this life, out of this house, and then it did.
The sea curled a hand around the strand of Luci’s blood in the water, and pulled, and she fell end over end into the deepening water. It was not real, she told herself, even as the water belled her skirts up and up and up until her dress was gone, lost in the force of the current, and she was falling the way she imagined she would with rocks in her pockets, down and down and down until Ryder’s arms enfolded her and he said Watch Point commands you.
The ocean evaporated and Luci stood dripping in a dark room. The darkness consoled her because Ryder could not see the wreck of her and no matter that this was the destiny of them all — how long had they watched the world perish, time again and time was a lie — she did not want him to look at her, did not want him to know she had broken the oath, could not stand the idea of him recoiling from her, because he’d always been there, since childhood when they’d skipped hand in hand to the tide pools to watch the small green crabs and to feel the butterflies lick salt from their skin. But there he was, looking the way the sky looked — beautiful and stern and unflinching; so when she flinched, she felt it more, goosebumps skittering across her damp, salty skin. Ryder wore his midnight suit, impeccable despite the rot of the world around him. Again like the sky, he was above it all, glittering and sharp and distant and bright. Luci held out a hand to ward him off, but he did not stop and so she stepped backward, on a floor that was slick with her own decay. It was not ocean water dripping from her skin; it was her skin dripping from her bones.
In the house, she was careful, but she could not convince herself this was a house, for the walls moved like water, Ryder like a shark through them. Luci lifted an arm, meaning to reach for him, but her skin sloughed off like water over a cliff and the motion distracted her. Ryder, she wanted to say, I cannot do this, but she did this, lifting her other arm to see if it too fell to pieces. It held firm and she laughed, though it sounded like a creek babbling, her throat gone liquid as her skin.
“Ryder,” she imagined herself saying, but though she did not say it, he was there, his hands guiding her toward a table where he helped her sit. Not in a nicely padded chair, but on the smooth surface of the table itself. Walnut, she thought, but it did not matter. She splayed her hands on the table’s flat surface, her fingers running liquid everywhere and then there was Ryder, kneeling before her, licking the wetness from her skin — no, licking the skin from the wetness. Luci shuddered, falling into his dark eyes when he looked up at her. When he kissed her, he tasted like the sea, his tongue like a stinging eel as it slipped in and out of her ruined mouth. She felt herself dissolving, but never quite entirely. Something held her together — maybe it was the insistence in Ryder’s eyes or the idea that Emelia was still out there somewhere. She bit Ryder, just to taste the treehouse jump again, and he laughed, wiping the blood from his mouth, down the stained-glass wreck of her tattered cheek.
“Emelia comes next,” Ryder said as if he could read her mind. “Watch Point commands everyone and her year will come — but this is your year and you have no idea, do you — hiding away because you feared what you have become, but what you have become will feed me for another year — will keep me whole, will keep you whole, for as you are eaten, so too shall you flourish. You are the ocean, unending.”
She could feel it, the way her body split and branched everywhere Ryder pinched or bit her. Every consumption made her divide into something greater than she had been, and what had she been but some lowly girl cowering in a cave, begging the sea to drown her when this — this was her purpose, this was her place. She saw that what lay inside her was not hers to keep, but share, for this is how they would live.
She could not curl her dripping fingers into Ryder’s hair to keep him buried where he was, but her body anchored his nonetheless, and in time when Braga came to feed, he too was so anchored, buried by tongue and finger and hip and arm into the ocean she had become. The ocean had taken her, working her within its wet maw until she had formed as it wished her to, soft body split by coral and oyster, by seaweed and algae.
The stars had gone out, and there was only relief as the sky closed its monstrous eyes at last. It did not need to see what became of her inside Watch Point, because Watch Point commanded all. The spotted butterflies came, through window and roof, to perch on her brow, to drink whatever escaped her, to tiptoe their way across the surface of the ocean she had become. And if she swallowed one, it was no bother, for she branched there too, until she filled Watch Point with her overflow.
