Now Rose and Griffin sat beside me at the prow of the ship. From its position near the mouth of the harbor, I spotted the imposing outline of Fort Sumter.
“We need to release Eleanor’s body.” Rose spoke and signed—hushed tones and hesitant gestures. We were in unfamiliar territory. “If we wait until we’re in the harbor, it’ll probably wash up on shore.”
She breathed in and out slowly, trying to stay in control. I was doing the same thing. I didn’t want to tell Alice and Tarn that it was time to say good-bye. Or Ananias.
Griffin raised his hands, but a moment passed before he signed. What. Happen. Last. Night?
I knew what he was talking about, but I didn’t have an answer. Ananias had warned me that Joven was behaving strangely, but I never would’ve believed he hated Alice enough to blame her for Eleanor’s death. It was crazy.
When I shrugged, Griffin coiled his arms around the deck rails and stared at the harbor ahead of us. He was constantly searching for answers, but some things couldn’t be explained.
“Was it an accident, Thomas?” Rose whispered. “When you touched Ananias and combined to make the flames.”
She was giving me a lifeline. To everyone else I must have seemed like a child playing with a dangerous new weapon. But I’d wanted to hurt him, I knew that much. “I wasn’t trying to kill him, Rose. I didn’t want anyone to die.”
She gave a small, sad nod. “Me neither.”
I looked at my hands. There was no sign of the energy that had coursed through them ever since I was born. No scars from the pain I’d brought to others. “I hope our elements disappear completely. I hope whatever’s left can fade away. I don’t want this anymore.”
Rose didn’t answer, but when she leaned into me and rested her head against my shoulder, I knew she was wishing for the very same thing.
»«
We formed a circle around Eleanor’s body, just as we had for Kyte two days earlier. We were fewer now. With my father below deck, still too weak to move, only eight of us stood there.
I’d promised to bring everyone to safety. I’d convinced them that a better future lay ahead. But who was better off now?
All eyes turned to Tarn to offer blessings for safe passage. She couldn’t seem to find the words, though. So Rose began to speak, words of comfort and, above all, love.
Across from me, Ananias kept his eyes closed, fists clenched at his sides. When Rose was done, he stepped forward and crouched beside Eleanor. He rested his elbows on his knees, head swaying slowly from side to side. From the way he stared at her, I imagined that he was committing her face to memory, already dreading the day when he’d forget how she looked.
Alice took a seat across from him. She held her sister’s hand, turned it over and twined fingers. They’d never been as close as my brothers and me—too different from each other—but Eleanor had been patient with Alice. She’d tried to understand her sister’s quirks, and she’d been there when Joven’s temper threatened to boil over. Now a lifetime together was suddenly over.
Tarn knelt beside Alice. She placed one reassuring hand on her daughter’s back, and the other on Eleanor’s chest, right above her heart. “All of us pay for our sins eventually,” she said, though I was certain the remark was directed at us, not her daughter. Then, looking at the sky, she added, “Pity those that pay for the sins of others. Good-bye, my love. Good-bye, my Eleanor.”
A few steps away, Rose’s mother gave a series of gentle nods. She didn’t speak, or comfort Tarn, though. The two widows who had known each other for years behaved like total strangers.
Choking on her tears, Tarn wrapped an arm around Alice and eased her away. With a single nod, she gave us the signal to lift Eleanor’s body.
No one had said a word for Joven.
Rose and Griffin held Eleanor’s legs. Ananias and I held her shoulders. My older brother shook as if the load was the heaviest he’d ever had to bear. In a way, I suppose it was.
We shuffled over to the rail. Griffin and Rose placed Eleanor’s legs on it, leaving it to me and Ananias to push her over. But he couldn’t do it. And so with no other choice, I took both of Eleanor’s arms. When she left us for the final time, it was me who pushed her over.
Eleanor’s body crashed into the water and disappeared beneath the waves. A moment later, she emerged again, settling on the swell. Her tunic, rust red only moments before, appeared bright white in the morning sun. It billowed around her. With her long hair trailing behind her, she looked as beautiful as she had appeared in life, and for that I was grateful. It was how I wanted us all to remember her.
»«
The harbor appeared desolate. Gulls gave warning cries as we approached, but there were no boats on the water, or people on land. To the southwest, Fort Sumter rose fortress-like from the water. Its great brick walls pressed against the harbor swell, as if there were no island at all. A tall ship’s mast peeked above the battlements on the far side.
With a turn of the winches, the ropes and pulleys lifted the sails and tucked them safely away. The ship continued to drift forward, but it was slowing. When we were a hundred yards from the island, Griffin and I lowered the stern anchor. The massive chain links clinked as the anchor splashed through the surface and continued dropping to the harbor bed. A moment later, the ship stopped moving and swayed gently in place.
I ran to the bow to lower the anchor there too, but Alice told me to wait. At first, I was confused, but as the tide pulled the ship’s prow gently around, I understood. Always thinking ahead, Alice wanted us to face the harbor mouth, in case we needed to leave quickly.
The fort had the look of a place with history, and an unpleasant one at that. Even its location at the harbor mouth seemed threatening rather than welcoming. As the ship swung languidly around, the view shifted somewhat, but I still couldn’t see anyone on the island. Instinctively, I scanned the ground for rats instead. There were no signs of life at all.
We lowered the second anchor and the ship sat idly in the calm harbor water. I joined Rose, who was leaning against the deck rail, hand shading her eyes from the sun. In the near distance, a door opened slowly in the fort’s perimeter wall. A line of men snaked out. They strode toward the edge of the island, where a jetty protruded several yards into the water.
I was so focused on their progress that it took me a moment to notice the other faces gradually appearing above the walls: men and women, and even some children. Only their eyes and noses peeked out, as though they were curious but also afraid.
“I guess they haven’t had many new arrivals recently,” said Rose, echoing my thoughts. “They’re going to have a lot of questions.”
“I’m not sure what to tell them.”
“We could try the truth for a change.”
“That we have elements?” I glanced at my hands and thought of what they’d done. “I don’t think they’re going to trust us if they’re afraid we might burn down their colony.”
The welcoming party stepped onto the jetty and arranged themselves in a line facing us, hands tucked neatly behind their backs. One of them, a man in his late twenties, I guessed, raised a hand and shouted something to us. I couldn’t hear him, though. Again the man shouted, but we were a hundred yards away and the breeze, though gentle, smothered his words. I tried to shout something back, but he couldn’t hear me, either. Beside him, the men shifted from foot to foot, growing restless.