Chapter Thirteen

I would only be gone a moment, I reasoned, and I slipped from the manor.

Long smears of black clouds roiled across the sky, and though it had not yet rained it would soon. The wind tossed the trees about, twisting their branches so that the silvery undersides of the leaves flashed. The surf was higher than I ever thought possible. The beach was already gone, replaced by churning, angry water. The cottage was perilously close to the waves below it.

When I reached the door and turned the handle, it flew open.. The wind rushing through the hole in the floor made it impossible to shut the door, so I left it open. I had to lean into the wind to enter the house.

It was the last time I would ever enter the glass house.

The windows were rattling and the floor underneath my hands shook in the wind. There was a whistle, a horrible shriek with each gust, and I realized that it was a shard of the broken floor that made the shrill noise.

The house seemed afraid, like it was shaking with fear and clutching the cliff, holding on for dear life. I walked across the remaining panel of the glass floor and the wind burst through the broken pane and hit me like a wall. I careened sideways and then righted myself. I reached the decorative vase filled with seashells and plucked my own simple necklace from the top. I quickly tied it on and felt a calmness come over me as I did.

I have often dwelled on what happened next, returning to it again and again, as I try to make sense of it. The moment I tied the necklace on, before my very eyes, the front doors of the house wavered for a moment, and then slammed shut with a force that shook me from my feet.

For a moment I was completely shocked and it took a while before I could respond. But when I did, I ran to the front doors and pulled on them frantically, screaming and yelling and banging on them. The doors would not budge. I was trapped, and the only thing I could think of was that I was headed to a crystal grave.

Then, I was alone with the storm.

I understand now, all these years later, the nature of storms. Storms are a force, a life all their own. They listen to no one and brutally ravage their waiting victims.

But I didn’t know that then. I only knew that a rage of fear exploded inside me. I roared and threw the dining chairs, one after the other, against the covered door. It didn’t budge, but I continued until I was so exhausted that I couldn’t breathe. There was no way out. The only windows were over the cliff, and the only door barred shut. There was no way I could survive the drop to the rocks below.

I leaned against the wall and sank to the floor. What would Celeste do, I wondered, faced with death? For once, there was no clear answer waiting in my head. I couldn’t know what she would do. I only knew what I would do.

I would fight.

In a rage, I rose and went to her bedroom. I swept my hand across the vanity, sending everything into the air. I shoved her mirror to the ground, shattering it into a million pieces. Without stopping, I stormed to the closet and grabbed her clothes and ran to the gaping hole in the floor. I tossed them through and the wind caught them and scattered them in all directions, like a flock of birds set free.

When it turned dark the first rains came. Sheets of it pelted against the walls in brief explosions. The wind followed, whistling as it circled the house, faster and faster, until the only thing to hear was a throaty howl that never ceased. The house shuddered, and I realized that in the storm, the glass house was a different thing. It was battened down and hiding, without any strength or defense.

I knew that it was too late to hide. The storm had taken notice and as I listened to the wind and rain, it almost seemed as if the storm had begun to toy with us. It was pitch black, so I had only my ears, but I knew the soul of that storm, and it was evil.

The winds were low and rumbling, shaking the foundation of the house. Then, a gust would roll over everything, wild, screaming in glee, going round and round in a frenzy. The whole structure groaned as if someone were leaning against it. A new sound came, a sound I recognized, and it brought me right to my feet.

It was a sloshing, slapping noise.

Water.

Beneath the house, already pushing at the floorboards, the waves crested through the hole in the glass floor. When the water hit my feet, rolling over them like a warm caress, I screamed. Then, another noise came. It was a roaring, hissing noise, and with a bang, and a crack, the house split open and water came roaring over me, bubbling up everywhere and sweeping me into it.

I heard the windows bursting apart, and more water, now black as blood beneath the now visible night sky, poured in. The house was barely together, splitting open and filling with foamy, hungry water. I righted myself, and half-swam through the madness, to where the house had cracked open. I clutched the wooden frame and watched as items, ghostlike, bounced and collided against one another.

I screamed again, as long and hard as I could, not with fear, but with a passion. I might die at the cold hand of a watery death, but I would not die silently. When I was done, I whispered to myself, “I have no choice.” I let go of the house.

I was in the ocean, nothing more than a piece of flotsam, pushed here and there. The water was moving, pushing, forcing me inland and I tumbled along with it, bumping into things that I could not see, grabbing frantically at anything that had substance.

The moment I crashed into the cliff my body exploded into pain. The water rose higher still, and swamped over me, but the pressure of it kept me crushed against the stone. I feared that I would die, crushed and trapped.

I heard in my mind Lucas’s voice from the day that we went sailing and I fell into the water. “Don’t fight it, just float.” I knew what to do. I dragged my hands above me until they caught a hold and then I pulled with all my might until my face broke free of the water. I held onto the stone, floating, rising higher and higher. The rain lashed against my face like a thousand needles and I was blind. All I could do was rise.

The wind stopped abruptly. The skies were clear. The moon was even visible, a half-crest, a blinking eye. Everything was perfectly still. I could see the poor house, broken into bits, great white chunks floating in the darkness. It was difficult to see where I was; the stone steps were gone, the torches gone. I looked up. The rock above me jutted out. I kicked off of the wall and shot upward, out of the water. I was only able to get a hand on the shelf before falling into the water again, but it was enough for me to know that it was a sturdy shelf.

I knew what was coming, that I needed a safe place. I tried over and over, but couldn’t reach it, and it was only when the storm picked up again and the winds exploded out of nowhere that the ocean rose again, and I was finally able to grab hold and pull myself up.

As soon as I heaved forward and felt a bed of stone underneath me, I collapsed upon it, my body wrecked, my soul completely spent, and my heart full of relief because there was a chance that I might live.

There was not long to celebrate or recoup, because the wind blew mercilessly and on my naked skin it felt colder than ice. My teeth began to chatter and I huddled as best I could, with my head tucked between my knees, my arms wrapped around my legs and my breath the only warm and life-affirming proof I had.

It was still night, and it seemed to stretch on forever. I marked time by the gusts of wind and the rhythm of the waves. The water moved higher still and I could hear the waves coming, foaming, sloshing, rising up the rocks. When a wave finally crested the stone it made a sound like a gurgle of delight before flooding over me. Strange as it sounds, the waves felt deliciously warm, coating my body in a brief blanket before slithering away, back into the ocean.

That was my darkest moment. I confess that the water, which I had feared so much just a short time before, was now seductive to me. Instead of wishing for it to go away, I found myself anticipating each wave, its warm shroud over my shoulders all too brief.

A huge wave came, pushed even larger by a screaming gale, and I am ashamed to say that I broke my protective stance of warmth, and I cried out for the wave as it retreated. I crawled across the ledge, sobbing, pleading for the water to come back to me. I went right to the edge. It would be so easy, I thought, to slip back into that warm water. To stop this madness, hanging on to rocks, clinging to the small slip of life that I had left. The water would be warm, embracing to me.

At that moment, I heard a wave approaching, rumbling up the side of the cliff and coming to me as fast as a nightmare. I put one foot out, over the cliff, and closed my eyes. The water bubbled up around my feet.

Then, as if from a great distance away, I heard my name. It was Lucas. I turned, searching for him, for the source of the sound, but I could see nothing in the fierce rain, only the rock behind me. I knew it was bad, to be hallucinating like that, but when I heard the voice again, calling to me, the only thing that I could do was follow it.

I moved away from the edge just as the water crested violently, slapping against me, and swelling over the rocks and about my feet. I didn’t care, because I lived only for that voice, to hear it again. Then again, faint, far away. I stumbled backward, pushed even harder by the wind, and where I thought my body would crash into stone, I fell into an opening in the rock. I had found a cave.

There was nothing but blackness in the cave and the howling wind outside, and I lay still for a long time, panting and shaking with fear and shock. The wind roared, and I could feel the anger of the storm, but it could not enter the cave, not fully, at least. Every once in a while a gust would burst in, but I was protected at last. Now I only needed to pray that the water would not rise any higher.

I ran my hands over my body. The rain had pelted against me as hard as stones for so long that I could feel my skin swelling and bruising beneath my fingers. Even so, I was filled with hope for the first time since the storm started. I crawled along until I felt a wall, and I curled up against it. Somehow, I still wore my necklace and my ring, and I held the shell tight for comfort, and somehow, in the midst of all that fury, I slept.

The sound of gulls crying out to each other woke me. When I opened my eyes and stood, I could see no blue in the sky, only gray clouds that raced along, but the storm had clearly moved on. The skin on my fingers and toes was white and puckered and shredded, and I could see the pink flesh exposed in the worst cuts. When I moved my body cried out in pain, and I could see the bruises painted over every piece of skin. I walked out onto the ledge that I had almost stepped off last night, and was humbled to see the sheer drop to the rocky beach below. The glass cottage was completely gone, wiped away as if it had never even existed.

A mixture of sadness and relief swept over me. The pang of loss was acute; the house had been so beautiful, such a powerful place to be in. I would only possess a pale memory of its greatness.

A gust of wind rushed the cliff and blew my hair around, and remembering the power of the wind, I stepped away. The floor of the ledge sloped so deeply downward that this cave would never, ever be noticed from the ground, and unless I figured out some way to get out, I would be trapped until I died of starvation or water deprivation.