Morning of the New Moon
The Sullivan Cottage
November 15, 2020
The sea was a collector of things.
My earliest memory was when I was six. Mom had carried me on her hip in the sea, even though she was unable to touch the ocean floor. Violent waves toppled over us again and again, and it had become a struggle to keep our heads above water. But I remembered her crying. It had been a manic sort of cry. The kind nothing could stop.
I’d never told her that when she was crying, the ocean was curling its salty fingers into my hair, ripping away my favorite lilac hair clip. Or that my sea was shoving her salty fingers down my throat, stealing away my breath.
When I was eight, my sisters, and my best friend, Adeline, and I had matching pastel two-pieces. One June, after Mom could no longer speak, we waded in the shallow while Dad held Mom in the deep. Mom returned with puffy eyes and no smile, and Dad returned without his wedding band. He’d said a wave slipped it right off his finger. After all this time, the ocean never returned her smile or his wedding band.
When I was ten, I awoke on the shore the morning after Adeline died. I had my head lying on praying hands and was consumed with the kind of grief that made everything hurt. The tide had come up and over me like a blanket, wiping away my tears.
On a cold October night when I was fourteen, after Mom could no longer walk, my sisters and I built tents with driftwood and worn tarps from Dad’s fishing shed. We camped through the night on shore and didn’t make it to morning. The tide had rolled in and choked our fire, and as her waters slipped back into the ocean, she took my purple glitter jelly sandals with her.
I haven’t seen them since.
The sea was a collector of things. It took things we cherished—most things we’d forgotten—and I still found myself drawn to her, unable to resist her call, needing to step into the graveyard of the lost, wild, and treasured.
My foot let off the last step of the stone stairway, and I laid my hands on the weathered gate, feeling the sharp imperfections scratch against my palm. There, I looked out into the expansive, milky-white horizon, my gaze falling upon my beloved black sea.
A sliver of wood pierced my skin, and I sucked in a sharp breath, turning my hand over to find a splinter in my finger. Deep and stuck. Ugly and imperfect. I pressed against it, and the slight burn was somewhat satisfying, like a tiny knife cutting into me every time I flicked my fingernail against it.
There was pleasure in pain for someone like me—someone who was a pretty shell holding in an ocean of rage. So, I closed my fist and decided to keep the splinter for as long as I could. Until I wouldn’t need it any longer. Perhaps that could last forever, like this unexpected winter which arrived one night and never left.
It was different here. Snow flurries drifted, gentle and dreamy, wrapping the town in a gloomy silence, like a film noir. I dropped my hand and dragged in a full breath until my lungs filled with the winter chill. Then I let it go and unlatched the gate, my collected splinter pounding in my index finger.
The beach was crisp and frigid, and my dress was trailing across the sand as I stepped closer to the shore on bare, clandestine soles. A cool morning mist flipped over the waves and howled in my ears, flicking tiny grains of sand against my cheeks and into my eyes.
At the shoreline, I gathered the bottom of my dress in one hand, pinned it to my thigh, and clutched the glass bottle—with my message inside—in my other hand. I stood deathly still, keeping my feet just behind the waterline, daring the sea to come and collect me, too. Come treasure me, too. Come love me, too.
Anticipation scratched up my spine, then her denim waters came, wrapping around my ankles and teasing me. My numbed feet sank, wet sand slipping out from under my toes and pulling back without me, the ocean loving her shore but never loving me enough to fight for me in return.
Though the sea and I had been here before, disappointment still flooded my chest. As it would time and time again.
As I looked up, I let the bottom of my dress go, and the linen was swept up in her waters. The new sheer moon was a ghost, a transparent sheet pinned to the ashen, pre-morning sky. It was time, and I uncorked the bottle and slid the message into my palm.
All my wicked thoughts were tattooed inside.
Inky messages wept in fluid cursive, punched into the brittle ivory.
I pushed the letter back into the bottle, re-corked it, and tossed it into the fog.
The tide pulled back, grabbing my ugly message with foamy white fingers.
As if she had been thirsting for it, my secret drifted in her deep waters. She craved only my dreadful evil. The letter after the last full moon hadn’t been enough. The ocean was never satisfied, craving each and every new moon, too. Every end and every new beginning.
My love for the sea was an unrequited, toxic sort of love.
She took and took, I gave and gave, and my love for her remained. But I still held on to the day she stopped taking, or until the day she’d take me completely.
“Adora,” Fable’s sing-song voice called out, penetrating the seams of the salty breeze. I clutched the chain around my neck. The lightness of this spare moment alone was gone. “Everything all right?”
Fawn hair whipped around my younger sister’s face and shoulders as she stood atop the porch balcony. Her freckle-dusted cheekbones shone down at me like dawn stars, yet a heaviness hung under her eyes. “Come inside. Dad made breakfast.”
A mid-morning snowfall tickled the floor-to-ceiling windows at the back of the cottage. If one listened closely, the almost-muted sound was like a soft thumping. Rhythmic. A melody that was beautiful and belonged in a song and not in Weeping Hollow.
Dad made crepes from scratch. A variety of jams and jellies covered the kitchen island, each jar with a gingham lid.
Ivy sat at the breakfast nook, surrounded by embroidered, hand-stitched pillows. She was tying knots in ropes for fishermen for when they could ship back out to sea again.
My older sister depicted a stormy night. Black hair parted down the middle of her full-moon face, and navy edges struck her pale-blue eyes. But this morning, after many sleepless nights, she sat dazed in the kitchen, her fingers working on frayed ropes with robotic fingers.
I sat on a barstool at the island beside Fable, and Dad slid a jar across the island. “I picked up your favorite. Hazelnut peanut butter.”
I caught the jar in my palm, and Adeline’s face instantly took shape in my mind. “It’s impossible,” she mumbles with a mouthful, catching crumbs falling out of her mouth, but it sounds more like ih ipaw-ih-ble. A plate of crackers coated with peanut butter sits between us on the floor, challenging each other to eat six of them in under a minute. We’re giggling in the middle of the night. With ten seconds left, we shove two more crackers into our mouths. When the alarm sounds, we fall onto our sides, our faces and fingers sticky, laughing so hard our laughter turns silent, mouths agape, saltine sludge sliding out, and we can’t breathe.
The blaze from the fire crackling in the stone fireplace behind me licked the nape of my neck, pulling me back.
I lifted my eyes, catching Dad watching me as I traded the peanut butter for the jelly. “I thought Mrs. Cantini wiped out all that was left,” I said, spreading the jelly onto a crepe.
“Viola sure did,” Dad rushed to say, pacing the kitchen with flour caking his forearms and dishes clinking together in his hands. “I had an early start this morning. The Shadows took her handyman, Tim. So, I was over at her property to help fix a broken railing.” Dad swiped a dish towel from the edge of the sink and dotted his forehead, not looking at me. “Then I’m walking up our porch steps just as Mrs. Madder spotted me. Perfect timing, as always. I had to board up her windows.” A groan. “Don’t get me wrong, I adore Mrs. Madder, but that woman drives me nuts.”
Of the three of us, I looked the most like our father. We both had blond hair, though his was graying on the sides, and green eyes. When he smiled, wrinkles fanned around the edges, but the days of Dad smiling were few and far between.
As it was, youthful skin ran on my maternal side. Mom once said it was because of the ocean, and that her waters would keep us young and beautiful forever.
“Viola knows how much my girls love jellies with their pastries in the morning. And you, Adora, with the peanut butter. It was the least she could do.” He’d said it as if he rehearsed what Viola had told him. From her lips to his ears, then ours. But if they’d paid attention, they’d know I hadn’t had peanut butter in over twelve years.
As Dad rambled, Fable faced me with humility shining in her eyes. Freckles splattered her cheekbones and the bridge of her nose, and they moved as she fought back a doubtful smile. One that also recognized Dad’s strange behavior.
I followed Fable’s gaze to Ivy sitting in the corner of the kitchen, and for a moment, we all exchanged knowing glances.
Sometimes in moments like these, it reminded me of when we were kids—before Mom left—when all five of us were together in this kitchen. A time when the Curse of the Hollow Heathens remained, and their remnant shadows weren’t haunting the streets of the town. A time before the Panic and piles of unpaid dues. A time before Kane took Mom away. A time before a Heathen took Adeline away.
Dad leaned over the island and shoved a fork-full into his mouth. “What?”
“Oh, nothing,” Fable sang, sliding one of my magazines closer to her from the end of the island. A vintage December 1949 Vogue issue from my collection. It had been sitting on the island from the night before. I’d been working on Viola’s dress and needed inspiration.
Dad stabbed his fork into another buttery layer. “I ran out of wood on Mrs. Madder’s windows. I have to go back into town for more and start on ours. That is if there’s any wood left.”
The boards weren’t there to protect us from the Shadows because the Shadows didn’t come from anywhere. They just appeared. The boards were needed to stop those on the west side from breaking in and stealing food or money. Sometimes both. Anything they could get their filthy hands on.
“Adora,” he pointed his fork at me, “could you close your shop an hour early? We must be at the Pruitt’s by one and home before nightfall.”
“Close early?” I was already closing early, with nightfall coming at three in the afternoon. “No. There’s still so much that needs to get done with barely any time left. There’s no way I can leave early.”
The Founder’s Day Ball was only six weeks away, and I was already behind. Most women in Weeping Hollow paid their deposits a year ago, the day after the last ball, expecting me to have finished their dresses by this time. Their pantry may be empty, windows not boarded, empty batteries in their flashlights. However, they would still pay me what was due for the ball, the most prestigious event of the year. And we needed money. I had a responsibility to uphold, regardless of the Panic.
Which had me worried. How much longer could we go on with a reduced income? Dad was unable to fish, the docks were closed, and the entire town was suffering while slowly dying off one by one.
Luckily for us, I had Founder’s Day to keep us afloat. People still cared about the ball. People would always care about the ball, no matter what threat came upon us. But what would happen to my family if the town ever canceled the ball?
Beside me, Fable slowly flipped through my magazine, the scratchy sound of the waxy pages filling the awkward tension.
“Make a way,” Dad insisted. “There’s a meeting in the Sacred Sea chamber. Augustine, Viola, Cyrus, and Kane will be there, too. We’re all required to attend.”
Fable’s fingers paused. Her and Ivy’s expressions abandoned them.
The sound of Kane’s name struck a chord inside me, and I gripped the edge of the stool. The splinter in my finger rubbed against the wood, and a jolt of pain rushed through my hand. I pressed my finger into the stool to keep the ache there and lasting. It was a way to blanket the rage and focus on what Dad was saying. A meeting. Ah, yes, a meeting.
It was the first time any of us had heard about this meeting.
Could it be the reason for Dad’s bizarre behavior?
“Is it about the Shadows?” Fable asked, flipping another page in my magazine. “Did they take someone else?”
She didn’t look up when Dad said, “No, and you know I can’t talk about it.”
We already knew his response. It was the same each time. It was put out due to the heavy nature of the topic, like everything else that stirred up in the Sullivan cottage. Water over fire.
I thought about Mrs. Edwin. The last time we’d spoken was when I’d accused her of stealing from Oh My Stars. Hours before the Shadows took her life, we had a heated argument, and it didn’t end well. She’d accused me of lying, and I’d threatened to burn her rickety cabin down with her and her sick daughter inside it. A flatlander had called Officer Stoker shortly after, and he showed up outside my shop and escorted Mrs. Edwin out.
I hadn’t meant to say these things. I didn’t know where these words had come from. This isn’t me, I’d wanted to tell them. I’d been swept by cruelty like one was swept by illness, and I hated myself for it. I didn’t know when it started. As the years passed, this evil inside me had only worsened, and if I didn’t toss my letters into the ocean twice a month, was burning down their home something I would act upon?
“Watch, they’re going to confirm the Shadows took Freddy this time,” Ivy said, her voice disinterested as she tightly pulled another knot. “Weeping Hollow can’t function without Freddy in the Mourning. Ever since he went missing, it’s like no one knows what’s going on anymore.”
At my side, Fable tapped on an article that read The Decline and Fall of Blondes and side-eyed me with a smirk, perhaps trying to lighten the mood. She was good at that.
I peeled the magazine from her jelly-smeared fingers, but the news of this meeting still twisted in my head, layering another worry.
Ivy went back to tying knots with the same worry in the creases of her eyes.
After the last dish was clean, Ivy dried her hands over the sink and turned, coming face to face with Dad. He held a breakfast tray with crepes, fruit, and a glass of orange juice between them.
His expression softened. “Bring this to your mother?”
Their eyes met for a brief stand-off until Ivy turned away.
Dad always tried. Ivy always turned away.
His crestfallen eyes turned to me for help.
Mom’s bedroom was down the hall and to the right, just before the staircase. I balanced the tray in one hand and clutched the brass knob in the other, closed my eyes, and sucked in a full breath.
A four-poster bed with an ivory canopy and crisp-white lace trim greeted me. Tucked inside a made-up bed lay Mom, eyes closed with a steady beeping of her heart on the monitor at her side. Dad had pulled back the curtains, hoping for natural light to flood into the room. But the only color this morning was gray, much like Mom’s soul.
“Hi, Mom,” I set the plate on the nightstand, grabbed the breakfast tray, and pulled out each leg, humming the tune to You Are My Sunshine. It was the same song Mom had sung to us every morning from room to room.
There was a crack in my pitch, my voice shaking from the memory.
But I didn’t stop, hoping she could hear me, hoping she could find comfort while trapped in her nightmare.
Mom hadn’t moved on her own in almost nine years. She hadn’t walked, she hadn’t spoken. She only lies behind the bedroom door, sleeping. Her blue eyes were always shut, but I still saw the same nostalgic color every time Ivy looked at me.
When the Panic first started, I lay beside her to protect her from the Shadows, but the Shadows never came for her. They never would. A more powerful form of torture had already taken precedence over Mom.
I didn’t know why Dad insisted on making her breakfast and delivering food to her room when she never awoke to eat it. He’d believed the routine, the scents, and the visits would bring her back. But after all this time, none of it ever did.
When I was fourteen, despite what the coven had done, Dr. Morley diagnosed her with an extreme case of catatonia—a depression so severe, it had put her into a catatonic state. It was just a formality. According to him, the only thing preventing her from living, loving, caring, and being a mother and wife was her.
As they all said, Mom gave up a long time ago.
Ivy had given up on her long before that.
But I never gave up on her.
“There’s a Sacred Sea meeting today,” I said, holding a spoon-full of orange marmalade close to her cracked lips so she could smell it. Not eat it because she hadn’t eaten anything in years. Something was feeding her long enough to keep her healthy. Magic, perhaps. “No one knows what the meeting’s about, but Dad seems nervous, which is making all of us nervous.” I laughed lightly. “You know how Dad gets.”
I set the marmalade down and retrieved vanilla lip balm from my dress pocket to coat her lips. “It could be about the Shadows. It could be the announcement of Ivy and Cyrus’s marriage,” I said with an injection of hope in my voice. “Could you imagine a Sullivan-Cantini wedding? Who knows, maybe weeks from now, I’ll be designing Ivy’s wedding dress.” I shrugged. “Either way, I’ll keep you updated.”
Though I never gave up on Mom, it still pained me to come every day and see her like this. A body without a warming smile, a contagious laugh, and a musical voice that once carried delicate notes in her wake.
Dr. Morley had said Mom could hear us, that her ears weren’t broken. However, it was her choice whether she wanted to listen, and it was her choice whether to come back. But when Eleanor came to visit, she confirmed Mom was trapped in a nightmare in the middle of the ocean, screaming out for me.
Mom didn’t do this to herself. This wasn’t her fault.
She was supposed to be the strong one. Now, I had to be.
I kissed the top of Mom’s head when Dad walked into the bedroom.
His arm wrapped around my shoulder, and he looked at the love of his life with water in his eyes.
“Dad?” I hated to see him like this.
“I just miss her.” He pushed the heel of his palm into his eye to smother a tear. “She’s right here, and I just miss her, is all.”
“I know,” I said, leaning my head against his shoulder. “Mom will come back one day. She has to.”