edited by Ziv Wities
Content note (click for details)
Content note: Death, stillbirth, and isolation.I’m not supposed to talk to the locals, but that’s not a problem because there don’t seem to be any. Not as far as the eye can see. Not in the endless blue I can’t look away from. Not along the windswept bluffs high above that crashing, ever-changing vastness that makes me feel smaller than I’ve ever felt. And yet bigger. More alone. And less.
I must keep the light burning at all times.
And I must never, never climb down to the beach.
I’m content with these rules. A woman in my position is grateful for a job. Grateful for the quiet. For no eyes to watch me. Revile me.
I have a milk cow. A clutch of chickens. A garden the last lighthouse keeper planted neatly, then almost let die. And I have the sea. A beautiful fierceness I don’t yet understand.
***
“What do you know of the sea?” the man who hired me demanded, weeks ago, sitting on a bench on the street while people stared at us and whispered behind their hands.
“It’s… big. Bigger than our lake.” I tried to think of anything else that might satisfy him, but sea was just a word to me then. I hesitated. “Pearls. Pearls come from the sea.”
“You won’t be seeing a single pearl in this job. Let’s get that clear.”
I nodded. I understood. He had no idea how well.
Thin and sharp-looking, he didn’t smile, even when his lips tried. But he wasn’t treating me like a mangy dog. “What do you know about sea laws? Sailing techniques?”
“Nothing.” Surely he’d dismiss me now for my ignorance.
“What function does a lighthouse serve?”
I wasn’t even sure of that. “Maybe it helps sailors find a place to land?”
He grunted and muttered, “Finding isn’t the problem.” Then he narrowed his eyes at me. “I think you’ll do.”
“What?”
“The job’s yours, if you want it.”
Relief shot through me. Or fear. “I want it.”
“Wait until you hear the rules. You might change your mind.”
***
The first night, the peace was so complete I cried with the beauty of it. The waves crashed below, their faint rhythm strangely comforting. No other sound came, once the cliff birds settled down. Just me and the sea. The beam turned around and around, like the sun moving through a thousand days and nights, separating me from all before, moving me to a time when there was only peace. I needed peace.
***
The sharp-faced man never gave me his name. I never questioned it. “You understand,” he said, it’s very lonely.”
“Yes.”
“Very, very lonely.”
“Are you trying to scare me away?”
“Are you easily scared?”
“No.”
“Perfect.”
I wasn’t scared of loneliness. I’d faced plenty of it, surrounded by people I thought I knew. It would be a relief to be lonely alone.
“Pack up. It’s a long journey.”
***
When he first hired me, I’d assumed I would be cleaning whatever a lighthouse was. That’s what unmarried women did. If you couldn’t find a husband, you became a cleaner or a cook. Or that other job decent folk didn’t talk about. “That’s all women are good for,” a greasy-bearded man once spat at a ragged woman on my street. I’d shivered, as if I knew people would one day look at me that way. But apparently, in the lands by the sea, women can be lighthouse keepers. Maybe butchers and cartwrights too. Maybe anything’s possible here.
I spend my days high on this bluff, polishing the beautiful cut glass of the lens, winding the mechanism that turns it, clearing the vents. I make repairs. I chop wood. I inspect the wick and ready the oil. The sharp-looking man taught me these things, and now I feel a glorious power in them. If the light goes out, it’s my fault. If it stays lit, it’s my triumph. I’ve never felt so exhilarated.
The loneliness hasn’t truly set in. Maybe it never will.
***
One day I find a razor fallen behind a cabinet. A man’s razor. It’s the only evidence I’ve seen of the previous keeper—except of course for the wilting garden I’ve nursed back to health. So lighthouse keepers aren’t always women here. When I ask about the previous keeper, the man who brings supplies every two weeks says he doesn’t know anything. But when we first met, he knew exactly where to stash the supplies. His horse knew the path. I think he’s been doing this for a while.
I won’t pry. I’ve been on the other side of prying. But I let myself imagine what he looked like. How he spent his time.
Why he left.
***
A lighthouse warns sailors of rocky shoals where their ships may run aground. I learned that from the sharp-looking man. A lighthouse means life or death. It makes me swell with pride. As yet, I’ve only seen three ships, all keeping their distance. That means the light is doing its job. Sometimes I wish they would come a little closer. Close enough they can see what care I take to protect them.
Most afternoons I sit near the cross I carved and talk to the one I couldn’t protect. I’ve outlined the tiny plot with white rocks I found along the bluffs. I’ll plant flowers there next spring. It comforts me to imagine her soul at rest among the salty breezes, and the big open sky, and the distant crashing of waves. It’s a good place to rest.
***
The first big storm comes one warm night. The wind shoves its arms through the cracks around the windows and tries to steal my light, which keeps puffing out and bursting back to life, a tragedy and a miracle repeating relentlessly for hours. I sit up the whole night in the lantern room, high above the ground, as rain lashes the shuddering glass, and I protect the flame with my body.
At dawn I search the sea for wrecked ships and cry in relief when there are none. The pea vines in the garden have torn loose from their stakes. They wave in the wind like the tentacles of the sea monster I found in a book behind the flour crock.
***
That night, exhausted, I go to bed earlier than usual. Earlier than I should. I wake to wind screaming around the lighthouse again. Something is very wrong. I drag myself to the window.
The darkness is complete.
Did I forget to top up the oil? I fumble for my bedside lamp and try to light it, but my hands shake, my throat tight. I give up and feel my way to the stairway that winds up and up. Hand on the wall, I ascend into blackness, legs trembling, wind howling like a newborn child. I finally burst into the lantern room, made mostly of windows, and see the full splendor of the night sky for the first time, the darkness undiluted by the light. Half the sky is clouded, but on the landward side the stars shine brighter than I’ve ever seen, so many they’re a fog of light, not a sprinkling. It’s beautiful. But wrong. Wrong.
I stretch my hands out to the nearest window and follow until I find the open one, its latch broken. My eyes are adjusting. I wedge the window tight with rags, muting the fury of the wind, but still it sings through the cracks, a lonely and terrible lullaby.
I pull myself away. The lens is still turning. At least I didn’t fail to wind it before bed. I check the lamp. I’ve done this so many times now my fingers don’t need much help from my eyes. The oil reservoir is full enough, the air inlets unblocked. I tug at the wick, where it often slips out of place. I strike a match. A tiny glow pushes back the darkness, but the wind snuffs it. I light another. Cup my hands around it. The wick catches. The revolving glass glows brighter and brighter. A beam pierces the darkness.
I breathe deep and steady myself, legs even shakier now that my immediate task is done. I scan the sea. Its surface looks dull, choppy, but I can’t see any ships, any sign of trouble. I watch the light for long moments—not looking directly at it because the brightness hurts.
Something in me misses the darkness.
***
The window latch fixed, the oil reservoir filled, the mechanism wound, I make my blind way back downstairs. The sea is still empty, peaceful in its submission to the wind. I crawl into bed and dream of her.
***
They wouldn’t let me dress her little body. Pearl, I named her. Pearl was just a word then, like sea. A soft, shiny word that meant far-away places and unimagined beauty. Now my pearl has returned with me to the sea. Even if her body hasn’t.
***
The night is endless. This time what wakes me isn’t the wind. The building settling? Shutters swinging in a breeze I can’t hear? I lie perfectly still until it comes again, long and slow and purposeful. Scratching. On the door.
No one comes here. In all these weeks, no one has knocked but the man who brings the supplies. And he’s not due for days.
Scraaaatch.
A wild animal, in need of help? A demon?
Scraaatch.
A soft thud. Then a word. “Please.”
The same word I screamed as they took my baby away.
“Please,” the voice comes again. A man’s voice, but weak like a child’s.
I creep out of bed, grab my cooking knife, light the lamp, and tiptoe to the door. It’s latched. I always latch doors now when I sleep. I never used to. His appearance at my bed that night was not unwelcome. I thought I loved him. I thought he loved me. I would have opened the door for him at his first sweet word. I was foolish then. But I sleep with latches now. “Who are you?” I yell through the door. “Where did you come from?”
“Ship…” he answers, as if that’s all he has strength for.
Don’t say it, I plead.
“Ship… sank.”
All I can see is Pearl’s body, cold and gray and tiny. I imagine it sinking below the dark water. Sinking, sinking.
“Please,” the man begs.
I unlatch the door. If this is a trick, if a thief or a murderer lies on the other side, or a man who wants what every man wants, who will get what he wants and then leave me to pick up the pieces, then I deserve it. I open the door.
It looks more like a pile of rags than a man. Wet. Crumpled. When he lifts his face, it’s bloody. A gash across his temple. Another on his collarbone where his clothing has torn. He’s young. Practically a boy. He tries to push himself up.
I help him into the room. Into my bed. I tuck all my blankets around him. His heartbeat is slow, his forehead clammy. I touch the leg he was favoring. He gasps in pain. His face goes white. “Shh,” I coo. “I’ll get you some water.”
I quickly light a fire. Sprinkle herbs into a pot.
He lies still, breathing slowly.
I run up the stairs and wrestle the unwieldy black shield out of its cabinet. The wood is thin, but its size makes it heavy, and my arms shake as I hold it up, blocking the light while I count in my head. I pull it away, count, put it back up, count. I hope someone’s watching. I repeat the distress signal seven times. I’d do it more, but the man in my bed needs me. I run back down to find him still asleep. The water is warm, aromatic. I rouse the man and feed it to him like a baby.
His eyes hardly focus, but his breathing sounds stronger. I pull the covers away long enough to assure myself he’s not bleeding badly and wrap him back up.
I pull on my boots and head out into the wind, over to the edge of the cliffs, where I can see straight down to the beach and the rocks below, where a ship founders. I can still see the mast, tilted at a terrible angle, and other bits of the ship rising like a serpent from the water. Something bobs further out. What if more survivors are dying down there? It’s so far. There’s no good path. It’s dark. And I swore never to climb down to the beach.
But I’ve already broken my other vow. I let the light go out. I caused this. If you’re stealing an egg, might as well steal the salt, my father used to say. Before he slapped me so hard my vision blurred, and I saw his disgust three times over. Before he threw me out. He never knew my little Pearl was a girl.
I check on the sailor once more. He’s feverish, but I think he’s too stubborn to die. So I gather supplies. The noise rouses him. “You were singing,” he says. “So beautiful.”
“I wasn’t singing.”
He smiles. “Like an angel.”
I pat his hand, wipe his forehead with a cool cloth, and go face the cliffs.
***
The way down to the beach looks dangerous. I’ve sometimes wondered if the last lighthouse keeper slipped and fell to his death. Thus the rule. But if an injured, half-drowned sailor can make it up these cliffs, in the dark and the wind, surely I can make it down. I search for the least-precarious route. Maybe my eyes have already contemplated this, because now my feet seem to know the way.
It’s still terrifying—a slippery-thin edge of earth high above the nothingness of air and sea. I test each footstep. I cling to bushes. I try not to look farther than I need to.
I’m halfway down when a burst of wind drives straight into me. I totter. The sea lies so far below, scattered with rocks that will tear my body to shreds. I throw myself against the cliff and cling there, stone cutting into my cheek, one hand around a low plant that I pretend will hold me back if I start to slip. I don’t slip. I manage to breathe. Eventually, my feet start moving.
I’m using both hands, both feet, while wood creaks below me and no voices cry out for help. The light swings slowly overhead, sending its beam into the black. I begin to count the revolutions as I descend. And suddenly there’s no more to descend.
I run along the beach. “Can anyone hear me?”
Nothing. Just the crash of the sea, much louder here. There’s a sort of fizz too, not just the crash. It’s beautiful. I stop in the silence. Bend down. Touch the water. It caresses my hand. When I bring my finger to my tongue, it’s salty. Just like they said it would be. Like the tears I cried alone, after they took Pearl’s body. But here, the salt is a comfort. A balm.
I don’t understand why I’m not allowed to come here.
Then the half-sunk ship creaks and I remember myself. I scour the beach. No one. No live men, panting and shivering, looking for shelter, calling for help. No dead men, washed up on the sand, still and cold. There’s a piece of wood. Waves drag it in and out. The ship groans and tilts even more. If anyone’s trapped in there, they’d be dead by now.
I know this. But I keep calling for survivors.
I can’t swim. Even if I could, there doesn’t seem to be any hope. But there is still hope for the man in the lighthouse. So I touch the water one more time, a farewell, then turn my back on the ship and start to climb.
They’re there when I get back up: the man who brings me supplies and the sharp-faced one who hired me. They’re hauling the sailor out of the lighthouse.
“Wait! He needs rest,” I protest.
“Did he speak?” The hard eyes in the sharp face make me feel small.
“Only a little.”
“Did he say anything about why his ship sank?”
“No.”
“Do you know why?”
“The rocks…” I whisper. “The light.”
“Which you let go out. Don’t deny it.”
“I’m not. The wind—”
“You’re just as worthless as the last keeper. Three rules. That’s all I asked.”
“I tried.”
“I rescued you from your shame. Now you’ve dragged it here with you.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t know the wind was so powerful. I’ll never let it go out again.”
“No, you won’t. Pack your things. You’re leaving.”
“I can do better.”
“I don’t think you can.”
“Where will I go?” My father says I’m dead to him. Pearl’s father, when I told him I was with child, pretended he hadn’t heard. The next morning his foreman came to fire me. My friends turned their backs. “What will I do?”
“Whatever you must.”
***
The sun rises over the sea as I sit on the cliff, everything I own in two bags beside me. The sky’s pinks and yellows are improbably beautiful.
They took away the sailor. Wouldn’t let me say goodbye. Told me which direction to walk to get to the nearest village. Then locked the lighthouse and headed off in the opposite direction.
Now I sit and cry for the sailors lost below. I tell them I’m sorry. But I keep imagining them laughing in my face, spitting at my feet. I wonder if any of them left women on land. Women large with child, reduced to begging on the streets after everyone abandoned them. Women who would starve themselves to feed their children, but who would praise the hunger, because the alternative was a cold, lifeless bundle wrapped in rags in the uncaring arms of a man who wouldn’t even let you kiss your baby goodbye.
I sit and I stare at the waves. The sunrise is gone.
It’s then I hear a sound far below, faint and sweet. A baby. Crying.
I leave everything and scramble down the path I found last night. The rules don’t matter anymore.
“I’m coming!” I slip in the mud and keep descending.
The baby keeps crying, a soft mewling that Pearl never got to make.
“I’m almost there, sweetling!”
When I hit the beach, more wreckage from the ship has washed ashore. I have to pick my way through it, following the cries. I nearly step on something that is not wood. A body. My mind registers it coldly. Just another obstacle. I head toward the far end of the beach, where I can make out a cave of sorts. That’s where she is. The baby.
I jump over another body. A barrel that still smells of wine. If there were a raging fire, I would run through that. I would dive into the sea, knowing I may drown.
At last, I reach the cave. “Sweetling, all’s well. I’m here.”
But the crying has stopped. Where is she? I search the light and shadows inside.
Something splashes behind me. I turn. There, pulling herself onto a rock, still half in the water, is a woman. Beautiful, with skin so pale it almost shimmers. Her dark hair cascades into the water. Her gown floats around her like sea foam. She smiles at me like she knows me. Like she knows everything about me. Knows and understands. And won’t turn away.
She opens her arms. “My sister.” Her voice rumbles like the waves. “You’ve come at last.”
I wade into the water, toward her. “Where… where’s the baby?”
She reaches out. I’m not afraid. Her fingers—light like the breezes off the sea—touch the hollow place where my heart is. “Your baby is here.”
I nod. Because it’s true. Because the truth breaks my heart again. She pulls me into her arms. No one has embraced me for a very long time. I weep, and the sea weeps with me.
“No man will ever hurt you again,” she whispers. “You will find peace.”
And somehow I believe her.
***
The gale is fierce. Its strength becomes our own. The wailing wind snuffs out the light above. Then my sister begins to sing, the music so beautiful I cry. She stops. And I start.
The ship in the dark changes course. Heads toward us. Without the warning beacon on the cliff, the night becomes ours alone.
No one will hurt us. Ever again. Our voices become a duet.
When the ship runs aground on the jagged rocks, something in my soul relaxes. The ship tilts, just like the other did. Men scream. Splash. Sink into the darkness and never come up.
One ragged sailor crawls onto shore, lust in his eyes, and I am not afraid. He has an earring in one ear. A pearl. I will take it from him.
And I will never let it go.
© 2024 by Melinda Brasher
3500 words
Author’s Note: Lighthouses have always fascinated me—especially the isolated ones. Would life there bring madness or solace? And what happens when the light fails? “The Lighthouse Keeper” sprang from these questions.
Melinda Brasher spends her time writing, traveling, and hiking. Her talents include navigating by old-fashioned map, mashing multiple languages together in foreign train stations, and dealing cards really fast. You can find her work in Uncharted, ZNB Presents, the Just Chills podcast, and others. Visit her at www.melindabrasher.com or on Facebook as Melinda Brasher, Writer.
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Thanks for writing this, I truly enjoyed it. Well done, indeed!
This was a great atmospheric story. Thank you