Who knew how long this rumspringa might last? I guess that was the point, sort of. A jump into the unknown with your hands pressed over your eyes.
I settled myself down in between the graves, crossing my legs and cupping my hands around the thermos to warm them. I thought of rain, of wind, of sunshine, of rainbows. All these things that suddenly felt like they might actually be a part of me in a way that felt huge, unfathomable.
I had brought a flood to By-the-Sea—
But had it been the first time?
The Fernweh mausoleum was the largest in the graveyard. The outside was carved in Annabellas, a tribute to Annabella Fernweh and her sister, Georgina, my great-great-great-great-whatever-grandmother who had been among the first people to inhabit By-the-Sea. I bent down and found the loose stone near the door and removed the little key we kept hidden there.
When Mary and I were younger, we’d play in here. A morbid setting for our dolls to have teatime, but we had liked the stone floors and the way the light turned into rainbows from the stained-glass windows.
I found my father’s empty tomb. There was nothing inside this stone container, no earthly remains of Locke Caravelle. His name wasn’t even etched into the door. My mother wouldn’t allow it. But this is where my father would go, should anyone ever find his body. This is where all the Fernweh women and the men who loved them were buried.
I put my palm against the cool stone.
I had heard the story a hundred times. The story of our birth. Of the final push that delivered me into the world, the push that coincided with the skies opening up. An island flooding around my mother and me as we waited for my sister to show up.
The great storm of our births—the one that had sunk my father’s ship.
It had started the moment I was born.
And now I knew that my father’s ship had gone down because of me.
My father’s tomb was empty because of me.
I would never know my father because I was born with a power I didn’t even want, one I didn’t even know about for eighteen years.
And now I had it, and there was no sending it back. There was only going forward, and living with the knowledge that the newborn tears of baby Georgina had done so much more damage than anyone had realized at the time.
I wouldn’t forget that. This power had blood on its hands.
“I’m so sorry,” I whispered to his empty tomb.
“I’m so sorry,” I whispered to all the women who had come before me.
And then I left them alone and promised I’d return one day.
The dead loved promises; the living loved promising.
I returned home and stood in my bedroom and turned in a slow circle, looking.
The day had turned bright and sunny.
I guess that meant I was in a good mood.
I had almost no clue how my powers worked. Thatlittle knot of warmth in my gut—when I’d Zeused-out on Peter—that was gone.
If I stood at my window—
And looked up at the sky—
And concentrated very, very hard...
I could almost make a cloud appear.
“You’ll figure it out,” my mom said at the door to my bedroom. She was dressed less conspicuously now that all the birdheads were gone. Jeans and sneakers, a Smashing Pumpkins T-shirt. Her hair was in a long, straight ponytail and she held a cup of coffee, which she offered to me.
“Just coffee?” I asked, taking it.
