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Sadie’s shoulders twitch, an odd movement, almost like a bird trying to flap wings it doesn’t have.
“You stay,” she says finally.
“Yes, I’ll stay here every summer, and no one will come unless I’m here to watch over—”
“No, you stay.Here.On our island. Forever.”
Fear licks through me, a looming vision of being trapped on this island. I love it. I love it so much. But I have a life elsewhere. Madison has a life elsewhere. Kit has a life elsewhere. If I am here—always here—I will lose them.
Except I won’t, will I? They will still be alive and that’s all I wanted two minutes ago.
I open my mouth to agree.
“No,” Jayla’s voice rasps as she appears, dragging herself from tree to tree. “She can’t. Literally, she cannot do that.”
Sadie’s body turns on Jayla.
Jayla lifts her hands. “I’m pointing out facts. We’re in the middle of Lake fucking Superior. You said you’ve seen people come and go on this island. How many of them survived a winter? Oh, maybe at one time, when humans knew how to do that, but we’ve adapted to a different life. Laney isn’t a survivalist. She teaches children.”
I jump in. “She’s right. I won’t let Kit die because I’m too afraid to stay here. But I wouldn’t survive more than a winter or two. I can be here in the summer—all summer—and make sure no one else comes—”
“You can only be sure of that if you are here. No one comes in the winter. The lake does not freeze enough to cross. From spring equinox to winter solstice though, you must be here.”
“I can’t boat over when the lake’s partly frozen.”
“Then you will fly. I know what is possible. I have seen it. First thaw to full freeze, and you will not set foot on the mainland during that time. Not for a day. Not for an hour.”
I swallow. This isn’t summers on the island, a dream I’d once held.
Someday, I will be able to write full-time, and I’ll spend the entire summer writing on the island, and it will be glorious.
This is a perversion of that dream, as if I did indeed find a monkey’s paw.
Be careful what you wish for…
I wouldn’t be holed up here of my own free will. I’d be chained, like Persephone in hell. Except this was supposed to be my paradise.
Be careful what you wish for…
I don’t turn and try to see Kit through the trees. I don’t need to, because there is no doubt what I will do.
I made an oath, whether I intended to or not, whether this is fair or not, whether this is justice or not.
I made an oath.
I will pay the price.
I turn to the entity in Sadie’s body. “Make your vow,” I say. “And I will make mine.”
EPILOGUE
It’s been a week since that night when I agreed to the entity’s bargain, and I am locked into it, unable to leave until December twenty-second. Then I’ll be able to go home for three months before I must return, and if I do not, anyone who sets foot on this island will die horribly.
Kit and Jayla’s parents showed up that next morning, as expected. They’d even brought a doctor, and I have never been more grateful for parental paranoia.
Kit was fine, just bruises and contusions. Jayla was… Well, Jayla had fallen twenty feet onto rock, and maybe the entity cushioned the blow enough for her to survive, but she’d still broken a half dozen bones. That “spray of blood” may have been mostly an illusion, but she’d needed stitches and a blood transfusion. So did Madison.
Madison and Jayla had been airlifted from the island. Madison fought that. It had taken a while for her to comprehend what I’d been forced to agree to, and when she did, she broke down in such panic and fear that I can only be glad she didn’t fully understand before I agreed.
