Monstrous Beauty (29 page)

“It’s nothing,” she said. And it was just that: nothing. Nothing compared with anything that had happened to her that night. Nothing compared with losing him.

A large wave knocked into them, but Ezra held her and stood firm. When it passed, he loosened his hold to look more closely at her face. He lifted her chin, looked at her injury with furrowed eyebrows, and softly kissed the space next to her nose, where it wouldn’t hurt. He understood everything.

“Eleanor did this.”

Hester nodded.

“I’m so sorry, Hester. I had forgotten about her spirit until tonight. We all forgot. I suspect it was a corollary to suppressing her. But you might have been killed—and I would never have forgiven myself.” He touched her cheek. “Does it hurt terribly?”

Another massive wave came, and he picked her up to protect her. It broke against them and splashed over their shoulders. She tucked her face into his neck to block out the salt spray.

“I’m fine,” she murmured. And it was true, as long as he held her.

They stayed like that through several cycles of waves, pressed together, stopping time. If only. When the water had retreated, he set her down.

“Your hair…” he said.

“Noo’kas.”

“You are a remarkable woman.” He shook his head. “But I’m sorry that you’ve crossed paths with her. It colors your decision about me.”

“I don’t care about her. I don’t care about my hair. I don’t care about anything but you.”

“And yet you are here to destroy me.” His lips were tight, his eyes penetrating.

She knew him well enough to know that he was confronting her, and yet he was so calm. She lifted onto her toes and kissed him. He scooped her up and returned the kiss with impatient desire. And then he put her down and shook his head. He took a step back, flustered.

“Let me stay a little longer, Hester.”

It stabbed her to hear him say it. Her eyes filled with tears. Thunder clapped. The largest wave yet came with such force, she saw it crest over their heads before she was knocked over. She felt Ezra grab her just as she lost her footing and her body threatened to somersault underwater. He held her solidly in place as the wave retreated with a strong undercurrent, sucking at her clothing. His arms were firmly around her waist and she was on her feet again. She turned to look at the stone steps. The bag was gone. Her eyes darted frantically in the blue, predawn light until she caught sight of it floating in the water, bobbing out to sea. The journal would be lost!

She pushed away from him and ran after it through the high waves and into the ocean.

“Hester!” Ezra called. He was anchored by his curse to the beach. He could not follow.

She dove onto the bag and looped her arm through the strap. She struggled to her feet and ran across the sandbar toward shore until a wave caught her. It flowed over her, pulling her feet out from under her and dragging her down. Noo’kas aimed to have it all—the journal, Hester, and her favorite trinket, Ezra.

The wave tugged Hester backward. She clawed at the sand underneath her, trying to resist the swirling retreat of the water. The next wave came, forcing her briefly toward shore. She staggered and then tumbled, rolling submerged for a moment until she could right herself. When she came up, she could see Ezra, knee-deep in the waves, reaching out for her. She stood again and tried to run the rest of the way to him through the seething water, which held her back until another wave knocked into her. Hester tripped and fell forward.

Strong hands grabbed her under her arms and hauled her ashore. It was Ezra. Her torso, at least, had fallen into his territory. He pulled her out and carried her effortlessly away from the water.

After several steps he began to weaken. He staggered, seeming to will himself to reach the bluff where the land met the beach, and finally collapsed there, holding her. The sea churned so roughly that the leading edge of the storm surge still licked over their bodies, even at this distance.

“Ezra!” Hester said. He was clutching his chest.

“Take it away, please,” he begged her. She knew he meant the journal—it was in the backpack, and too close to him.

By rescuing her, he had exposed himself to the instrument of his death.

She kissed him. Her throat was hot and tight as she said, “I’m so sorry.” She began to cry as she opened the backpack and removed the journal.

“Syrenka made a mistake all those years ago because she loved you.” She pressed the journal to her heart as hot tears mixed with rain and blood on her face. She had to do this before she lost her courage. “Now I’m fixing her mistake because
I
love you.”

She kissed the book. He cried out in agony as she pressed it into his hand.

She fell on top of him and sobbed into his ear, “Forgive me.”

“I waited so long for you,” he whispered.

“I know. Me, too.”

She sat up. A bloody spot had bloomed on his white shirt, wicked by the wet linen like a watercolor painting. She unfastened the buttons. The small scar had opened and was bleeding. The long scar down the middle of his chest was still intact. She put her hand on the smaller wound; it was a clean piercing, from a knife. Touching it made her own heart ache. He had died from the smaller wound all those years ago. His breathing became shallow and quick. She gently moved wet strands of hair away from his eyes.

“Why did you not live out your life with me?” he gasped. His skin was ashen. Until this moment she had never seen him appear to be anything but perfectly healthy.

“Oh, Ezra,” she choked, “I would never have said goodbye.” She kissed his temple tenderly, feeling the coolness of his skin beneath her lips. She kissed the beautiful hollow of his cheekbone. She kissed near his ear and said softly, “A lifetime with you wouldn’t have been enough.”

With a grimace he lifted his free hand and draped it on her back.

“I think…” he started. He could hardly speak.

“Don’t,” she said.

“… I have solved your curse,” he finished.

Hester leaned her head in the crook of his neck. “I don’t care.”

“That is—” He breathed in, and she heard his chest rattle horribly. “
You
have solved your curse. Just now.” She put her fingers on his lips. He shook his head, making her drop her hand.

“I missed the obvious. You have her soul. To gain a soul, she had to have had…” He couldn’t finish. He grunted in pain.

Hester stayed nestled against him. Soon he would be gone, and every joy in her world would be gone with him. She would return to her solitary life. She would never love anyone after him.

“… a baby,” he finished.

He stopped speaking, but with her head against his chest she heard that his breathing had become irregular. There was an agonizing moment when he drew in no air, followed by a deep, gurgling gasp.

What had he said?
She had a baby.
Syrenka had a baby. She lifted her face to look at him. His eyes were closed.

“What does that mean, Ezra? Why is it important that she had a baby?”

He opened his eyes, looking at her with such pained affection, it pierced her with longing for what they would never have together.

His hand pulled her against him one last time. “Little Adeline held a baby that night.” His voice was barely audible. “Eleanor’s baby.
Syrenka’s
baby.” His arm seemed to relax and slid off her back.

“Marijn!” Hester cried. “Marijn was Syrenka’s baby.”

He closed his eyes and nodded almost imperceptibly, with a grimace of satisfaction on his face. He trusted her to figure out the rest.

Hester’s mind raced. Her great-great-great-grandmother Marijn was the baby from that tragic night in the graveyard. It was Marijn’s soul that Syrenka had used to pin Ezra’s emotions to the earth, entangling Linnie’s emotions and Pastor McKee’s and Eleanor’s in the process. But Marijn had not died that night, even though she had lost her soul. She had gone on to have a daughter of her own.

And then Hester remembered what Needa had said: it would have been merciful for Noo’kas to refuse to help Syrenka pin those spirits, knowing what she would discover “as soon as the deed was done.”

“Syrenka didn’t know that Marijn was her child until after she had sacrificed her! And so she gave her own soul to the baby to save her,” Hester cried. She lifted herself up to look at him. “Is that right, Ezra?”

His eyes were closed, his face relaxed. He seemed at peace—even contented. He exhaled one long, shuddering breath. And then he didn’t move again.

“Ezra,” Hester whispered.

The scar on his chest began to peel open at the edges. As she watched, the seam burst, revealing a broken rib cage beneath. The rib cage slowly spread apart, and between the ragged edges of the bones she could see he had no heart.

The skies opened and the rain poured down in sheets, as it had the first day she met him in the cave. One last wave washed over them, and the journal was swept out of Ezra’s hand into the sea. Hester let it go. She flopped back down on him and sobbed into his cheek.

“Thank you,” she said. “Thank you for figuring it out.”

At last she understood what he had pieced together in his final moments. She understood what the debt of the baby’s stolen soul meant, and why the curse had passed from generation to generation in her family. She understood what Syrenka—and every woman in her family after her—had sacrificed, for love of a daughter. Because even though Syrenka had given her own soul to save her baby, Marijn’s soul was still selfishly detained on the earth.
There is one soul too many on earth, and one will be taken from Syrenka’s family,
Needa had said. Which meant that Marijn’s first child was born without a soul, and Marijn was faced with the agony of watching her daughter die in her arms.

Each new baby in her family had arrived without a soul. Each innocent, soulless infant had begun to fade away within days. And faced with the prospect of losing a child, each mother had willed her own soul to her baby, giving up her life so that her daughter might live.

By unpinning Ezra and Linnie and Pastor McKee and Eleanor, Hester had finally released baby Marijn’s soul, and the debt was paid. Hester would die with her soul intact—Syrenka’s soul, she knew now—which had passed from Syrenka to Marijn, to Nellie, to Grace, to Carolyn, to Susan, and finally to her. If she married and had a daughter, Hester would
live
, and with a bit of luck and good health she might be blessed to know her grandchildren and great-grandchildren someday as well.

She looked at the body of her beautiful lover. In the end he had accepted death so gracefully, knowing what she would gain. She kissed his lips for the last time.

“Goodbye,” she whispered, wishing it might not be forever.

Chapter 45

T
HE STORM EASED
, and within minutes the rains stopped. Noo’kas had lost her playthings, but her consolation prize was Ezra’s journal. Hester took comfort in knowing that within days or weeks it would disintegrate, and the hag would own no part of him for the rest of time.

She folded Ezra’s hands on his chest. She touched his cheek and his lips with her fingertips.

She stood up and tried her best to close her torn shirt by fastening the one remaining, dangling button with trembling hands. Her socks and sneakers were full of wet sand. She ran her fingers through her short hair. She was covered with blood, salt, sand, and bits of ocean debris, and she felt more drained, in every way, than she would have thought possible. Her insides had been scooped out, her head had been emptied. A battered, fragile shell was all that remained. There was no way she could be remotely presentable, but she didn’t care. It was almost dawn, and she had a life to live—for Ezra and Syrenka, for Linnie and McKee, and for all the women in her family who had died too young. The first thing she was going to do was take Linnie’s doll back to the museum. Then she’d have a hot bath, a long nap, and maybe see a doctor about her broken nose.

She took one last look at Ezra and forced herself to walk away from him. At the top of the stone steps she noticed that the sun was rising. The horizon was on fire with oranges and reds, and above that the sky was full of the gnarled gray and black remains of heavy storm clouds. After billions of years, she thought, the earth was still passionately creating another new day.

Something caught her eye: at a distance it seemed as though shimmering figures were walking on the water, toward the sun. She wondered whether she was seeing things. She squinted against the glare—there were four of them, one much smaller than the rest, one much taller. The taller one lagged a step or two behind the others and seemed to turn, hesitating. She looked back at the beach where Ezra’s body had been; it was gone. She looked out at the horizon, searching for him. The procession had disappeared.

She walked up the lawn and retrieved her bike from the post. She did not have the energy to ride her bike up the hill of Leyden Street, so she walked alongside it. A fisherman passed her as he drove up Water Street. She saw his brake lights brighten; his pickup truck slowed to a stop. He craned to see her through the passenger window, calling, “Hey, are you okay?” She nodded, and put up her thumb with such conviction that he waved and drove on.

It took her several minutes to walk up the hill. The church seemed to be quiet, finally resting. She dropped her bike in front and walked around the back. As she turned the corner of the building, she was startled to see Peter come out of the back door with Poppet in his hand. He saw her and his face was instantly shadowed with a worried frown. He rushed toward her, and she fell into his embrace. She let him hold her up as she cried into his shirt.

“I’ve been searching for you all night,” he said. “When I got home I found your note. What the hell is going on?”

“It’s a long story,” she said, sniffing through a throbbing nose. The story was generations long, she realized. But it was a secret she needed to share with him … after a good long sleep. “Can I tell you later?”

She rested in his arms for a minute before she pulled away.