LITMIR.BIZ

Скачать книгу

I don’t know. I think there was a house for the family at one time.”

      “Do you see those flames?” I asked.

      “What?” He was surprised. “Oh, I see what you are looking at now, they are lighting the torches.”

      A small globe of orange hovered at the top of the cliff. I could make out the shadow of a person that appeared to be a woman holding the torch. She was at the steepest point of the cliff. A chill swept over me. She was so close to the edge…

      The fire lowered and I cried out in fear, thinking that whoever it was had fallen. But no, it was an illusion, and the fire only moved slowly down the cliff.

      “Do you see the stairs?” asked my father. “Watch.” His tone was patient and indulgent. “Watch.”

      The flame floated lower. Suddenly, there was a flare, a bursting intensity of light, and one fire became two. Like lava dripping down the face of the rock, the flame descended, illuminating a staircase that was hewn into the rock. Just above the ocean the last flame came to life and all at once there were a thousand flames, an impossible crisscross of light and color.

      “What is it?” I asked.

      We could see illuminated in a ring of fire what appeared to be a house of glass.

      If the torches were a necklace of fire, the cottage was the jewel. It dangled just above the shoreline, brilliant in the dusk.

      I gaped at the image, trying to unlock the mystery of how a house of glass could be perched on such a precarious spot. A thin skeleton of white pillars and supports provided a clue, but the building, although small as a bungalow, was a marvel to behold. A feeling swelled inside me, of warmth and wonder, appreciation and awe. “It’s so beautiful,” I whispered.

      The house shimmered in the setting sun. It almost seemed to shift in place, a trick of the eye.

      “Reyna…” My father’s voice came to me from somewhere far away. “Reyna… We have to go. It’s almost dark and we can’t be out on the water at night.”

      “No,” I begged. “No. Please, Papa, can’t we just stay a little while longer?” Some part of me thought that the house would do that unusual thing again, that trick of the light, and I wanted to see it.

      “I’m sorry, my sweet. But, the tides are changing, pushing us toward the rocks. We have to go.” He dropped the oars, turning us away from the magnificent house. I felt a pang of sadness as we moved away, and only when we were almost back to our side of the island did my joyful mood return. I still had the shell, clutched in my small hand.

      When we reached home, my father helped me bore a hole in the seashell that Mr. St. Claire had given me. We threaded a strip of leather through the hole and my father placed it over my head. The shell warmed the base of my throat. “A jewel fit for a queen,” he said, and I could tell by his playful tone that he was teasing me.

      I never missed a day at market after that. I would wait, fingering my necklace nervously, watching the entrance to the harbor for that one distinctive sailboat, though it never came. But I was always ready, my necklace never removed. Though at first I begged my father relentlessly, he never took me to see the glass house again. Eventually, my requests died away, and I was left with only a memory.

      * * *

      It is a testament to my happiness that ten years slipped by in barely an instant. 1912 arrived, and I turned twenty years old. No man I had ever met could compare to the memory of Lucas St. Claire. I focused solely on my father, helping him whenever I could.

      The world seemed poised on the tip of technology and industry, and when my father bought a new boat, one with a motor, it seemed as if the future was right before us.

      Not a month later, my father left to fish in the dead of night. I remember rousing from sleep just long enough to feel him kiss my forehead goodbye before sleep claimed me again. That is my last memory of him, a cloudy wisp of a memory. He headed out like he had so many times before, but he never returned.

      It seemed that my happy life was taken, too. I was left painfully alone and penniless, as both my father and the source of our living and our savings—his boat—were gone. I sold my father’s market stall to another fisherman, and the meager amount of money that I received was all I had to my name.

      A month after my father’s death at sea, a letter arrived for me. It was from my aunt, my father’s sister, a woman I had seen only briefly once or twice when I was younger. I opened the envelope and read it while I sat at the kitchen table, a few meager pieces of salted fish my only dinner. As I read, the words sank in quickly and my hands began to shake.

      When I finished reading it, I stood up, grabbed the old suitcase from under my father’s bed and placed all of my belongings inside. I said a quick prayer, went to bed and waited for the morning. I never slept. At dawn, I was to take the ferry to the other side of the island. My aunt had secured a housekeeping position for me on the estate of Lucas St. Claire.

      Chapter Two

      The ferry was waiting, its engine purring, and gulls flew above as I boarded it. I sat by the railing, clutching my suitcase to my chest as if it were a lifejacket, and watched the sights of our small marina fade in the mist as we headed out over the bay. My future lay out there, obscured by the fog.

      Thankfully, the waters were smooth, and the sun hovered in the sky, nothing more than a silver disc behind the vapor. I heard the engines of other boats, far away and muffled. The ferry floated as if in a dream.

      Gradually, the wind picked up, and the fog cleared.

      There, before a curtain of blue sky, was the island, and in the center of it was the house of glass. It was like a diamond, perched on the cliff, twinkling, taking me back to the days with my father. A strange, flushed sensation enveloped me. Had it really been ten years?

      Now, dark clouds drew together and the image was gone, but not the memories of that day, ten years before, back when my life was simple and happy.

      So much had changed since then. I was now twenty years old, no longer a child. I would live in the house I that I once dreamed about, not as a wife, but as a servant. I had lost everything that I once loved so deeply and had come to depend on. Lucas St. Claire had lost much as well, and he was now an outcast, living under suspicion ever since his wife disappeared. I was deep in my thoughts and surprised when the boat bumped against the dock.

      We had arrived at the main harbor of St. Claire. When I stood to leave, the mist seemed to curl about my legs with tendrils as strong as fingers. Instinctively, I touched my necklace. I wonder now if it was trying to help me, to hold me back from the chain of events that would soon sweep me away. But, I shall never know, because I stepped out of the boat and off the dock and kicked loose of the mist.

      The docks were bustling with people, the smell of salt and fish, and the cries of the fishermen as they solicited their day’s catch. I passed my father’s stall and said hello to Roberto, the fisherman who bought my father’s stall and he gave me a kind wave in return.

      A tightness gripped my throat when I passed the old market stall, but I forced myself to continue on. I walked off the dock, and past the harbormaster’s office where captains and merchants were negotiating loudly. When I left the gates of the harbor, I stopped for a moment and looked up at the road ahead.

      There was no cart coming for me. I began to walk, but the going was slow. The breeze that was usually present at the docks died away as I climbed and entered the dense canopy of trees that swallowed the road and led higher and higher. Sweat gathered on my brow and I stopped often to mop it away.

      Occasionally, a bird would call out. Here and there the trees opened up to reveal the ocean far beneath me. After what felt like a lifetime of walking, the gates loomed before me. I had arrived at Devlin Manor.

      I could not move.

      I don’t know what I was so afraid of. It was only a gate. My feet, however, refused to go along with that simple fact. Maybe

Скачать книгу