Damp chill clung to every stone of the lighthouse walls. As she made her way up from the cellar, Ally's fingers grew red and cold around the frigid metal handle of the lantern she held. Its golden glow pooled on the narrow walls of the spiral staircase in a perfect circle, as though Ally Lichen was a firefly in the center of the light.
She didn't feel like a firefly, although, as keeper of the lighthouse, she supposed she could be in some metaphorical sense. But the fire gremlin in the lantern was bouncing and energetic, and Ally was straining to keep her eyes open. It would not do to fall asleep halfway up the stairs and then go crashing back down to the cellar, especially with the four jars she had tucked against her gray sweater with her free arm. So she told herself that she was a big girl—eighteen now, so technically not a girl anymore—and marched on.
At last, Ally reached the kitchen and put the jars of apple butter, pickles, canned corn, and pumpkin on the shelves where they belonged. Only then did she allow herself to collapse into the kitchen window seat, which had become her accustomed nook since she moved here a year ago.
A year ago today, in fact. Ally opened her eyes a crack to peer at the calendar hanging over the stove. October third. Exactly a year.
A sigh escaped Ally's lips and she let her head fall back against the wood of the window frame, pulling her knees up to her chest, and hugging her corduroy trousers. To her right, the night through the window was dark, and the sound of waves against the rocky shoreline hummed gently in her ears. She was grateful for it. Without the sounds of the waves, the lighthouse would surely be unbearably quiet.
Oh if only she could fall asleep right here...
The tea kettle on the stove began to whistle.
"Oh." Ally murmured. Her eyes felt as heavy as stones, but tea sounded nice, and she supposed that she really ought to eat supper before it got too late.
As she poured the hot water over dried mint and lemongrass, the voice of John Millner, the man who had hired her, kept echoing in her head.
It's an awful lot of work, looking after a lighthouse, you really should find someone to help you. Two are better than one!
"I'll find someone when I find someone." Muttered Ally, which was her response every time John nagged her about finding help. Alone in the lighthouse almost every day for an entire year, she had made a habit of talking to herself. At least when Flicker was not around.
Speaking of which...
A ghostly mew sounded from the door to the round kitchen. Ally glanced up to spot a familiar corporal form hurrying across the floorboards to rub himself against her ankles. He had been summoned by the sound of the kettle, accustomed to a saucer of milk whenever Ally had her tea.
Ally gave the ghost cat a tired smile and waved her hand, conjuring a dish of Ghostly Milk. Conjuring ghostly items wasn't something most witches bothered with, but she had learned it from her mother. Flicker had been a living cat when her mother was a little girl, but Ally had only known him as a ghost.
Her feet ached, but her stomach growled, so Ally began to fix supper. She sliced off some sourdough bread. She fed the fire gremlins in the stove several shovel-fulls of coal and told them firmly to behave. Even after she shut the iron door, she could still hear them cackling. She chopped up an onion and put it in her small one-person-sized soup pot with some butter. She added salt and pepper and crushed sage. She chopped vegetables and poured a jar of canned broth into the pot. The fire gremlins did behave, or at least they were as close to behaving as fire gremlins can be, and before long, the soup was simmering away on the stovetop.
The kitchen was full of moonlight and firelight, and Ally sipped her hot tea and stirred the soup.
"This is nice, isn't it Flicker?" She said.
Flicker purred from his place on the spice shelf above the stove. His nose peeked out between the oregano and basil bottles. That was one nice thing about ghost cats—they didn't knock things over, they simply passed right through them.
"The light sprites were a good deal of trouble today." She confessed to the cat.
Flicker batted his see-through paws at a string of thyme hanging from the ceiling.
"They never listen. I couldn't get them to go to sleep this morning, and half of them stayed up all day and got overexcited and nearly burned out." Ally paused to yawn and took a sip of her bright green tea. "But I think we have enough awake and happy tonight that the light will bright enough. I don't know how mother can write to me all worried about me being lonely—not when I've got two million light sprites to take care of. And I've got you, Flicker, haven't I?"
Flicker meowed.
Ally gasped in mock shock. "How rude of you! And after I've conjured you milk too. I wouldn't have to, you know. You're a ghost. You don't have to eat."
There was a sharp tap on the window.
Ally turned to see a bat fluttering outside the glass, scratching at the window with its claws.
"It must be a letter from mother." Ally informed Flicker, and left the stove to open the window and let the bat inside. Opening the window for even a second sent a chill wind whistling through the tiny kitchen. For a moment, with her head stuck out the window, Ally was struck by how vast and black the sky was, studded with jewel-like stars, and how loud the waves crashing against the shore far below. Then she shivered and pulled herself back inside quickly, the bat clinging to her finger.
As soon as she had untied the small, rolled parchment attached to the bat's leg, it fluttered up to the ceiling and hung upside down from one of the shelves. Ally shoved the window shut and unrolled the letter.
The back announced:
From Takia Evergreen
To Ally Lichen, Lighthouse Witch. Vista Cove.
Ally blinked several times at the paper.
Takia Evergreen.
It was not from her mother.
Perhaps it was fate that this letter arrived on the third of October, exactly a year to the day that she had left her home village.
But what on earth could Takia Evergreen have to say to her? After all this time? Ally tossed the letter onto the kitchen table and eyed it warily, as though it might bite her.
Once upon a time, Takia and Ally had called each other best friends, in the silly way little girls are want to do. But a lot had changed since childhood games of hide and seek. Ally had not received a single letter from Takia in the year she had moved away, but that had not surprised her in the least. Their lives had been growing apart for some time even before she left, although for a while she had been too blind to see it.
But why now, of all times?
Ally frowned at the letter. She reminded herself that she hadn't even read it yet. Ally sat down at the kitchen table and wrapped her hands around her hot mug of tea, the warmth seeping into her skin and thawing her cold fingertips. She pursed her lips and frowned at the letter for a very long moment, then mastered herself and reached for it once again. She tore it open, pulled out a short sheet of paper, and read quickly through the contents.
Once she had finished reading it for the third time, Ally let her hands drop and stared unseeingly at the kitchen wall.
The first thought that drifted through her mind was that it was too late for this. She was too tired. But she was always tired these days.
Flicker nudged her dangling hand with a feeling like cool silk against her fingertips, and a small echo-y mew.
Ally glanced down at him. "Mother is ill." She said softly.
Flicker blinked up at her with bright, pale eyes.
"She'll be alright." Ally reassured him. "But Takia says I need to come home. Mother will need some help while she recovers. And," Ally's gaze drifted back to the vast night sky beyond the window pane, "I suppose she misses me. Mother does. Takia certainly does not miss me, the tone of her writing was cold enough to say that even if the words didn't." A pained laugh escaped Ally's lips. "Best Friends Forever." She scoffed.
Ally picked up her cup of tea again and shook her head, staring down into the swirling steam. "Oh, I'm being silly. We've grown up. That's all. That's just what happens when you grow up. Best friends are for little girls who say they want to be princesses when they're older."
It was at this moment a cascade of bubbles erupted from the pot on the stove. The unsupervised fire gremlins had boiled her soup over, shrieking and cackling with laughter.
Ally spent a good portion of the night scrubbing tomato juice from the floorboards.
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Thank you so much for reading this far! If you enjoyed it, please vote, add, or share with your friends! I would REALLY appreciate it.
If you have some constructive criticism, please comment. This is the first draft and I would love some feedback. Or you can just comment agreeing that ghost cats are the best. That would be good too. XD
- Millie Florence
millieflorence.com