What Lies Beneath the Fog

》29《

When I reached them in the kitchen, I found Dad sitting at the table already laid for dinner. Emma was stirring a saucepan full of tomato sauce for the spaghetti boiling in a large pot.

I paused in the doorway, admiring how she handled the situation. She looked so relaxed, so at home in my house, so natural around my father who was observing her thoughtfully from across the room. Emma was absolutely gorgeous and amazing. She turned around, catching me smiling at her and smiled back.

Sitting down next to Dad, I noticed that he was watching both of us now, with a wide, childish grin spread over his face. I rolled my eyes at him, and that made him laugh.

"So, what have you been up to, kids?" he asked when Emma served the dinner and sat down to eat.

I looked at Emma, unsure of what to say, but she saved me again.

"You tell us about your trip Mr... I mean James. About the otters."

Those were exact words that were necessary to direct Dad's attention away from us. He started talking about his beloved animals and the horrible rain that had forced him to come back home early. He never stopped chattering until after dinner, when Emma was ready to go home, dressed again in her own dry clothes.

It was dark outside, and there was no way I would let her go down to the village alone.

When I told my father that I was taking our guest home, he even volunteered to wash the dishes instead of me. The first time ever. That was an obvious sign of how much he liked Emma.

We left him to it before he could change his mind and walked out into the foggy dusk. The wide cone of bright light from the Byron's Lighthouse illuminated our way.

"I hope that the light will never disappear," Emma said, looking towards the lighthouse. "I got used to it."

I hoped so, too. As much as I wished Anne Byron some peace and rest after the century of haunting the inhabitants and visitors of the Foggy Island, I wished she would leave us her light. As a memory of this summer, the summer when I found Emma beneath the fog of this tiny island.

I smiled at her, and we made our way towards the village, hand in hand, disappearing from view into the evening's mist.

° * °

Often, when I stand on board the small, slow, blue and white ferry taking us home after another day at school, feeling cold in the winter drizzle and wind, I recall the events of my first summer on Foggy Island.

After the rainy morning's adventure by the Byron's Lighthouse, the rest of the summer passed in a blur of happy moments, days, and weeks. Most of that time I spent with Claire, Dean, and Emma. Mainly with Emma. Her company was all that I really needed.

Mum came back a few days after my and Emma's crazy trip to the cave. She had mailed enough stuff from our Edinburgh's home to ensure that none of us would need to go back there anytime soon. That suited me perfectly, I didn't wish to leave the island at all. Not even for a few days.

Emma was keeping me busy. We explored the rest of the island together, falling deeper in love as the days passed by. I didn't know which kind of magic she cast over me, but I was all hers, and I liked it.

We had never seen Anne Byron's ghost again since we had buried the things connected to her life on the island.

Apparently, no one had. Poor Will, he never got any more ghost hunters stopping by in his pub and telling him their tales about the White Lady wandering over the cliffs at night. But like Will, there were plenty of those, both among the locals and the tourists, who strongly believed in the ghost's existence and never stopped hoping to see her again. During the century of her presence on the Foggy Island, Anne had become an inseparable part of it, like its legends, like its omnipresent fog.

Luckily, nobody noticed that we had swapped the key in the library and entered the Old Lighthouse... so far. I never questioned mine and Emma's unspoken agreement not to tell anything about our adventure to anyone. The story belonged only to us.
It felt as if the two people chosen by Anne Byron herself did exactly what she had asked them to, maybe even more.

Even now, it surprises me how little we had found out about the unsolved mystery surrounding the Byrons, Anne's disappearance, and Walter's suicide. How little was needed to know to appease her restless ghost.
Maybe Anne herself wanted the old story to lay silent and half-forgotten in the memory of the island, deep under the thick, silvery cloud of mist.

In any case, she seemed to be happy with the result; the only important thing was that she had finally found some peace and rest.

Remembering our summer adventure now, I pull Emma into a tight hug, oblivious to the other passengers on the ferry. She cuddles into my chest, seeking warmth and protection from the autumnal drizzle flying around us, carried by the chilly wild.

Like this, we watch the waves rolling and stretching in front of us, through the distance as well as time, towards our home lying hidden beneath the eternal fog. The thick mist that gets pierced regularly by large cones of bright light, coming from two different lighthouses, one only visible to the two of us.

They guide us safely to our home -- Eilean Ceòthach, the tiny Foggy Island where our future lays, at least for now, mysterious and unpredictable like the strange fog itself.