She was sure she already knew the answer.

Chapter Twenty-Three

Alice started to receive visits from Grace most evenings. It had become a habit to spend their quiet hours of rest together. Alice’s days were filled with strange, intense training. She would be forced to run miles and miles around the edges of cavernous training rooms, all in her heavy overdress and boots. Building stamina was important, apparently, before she trained in witchcraft. She’d also been taught to handle a bow and arrow and to fight with a sword, and was warned that the easiest path to defeat was to rely on her magic. The food Grace brought to her room each night was the only thing that stopped her from shrinking too much, although her dress still hung awkwardly on her bony figure.

Along with the food, Grace also brought company. Alice hated to admit it, but she had warmed to her companion. She had fallen into a comfortable routine around Grace and her friendship was a welcome distraction from the fear that lay on the other side of her bedroom door.

‘You’d love it there, I feel sure of it,’ Grace told Alice one evening. ‘At the top of the tower, in the lantern room where the lamp is, all you can see is the wide, open sea. The glass curves around you, almost like the sky is trying to embrace you. On a clear day, you can see dolphins dancing in the waves. I used to sit up there at night with my sketchbook and draw the everchanging shapes of the water. I even saw a selkie once, I’m sure of it.’

Alice raised her eyebrows and gestured for Grace to keep talking. This was the quiet agreement between the two of them; Grace always had so much to say and Alice was at her happiest just listening with her eyes closed, picturing the places of which Grace spoke.

‘One night,’ Grace continued with a glassy-eyed smile, ‘I couldn’t get the lamp to light and it’s still a working lighthouse. I was terrified that there would be a wreck when I woke up in the morning and I couldn’t settle. I couldn’t even entertain the idea of trying to sleep.

‘I couldn’t think of a better plan, so I pulled on my boots and one of my brother’s huge woollen overcoats and I walked right out onto the rocky outcropping just beyond the base of the lighthouse tower. I stood there, clutching the biggest lantern I could find, being whipped and beaten by the crashing waves and the vicious, cutting winds. I stood there all night. As the sun started to rise, I extinguished the lantern and perched on one of the rocks for a while. I don’t know if I saved any lives that night, but I like to think that maybe I did.

‘You see, the sea is an unpredictable, fearsome creature. Like a wild animal, it’s beautiful to watch, but it’s dangerous to get too close. I realised, sitting there, that I wasn’t scared of the sea at all and I couldn’t imagine how anyone could be. The sea birthed me, in a way. It created Grace as you see her now. I washed up on a stony beach, choking on sea water, soaked through and shivering, and became who I am.’