Starla
When lightning struck the island
for the third time, sundering the remaining wall of Winchester Light and
tearing her chains from its crumbling foundation, Starla bit her tongue,
severing the end. Her mouth contorted
into a crimson grin and she savored the metallic tang of blood and algae and
freedom. The storm raged overhead,
whipping the sea around the ruined lighthouse into a fury, crashing waves
salting the rain. She roared back at the
hurricane with lungs full of hatred for her past, the sea and for Him. One
hundred years chained to that cursed rock.
Ninety-nine ships led by her damned voice to be devoured by Him, the ever-thirsting
drain, a whirlpool in the deep darkness of the sea. She’d filed the tips of her webbed claws into
sharp points and chiseled deep lines into the volcanic rock to mark the passing
of ship and season. The carvings were a
wasted attempt to calm her mind and maintain some kind of order. Over the years hope dwindled and her sanity
seemed to come and go as it pleased, burying itself deep within some hidden
corner of Starla’s fragile mind and leaving her to wander alone through
haunting dreams. On those nights, she
relived the horrors of her capture and expedition across the Atlantic aboard
the Negro Marie. She would wake with a
start, choking herself on the collar as she thrashed about reaching for her
brother Martin as he burned in the wreckage of her father’s Irish cutter, her
eyes wet from the memory of the black smoke.
“This ends
tonight,” thought Starla. Another bolt
lit the charcoal sky, reflecting her grotesque image in a puddle of brine. Her long braided hair hung brackish and
tangled, flecked with bits of broken shell.
Milk white cockle shells adorned her gray-green breasts, chipped and
cracked yet permanent, an extension of her weather beaten skin and the dark,
mottled scales that formed her tail.
Starla grimaced, tearing her eyes from the image. She’d been beautiful once. But that was before she had become broken and
lost. Betrayed and discarded to the sea. Behind her, at the base of the lighthouse,
the broken chain attached to her neck glowed white hot in a charred crater. Starla took the tarnished ring around her
throat in her webbed fingers and gripped until her knuckles turned bone
white. Tiny barnacles encrusting the
back of her gray-green hands stirred in their shells from the warmth of the
collar. Wind whistled through holes in
the base of the rock, chorus spiraling in gusts ranging from bass to soprano.
