Page 7 of Beacon

I waded deeper as I followed Octavius. When we’d ventured several yards from shore, he dipped below the surface and I followed, allowing the ocean to surround me like a cocoon. We didn’t have to swim far, just beneath the lighthouse where the cavern was hidden. We wriggled through the tight hole in the rocks and clambered onto the rocky shore.

Darkness shrouded the cave until Octavius’s body changed to a gold that glowed in the dark. His body illuminated the crystals embedded into the rock and lining the cavern floor and walls, a light which glistened off them to dance around the chamber and the pool at the center.

I had enough magical crystals, so I ignored them and headed for the pool. Octavius paused in admiring the way the light reflected off his glowing body and surged forward to block my path. I pressed my hands to my hips, but he wasn’t dissuaded. I rolled my eyes and tried to step around him, but he only blocked me again, tangling his arms around my ankles in protest.

I glared in an attempt to convey some sense of my urgency—Ineededto look even though my doing so would lead to nothing but heartache.

Octavius wriggled his body in a distinct no, and I pressed my hands back to my hips. We had a silent stare down before he slumped in defeat and released me. I smirked with that success before the emotion was quickly replaced with wariness.

Octavius curled against my side as I knelt beside the pool. He might not approve of my decision, but he never abandoned me. I stroked him once before turning my attention to the water. The dancing light from the crystals glistened off its surface in an enchanting, almost otherworldly way. One would never suspect that such a pool could cause such pain.

I lifted my hand and reached out until it hovered just above the pool’s surface. I’d spent years suppressing my powers…save for a single pinprick that the ocean had for some reason decided I should keep. I’d kept safely locked away for this very moment a servant whose only purpose was to grant me access to the enchanted pool’s visions.

Magical ripples extended from my touch, skittering across the pool’s surface and leaving images in their wake before settling on the first memory I often relived, transporting me back in time to the day I’d lost my voice.

I stood on the rocky shoreline overlooking the ocean. The sea was uncannily calm, even lovely with the way the sunlight danced across the water’s surface almost innocently with no hint of the storm that had raged only yesterday…the one that had stolen everything.

I hadn’t spoken since then, though I’d spent hours crying until I’d run out of tears, leaving me entirely empty, a state of nothingness that brought my only semblance of relief. This numbness was only penetrated by the sharp pain that accompanied the memory of what had happened—the loss I’d suffered and my irrevocable mistake, one I’d do anything to escape.

Part of me held out the foolish hope that I was living a nightmare, one I desperately ached to awaken from in order to return to the way things had been before Mother’s ship had sunk. I spent hours standing at the shore, waiting…waiting…waiting…all while keeping my words locked away until I could greet her upon her return.

Only, she wasn’t coming.

Heartache filled me, so acute that I feared I’d drown. I collapsed onto the sandy shore, buried my face in my knees, and wept. Time held no meaning as I sat there crying…until the gentle breeze shifted into a rough wind and the ocean began to churn restlessly.

My tears immediately ceased. I gasped and scrambled closer to the rough rapids with an earnest prayer they’d calm. Though Mother’s ship had been lost, others were out at sea. I couldn’t bear for any more lives to stain my conscience or for the guilt already weighing upon my aching heart to grow even more heavy and unbearable.

It took several deep, steadying breaths for the sea to gradually calm. I released a shaky sigh of relief, but though disaster had been averted in this instance, my anxiety lingered.

My emotions were too connected to my magic, making my powers too dangerous…along with my voice, which had died with Mother. If I could never speak to her again, then I didn’t want to speak at all; perhaps that would somehow make up for the chatter that had annoyed her during our last interaction. My voice deserved to share her fate and become swallowed by the depths where it now belonged…with her.

I didn’t voice my wish out loud, afraid a single word would cause me to lose my resolve. But dipping my hand into the ocean was enough for it to sense my desires, a wordless connection the sea and I had created in all the time we’d spent together.

The water stirred again, not in the rough, almost violent way it had earlier, but more gently. Its ripples gathered to form a wave, which rose to eye level. Though the ocean couldn’t speak, our connection allowed me to sense its thoughts, so closely attuned to mine—was I certain this was what I wanted?

I nodded. I’d never been more certain of anything. While my guilt would always remain, at least I could alleviate myself of the burden pressing against my throat, a connection to the magic that had stolen everything from me as well as my last tie to Mother.

The water glowed before reaching inside my throat to extract the words I’d grown to fear, leaving nothing but the lingering taste of salt and seaweed against my tongue.

The ocean withdrew, now carefully cradling a glowing bulb of light that was my voice. The water formed a box where it locked my voice away before slowly swallowing it up as the wave receded back into the ocean, taking my voice with it, stealing it forever.

And just like that, my voice was no longer my own, lost somewhere at sea.

This memory faded from my pool, the less painful of the visions I often subjected myself to, but I lingered. Once more I grazed its surface, opening my mouth to emanate only a single, wordless note—the only part of my voice I still possessed after giving the rest to the ocean—before I snatched it back and locked it away.

It immediately responded to my touch to swirl with color and magic, which gradually formed the image I both longed for and feared. My breath hooked when I spotted her.Mother.

I leaned so close my nose nearly grazed the surface, staring hungrily at the memories of her that the pool reflected back to me. For the briefest moment I only felt peace as I watched recollections of Mother’s smile, her stroking my hair, her blowing me a kiss…happy glimpses that kept me returning to the pool again and again despite the pain that would inevitably follow.

But soon the images twisted to transform into the ones I dreaded, all of the last day of her life—impatience causing her lips to purse, her disapproving frown as she noticed the sandy footprints I’d gotten all over the floor, her weary sigh as I followed her around while talking to her, and the annoyance filling her eyes as she said the words that had haunted me every moment since she’d spoken them:just…stop talking.

I gasped and yanked my hand away, but the ripples didn’t fade; they couldn’t until the memories had been played in full, forcing me to once again watch the moment my words and emotions had caused the storm, as well as the nightmares that had tormented my nights ever since, of a towering wave of water swallowing a ship whole, and with it…

With a strangled sob, I buried myself in my knees, desperate to block the images I’d seen so many times that they were engraved on my mind. But even if I couldn’t see them in the pool, they lingered to play out across my mind’s stage, reopening the wound that had never healed, leaving me bleeding once more.

But as much as I loathed the pain, I also welcomed it, for it was my atonement for the mistake I could never undo, a penance whose cost was even higher considering Father continued to treat me with love, kindness, and forgiveness.

I deserved no forgiveness. Thus I had to punish myself. Day after day after day.

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