The Lighthouse

The light came back on a Tuesday, which Mira would later think was a strange, ordinary day for a miracle to happen.

She was hanging washing on the line when she saw it — a soft gold bloom at the top of the tower, steady as a held breath. Twenty years since her father had climbed those stairs for the last time, twenty years of dark glass and gull nests, and now light, spilling out over the water like nothing had ever stopped.

Mira Hale

Tobias. Tobias, look — do you see that?

She was already running before he answered, bare feet slapping the wet stone path, her heart doing something complicated and fast.

Tobias

That's your father's lamp. Mira — that's been dead since before I was born.

Mira Hale

I know how old it's been. I've counted every one of those years. Someone's up there. Come with me.

The door at the base of the tower stood ajar, salt-swollen wood scraped back against stone, and the smell that came from inside was not dust and rot as she'd expected but oil — fresh oil, faintly sweet, like the smell of her childhood.

Tobias

Someone's been here recently. Look — footprints in the dust, going up, not down.

Mira Hale

Then we go up too.

The stairs wound up through darkness broken only by narrow slit windows, and with every turn Mira felt the years peel away — here was the step that always creaked, here the wall where her father had chalked her height each birthday, numbers gone pale and ghostly now. Tobias climbed close behind her, quiet for once, his hand brushing the small of her back when she stumbled.

Tobias

What if it's your father? What if he never really—

Mara Voss

Don't. Don't say it until we know. I don't think I could bear the hoping and then the not.

They reached the top landing breathless, the light so bright after the dark stairwell that Mira had to blink tears from her eyes — or perhaps they were tears already, waiting for an excuse. The great lamp turned slow and patient behind its glass, throwing gold across the walls, across the small figure crouched beside the mechanism with an oil can in hand, who turned at the sound of their footsteps with no surprise at all, only a small, tired smile, as though she had been expecting them for twenty years.