Page 34 of Now Comes the Mist

He is standing, waiting for me beneath the willow tree with an eager welcome in his eyes. I feel no shame, no embarrassment, no concern for propriety as I run straight into his arms and he gathers me close to him. I know that one cannot love a stranger. What I feel for this man as he strokes my hair, the two of us sheltered by the whispering leaves of the tree, is sharper, more desperate and immediate. It is a need, a recognition so powerful that it steals the breath from me as he lifts me off the ground, my arms around his neck and my legs around his waist.

“Good evening, Lucy,” he whispers in my ear, and I smile into his neck, my fingers tangled in his dark waves of hair. The rumble of his voice against me is already familiar, like a soft blanket I can wrap myself in. He has no scent, or perhaps he shares that of the ocean and the night. The mist rolls in off the sea, enveloping us in its tender embrace.

“I wish you were really here with me now,” I say softly.

He pulls away to look at me, nose to nose. The blue-green of his gaze is deeper tonight, as though the sea of his eyes is mirroring the ocean ahead of the storm. “Am I not?”

“You are only a dream,” I say, and he laughs. “Aren’t you?”

His arms tighten around me, his hands respectfully on my back. But respect is not what I want from his hands. So when he asks, “Why don’t you find out?” I mold my mouth to his, my lips and tongue starving for the taste of him, and he laughs again and rewards me by laying his fingers along my hip and thigh. He gently ends the kiss. “Enough now, or I will think you have come here only for this and not my sparkling conversation.”

I lay my hand on top of his, touching the garnet that rests there like a drop of blood. One of his fingers has a rough callus that I recognize as belonging to someone who writes often; I have felt them on Papa’s and Mina’s hands as well. I squeeze lightly, and the hand squeezes back.

He sets me down on his side of the bench, where he had sat the night before, and takes a seat on my side. Already, I am thinking ofhisside andmyside. “I don’t want your feet to get wet. It has rained here,” he says, carelessly putting his polished shoes into the puddle as though defying its disrespect toward me. We look out at the ocean, which is as agitated tonight as I feel.

I touch the cool surface of the bench, and my fingers find a crack in the stone. “This is the most vivid dream I have ever had,” I say as my robe flutters around my legs in the wind and an errant leaf sinks to the grass, wet with rain. “It all feels real.Youfeel real. But it is not possible.”

The man tilts his head. “Why not? Is it so impossible that you are a dreamer and that I am also a dreamer, and somehow, in our dreams, we have found each other?”

“You would have to sleepwalk as I do. And you said last night that you were not even on English soil.” A sigh escapes me. Such a lack of logic is irrefutable proof that I am dreaming.

The man seems amused. “I think you will find that not even I can walk across the sea. But perhaps I am both here andnothere. Perhaps my body is on a ship headed to these shores and I am dreaming from the safety of her hull. Perhaps I am with you in every way that matters.” Last night he had seemed more guarded, but tonight, he turns to look at me with openness, his beautifully accented English smooth and free. In recent memory, the only acquaintance I have met who speaks with an accent is Dr. Van Helsing. Perhaps my subconscious mind recalled the softening of his English, and indeed, I hear shades of German in the stranger’s speech.

“Where do you sail from, then?” I ask playfully. “Amsterdam, perhaps?”

“A port in Bulgaria. It has been a long and tiresome journey, with no good company on board, so I am grateful for our conversation.” The man looks sideways at me with gallant charm.

“Are you Bulgarian?”

He laughs, displaying strong white teeth as he takes my hand, studying it as though reading something written upon it. “Bulgarian, French, German, Russian, and everything in between. I am connected to almost every noble house in Europe. I simply chose a Bulgarian port for convenience.” He sighs. “TheDemeterhas a provincial crew and no passengers with whom I can hold educated congress. And so I dream to pass the time, especially at sunrise and sunset.”

“Sunrise and sunset?”

“The times when I rest. When I am most vulnerable.” He looks thoughtful but does not explain further, and I do not press him. Somehow, I sense I would not be able to, and it is both interesting and disturbing,this feeling that I can only ask what he will permit me to. As though he is steering me the way a captain is steering the ship he is on. “I dream to explore the land I will soon call home. I am moving to England for a time and have just purchased a property outside of London, in Purfleet.”

I blink in surprise. “That is not far from my own home. I almost lived there myself.”

He raises an eyebrow. “Almost?”

“I know a gentleman who is a doctor,” I say, blushing. Clearly, Jack Seward still lingers in my mind, even after my engagement. “He works at an asylum there.”

Again, the stranger seems to hear everything I am not saying. “Ah, I see! So this gentleman might have brought you to live with him in Purfleet, had it not been for the noble Arthur. Well, I am glad my property will not be far from you. We will be almost neighbors.”

I laugh at the wonder and the absurdity of this dream. “Do you think we shall meet in person?” I ask, playing along. “Outside of dreams? It will be strange.”

He turns my hand over, still examining it. “Strange? How so?”

“Well, we have already met, and it would be a lie to pretend otherwise. Though itwouldbe highly inappropriate to admit the circumstances under which we became acquainted.”

“A lie? Why not say a secret?” The man’s eyes shine at me, the lashes long and thick, giving his stern face a hint of softness. “A delicious secret shared by two friends.”

I smile, for being called his friend and sharing a secret with him feels oddly like an honor.

“Perhaps I will call upon you here in Whitby,” he says, squeezing my hand. “Perhaps I will find you in town and you will invite me in for tea, since we are in England, after all. And we will converse as though we are newly acquainted, not as kindred souls who have met before.”

My heart leaps. “Do you believe me to be a kindred soul? I feel that about you. I feel that I can talk to you about anything, the way I cannot with many people in my life.”

He puts an arm around me, and I lean against him. His presence gives no warmth, and yet the gesture is comforting and natural. “I am glad for your confidence in me. It is good to have a friend one can speak to without fear, and I shall be that for you.”

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