Page 2 of The Otherworld

“You’re a very special, kind soul, Orca,” he’d say, looking deep into my eyes from across the dinner table. “People aren’t kind in the other world.”

“None of them?”

“Not many of them,” Papa said. “You’re like… a delicate and unique branch of coral. You belong far away from the violent crashes of the waves on the rocks. You see, corals can’t survive in the tide. That’s why they flourish in a reef, on the ocean floor. Out of harm’s way.”

I understood what he was saying:

I wasn’t strong enough for the Otherworld.

According to Papa, it would smash me and destroy me.

Year after year, I helped Papa keep the light. Occasionally, boats and planes would cross paths with us, always miles out of reach—traveling in too many directions to determine where they came from or where they were going. I amused myself by making up stories about the people in those planes and boats. Where they might be traveling to, and what kinds of lives they led.

Every three months, a coast guard boat would come to our island and moor off the east side. Two men would carry out a routine inspection to ensure the lighthouse was up to standard. Our only other visitor was the supply man, who came twice a year to deliver us essentials we couldn’t grow or build ourselves. Knives, new flint, ointment, fresh rope, yellow wax candles, sacks of flour and rice, and fat bricks of soap. I loved to examine the new supplies piled up in our living room, studying them like treasures from the bottom of the sea. My only taste of the Otherworld.

When the supply man left, I would watch his boat through Papa’s spyglass, squinting hopelessly through the eyepiece until the small craft vanished into the distance.

Season after season, year after year, the Otherworld remained a mystery. The only evidence that it existed at all lay in the ropes and the wax and the knives.

And the pinpricks of light.

And the look in Papa’s eyes when he remembered it.

Part One

The Lighthouse

JUNE 14, 1997

1

Strange Treasures

ORCA

Every year on my birthday, Papa carves a new driftwood orca whale and leaves it on my nightstand. It’s the first thing I see when I open my eyes on the fourteenth day of June. I know exactly which piece of driftwood Papa used for this one. He’s made it a thing of beauty—sculpting away the gnarls and knobs of the branch to release new life from its soul: an orca whale breaching high from a wave of driftwood, its pectoral fins like wings in flight.

I turn the carving over in my hands, marveling at Papa’s talent before I place it atop my dresser with the others. There are big ones, little ones, males with tall dorsal fins, and females swimming beside their babies. Today, I have a pod of eighteen orcas porpoising across my dresser.

Eighteen.

I’ve waited an eternity for this day. To finally step over the threshold of childhood and embark on a new chapter of my life. In the Otherworld, eighteen means something. It means you are no longer a little girl in need of protection. It means you are an adult, capable of making your own decisions.

It means anything is possible.

I twirl over to the window and throw it open. Briny, sweet sea mist billows inside, fluttering the papers pinned to my walls—ocean charts and illustrations from marine biology books. Seashell garlands sway and clink jovially in the breath of a new day. I lean my elbows on the windowsill and peer across the water to the mist-shrouded islands in the distance.

So many adventures, waiting to be had.

So many mysteries, waiting to be discovered.

So much more, just beyond my reach.

Today is the beginning of it all.

I wrap myself in my crocheted shawl and head into the living room. Lucius lifts his scruffy head upon my entrance, romping over for a good-morning hug. I kneel on the floor and loop my arms around his neck, planting a kiss on top of his head. He is a sandy, salty mess of a dog—another outcast from the Otherworld. Papa found him at a harbor five years ago, whimpering in a box marked “free to a good home.” He was the only puppy in the box, and there was no telling if he’d had any brothers and sisters taken before him. The fact remained: Lucius was all alone. Perhaps they didn’t like his mismatched eyes—one was brown and one was blue—but I always thought it made him more beautiful. Papa didn’t have the heart to leave him behind, so he tucked him into his raincoat and brought him to the lighthouse. He’s just the right sort of dog to have on the island—a mix between “some kinda collie and some kinda shepherd,” according to Papa’s analysis. I think he may be part bloodhound because he can smell a good meal cooking from half a mile away.

“Today is the day, Lucius,” I whisper conspiratorially into one of his floppy brown ears. “I’m going to ask Papa to take me to the Otherworld. He can have no possible reason to object now that I’m eighteen—”

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