Song of the Lighthouse by Barbara Schinko

Author:Barbara Schinko
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Babelcube Inc.
Published: 2019-10-05T16:00:00+00:00

Owen was gone when I opened the front door again. Half relieved and half disappointed, I marched across the village square to the high cross – peering between the crossbeam and the stone ring. Nobody lurked behind it, nothing moved except oak leaves in the wind, and the only sounds to be heard were the screams of the gulls.

On my way home I rattled the door of the grocery store without too much of an expectation. A sign saying "I'll be back" was hanging on the outside. Some joker had scribbled "Sure, but when?“ below it. Till the bus stop there was still no trace of Owen and I began to suspect that he had taken another path.

I hesitated briefly. But I didn't want to run away from Owen. Resolutely, I turned around and marched through the village once more – into the high grass beyond the last houses. Under the stone-grey sky the sea of grass swayed towards the cliff with the oak. A white spot stood motionless in it. The wind tugged at it like at a sail, swept along it like along a lighthouse.

Owen nodded to me when I came, but he didn't say a word.

I cleared my throat. "Hi."

"Hi", he echoed. Then he turned away and seemed to look only at the blackberry hedges and the tall grass. I sensed that he was watching me from the corner of his eye, but as soon as I wanted to say something about it, he looked stubbornly straight ahead as if he'd done so all the time.

"Did you find the key?", he finally asked, still without looking at me.

"Yes."

"Good." He sounded as if he wanted to add something, but then he just repeated: "Good."

"Yes." Being quiet with Owen was easier than talking to him. The silence between us didn't seem to bother him at all. He would have fit into the lighthouse much better than I did, like Grandpa with his harmonica and Grandma with her seashells and her pairs of broken glasses. Owen's ancestors must have been good at silence too, I realized when I thought of Miss Alvy who had never even gone into the village, and of Macallis far out on the sea.

Only I didn't fit. I did not belong to the village. I had taken possession of the lighthouse although I had no right to it, and I was going to disappear at the end of the summer. I was a troublemaker, a scratchy, dissonant D major chord. Defiantly, I bit my lip and vowed not to say another word until Owen broke the silence.

The wind swept over us, it pulled on Owen's short shirt sleeves. Although goose bumps covered his arms and I myself was freezing in my jacket, he didn't seem to notice. I peered discreetly at his tattoo. I wanted to kiss him, but I suspected that here and now it would be much like kissing the lighthouse. Our elbows and shoulders almost touched, and yet I felt as if we

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