Ahab's Wife by Sena Jeter Naslund Read Free Book Online

end in the sky. How unaspiring it seemed! Such a puny human effort to draw a mark an inch up the dome of the great sky. A mere budge of the pencil, a dash of graphite, gray against pale blue. But suddenly, at the top of that stubby thing, there was a glint!
    â€œIt’s on!” The exclamation broke from me.
    â€œNo,” she answered, pressing my hand, for she, too, was excited. “It shines only at night. The sunlight has caught the windowpane like a mirror.”
    Then a wave of homesickness lapped within me, for I thought of my forest and the shiny objects my mother hung among the dark trees.
    â€œWhy did you hang the mirrors in the woods?” I asked.
    But she didn’t answer.
    Instead, she asked me how was my stomach and did the motion of the water make me queasy. When I looked at the water, I felt contempt. The color was more green than the dark blue of the English poets, and the waves were small and choppy.
    â€œIt’s not wild enough,” I said.
    â€œYou always loved a storm,” she said. And she told me again how when I was a small girl, only freshly equipped with language, when it rained I had said, “Harder,” and begged her to make the rain bigger and more extreme.
    â€œHow do you like the Lighthouse?” she asked.
    â€œI wish that it were taller.”
    She laughed. “Accept the world, Una. It is what it is.”
    Gradually, the vertical line of Lighthouse widened, so that the Lighthouse seemed not like a mere pencil line but a brush stroke with width as well as height, inching up the sky. For a time, the sunlight on its high glass glared steadily, but as our angle of approach changed, the whole column went gray and lightless. It grew taller and more satisfactory.
    I could see the shaft was made of stone, and some of the stone jutted out so that it appeared knobby as a spine instead of smooth-sided. Ittapered like a candle as it grew taller, and at its base was a stone house, the roof of which was shake shingles, covered with a splash of pink roses.
    â€œOh, the roses,” I said.
    â€œThey lie on the roof in the sun all day.”
    â€œAnd the goats!”
    â€œThey’re nimble enough not to fall off the island rocks into the ocean.”
    â€œDid they swim here?”
    â€œThe goats were brought by boat. Like us.”
    I admired their dark, spiky horns and their big, dark udders.
    â€œMy sister shovels up their manure to feed the roses. Perhaps you can help her.”
    In Kentucky, small white roses grew in sunny places in the woods, and I loved them well, but these were pink and so profuse, I could scarcely believe in them. The roses climbed up to the roof on wooden trellises, and on the roof lay another trellis which roses’ stems wove under and over. Those roses were the first time nature surprised me; for the first time she exceeded not only what I wanted but what I had imagined possible.
    â€œWe’ll have goat cheese for supper, I imagine, and toast, and rose-hip tea.”
    At the corner of my eye, I saw a goat jumping, jumping as though to greet us. And then when I looked closer, it was a white apron flapping, and a little girl, jumping and jumping—Cousin Frannie. And I remembered that Aunt Agatha had written I would be good company for her little girl, isolated on the Island. She was four, and I loved her at once for her joyful jumping.
    Soon we were disembarked, and when I hugged Frannie, I felt I was hugging a sturdy little churn. The moment I let go of her, the dasher inside made her jump and jump again with joy. Her hair was the color of nutmeg, between red and brown, and across her nose and cheeks were scattered freckles of the same nutmeg color. Her eyes were as green as the sea, and forever I forgave the sea for not appearing blue.
    Oh Una, oh Una, oh Una, you’re here was all she said, over and over, in a voice like little bells jangling—with that same pleasant discord. And I held her hands, and big