The Lighthouse
by Marianne Xenos
Vita lay on a cold slab of stone, feeling disappointed with death. She resented the darkness and chilly discomfort, and resented being alone. Vita wasn't the kind of woman who enjoyed solitude. A memory nudged her, and she wriggled her toes, which were cold and bare, but animate. She'd come to this place to find her friend. Even in death, love made her restless.
Tentatively she opened her eyes and watched a flash of light across the ceiling. No, not the ceiling—the light swept across the indigo sky. Over and over, with a rhythm like the ocean, the light surged. The ocean was near; she sensed the bite of salt and rot in the air. This wasn't the cold table of a morgue. She was outside a lighthouse, and she was looking for her friend. For Virginia.
Vita lay collecting her thoughts as the night faded. The dawn chorus began, and she shivered in a white muslin nightgown. Wishing for a shawl, or better, her leather riding coat, she pulled herself to sitting, and wondered who would turn off the great light at dawn. Maybe she was the light's keeper now. Then, as the sky brightened, the beacon blinked out, and Vita stood up to look around.
The last thing she remembered was haunting her writing room at Sissinghurst Castle. Death had been expected, but the haunting took her by surprise. And even more surprising than the haunting was her longing for Virginia.
The writing room was full of books and paintings, the treasures of Vita's life—lush oils, first editions, and a manuscript inscribed with her friend's distinctive scrawl: "To Vita from Virginia." She paused near each object as though it could be a portal to another world. She was searching for something. She was at home, but also homesick. Homesick for another world. As she paced her writing room, agitated yet utterly silent, she found herself pausing in front of a simple painting of a lighthouse.
She'd bought the painting at a shop in London. Vita owned exquisite pieces of art, but this one was almost cliché and sentimental—a lighthouse in the sunset. The composition was amateur, although the colors and detail were lively. She’d bought it because it had reminded her of Virginia's lighthouse—the one in Cornwall she'd visited as a child. The one at the center of Virginia’s famous book. When Vita flipped the painting over, she found she was right about the location, but wrong about the time of day. The title was "Godrevy Lighthouse at Dawn."
In her writing room, Vita stood with her feet deep in the plush Turkish carpet, and reached one hand towards the frame. She hesitated, but a sense of urgency was building. Was she afraid of getting lost, or being rejected once again? Or more ominously, afraid she would eventually snuff out like a candle? Maybe all of these.
Vita had never been a coward. She thought of her friend, put two hands on the frame, and tumbled through the dark to the lighthouse.
The indigo sky had brightened to pale blue, and the day promised to be fine. Vita circled the lighthouse, and found a small cottage in the back. She knocked and called Virginia's name. The door creaked open to a small tidy space smelling of coffee and toast, but whoever enjoyed the early breakfast was gone. Vita lit a lamp, and saw a gallery of paintings along the walls, including one painting she knew well. The lighthouse hung central on the wall, and when she stepped close, she saw that it was identical to her own. She thought to look at the back, but she was afraid to touch it.
The thought gave her goosebumps, or as the Turks say, "My hairs become thorns." At the thought of thorns, Vita remembered the garden outside the lighthouse, and went to the door. She heard the ocean in the distance, and worried once again she'd be turned away.
She noticed a note pinned to the door. It hadn't been there before, but it seemed death had its own logic, as dreams do.
"Darling V. Take the path through the garden and meet me at the shore. I spied a mermaid, although she may be a Russian princess. Yours, V."
Vita left the cottage in her white nightgown, running with dark hair streaming behind her like the heroine in a penny dreadful, and rushed down the path to the garden. Morning light reflected on two borders of white flowers, and at the end of a stone path she saw her. Virginia.
Vita was relieved that Virginia was also in a night dress, although her hair was carefully coiffed at the back of her head. She stood close to the water and Vita was irrationally afraid of losing her again. Losing her to the waves, which seemed hungry for life, like beasts stamping on the shore. She saw her friend's feet firmly planted on the rocky edge, and took a deep breath.
"Hello? I'm looking for a Russian princess. Have you seen her?"
Virginia turned and smiled, less constrained that she'd ever been in life.
"What took you so long?"
Vita stepped forward cautiously. She'd never been a cautious person, but the stakes had changed. Death changed everything. Her friend's face -- neither young nor old, masculine nor feminine, pretty nor plain -- was piercing and precious. She touched Virginia's face, and caressed the back of her bare neck, and they kissed, listening to the waves. The ocean danced like an unchained beast.
Marianne Xenos is a writer and artist living in western Massachusetts. For decades, stories were part of her visual art, but she recently shifted focus from visual work to the stories themselves. Her first published story appeared last year in The Future Fire, and several will be published this year in anthologies and magazines, including The Fantastic Other and The Underdogs Rise. Recently, she was a first-prize winner of the Writers of the Future contest, and the winning story was published in the Volume 39 anthology. Marianne has always loved the fantastic, including artists Joseph Cornell and Frida Kahlo, and writers Ursula K. Le Guin and Toni Morrison. "The Lighthouse" echoes her first literary love, Virginia Woolf. Marianne's publications are listed at www.mariannexenos.com, and you can follow her on Twitter @MarianneXenos Instagram at @mariannexenos.