The Last Wind

I found the watch on a Tuesday, which is the sort of detail that matters only when you’re looking back and trying to pin down the exact moment your life stopped making sense. The lighthouse had been crumbling since before I was born, so the fact that a piece of the floor had rotted through and swallowed my foot was hardly a surprise. But the pocket watch that rolled out from under the rusted anchor chain, that was a surprise.

I pulled my leg free, cursing, and picked it up.

It was heavy. Heavier than it should have been, like it was packed with something denser than brass and gears. The case was tarnished silver, the face cracked but still readable. Roman numerals, a second hand that didn’t move, and an inscription on the back that I couldn’t quite make out in the dim light. I ran my thumb over the words. *For the one who winds.*

I laughed. A shitty joke from a dead man. The lighthouse keeper before me had been named Aldric, and he’d died in the same bed I now slept in, his heart giving out while he was still clutching a bottle of rum. I’d found his body three days later, the smell already spreading through the stone like a secret. I’d buried him in the yard, under the salt-burned grass, and I’d taken his job because no one else wanted it.

The watch was probably his. Maybe he’d stolen it, maybe it had been a gift. I didn’t care. I shoved it into my pocket and forgot about it for three weeks.

I found it again when I was drunk.

That’s the truth of it. I was drunk, and I was thinking about her, because that’s what I do when I’m drunk. I think about Elena. I think about the way she looked at me when I told her I couldn’t leave the lighthouse, couldn’t move to the city, couldn’t give her the life she wanted. I think about the way she walked out the door, her suitcase bumping against her hip, her hair catching the wind like a flag of surrender. I think about the way I let her go, because I was too scared to follow.

I wound the watch.

It wasn’t a decision. It was a reflex. My thumb found the crown and turned it, and the gears inside clicked and whirred, and the second hand began to move. Backward.

I felt it in my chest first. A pull, like a hook sinking into my ribs. Then the room blurred, the edges of the walls softening, the light from the lantern smearing across the ceiling. I heard the sea, but it was wrong. The waves were crashing in reverse, pulling back from the rocks, sucking the foam into the deep.

And then I was standing in the doorway, and Elena was still here.

She was packing. Her suitcase was open on the bed, her dresses folded neat and precise, the way she did everything. She looked up at me, and her eyes were wet, and her mouth was a tight line.

“Don’t,” she said.

I didn’t say anything. I couldn’t. I was too busy feeling the weight of the watch in my pocket, too busy trying to understand what had just happened.

“Don’t stand there and pretend you’re going to change your mind,” she said. “You’ve already made your choice.”

The words hit me like stones. But I knew them. I’d heard them before. This was the same conversation, the same fight, the same moment I’d replayed in my head a thousand times. Except this time, I knew what she was going to say next.

“I can’t live here anymore,” she said, right on cue. “I can’t live in a place that’s falling into the ocean. I can’t live with a man who’d rather watch it fall.”

I could have said something different. I could have told her I loved her. I could have told her I’d leave with her, that I’d burn the lighthouse down and follow her anywhere. But I didn’t. I just stood there, my hand in my pocket, my fingers wrapped around the watch, and I watched her leave again.

The second time hurt worse.

Because now I knew I could undo it. I knew I could go back and say the right thing, do the right thing, be the man she needed. But I didn’t. I let her walk out, and I felt the lighthouse shake beneath my feet, and I heard a stone fall somewhere below.

I ran to the window.

The cliff face was different. A chunk of rock the size of a car had sheared off and tumbled into the sea. The lighthouse was still standing, but it was closer to the edge now. I could see the fresh scar in the stone, the raw white granite exposed to the air.

I looked at the watch. The second hand was still moving backward, slow and steady, ticking against the flow of time.

I wound it again.

This time I went back further. Three months. I was in the workshop, my hands covered in oil, a broken clock spread across the table. Elena was in the kitchen, humming. She was happy. We were happy. I could hear her moving around, the clatter of dishes, the smell of coffee.

I walked to the doorway and watched her.

She was beautiful. She was always beautiful, but in that moment, in the golden light of the afternoon, she was something else. Something I didn’t deserve. She turned and saw me, and she smiled.

“You’re staring,” she said.

“I know.”

“Are you going to say something, or are you just going to stand there like a ghost?”

I wanted to tell her. I wanted to say, *I’ve seen you leave. I’ve seen you cry. I’ve seen the life we could have had, and I’ve seen the one we’ll have instead.* But the words wouldn’t come. They were stuck in my throat, tangled with the truth I didn’t want to admit.

“I love you,” I said.

She laughed. “I know that, you idiot. What’s wrong with you?”

“Nothing.”

I crossed the room and kissed her. She tasted like coffee and salt. She pressed her body against mine, and I felt the heat of her, the pulse of her, the life that was still here, still mine to hold. I wanted to stay in that moment forever. I wanted to wind the watch until the gears gave out and time stopped altogether.

But the watch didn’t let me stay.

The room blurred again, and I was back in the present, standing alone in the lighthouse, the sea roaring below. The floor was wet. Water was seeping through the cracks in the stone, pooling around my feet. I looked out the window and saw that the cliff was gone. The lighthouse was perched on a narrow finger of rock, the ocean eating away at the edges.

I had traded her for this.

I had traded every moment I could have had with her for the chance to keep the lighthouse standing, and it was still falling. It was always falling. The sea didn’t care about my regrets. It didn’t care about the watch or the time I’d stolen or the woman I’d let go. It just kept coming, wave after wave, eating the stone, taking the land, taking everything.

I wound the watch again.

This time, I went back to the beginning. I went back to the day Aldric died, back to the moment I found him in his bed, his hand still wrapped around the bottle. I stood in the doorway and watched him take his last breath. I could have saved him. I could have called a doctor, pumped his chest, done something. But I didn’t. I let him die, because I wanted his job, because I wanted the lighthouse, because I wanted to be alone.

The watch was warm in my hand. The gears were spinning faster now, the second hand ticking backward like a heartbeat in reverse. I could feel the lighthouse groaning around me, the stones shifting, the sea clawing at the foundation.

I didn’t care.

I wound it again.

And again.

And again.

The sea was inside the lighthouse now. I could feel it. The water was rising around my ankles, cold and relentless, dragging at my legs. The walls were cracking, the lantern was flickering, and somewhere above me, a stone fell.

I looked at the watch.

The inscription was clear now. *For the one who winds.*

I smiled.

And I turned the crown one more time.