The Best of Enchanted Conversation
THE LIGHTHOUSE KEEPER & THE HAG by MADISON McSWEENEY
I
n her younger days, she had a voice like a golden harp strummed by a fairy queen; now, she screeches like a cat in heat. The old man can hear her from his bedroom in tower of the lighthouse. Sometimes he turns on the fog horn to drown her out. Other times, he yells out the window: “Yowl all ye want, sea-woman – ye won’t lure this old sailor into the deep!” The old man hasn’t been a sailor for a long time. He lost his sea legs years ago, and retired to a solitary life at the top of a tall tower on an outcropping of rock in the middle of the sea, shining the warning light lest a ship come by and crash into the jagged shore. She was still young and beautiful when she first washed up on his beach. He was a younger man then, too, but knew well enough not to be fooled by
