The morning after the storm, I walked down to the harbour, boots crunching on the damp gravel. The air was thick with brine and the memory of loss. Nets lay twisted and forlorn across the dock, their usual order disrupted by the wind’s wrath. A few gulls wheeled overhead, their cries sharp against the hush that had fallen over the village.
Old Man Hemlock stood at the edge of the wharf, his oilskin coat snapping in the breeze. He gazed out to the horizon, eyes narrowed as if he could still see yesterday’s disaster playing out atop the waves. I hesitated a moment, unsure if I belonged in his orbit now, weighted as it was with grief and the burden of prophecy proved right.
A handful of villagers clustered by the fish shack: Mrs. Callahan, her arms folded tight against her chest; Thomas, the dockhand, who kept glancing at the empty mooring where the lost boat should have been. No one spoke. There was a reluctance in the air, as if any word might summon more calamity.
I moved to help untangle the nets, my hands automatically searching for splits and snarls. The motions pulled me back into myself, into the rhythms I’d learned as a child, the web of muscle memory and tradition. Yet even here, I felt the change—the way the old men watched the water, the way the younger ones avoided their eyes.
From the shallows, I heard the low, creaking sigh of a lobster pot shifting in the tide. The traps had weathered the storm but bore its mark: barnacles knocked loose, a tangled rope trailing from one side like a ragged braid. Kneeling, I reached for the rope, fingers brushing against something snagged—a strip of blue oilcloth, torn free from a slicker, fluttering in the salt breeze. A shiver ran through me, sudden and cold. It was the color young Owen had worn the morning before.
A shadow fell over me. Hemlock’s boots thudded softly on the warped planks. “The sea gives back what it will,” he said, voice barely more than a rasp. He nodded at the blue scrap. “That’s a sign. Maybe a message.”
My throat tightened. What was I meant to learn, standing here with the proof of loss in my palm—the weight of tradition, the warning of the sea, or the futility of trying to hold onto anything at all? Behind me, the others began to stir, the silence breaking beneath the hush of their grief.
Then: a shout from farther down the pier. Thomas jabbed a finger out to the mouth of the cove. A skiff, battered and slow, rowed into view: a shape hunched in the stern, laboring at the oars. The impossible hope rose in my chest, sharp and painful. Was it truly him—a survivor, or merely another ghost the morning would sweep away?
My heart hammered as the skiff drew closer, revealing a figure slumped over, salt-streaked and exhausted, but alive. The crowd surged forward in a single breath. I hung back, the blue oilcloth clenched in my fist, caught between the need to run forward and the dread of what I might find on that boat.