“I saw some ships on the horizon, coming in with the storm.”

“Off-islanders?”

“Looks like it. And the only place they use boats like that are past the Spires.”

Wynona glanced up from the net in her hands, watching the women as they moved like ants along the dock, hauling wet clay from the cliffs to their wheelbarrows, their skin smeared orange. Their gossiping was as constant as the tumble of the waves, and though it was often boring, once in a while they betrayed some useful piece of information: who was in the market for a unique gift, where a boat had gone down, what strange thing someone saw stuck in the rocks while they were fishing. 

Off-islanders, though. That was interesting. 

The women mumbled and grumbled to one another in passing, their noses scrunched, their tone unpleasant—the usual attitude one used when talking about people from beyond the Spires. Life was different out that way. Crueler. Quicker. 

Or so Wynona had heard. She’d never exactly spoken to an off-islander, but it was always big talk when they came poking around Claybay. Once, she’d even seen some shopping in town. They were rude and hasty and looked at everything as if it were part of a museum. 

“I’ll bet you anything it’s those Sea Monster Slayers.” One woman threw down her clay with particular malice. 

Wynona turned back to her net, its threads sharp and slick against her skin, but kept on listening. She didn’t want to be accused of eavesdropping and run off by the women (again). Not when this was her spot, a wide plateau of clay half-hidden by cliffs where she could sit in the sun and repair her net, and stare at where the Spires stuck up along the horizon, long strips of black rock cutting ominously into the sky; where she had the calmest entry point for diving; where she could be alone for as long as she liked.

Not that being alone was a very difficult thing for her to manage, but—still. When she came out to her spot, it felt like she was choosing solitude, rather than resigning herself to it. 

“They’re following Pelican,” said another woman. “I told you it was Pelican, didn’t I? Where the storm goes, the Slayers go.”

Someone laughed and said, “You think every storm is Pelican.”

“This time I’m right. I feel it in my bones.”

“Uh-huh. Your bones, your bones.”

“If those Slayers knew what was good for ‘em, they’d stay away from Claybay. We’re not interested,” said another. “Beyond the Spires… there’s nothing but death and destruction. People who come from a place like that are nothing but trouble.” 

“You’re crazy if you come from there, and crazier if you go there,” said one woman, the others nodding and humming in agreement—a few glancing Wynona’s way. 

Wynona met their sorry looks of judgement, stomach twisting. Their silence was an accusation. It told her they knew she was listening, and they wanted her to hear: travelling past the Spires was an act of taboo, and to do so surely meant certain death. Wynona scoffed. As if she needed reminding. 

She stood, hastily gathering her net in her arms. It was still in need of patching up, but more than anything in the world, she hated the avoidant pity that hung claustrophobically in the air. Diving would have to wait. 

Feeling their eyes stabbing into her back as she turned, Wynona took off in the direction of home.

Weaving through town, Wynona bristled as she passed by the shops and children and neat pockets of clay houses, their windows were open to let in the breeze, strong and atypically cool with the incoming storm. Familial laughter drifted out of front doors propped open for anyone who wanted to stop by and say hello. 

Town was kind, an easygoing and communal place. Wynona hated passing through it for that very reason. 

But it was the only way to get home. She had tried a hundred different routes, and was good at plenty of things, but scaling cliffs with her bare hands wasn’t one of them. So she avoided the doorways and the eyes of the town she’d spent all her life in, a blast of ocean wind carrying her home.

To any passerby, Wynona imagined, it probably looked empty or totally abandoned. Oftentimes, she found herself grateful that their house was a bit isolated, tucked up on a hill. It would’ve been annoying, sharing a street with all those happy, chatty neighbors. She climbed a set of stairs that had been carved into the hillside,  but were wearing steadily away. Every time she climbed them, it got a little harder. She didn’t think too hard about how she used to watch her father and mother re-carve them every year, their faces bright with sweat, to make sure her trip home was safe. 

“I’m back,” Wynona called, dropping her things by the door. 

Inside was dark, not a single light lit. Despite the bookshelves bursting with books and manuals and folders, the cluttered stacks of old papers, the pinboard of research materials frozen in time, the place felt empty. She hovered, waiting for some response. Only the wind answered as it batted gently against the windows. 

She didn’t know what exactly she expected. With a sigh, she started collecting mugs where they were scattered about the living room and placed them carefully in the sink. They were precious, glazed and fired in one of the neighborhood kilns, made of clay she and her parents had dug out of their own backyard when she was quite small. Some were perfectly shaped—molded by her mother’s hands, skilled and sure, and her father’s, firm and careful—and some were small and warped, the best she could manage as a seven-year-old. 

Her eyes lingered on the growing collection. She imagined herself breaking them, wiping their history clean from the sink. But she couldn’t. Despite what they represented, it wasn’t the poor mugs’ faults things were the way they were. As she turned away from them, she froze. 

There on the wall. That picture again. 

It was of their family when they were, well, a family: her, her father, her mother. A complete set. Heat collected in her face. She hated seeing it. Wynona knew her mother, when she was around, had been kind. They’d been happy. But all that photo was good for was dredging the memory of her abandonment back to the surface.  

Wynona flipped the photo around, letting it slam against the wall with emphasis. There was no point in taking it down if her dad was just going to keep putting it back up. 

On cue—as if sensing the photo had been tampered with—a shuffling sounded from the hallway. Wynona grabbed her things, adrenaline bursting inside of her. Quick, she told herself. If she got to her room quick enough, she could avoid—

“Wynona,” said a man, tired and slow, as if it pained him to speak. “I didn’t hear you come in.”

Wynona paused, net in hand. Shit.

“I yelled that I was back,” she said, turning around, knowing there was no way around this. 

Anderson was a man of average size and middle-age, but Wynona could have sworn he was getting smaller every day. The two shared the same pair of eyes and deep brown skin, but that was where the similarities with her father ended. He seemed so weathered, so resigned, like looking at a ghost. Anderson watched, tired, a hand braced against the doorway. There was a sadness in his face, too, like the kind she saw in all the townspeople. Like he was apologizing. Maybe it wouldn’t have been so terrible if they had always been that way, but Wynona knew better, still able to remember a time when his eyes were a little brighter, when he’d had enough energy to smile. It was there in her memories, just like everything else; it was there, in the picture on the wall.

“Oh.” Anderson rubbed beneath his thick beard, glancing down. “You went diving?”

“I was going to.” Wynona shrugged, not wanting to get into the things she’d overheard at the water. “But the water was too choppy.”

A lie. Obviously. The best time for diving, in her expert opinion, was just before and after a storm, when the rough waters kicked up the most interesting stuff. But it didn’t matter that it wasn’t true. It wasn’t like Anderson was going to check. 

With a nod, he shuffled towards the kitchen. “I’ll make something for dinner?”

Wyn managed a meager, “Sure,” as she went to her room and shut the door behind her, dumping her things out on her bed. Frustration welled up inside her, hot and indignant, directed at nothing, at everything. She threw her window open, leaning into the cool air. Night was coming early, the sun lost behind a blanket of ominous dark clouds. Far out, the horizon was gone, smeared out like runny watercolors; a haze of rain, incoming. Heavy by the looks of it.

She wondered what the Spires looked like, up close. From Claybay, she could pretend to pinch them between her fingers, but when a person stood next to one… they had to be huge. Bigger than she could wrap her mind around. Wyn watched their shadows through the haze, imagining what it would be like to stick her hand out and let her fingers skim the dark stone, knowing the rest of the world was waiting just past their shadows.

Her mother would have seen them as she left. How close had she gotten? Was she in awe of them, too? Were they what compelled her to leave Wynona behind?

“Ugh.” Wyn shook the thought away, pulling the storm shutters in and locking them. 

She went through the house, doing the same to every window save for her father’s bedroom, finding the space too sad and sacred to enter. When she was done, she found Anderson in the kitchen, pulling a small pot off the stove. In a bowl, he poured half of the Mud n’ Bites. Wynona grimaced internally. 

“Bites again.”

He looked up, eyes embarrassed and tired. “Yes. I didn’t have a chance to go into town today.”

Wynona took her bowl. Anderson had what was left in the pot and a spoon. They ate this way, standing in the kitchen, never, ever breaching the table. Families ate at tables. They talked and laughed and bonded. Wynona thought every night of asking if they could, of being brave enough to just pull out a chair and sit down. She wondered often if her dad would join her or not. If a table could change anything at all.

Instead, she held her spoon to her mouth and said, “You put the picture back up.”

Anderson said nothing. She looked at him, straight-on, waiting for him to speak.

“It’s tradition to keep a photo of a loved one who’s passed,” he said slowly. “I don’t want to forget what your mother looked like—”

“You’re not going to forget,” Wynona said, firmer this time. “And she’s not dead—”

“Wynona…”

“She’s not.” 

There was no evidence that she was dead. No body, no boat washed ashore. Not that anyone had sent out a search party for her. Once a person set out past the Spires, they were on their own, their fate determined by whatever sea monsters commanded those waters. Everyone insisted, in ways big and small, that her mother was gone. But Wynona knew better. She had nothing to go off of but a feeling, but that feeling was strong. Her mother was out there somewhere, alive.

Anderson looked at her with so much sadness, it stung. Wynona tensed in the face of it, frowning into her bowl, the thick brownish-red sauce clotting and hanging to bits of tasteless meat. The same thing they had nearly every night. She was sick of it.

“She’s alive,” Wynona muttered, “so we can take the stupid picture down.” 

The wind howled outside. She waited for anything to happen, for her father to tell her she was right, or, at the very least, that things would be alright. She waited for comfort or affection or something other than that sad, distant look he was always wearing. But he only shook his head softly and brought a spoonful of Bites to his mouth again.

Wyn gobbled down the rest of her meal and dropped the dish in the sink. Loudly. Anderson said nothing as she grabbed her net and goggles, and made for the door, ears tuned to the sound of his gentle voice, afraid of missing a single thing—afraid that, if he did speak, she might miss some phrase she’d been longing to hear, though what that phrase was, she wasn’t quite sure. She’d likely know it when she heard it, but waiting on her father to utter anything more than a few painfully quiet words seemed as futile as waiting for her mother’s ship to come sailing back through the Spires.