What the Sea Took

The snow had come again in the night, and by morning it lay smooth and deep over the beds, so the three of them kept to the hut and the warmth of the fire. The girl sat closest to the flames, turning a small grey stone over and over in her fingers, and she had not said much since they woke. The newcomer watched her for a while, thinking of how the child had slipped a cold hand into hers only the day before, and of how easily she herself might have gone on carrying her sorrow in silence, had no one thought to ask.

“You have listened to my whole long tale,” the newcomer said at last, “and never once asked me to hush. I have wondered these past days whether you might be holding something of your own.” The girl’s fingers went still around the stone. “My grandmother used to say that a grief kept quiet grows heavier, the way a seed held too long in a closed hand will not sprout but only spoil. I would listen, if you wished to set some of it down.”

The girl was quiet for a time, and the fire ticked and settled between them. Then she said, so low the flames nearly took the words, “I had a sister.” She turned the stone once more. “She crewed the deep-water boats, though she was only a few years older than I am now. One autumn the boats came home and hers was not among them.” Her voice did not break, but it thinned almost to nothing. “We waited on the headland three days. Our mother would not come away from the rocks.”

The newcomer set aside the root she had been trimming and moved to sit closer, so their shoulders touched. She did not say that she understood, for she had learned that no two griefs are cut to the same shape. She only asked, softly, “How old were you?” “Nine,” the girl said. “I am the age now that she was then.” The newcomer nodded, slow and certain. “And you have carried her all this while, and set her down for no one. That is a long time to be strong.”

From her stool near the door Nyra had sat listening, her hands folded quiet in her lap. Now she rose and crossed to the hearth and laid another length of driftwood on the fire, and the flames climbed and threw their light across the three faces. “There is room here for all of them,” she said, low and unhurried. “The ones the sea kept, and the ones it gave back to us. We do not leave them out in the cold.” The girl leaned her head against the newcomer’s shoulder, and beyond the shutters the snow went on falling, soft and without end, over the sleeping garden and the grey water past it.