Prelude

The town was once a bustling vacation place. Kara could remember visiting when she was small. She and her little brother Lewis would laugh and play in the soft white sand. Lewis loved the birds. He would toddle across the beach into flocks of milling gulls. She'd skip with him and as the birds took flight around them, they'd raise their arms and laugh. Lewis' baby giggles sparkled like sunlight on the water. As the sun went down she’d hold her father's hand as they walked along the boardwalk eating ice-cream cones. At night in their room, her mom would sing her and Lewis to sleep, the sound of the ocean keeping time with her mother's melody. Kara’s summer memories of long ago smelled like sea spray and spun sugar.


Sometimes she wondered if the world was truly darker or if her memories were unrealistically bright.

The night the sky shattered was one the living wouldn’t soon forget nor was it a thing survivors talked about. Not many people shared their secret thoughts with one another, bitter memories kept people’s mouths shut. Speaking the words aloud only brought sadness. Life was already difficult, why trouble themselves over things they could not change? 15 years later and The Incident was all it was called.

Around the world the darkened sky made farming difficult; even the texture of the water had changed. Years of riots and confusion left humanity broken and bleeding. Like other places the world over, the vacation town was no longer one of relaxation and fun; instead the people had to work hard to live.

The ocean had receded since the incident and to reach fish-able waters a long stretch of marshy ground had to be crossed. The walk to the water was slow and arduous. Mud clung fast and with a slucking sound, pulled away as the fisher folk lifted their feet. Once at the water's edge, the blackness of the ocean was all they could see for miles.

Hand knotted nets with weighted edges were cast onto the water. Each heavy web hit the water with a subdued splash and slowly sank below the inky surface, vanishing from sight. The first cast was always the quietest. The gentle lapping of the opaque water and the breath of salty breeze was the early morning song of sunrise. The fisher folk spread out along the black shore line. Each one far enough apart so that their nets would not overlap yet close enough so that someone was always within reach if there was trouble.

After a few minutes, each fisher would haul on their net. Ropes attached to the edges pulling together, gathering fish into the mesh. Anything caught was then dropped into buckets to be carried back to the village. Blind whiskered catfish and eels were the most plentiful, filling the worn plastic buckets with their undulating gray bodies.

It was hard work, but satisfying. Each fisher knew they were feeding the entire village with what they caught.

Everyone kept a wary eye to the water. With very little warning the waves could quickly rise and sweep across the mud plain to the village edge. That was when the water was most dangerous; its quiet strength deceptive.

Some thought there was a rhythm to the waves. That there was a subtle but dangerous tide that naturally formed after the crack in the sky. Others thought the waves rolled in the wake of giant creatures that swam the deep. Kara believed the ocean to be a vast living thing and like all living things it had to feed. When they stood upon the mud plain fishing the black water, her ankles and feet were caressed by the beast. It was just waiting and teasing before sweeping in like a tongue to lick the fishers into the sea's mouth.

***

Several years earlier, she had helped a girl escape the waves. Kara and Jeanette had been out along the boardwalk, exploring among the marsh reeds. In the springtime there were little blue frogs in the shallows, and the old man on Derry Road would pay for them. They girls were beyond the village, under the boardwalk among the reeds. They were laughing while with slippery fingers they tried to catch the quick blue creatures. If there were shouts from the village they didn't hear them, they were too caught up in their hunt.

By the time the waves reached the boardwalk, the water wasn’t riding very high. That was part of the tricky nature of the sea; while the waves were low, the strength they wielded was astounding. Kara and Jeanette were knocked flat by the water, like someone had taken a cane to the backs of their knees.

Pulling away from the shore, the water dragged Kara along the ground. The air left her lungs and she thrashed about searching blindly for something to grasp. Somehow her arm found a post of the boardwalk as her other was suddenly grasped by a desperate touch. Jeanette’s hand had found her own.

The water tried to tear them away into the depths, but they fought hard. With their muddy fingers tightly entwined, Kara and Jeanette clung to one another’s life.

Together the two of them clawed their way out of the shallows and climbed the wooden posts to the safety of the boardwalk. Black with mud from head to toe and skin scratched from the reeds, they lay on the weather worn boards. Below them the water shook the pilings and whispered their names.

A year later, Jeanette's parents sold her to a man in Rathethorn. Before she could be sent away to him, Jeanette threw herself into the sea’s depths. She had chosen the sea’s mouth over slavery to a stranger. Kara's tears fell upon the water that took her friend.

After Jeanette’s suicide, Kara was haunted by nightmares. She’d wake in the night from dark watery dreams convinced she could hear Jeanette singing to her from under the waves.

The sea waited quietly, patient as stone. It waited until people forgot.

***

That morning among the fisher folk Kara was laughing; laughing with joy in the warmth of a late summer day, in the afterglow of a new lover's touch. She smiled and sang her mother's song as she worked the nets.

Across the mud plain Carl stole glances of Kara as he worked; her smile was as bright as it had been in the starlight of the evening before. Kara caught him looking and blushed happily in the red sun.

In that moment of joy, the sea acted.

It reached up and took her. The water swept in around her calves and in an instant her smile was gone, her eyes wide, her voice silenced by shock.

The sea took her in the span of a heartbeat.