Chapter 1- Through the Wall of Clouds

“Twitch. Tet, tet…,” said the old woman as the wind caught sand falling from her fingers and carried it, along with her strange murmurs, up a grassy dune to a girl- the girl who watched boats come in. 

The girl hugged her knees to her chest to ward off the wind, but the old woman ignored the girl’s shivers, and in turn, the girl ignored her stomach to watch the old woman work. On the sand next to the old woman lay a broken sand dollar, string from a kite, and a rusty hinge. But none triggered a reaction in the old woman to cause the girl to bite her lip with anticipation. So the girl continued to watch. The old woman continued to rake. The wind continued to nip, and the sun continued to set. Each to a habit, each to a task and nothing more.

Finding nothing of value, the old woman shuffled forward. Her head kept pace, eyes rolling over swollen fish and charred firewood, over footprints and dog prints, and air holes popping up along the untouched sand. Hermit crabs burrowed beneath. She was just an ugly, oversized crab herself, the girl thought, looking at the old woman’s copper mane of matted spirals, bleached from hours in the sun. The cold wind always left the girl, cowering in the shadows, unusually bitter.

“Tet…tet,” the old woman repeated, allowing more fistfuls of sand to cascade through her pruney fingers.

She stretched her arms to the sky without coming to full height. Keeping her shoulders stooped, her eyes continued their meticulous sweep, back and forth, across the exposed shore. The back of her red calico dress was soaked, and its hem caked with sand. It clung to her calves while tiny bits of broken shell coated her bare, brown feet. Without looking, the old woman reached back for her cart, constructed from a crabber’s box atop a lopsided pram. It was always in her shadow ready to lay tracks, marking off where she had been, before losing its thin white wheel to a newly dug hole. 

“To hell’s top, you beast!” the old woman would kick the cart in her frustration, then pause, pounding its wheel back in place, before pulling it forward, with an angry fist.

The girl swore she heard the cart whine at each interruption; keeping balance under such harsh conditions was not its fault. It was meant to carry babies, not trinkets pulled from the sea, made heavy by water and sand. But the old woman cared nothing for the cart’s excuses. Babies were her younger sister’s work, so she dismissed the cart’s fragility; prioritizing her task, and expecting it to do the same. 

The girl rolled her round eyes and sighed as the old woman moved forward, displaying the same impatience she had the first five times the poor creature had dropped its wheel. Fresh potholes and uneven tracks scarring the smooth sand, abandoned boats bobbing in the distance, and the old woman at work were all familiar sights to the girl who now sat in a puddle of her own boredom. Nonetheless, the girl would return the next day and the day after, hiding in the grassy dunes to watch, as if, she herself, another thing pulled in by the sea or a bad habit to be noticed. 

But watching the old woman was more than a habit, it was the girl’s work and she knew, as the old woman, and the wind knew, that in the place where the boats came in, a person’s work arrived the moment they were born; as if, a lost tune to recall in the midst of thunder.

Cold, hungry, and frustrated by unyielding curiosity, the girl remained beneath the grassy dunes crouching, impatient, and hungry, while her eyes tracked the old woman’s movement. She’d stay until the surf reached her toes, becoming the boundary between the ocean and tin row where the old woman and girl each lived. At sunset, the old woman would trudge past without a word, and once a safe distance, the girl would step from the shadows and follow. This was how things were done in the place where the boats came in. Each to a habit, each to a task and nothing more.

The recycling of boats, in and out, gave the place its purpose. They arrived daily, ferrying a single passenger through the wall of clouds to the paths between the dunes along the shore. Each wooden boat was equal to the other. Sturdy and sprite to make the crossing, but no markings to denote whether the passengers they carried held privilege or importance. Their mainsail, made from a thin starched cloth, had wooden battens, constructed from white pine, soft and pliable, sewn within. They consumed the wind; expanded rib cages on the verge of bust as Steerman deftly maneuvered changes in current. One sail, one passenger, and one Steerman to navigate the crossing without anyone to recall the first boat’s arrival or why such a meager vessel for the scars across a Steermen’s hands. But no one asked, for like the wall, and the girl, and the Steerman, they each had a habit, and a task, and nothing more.

The girl had never met an actual Steermen. They didn’t come into the village to mix with the people living there. The wall of clouds hovering at the edge of the longest docks in the distance, where they disembarked, was the closest they ever came to shore. Only the dockmen who guided the boats in were allowed at its end. There, both stood in silence, in mist, so thick, sparks of light pinged off the top as the sun landed. Twice a day, its brilliance created a second horizon, separating their world from those that lay beyond. Worlds only Steermen and the riders they carried had ever seen. But the girl, unlike the dockmen, watching the Steermen’s willowy, nine-foot figures board and depart, could believe such places existed. To her, they were as real as the strange Steermen who she concluded were made of the very wall through which they appeared.

Her uncle, who ferried boats out for return, claimed Steermen weren’t quite human but anything other than human either. Steerman acted without need or emotion, leaving logic to describe such beings useless. This left imagination, which the girl didn’t know she had, to discern their exact features. So the girl conjured giants with hooked noses and bright eyes, fierce as the sun, forcing a person to look away. And as if such an image was not enough to fear, she imagined chins, as jagged and jutting as the coastline, to warn of drawing too close. These were her Steermen, taciturn and rare. Envisioning such beings made her feel strong, as if capable of such a crossing herself.

Once, she had heard her uncle tell of a Steermen with long dark hair who fell in love with his rider. But to truly understand love required experience not imagination and of that, the girl and her uncle had none. Had the rider spoken to the Steermen on the journey? Did this cause love? Had the Steermen broken silence and spoken love in return? The girl wondered, but the story didn't. It only told of a mainsail that didn’t lower. Did he forget his task? What had he said in return? Steermen did not choose; ask questions or hijack a crossing for their own. Steermen lived in one dimension so the sea they navigated could live in many unbound by tides, currents, or human desire. The narrative of the sea, different from the Steermen, was boundless. It rolled up to the platform, and then turned west, to push the boats with their passengers toward the shore. It brought things; things of meaning, for the old woman to measure, before turning to guide empty boats back to ferry another crossing.

To the girl, everything and everyone at the wall moved in a living dream, fluid and hazy. The girl often got lost in its comings and goings as her eyes shifted from the old woman… to the wall… to the horizon and back, like a cat to its perch. And without being told, she knew, even if not how, something invisible in the clouds directed it all; the boats, the people… even the breeze through the grass. So she wasn’t surprised to learn that when the enchanted Steermen refused to lower his sail, passing the boundary marked by the wall, the wind tore it from the mast. The waves swelled and churned, and the Sea of Things swallowed the Steermen, rider, and boat before returning to a steady roll. Each to a habit, each to a task and nothing more. Upon hearing this part of the story, the girl sat up, not because she was scared. She knew, even if not how, that the invisible something couldn’t touch her or the old woman. Maybe, it left them alone as they were of no consequence in a place where boats came in, or maybe of such, their presence, scared the hand itself. This last thought made the twelve-year-old girl grin.

The story of the Steermen, while didn’t frighten the girl, didn’t frighten the people born to the place where boats came in either. They retold it with faux trepidation like a child leading her doll over an imaginary cliff. They were either unaware of the invisible hand controlling everything or so aware, it brought them peace that nothing would change. The people of her town didn’t surprise or entertain easily. They preferred smoked fish and the call of the last boat being tied to the dock, to stories of love-struck Steermen. Not because such stories upset them, because the way they tasked and talked and thought became a life written in statements not questions. 

The girl, the old woman, and even the Steermen belonged to a different story. One with many questions. While different books on the same shelf, rarely interacting in discernibly meaningful ways, the town saw them as one uncomfortable tale. Watching others, in the way the girl did held no meaning to the people, which meant the girl had none either. Nor did the odd old woman who combed the shore collecting trash brought in on the waves. She had not been born in this place, making it impossible for the people to make sense of her too. The Steermen’s role in a boat’s crossing allowed the people to tolerate them. At least they kept to the wall. Things had to have meaning to a story to matter. This was the only knowing that the townspeople, the Steermen, the girl, and old woman shared.

For the riders who traveled across the sea it took a particular story with meaning held within a single object of their affection. It became a thing of such concentrated thought that, when challenged, could lift ordinary people out of ordinary lives to wake on a boat crossing a strange sea. Was the invisible hand the cause of this too? The girl didn’t know. Gobstruck was the word the old woman used for the strange expression on the faces of each rider arriving at their shore. Gobstruck, suddenly knowing something to be true, yet not knowing how or why you know. She said it was a curious way to be and curiosity made both cowards and kings. Though she preferred neither, finding starfish better company than most.

The old woman warned, that in such a moment, the weak were gobbled up by what crawled out of their knowing. They’d never find courage to cross the sea and make a choice. The strong were the ones who did the gobbling, refusing to step on the ship. They preferred to wander their worlds, spreading all types of twisted, pushed down truths while hiding the one they knew to be real. But a true knowing ignored would drive a person to act in mean and reckless ways, she’d say, even when they thought they were doing good. It was the gobstruck paused by their knowing, as if trying to see an invisible wish made in a candle’s smoke, that arrived on the shore where the girl watched. They stood at the bow of their boat staring toward the incoming shore, at a place that felt somehow familiar as well. Had they been there before? The girl who watched had asked the old woman too. The old woman said all places carried a way about them, a way that could feel unexplainably familiar when not scared. But this required letting go of something else first. The thing of their affection? The girl had murmured to herself, knowing to be true, even if not how.

  The old woman paid little attention to the new arrivals as they passed within her arm’s reach where she squatted, working her fingers through the sand. Each to a task; each to a habit and nothing more. Only the rare rider had earned a quick glance. The girl, herself, had only continued her watch of two. Two, who had departed their boats, frozen, unable to wade through the surf and onto the shore. They stood expressionless, fists clenched, clasping the very item meant to be dropped in the crossing. They stood for hours in the nipping wind, ignoring the push and pull of the harsh tide, looking to claim them in return. Their hesitancy and worse the attention they attracted, making it hard to look away, unnerved the girl. 

Things were meant to be brought to shore by the sea, not riders. This knowing made her angry even if she didn’t know why. Was it because their keeping such things was one less to wash up for the old woman to measure? Was it because she had never had a thing of her own, a thing meant to be lost in the journey across the sea? Did she want to be a rider...cross The Sea of Things to a place she knew but did not know how? Had a rider ever been able to keep the object they carried? Carried it onto the shore and past the dunes as they returned back to their own worlds? Thinking such questions made the girl uneasy and at that moment she felt a coward made from her own thoughts. Could the old woman tell her? Noting her distraction, the cold wind bit her nose to remind she had lost focus, and so the girl would begin her watch again.

But the girl didn’t take watching riders, any rider, as her work. To the girl, like the boat that carried them, their only role was to carry the thing meant to be dropped into the sea and nothing more. Men, women and twice, children, which she had noted were unusual. It usually took time to forget something to be true. But they all came with their own unfamiliar noses and straight expressions, tall, short, a bit older and some, really old, older than the old woman she had noted. Some wore fancy dresses or cut off pants. Others arrived with puffy blouses and tailored jackets. While their clothing was varied and often brightly colored, they appeared just people, unlike the eerie Steermen who ferried their passage. The riders, too gobstrucked upon arrival, never stopped to talk to the girl before choosing a path between the grassy dunes. As they disappeared, she would merely shift her eyes back to the boats now drifting passengers- less in the shallow waters. They would float at the edge of the surf until the wind guided them into the inlet at the far end of the beach for the dockmen to collect.

At night, through her open window; the girl often listened to the soft breeze caressing lowered sails and felt jealous, wiping tears, as more questions, questions that had no right, entered her thoughts. Was there anything invisible that cared for girls who watched boats come in? Girls, who had never held a thing of their own? She didn’t know, which brought a split moment of comfort that if she didn’t, maybe there were. But she would not bother the old woman with this particular question, hesitant of the answer. Instead, she closed her eyes to allow unknown possibilities of such someone’s, to lull her asleep.

But the boats knew there were many someones in the place where boats came in who cared for the boat who ferried riders, even if they did not for the girl they had spied, watching their return. Rested from their travels, they awoke to the wind guiding them below the cliffs, where men along the rocks above, flung iron hooks onto their rails, towing them back to the docks for refitting. It was the sounds of the gathering that woke the girl as well. At its call, she was quick to her feet and out the door, at a chance to enter the docks before their return. Outsiders were not permitted and getting caught met a fierce backhand and second, if the first had not sent her into the waves to deal with its current. But the girl was as quiet as she was fast, and even more patient than either. She’d stay hidden behind the stacked lumber at the foot of the dock until the men had climbed the mast on each boat to cut loose fringed rope severed by the wind. They tossed their cuttings into piles along the pier to be used as kindling to heat the mending pitch. When their discarded cuttings had grown high enough to sweep a large armful in passing, the girl would dart out from hiding. She‘d fill both arms before reversing in escape. The men cursed and a few even attempted to scramble down the tall masts in pursuit. Her uncle had scolded her half-heartedly on several occasions. But a full satchel meant fresh vegetables from the old woman’s garden in trade and possibly the end of a loaf of bread.

With her bag full, the girl scurried through the town, down the row of cottages and up the dunes, slipping within the tall grass at their bottom. There she dropped her treasure, falling into the sand to begin her watch of the old woman at work. Hours passed and the girl grew sleepy. It had been some time since the last rider, and the girl had yet to see the old woman find anything worth keeping. Her toes were frozen and itchy and her neck stiff. Was this what it felt like to be dead? She wondered, pinching her smallest toe. Annoyed at her imagining, the wind stung her ears with a cold hiss. Each to a habit; each to a task, until something more.

“Ouch,” the girl said, quickly covering her ears to muffle the ringing now reverberating in her head while the wind blew past again with satisfaction.

It had grown late. The sun was nearly at the horizon and the girl was anxious for signs that the old woman was ready to end their day’s work. With her bounty of scraps at the ready for showing, she rocked back and forth on the tips of her toes in an attempt to stay warm. The wind agreed. It sent the old woman’s straw hat off the cart and into the surf. But the old woman ignored the hat bobbing in the foam. With her fingers still wrapped around the cart’s handle, she turned her head back to a series of newly dug holes, trailing in her wake. The girl and the wind, noting her sudden interest, followed her lead. They watched silently as the old woman licked the tip of her finger and held it into the wind. With this, the wind blew softly across the palm of the old woman’s hand. The girl stood up, biting her lower lip, startled as the old woman’s head shifted to a small island of kelp bobbing in the tide. Light flickered within the clouds above, and the old woman’s eyes widened. She released her hand from the cart, pushed past, traipsing through the surf rolling around her ankles toward it.

Chapter 2- Each To A Task
The tangled kelp rose and sank repeatedly within the bubbling seafoam before washing onto the sand where the old woman waited. With narrowed eyes, she dropped to her knees and using two fingers quickly drew a circle in the sand, marking it off from the rest of the shore. The girl, sensing the old woman’s claim, scrambled up the side of the dune for a better look. The old woman lifted the kelp above her head, and its silky blades wrapped around her wrists. The sun broke free from the wall, concentrating on the old woman. In return, the old woman closed her eyes and began to chant strange words into the wind. Soon the breeze stiffened to a single whistle, and the girl covered her ears at its piercing call.

The old woman placed her lips against the kelp and murmured more words before flinging it back into the surging tide. She watched along with the girl, as the waves chomped at the knotted cluster, and each strand disappeared within the oncoming swell. The sound of waves crashing against the cliffs echoed in the distance, and the girl felt confused. But the old woman gave no answer, turning her attention back to the circle. She kneeled before it, pressing her hand to its center, smoothed by the receding tide. While clearly a ring, its edges were barely discernible.

The old woman hesitated, and the sun slipped once again behind the wall of clouds. She shifted her head in its direction and paused, before pressing the palm of hand into the circle’s center. The weight of her body broke its smoothed surface. As her splayed fingers sank into the wet sand, she spoke more words, too soft for the girl to hear. 

“Twitch, tetchy, uma, tet…,” the old woman then called louder, “Twish, oohcho, chada ba,” she continued to chant, flipping her wrist, and contracting her fingers. She dragged the back of her knuckles across the mark, allowing them to push deeper and deeper while keeping her eyes directed at the sky. 

The old woman continued to rake until she had created a series of deep ruts along the wet earth. With a diagonal swipe of a finger across the lines, she finished her ritual and made ready to dig. The pace of the incoming tide hastened, rushing and withdrawing and rushing again, as sun continued, unseen, to drop only inches above the clouded horizon. Sensing its setting, the sea pressed harder. But the old woman ignored the sea, scooping out gathered sand, again, and again, calling louder as water spilling around her knees pooled in the hole she had formed seconds before. 

“You may not keep it!” she scolded, bending over and throwing back her head, screaming louder into the wind.

She cupped her hands around the pooled water, calling softly to the concealed object as waves repeatedly slammed against her spine. The cart, stranded several yards away, was in its own fight against the rising tide. If the old women refused to let the sea keep this particular item, it would take all as payment. It pulled at the crate, hoping to separate it from the pram, and consume the old woman’s findings. The girl's eyes dashed from the stranded metal beast to the old woman. Waves now spilled over its edges, pulling it deeper into the surf. At risk of the old woman’s anger for breaking her concentration, the girl shouted a warning. But her words blew apart in the wind. It then turned and slapped her face in return as if not the girl’s job to intervene in the old woman’s work. Even if every cell in her body craved to do something, some things had to be left undone. The girl fell back into the side of the dune, rubbing her cheek and watching helplessly, unable to look away as her tears spilled. 

“Stop!!!” she yelled at the oncoming surge, and the light surrounding the clouds quaked harder, “You’ll hurt it!” she finished, watching the cart struggle to remain upright.

  The waves continued to surge. They hurdled over the old woman’s frail figure, soaking the remainder of her dress, and tugging at her small frame as if to claim her too. But the old woman was not a thing belonging to the sea, and she fought back, blocking each surge with the turn of her body. 

The girl, watching the old woman’s body drenched, and exposed, begin to tremble too. The old woman no longer appeared the fierce creature who spat at trespassers, but cowered like a wet lion made of rib cage and mange, digging furiously at the sand.

“Tch…Tch…,” the old woman continued, her hands pressing deeper into the earth.

The hole she had managed was entirely submerged, but the old woman, with water up to her elbows, had tunneled her fingers beneath. She could now feel the object the sea had attempted to hide. The old woman howled, pulling the hidden object from the sand, and lifting it high above her head. At this, the sea lept at her shoulders in an attempt to take it back. 

“Be done!” the old woman called, “It’s claimed,” and the sea, under the pact within her words, relented, receding into its deeper waters to sulk.

The girl at sight of the old woman’s claim, lost her balance, tumbling forward and down the side of the dune. She scrambled to her feet, brushing sand from her tongue. But before she could find her words, the sea had gentled and the wind became nothing more than a purr.

“What is it?” the girl managed to call.

The old woman ignored the girl, too busy inspecting the mysterious thing now cradled in the palm of her hand to bother with such questions. Without the day’s light, the girl struggled to make out what it could be. Too small for a vial of perfume and too large for a gold coin. But what it was, didn’t matter. Such a thing, coveted by the sea, would satisfy enough. The girl exhaled and remembering the cart turned her head anxiously to find it. Barely upright, but still held together, it tilted to one side with two wheels fully buried in the sand several feet away. The girl dusted the sand from her skirt and picked up the satchel of scraps, placing the strap around her shoulder. As she began to make her way toward the cart, a concerned expression arose on the old woman’s face. It was not one of disbelief or suspicion. It was something else. The old woman appeared… gobstrucked, and at this, the girl and even the wind paused.

“What is it?!!” the girl mustered the courage to ask once again.

The old woman ignored the girl once more and softened her expression before rising to her feet. She tucked the newly found object into a drenched pocket clinging at her thigh. From the outline made against the old woman’s body, the girl could see it was flat and curved as if containing a spine. Was it alive? She had never seen the old woman find a thing that was alive before.

“Twitch. Twitch,” the old woman complained at the sight of her cart lopsided against the sand. 

The old woman trounced through the surf now receding as fast as she stepped, suddenly frightened at her displeasure. She yanked on the pram’s handle, all the while glaring out at the sea in reprimand for forgetting her cart did not belong to it either. Kicking sand from around its wheels, she pushed it fully upright, and the cart began to shake like a dog from a bath, sending the last bits of sand into the old woman’s matted hair.

The old woman wiped debris from around her eyes and took a quick inventory of its contents before using the heel of her foot to dislodge its last buried wheel. With one arm extended back and the other stretched in front, she dragged the cart onto a patch of dry sand a few yards from where the girl stood watching. She then straightened the mound of rope that had once been coiled inside but now laid half spilled out and draped down its side. The sea had left the rope drenched and heavy, causing the cart to begin another slow descent toward the sand in its direction. At this the old woman cursed.

“Stand up! You lazy beast,” the old woman scolded, “You’re alright now. No more fussing! I didn’t let it take you. No, I was coming. Oh…so you say! Well, Miss Mighty, if you weren’t so fragile, I’d push you over myself for that cheek.”

The girl sighed with relief, listening to the familiar exchange between the old woman and her pet. It was not uncommon to see both the unusual and usual when it came to the old woman and her belongings. To the girl, they were neither magic nor mundane. This was just the world the girl knew and in it, the old woman collected things from the sea, measured them to be carried, tied to the rope nestled within. The girl, while still curious about the new found item, was…for the moment…happy as her world settled back to the way it had always been. She grinned, kicking at the ground with her toe as the old woman conceded apology to her metal beast.

Gently pulling open its folded canopy to drain puddles of sea water from its creases, the old woman patted the cart once more, before making her way to its rear to free a long measuring stick, tethered along its side. 

“It wouldn’t dare take you,” the old woman murmured, running her hand across it.

The stick, longer than the cart, stuck out at both sides of the metal frame. When stood on end, it was almost as tall as the old woman and equally bent. The girl sensed the sun was now seconds from setting behind the clouds. Why couldn’t the old woman’s measure wait until morning? This frustrated the girl. She was tired, cold and hungry, and if the old woman didn’t hurry, the girl would have no choice but to push the cart from behind so they could maneuver it up and over dune at their backs to escape the incoming tide.

“I said back,” the old woman warned, pointing her stick as the edge of the water drew nearer as if reading the girl’s thought, “Your business is done here and you will not rise until mine is too!”

The stick, held in the old woman’s hand, had been carved out of a torrey branch stripped of its bark, kilned, and smoothed. Measured marks were burnt along its side in perfect alignment. The stick, seemingly older than the old woman, determined the kind of thing the woman had found. The girl had always known this, even if not how. The old woman stood the stick on its end and the girl, as if under the same command, straightened her posture.

“Did you make that stick?” the girl had once asked as they sat at a dwindling fire, built on the empty lot several hundred yards from the entrance to the row of cottages where they both lived yet far from the community gathering in the center of town.

“No,” the old woman said, poking at the campfire where they sat, “The stars don’t measure themselves,” she huffed as if the girl could possibly understand what she meant.

“Stars?” the girl said, “Is it the stars sending in all those things?”

“No dumb girl. The stars can’t control the sea any more than the wind.”

“Then the moon? Did it make that stick?”

“A moon making a stick. A star sending objects across a sea. Don’t bother me with such nonsense,” the old woman scoffed.

The snap in the old woman’s voice told the girl that she did not think it was nonsense at all. This encouraged the girl. More questions crowded against her pursed lips, yet she needed the old woman’s company too much to press on. But she could watch the next day and day after, she told herself, until the old woman, too busy at work, forgot she was watching. She’d then pull the answers herself, as if just things from the sand for knowing. The girl then stared up at the constellations in the sky and let the old woman’s words bounce off each star. With this, the old woman rose from the fire. She soon shuffled away, leaving the girl to sit alone in the darkness to wonder.

Presently, the girl continued to watch the old woman fresh from her battle with the sea. With the measuring stick in hand, the old woman reached into the cart, searching the rope recoiled inside until she found its end. She pinched the tip as if a dangerous snake, guiding it out and above her head, until wielding enough slack to begin her calculations. The girl couldn’t make out how much rope remained between the end and braid now looping over the side onto the ground. Were there yards of unused cord waiting or only inches? Its totality had been another mystery for the girl. When the old woman had determined a satisfied amount, she held the rope to the tip of her stick.

Between the rope’s burly knots, appeared many tethered things peaking out between twists and loops like too many kids tucked in one bed. In the time of the girl’s watching, it had become a mound of twine and metal and shell, and cotton cloth and many unrecognizable things tucked in its folds. The treasures secured by the old woman using several loops pulled tight were the hardest to identify. They often perplexed the girl, who had to be fast, memorizing shapes and colors, sizes, and use within the time it took to get back to the row of houses, as she trailed behind. Was it a half a scissor’s blade or a key? Had the old woman unearthed a buckle from a shoe or belt? There were things she recognized from months before and things that she hadn’t remembered the old woman finding at all. But this wasn’t the girl’s task. Why she hadn’t been given this name, the girl who remembered things, preferring such a title. The thought nipped at her as if sent by the wind. 

The old woman held out the stick and felt for the object now squirming to be freed from her pocket. She knew the girl was watching, discerning its importance just as the old woman did. The girl understood the measure of a thing was significant; she just didn’t understand her role in its finding. But the old woman, having watched many sunsets, and many girls who watched boats come in, knew there were those who lived not believing that the things they could see, could feel, or think were more extraordinary than what they deemed extraordinary to be. They wished themselves to be, as things brought in by the sea, only found and nothing more. Was the girl one of these? The girl hadn’t decided, and it wasn’t the old woman’s work to decide for her. Each to their habit; each to their task until something more. 

The old woman knew there were others watching too. She had felt them move closer moments earlier, giving reason to her concern. To the people of this place, they appeared as shadows cast by clouds along the cliffs. But the old woman knew they were as dangerous as they were real. Like her, they possessed their own claim to the object she had pulled from the sea’s grasp. From the invisible hand to the darkness, many did, and it would continue to call out to all watching. Even the stars were at that time holding witness, camouflaged by the last light across the sky. But the shadows watching were not hers to deal with, nor were they part of the sea or constrained to these cliffs either. They, like the old woman and the waves, could move in many directions giving them as much power to disrupt its path, as any force who could sense its meaning. But what did it mean? How would it measure?

The old woman hesitated, reluctant to reveal the object’s intent with such eyes watching. But such a thing commanded an audience. It had come from the same source that made the old woman and therefore, had its task as well. She was to measure and nothing more, so she held the stick firmly to the slack in the rope and pulled the object from her pocket. Next, she placed it parallel to the stick. Yes, the girl was right, it had begun and a thing undone if, of extraordinary measure, meant it was time for an unraveling. But who would unravel? Even the stars and the invisible hand in the clouds watching couldn’t provide an answer as the old woman steadied her hand.

With one hand pressing the cord against the stick and the object concealed within her other fist, the old woman guided the measure. The sun paused its descent, and the wind softened to a whisper as they too watched the old woman at work. It did not take long before the rope began to vibrate and the etchings along the stick began to glow. The old woman struggled to keep her arm held high which confused the girl watching. She seemed to be in a new struggle with the object as if it did not want to be measured. But the old woman held firm, pressing it harder against the stick so it could complete its task. Each to a habit; each to a task, until something more. The old woman then peered up to the cliffs with narrowed eyes, and the girl felt an overwhelm of panic.

The girl noted the figures gathered along the edge of the highest cliff. She had seen them as a child, watching her as well, as if she were a ship brought in on the wind. Was it their task to look over her? She often wondered this, craving parents like those who kept their own children from wading in the current that followed along the shore. Often, before the old woman stepped from her cottage, and the sound of the gathering had broken the morning air, the girl would climb into the cliffs searching for such shadows. Who were they, and where did they go?  But the shadows never appeared or came down from their post to speak. They watched from cliffs and nothing more. But the girl didn’t care. She liked the idea of being watched, wondering if they had questions about her too. She had never been a question, and it felt exciting.

Seeing them in the cliffs now, their attention locked on the old woman, startled the girl. It was a conflicting sensation. Watching their dark figures made her uneasy, but she also craved to draw closer, to hide in their numbers and listen to their whispers. Did they know why the sea had fought so? As she continued to study their movement, their numbers seemed to multiply with each blink. The girl became lost in her watch, forgetting the old woman and the thing she measured.

But the thing had not forgotten, and continued to struggle, making it hard to control, as the old woman held it against the ancient branch. The carved markings running down the measuring stick began to dance, growing darker and lighter. The movement was subtle and in the failing light, only the old woman could see their pattern. 

When the reading was complete, the old woman closed her eyes, releasing the stick. As it hit the ground, the measure taken along its shaft disappeared. The old woman held her fist clenched against her chest guarding the mysterious object as the dark figures watching from above began to stir. Noting their movement, she scrambled into the surf, allowing it to rise around her calves. She opened her fist, pressing her lips to the object and murmured. The incoming swell rose and crashed several yards in the distance, followed soon by another. The figures above had formed one swarm above. They began their descent and a strange sulphuric smell tainted the air, causing the girl to cover her nose and mouth as she watched their cloud draw closer. 

“Be gone!” the old woman commanded, hurdling the mysterious object into the approaching swell.

It tumbled over, consuming the object into its fold. With its disappearance, the wall of clouds parted, and a green flash exploded in the horizon. The dark figures launched at the old woman, surrounding her in their cloud, as if a murmur of starlings, encircling her body until lifting her off the ground. They continued to shift frantically in folding patterns across the grey sky. The girl followed their movement toward the horizon until, at once, the murmur vanished. She turned to search for the old woman, finding her lying listless on the shore.

Chapter 3- The Place You Know But Not How

My Nana said, as she stroked clumps of sweaty hair from across my baby brother’s forehead, that even babes had a place they knew and didn't know how. As she said it, his eyes locked on hers, lips pursed, and his bare chest trembled from his latest crying fit.

“We all go there,” she said, “when the world fights backs in unsatisfying ways.” She pressed her hand to counter each spasm as he began to fuss again. “Ways you can’t get a fist through. Ways that don’t hold an ounce of reason to what you suddenly know. Especially as you don’t know how you know it. But you’ll fight for it,” she finished, sending her last words directly at him, “just the same,” then cooed.

I looked at my baby brother. His dark brown eyes, fierce. His pudgy brown arms frozen in a bow above his head not wanting to surrender. “He can’t fight, Nana,” I said, annoyed at the attention he was commanding, “he’s just a dumb baby.”

The sun was setting, and through our bedroom window, the first fireflies blinked among the tiger lillies edging the broken sidewalk leading up to the screen door. Their summons, like little fire sirens, persisted, irritating me the more. Soon, the sound of other screen doors in the distance could be heard slapping, and my friends’ hollers broke the humid silence of suppertime, announcing it was over. I itched to join their games, but Nana pulled me back with a look. Her golden eyes flickered.

“So you don’t believe him?” she said, “That he knows what he knows?” her eyes squarely on me even when she didn’t turn her head.

I shrugged my shoulders, “I just don’t think he knows much,” I answered. “Or much worth knowing.” It was a hot night and her attention made it feel that much warmer.

Nana sniffed loudly, picking my baby brother up and holding him close, “Oh, he knows something, and that’s what he’s fighting. In his way. Don’t ever discount a fight,” she directed. “You don’t know someone’s thoughts. Worse, knowing doesn't mean liking or agreeing with what you just became aware to be true… even if you don’t know how. More than not, it feels like carrying around someone’s ashes on a windy day. You taste them long before the wind puts them back on your lips.”

I grimaced and she chuckled at the look on my face as she continued, “Not the things you think people should know. These things, people fight for too. It’s the things that make you curl up inside. The scary ones, the indescribable ones. The ones that just stick. Ones that won’t be laid to rest just anywhere and now they're yours,” she said, shaking her head at this particular thought. “For some it comes in knowing their own measure when tasked to do something real hard or worse knowing someone else’s then having to trust it just the same.”

“He can’t do anything hard,” I sniffed, but Nana just continued.

“For some it's knowing even after all the hard things you’ve done, there’s still more to do. Some knowing is simple like salt along the rim of a cold glass tastes like a good secret in your ear or knowing someone’s lying when they scratch their nose. Babies are born knowing things too.”

“But he can’t even talk,” I said, “Who’d give him something important to know?”

“That he is and imagine knowing something so soon and having to hold on to it until you could do something about it,” she said, shaking her head softly, as the rhythmic rise and fall of my baby brother’s breathing softened too.  

At Nana’s faith in my baby brother, I looked at him suspiciously as if he had put one of his spells on her. Could he know something important? Something that big?

“Here he comes… that’s right,” she whispered, grinning, and cooing at him some more, while continuously smoothing back new beads of sweat pooling on his furled brow. 

I rolled my eyes at the attention he was commanding.

“A babe,” she repeated, not as if some contagious condition, but a royal title, and with her call, my little brother curled up his fist, sucked on it, before grabbing her nose with wet fingers. 

“I care,” I relented, getting her meaning and now a bit worried that if he did know something…something, some day, I might need to know too…he might not tell me if I didn’t mind what she said.

“Uh huh,” she said, poking at my sincerity like a fox sniffing at a turtle in his shell.

Nana added, “Well, you better truly then. And don’t you dare care if you can’t find respect for him too. Caring without respect is like frosting a stale bread and calling it cake,” she’d huff. “Compassion’s not for sissies and real respect shouldn’t come easy. You have to work at it.”

“I don’t see him respecting us with all his crying,” I said, hearing the calls of a game of kick-the-can coming through the window.

“He respects you. That’s why he cries. Think he’d try to get the attention of someone he doesn't?”

“I don’t think it’s my attention he wants,” I answered.

“Aw Coyot, there’ll be a day, your attention and respect, will be all he wants,” she sighed.

I nodded but even in that moment, like most others, I didn’t get what Nana was saying. Her words were squirrely and had to do with one thing being alike another in some scrambled up way. Besides he was a baby not a frosted butt of bread. I did believe a person didn’t know how they knew things. I never did, but then again, I didn’t think of the things in my head as knowing. Maybe, unlike my brother, I just hadn’t been given anything worthy to know.

The fireflies continued to compound outside the screen window, until their unified glow sounded last call to join the game. There was something on the other side of the screen door waiting for me, and I lost myself watching them pulse, desperate to be let out to run in the darkness. But Nana didn’t like me running around Knox Point by myself at night. She said I was too young, and there were things in the shadows who would love to snatch up a sweet boy like me for the tasting. I knew she probably only said this to scare me from sneaking out. But while I didn’t think my baby brother knew things, I was certain my Nana did. She was just the type of person who could see what others couldn’t.

She said that everybody got attached to one idea or another. They were mostly stories that had to do with having a different life than the one they woke up to. She said you only had to watch a person’s eyes to see their thoughts drift there. Nana said it wasn’t because such lives weren’t theirs for having that made a person look so. She said it was in knowing, even if not how, it was. But to get there, you’d have to let something else go first. 

          “What?” I’d ask.

         “The thing that made you want such a life in the first place.”

        She just smirked at my confusion, saying this was the payment a person had to make to get to the place you knew but not how. The more she talked about it all, the more confused I became.

But my baby brother cooed and watched her lips as if understood every word that Nana said. After a while he’d lay content and solid under her answers. With some babies, you knew they weren’t listening by their heads rolling from one corner of the room to another, but not my baby brother. He listened like I watched. Focused, like an old man watches the sun slip beneath the horizon, before willing to get up from his chair. His baby assuredness made me uncomfortable. Nana laid him on his back in his small bassinet beneath our bedroom window, handing him off to the summer breeze and chorus of cicadas sounding through the wired screen. She then gestured for me to follow back downstairs.

“Well, I don’t know that place anyway,” I said, following her down the steps and surrendering that I wouldn’t be allowed out into the dark to play.

She went through the kitchen, opened the freezer, pulling out two lopsided toothpicks with a frozen OJ cube on each. She then motioned me to the back stoop, and I took mine from her wrinkled fingers, and we took our seats on the porch swing hanging there. I had watched her pour them into ice trays, slip into the freezer, before setting down my breakfast earlier that day. She had prepared for the hot summer night she knew was coming. The corner of the cube crumbled under furious licks. I continued to lick and kick my legs futilely, not long enough to make much movement, but Nana kept us in constant motion, prepared for my shortcomings at this too. That was Nana. She prepared. She prepared for things she didn’t see coming. She prepared for the things she did, like Mama appearing and then slipping away again to find places that smelled like Papa. Nana prepared everything in our life so much so that when she couldn’t answer my questions for such things, like when Mama would be back, it didn’t matter so much. I’d soon be so lost in her next prepared moment, forgetting why I needed to know.

A person needed to be prepared, for things you didn’t see coming, more so, for things they did, even if weren’t theirs to prepare for at all. That’s what she said. She prepared us for the things she understood and those she didn’t. Nana’s doings just became an ordinary part of our day to day. Extra napkins set on the table meant we’d be eating crab for dinner. Boots set out on the front porch, meant we’d be going out to gather sand dollars after the storm the next morning. Mostly we knew that living with a man like Grandpa, required you to live with a preparer too. Without one, we’d have to hide in the corners with the spiders whenever he came into the room. Little things, like broom strokes left by the back steps put Grandpa in a good mood. She wouldn’t call Grandpa in for supper without one of us placing a few at the bottom of the stair as if the final step to setting a proper table.

The place you know and don’t know how often seeped into our conversations. Nana said that we all reach this edge, where what we know is true offers no next step—only a choice.  She said the price to get there meant surrendering what the heart clings to most and that’s why most people only looked at it from afar It was the place Grandpa went to when he got caught up in his own thoughts, watching from his lawn chair as the younger men carried up fish nets from the pier. Most of the time he sat there shouting orders and complaining at the sloppy work of Uncle Tooley’s crew. Being confined to his chair provided plenty of time to find a new curse word or five for every fish sliding back into the water, escaping crowded nets, flung onto the dock.

“That sure is a lot of new words for a man supposed to have memory problems,” my Uncle Tooley would call out, trying to soften Grandpa’s ire. 

My Grandpa, like my little brother, always had a fight with him ready to wrestle. Mostly over made up stuff, about things that hadn’t even happened yet.

“Coyot, you’re gonna lose that tackle box if you keep leaving it on the pier for someone to take. Tooley, you’re gonna have to pray we don’t run out of trees, if you don’t stop cutting those pier planks so short.”

With Grandpa, we lived in a world of “you’re gonna,” none of which ever came true. But you couldn’t tell that to Grandpa. The way he said it, made the things he warned about as probable in his mind as stepping on a viper in the glades, which none of us had done either. It seemed unfair that only the babies and old men in our family got to fight, and therefore had a place to know even if they didn't know how. 

The place you know and don’t know how, also seemed to be where my mother spent her time when with us. Nana said to be kind to Mama. She said when looking for such a place, a person often gets distracted with others in their head. Places that could hold a person hostage, on a single idea. Ideas about who people could be, especially yourself, if caught up in a place you wanted to be vs a place that wanted who you were. She said that’s why Mama stared off, over the steam of her coffee, as if could smell in its fumes, those sugary kisses daddy gave that disappeared as fast as his babies landed. When my baby brother, Grandpa and Mama returned from thinking about such places, knowing they could go, but wouldn’t, there was a loneliness to them.  While I couldn’t understand what took you to such a place, I yearned to follow even if just to keep them company. Maybe I couldn’t go, because I just didn’t have my own fight. Or maybe there was something else about me, that even with Nana’s help, there wouldn’t be enough preparing she could do, to help me know anything important of my own.

I asked Nana once if you had to prepare to go to the place you know and don’t know how, and she said that preparing didn’t matter much. Preparedness only got a person so far, far enough to know, it wasn’t how you reached there. To get to such a place only happens when you had nothing left, no thinkable next step or prayer but you knew you needed to make a choice. That’s how people ended up on their way to the place they know but not how. 

“As sudden as sneezing,” she’d say, noting how big my eyes had become.

“You're talking about a real place, right Nana?” With a burst of grown-up logic to make even grown-ups pause. Nana smiled and nodded, her golden eyes glistening as if scolding tears that needed to be put in their place.

“It’s real Coyot. You’re just in a different place right now,” Nana consoled, “You’re in the place of watching. Watching things come in and things go out,” she said, “And that’s not such a bad place, if you can keep yourself apart from what you see. Lots of things to watch.”

“How long am I gonna be here?” I asked impatiently, still not sure if either place was actually real.

  Nana would just throw back her head and laugh, kiss the top of my head, and tell me to promise her that in the morning I’d head off to find  her one of those heart-shaped stones she loved so well. 

“Don’t mind that for now. It’s a good place, and if you aren’t here watching, who’d I swing with? And who’d find me those hearts. The ones you so cleverly find washed on the shore. Out there… rolling in from the Sea of Things,” she’d whisper gently into my ear.

Begrudgingly, but far from immune to her praise, soon I’d make the promise to go look at sunrise. But even with her preparing me to be ok with where I was, I secretly wished just once, I’d know something that could carry me to such a place. Then, I’d have a place of my very own to go, even if I didn’t know why I’d ever want to go someplace else, especially to a place without Nana.

Copyright Lisa Marie Batchelder 2025