Chapter 1- Through the Wall of Clouds

They arrived thinking of heaven, but this was not that. This was a moment, a particular moment, and a moment, nonetheless. The old woman understood this more than the girl watching from the dunes behind her or even the hand in the clouds directing the boats through its wall. Passengers arriving without their ghosts, immediately sensed those hovering among the rising cliffs. At this, they understood too. They passed the wall of clouds with held breath, knowing what was required. Most jumped before the ship could cross the break and without hesitation, the larger ocean swallowed their shapes to toss and dream upon its seabed. But the sea, in its part, was careful not to disturb the upper currents, busy ferrying castoff items to the old woman’s shore. They knew she would not interfere with their actions, preferring such fates for hesitant passengers over their crossing her beach to hesitate when time to take a path. Indecision bristled at the old woman while rallying ghosts watching among the cliffs, hungry for such a choice. 

“This way,” they’d whisper, descending into the gap left around a hesitant ear.

They’d wrap themselves around the frozen and lead down a path of the ghost’s choice to disappear through the tall grass running between the dunes. The others, envious and seething, would flee back into the shadows. At this, the old woman simply narrowed her eyes, before wiping sand across her brow and turning back to uncover trinkets washed in and buried beneath her sand.

“Twitch. Tet, tet…,” said the old woman as the new day’s 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 ground 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’s just an ugly, oversized crab herself,” the girl thought, looking at the old woman’s coppery gray mane, covered in matted spirals, bleached from hours in the sun. The cold wind had left the girl cowering in the shadows, unusually bitter.

“Tet…tet,” the old woman repeated to herself, allowing more fistfuls of water and tiny pebbles to cascade through pruned 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 sitting atop a tilting pram. It was always in her shadow ready to lay tracks as if marking off where she had been was its job before losing a thin white tire to a newly dug hole. When this happened, which was often, the old woman would kick the cart in frustration, pausing her work to pound its wheel back into place. 

Pulling it forward with an angry fist, she cursed, “To hell’s top with you, you beast!”

The girl swore she heard the cart whine at each reprimanding; keeping balance under such harsh conditions was not its fault. It was meant to carry babies, not the old woman’s trinkets, made heavy by water and sand. But the old woman cared nothing for the cart’s excuses. Babies were the work of the old woman’s younger sister 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 continued to curse and yank her cart forward, having displayed the same impatience multiple times already that morning. Fresh potholes, tracks that weaved, and blemished the smooth sand…abandoned boats bobbing in the distance, and the old woman at work were all familiar sights to the girl who sat in a puddle of her own boredom. Nonetheless, the girl would stay and then return again the next day and the day after. She’d hide in the grassy dunes to watch the old woman at work, as if a bad habit for the old woman’s notice while wishing instead, to be a thing brought in on the sea herself.

But watching the old woman was more than her own habit, it was the girl’s work and she knew, as did the old woman, the hand in the clouds and wind, 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 and frustrated at her unsatisfied curiosity, the girl squatted at the foot of the row of grassy dunes. Her eyes tracked the old woman’s movement. She’d stay until the surf reached her toes to become a boundary between the ocean and tin row where the old woman and girl each lived. With its arrival, the old woman, without a word, would trudge past. 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.

Each boat, equal in size as any other, carried only one passenger. They had been constructed to be sturdy and sprite enough to make the crossing but without any embellishment to denote a passenger’s specific privilege or importance. The boat’s main sail was made from a thin starched cloth. Wooden battens of soft and pliable white pine, ran in measured ribs down its frame. When released, the sail gulped the wind to the verge of bust while the boat’s single Steermen deftly maneuvered through the current. One sail, one passenger, and one Steerman to navigate a crossing without anyone to recall when the first boat arrived or how such a vessel survived conditions to leave such marks across a Steerman’s hands. But no one asked these questions, for like the place, and the wall, and the Steerman, they each had a habit, and a task, and nothing more.

While the girl had witnessed several Steerman in the distance standing expressionless across the long dock that ran out to the wall of clouds, waiting to make a return, she had never encountered one in person. Steermen were not the type of beings who turned at a calling. Even the dockman who worked among them took as much notice as would giant tar posts screwed into the seabed around the docks for securing damaged boats. Steermen existed among them like gnat to horse. They also didn’t come into the village nor did they gather in groups among their own either. The girl would often turn her gaze at them when bored of the old woman’s search, and sigh. She counted each willowy figure within the mist, so thick, sparks of sunlight pinged around the space between. When the sun was at its highest point, the light cast made the wall of clouds glow as if a second horizon to separate their world from the ones far beyond. Worlds only Steermen and the riders they carried had ever seen.

Most people of the town, championed by the dockman, held little belief that worlds beyond the wall had any more importance than their own. Such sentiment made the passengers insignificant as well. But the girl, unlike most, held that such places existed, separate in meaning from their passengers, called to her shore. To her, they must be real for there was a stirring inside her as she tried to stretch her gaze past the Steermen and edge of the horizon. This stirring, whether she understood or not, came from their own calling.

Her uncle, who ferried boats out for return, claimed Steermen weren’t quite human but anything other than human either. Steermen 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 her imagination and of that, the girl 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 for 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, meant nothing to the townspeople, 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 whose meaning would be held within a single object of affection. It became a thing of such concentrated thought that, when challenged, could lift ordinary people out of ordinary lives to find themselves waking up 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 on the riders. Gobstruck, suddenly knowing something to be true, yet not knowing how or why you knew. She said it was a curious place to find yourself 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 beach from 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, to then freeze, unable to wade to shore. They stood, fists clenched around the item meant to be dropped in the crossing. This made the girl scowl. But she held her tongue. The wind nipped at the frozen passengers, making the water around their calves leap. Their hesitancy and worse the way they drew in her attention, unnerved the girl.

Things were meant to be brought to shore by the sea, not riders. Riders were meant to finish the cross onto the shore empty handed. They were then meant to choose a path through the dunes and disappear. To where they returned, she would not know. She had tried all paths only to be returned to the shore at each taking. But she knew, even if not how, they led the riders elsewhere. Back to one of the worlds from the beyond? This thought made her angry too. 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? Noticing the girl’s distraction, the cold wind bit her nose to remind of her task, and so the girl began 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 the girl didn’t agree with the wind that watching riders, any rider, was her work. To the girl, like the boat that carried them, passengers were only vessels. It was the thing meant to be dropped into the sea that held importance. They 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 nine foot 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, the girl merely shifted her eyes back to the boats drifting in the shallow waters. They would float 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 the boat's sails as they drifted. She felt jealous and wiped 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. If she didn’t know then maybe there were if not in this world, in others. 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 someones, to lull her asleep.

But the boats knew there were many someones in this place, who cared for a boat, even if they did not care for the girl who watched their return. Rested from their journey, they woke to the wind pushing them below the cliffs. Men along the rocks above, flung iron hooks onto their rails, towing them in for refitting. The sounds of their gathering woke the girl as well. 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 one, if the first had not sent her into the harsh current. But the girl was as spry as she was fast, and even more patient than either. She’d stay hidden behind stacked lumber at the foot of the dock. With the dockmen gone to gather the boats, she darted out to collect old bits of rope thrown in piles along the dock. She filled both arms before reversing in escape. A full satchel of twine pieces for the old woman meant fresh vegetables from her garden in trade and possibly the end of a loaf of bread. With a full stash, the girl would scurry back down the row of cottages and up the dunes, slipping within the tall grass at their bottom. There she would drop her treasure, falling into the sand to begin her watch.

On this particular day, having watched the woman at work for hours, the girl had now grown 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 pinched her smallest toe to check if she could feel it. 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 toward 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 darted off, blowing softly across the palm of the old woman’s hand. The girl stood up, biting her lower lip. She nearly tumbled forward, startled as the old woman’s head jerked toward an island of kelp bobbing in the tide. Light flickered within the clouds above, and the old woman’s eyes widened. It seemed the hand poised there had noticed too. The old woman released her grip on the cart, and rushed into the oncoming tide while the girl lost balance and tumbled forward.

Chapter 2- Each To A Task
The tangled kelp rose and sank within the bubbling foam before settling onto the exposed sand at the old woman’s feet and the receding surf surrendered. With narrowed eyes, the old woman dropped to her knees. Using two fingers, she drew a circle around the kelp, marking it off from the rest of the shore. The girl, sensing urgency in the old woman’s actions, scrambled up the side of the dune for a better look. The old woman lifted the piled kelp above her head, allowing its silky blades to wrap around her wrists. The sun broke from behind the wall of clouds, blazing in the old woman’s direction. In return, the old woman closed her eyes and began to chant strange words across the wind. Soon the breeze stiffened to a single stream, causing the girl to cover her ears at its piercing whistle.

The old woman placed her lips against the kelp and murmured more words then without pause flung it into the oncoming tide. She watched along with the wide-eyed girl, as the waves chomped at its knotted cluster, and each strand disappeared. The echo of waves hitting against the cliffs thundered, and the girl felt confused. What did the old woman fear? But the old woman gave no answer, turning her attention back to the circle in the sand. The ghosts in the cliffs formed a dark line along its edge. 

She had first seen them as a small 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, craving parents like those who kept their own from wading in the currents. No one minded her wading. 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. 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.

But the girl’s arms began to tingle at their sudden gathering while the old woman ignored their movement. She kneeled before the circle, pressing her hand upon its center. Smoothed by the receding tide, while clearly a ring, its edges were barely discernible.

The old woman looked up as the sun slipped again behind the wall of clouds as if to hide from what was about to come. She shifted her head in its direction as if listening, before shaking her head. 

“Who had she answered?” the girl wondered, sensing the ghosts along the cliffs shift excitedly, “Could they hear what had been said?” she then thought.

  The old woman looked up at their stirring. She then placed her palm upon the circle and leaned forward. The weight of her body broke the sand’s surface and 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, pulling her hands up, and contracting her fingers. She dragged the back of her knuckles across the broken earth, pushing deeper and deeper, with her eyes now locked upward toward the sky.

The girl shifted her eyes from the ghosts to the clouds above. Had the hand within given the old woman a warning? But the old woman continued to rake until she had created a series of 9 inch parallel lines along the wet earth. With a diagonal swipe of a finger across each line, she finished her ritual and made ready to dig. The pace of the incoming tide hastened, rushing and withdrawing and rushing again, as the sun dropped within inches of the clouded horizon. Sensing its setting behind the clouds, the sea pressed harder. But the old woman ignored both, scooping out handfuls of sand, again, and again, while calling louder. Water spilled around her knees and pooled as it receded, destroying her work.

“You may not keep it!” she scolded. Bending over while at the same time throwing back her head in defiance, she screamed louder, “Show me!!!”

She then pressed her lips to the sand, whispering as a series of small waves smashed against her thin figure. The old woman fought to keep her balance, and as the water pulled back she caught her breath and leaned over the pooled water once again.

“Rise,” she whispered as if compelling a shy child out from under a bed.

The cart, stranded several yards away, was in its own fight against the oncoming tide. If the old woman refused to let the sea keep this particular item, it would take all of hers as trade. It tugged at the crate, hoping to separate it from the pram, and consume the old woman’s collection. The girl's eyes dashed from the rickety cart to the old woman. Waves spilled over the pram’s carriage. At risk of breaking the old woman’s concentration and inciting her anger, the girl shouted her own warning. But her words blew apart in the wind. It turned and slapped her face as if to remind it was not her place to intervene. Even if every cell in her body craved to do something, some things had to be left undone. The girl fell back into the dune, rubbing her cheek only to watch as more tears spilled.

“Please stop!!!” she screamed at the oncoming waves, and the light surrounding the clouds quaked, “You’ll tear it apart!” she finished, watching the cart struggle to remain upright.

But the waves continued to surge. They hurdled themselves at the old woman, soaking the remainder of her dress, and tugging at her body as if to claim her too. But the old woman was not a thing belonging to the sea, and she fought back, pushing her fingers deeper into the sand. The girl sat up frightened as 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 to uncover the hidden object.

“Why did the sea act so?” the girl wondered, having never seen it fight before. 

“Tch…Tch…,” the old woman hissed, pressing deeper into the earth.

The hole she had managed to dig 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 at the end of her finger tips. The old woman howled as she pulled the buried object from the sand, and lifted it high above her head. The sea leapt at her shoulders in an attempt to take it back. 

“Be done!” the old woman called, “It’s claimed,” and the sea, under a pact older than either, relented, receding to its deeper waters to sulk.

The girl scurried to her feet, brushing sand from her tongue and swallowing the rest, noting the scratch at the back of her throat. But before she could muster her question, the sea gentled and the wind became nothing more than a purr.

“What did you find?” the girl called out excitedly. 

The old woman ignored her question, busy inspecting the item cradled in the palm of her hand. With the day’s light fading, 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, now in the old woman’s possession, would satisfy enough. The girl exhaled and remembering the abandoned pram turned her head to find it. Barely upright, it leaned sideways at having two wheels fully buried in the sand. The girl picked up the satchel of scrap rope, placed the strap around her shoulder and jogged to it. She looked over at the old woman to see if she had noticed, finding a peculiar look 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, who had begun to blow once again, hesitated.

“What did you find?” the girl mustered the courage to call again.

The old woman ignored the girl once more, releasing her expression before rising. She tucked the strange object into the 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 possessing 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 buried cart, lopsided upon the shore. She then looked up to where the ghosts waited. They withdrew until appearing to be only a broken shadow against the rock.

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

The old woman wiped its debris from around her eyes and took a quick inventory of its contents. Her collection was safe so she used the heel of her foot to dislodge the last buried wheel. With one arm extended back and the other stretched in front, she pulled the cart up and 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. It now laid half spilled over, drenched and heavy, causing the cart to begin another slow descent onto its side as she released her hold. At this the old woman cursed.

“Stand up! You lazy beast,” she 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 at 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, such was neither magic nor mundane. It was the world the girl knew and in it, an old woman collected things from the sea, measured  and tied to the rope nestled within the old cart. The girl, while still curious about the new found item, was…for the moment, content to have her world back. She grinned, kicking at the ground as the old woman conceded an apology to the metal pram. 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 its metal frame. When stood on end, it was almost as tall as the old woman and equally bent at one end. The girl sensed the sun was now seconds from setting behind the clouds. It would soon be dark and the path leading away from the beach submerged. 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 wasn’t quick, the girl would have no choice but to push the cart from behind so they could maneuver it up and over dunes to escape the rising water.

“I said back,” the old woman warned, pointing her stick as the tide drew closer, “Your business is done here and you will not rise until mine is too!”

The stick in the old woman’s hand had been carved from a torrey pine branch, stripped of its bark, kilned, and smoothed. Measured marks had been burnt along its side in perfect sequence. 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.

“No,” the old woman said, poking at the fire where they sat, “The stars don’t measure themselves,” she huffed as if the girl should 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? Or the hand in the clouds?”

“A moon making a stick. A hand in the clouds? 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 her pursed lips. But she needed the old woman’s company too much to press further. She could instead watch the next day and day after, she told herself, until the old woman, busy at work, forgot she was watching. She’d pull the answers out herself, as if her own things for collecting. After such exchanges, the girl would often stare up at the constellations and let the memory of the old woman’s words bounce off each star. As the girl became lost in thought, the old woman would rise from the fire and shuffle away, leaving the girl to sit alone in the darkness in her wonder.

Presently, while many questions bothered the girl, she kept her tongue and continued to watch instead. Still wet and trembling from her battle with the sea, the old woman regardless, prepared to take a measure. With her stick in hand, she reached into the cart for the rope coiled inside, using her fingers to find its end. Pinching it as if a dangerous snake from its basket, she guided the rope out and above her head, until wielding enough slack to begin her calculations. When the old woman had determined a satisfied amount, she held its end to the tip of her stick. Between the length of rope, constructed from scraps tied together by burly knots, appeared many things peaking out. The old woman had braided her collection between twists and loops like too many kids tucked in one bed. In the time of the girl’s watching, the collection had become a mound of twine and metal and shell, cotton cloth and many unrecognizable things tucked in its long folds. Was that a half scissor blade or a key? Had the old woman unearthed a buckle from a shoe or belt? There were things the girl recognized from months before and things that she hadn’t remembered the old woman finding at all. But remembering what had been found wasn’t the girl’s task. Although she made note of each as peered into the crate while following in the old woman’s wake each evening. Why hadn't she been given this name, the girl who remembered things? She would have preferred such a title. Wasn’t she the girl who provided the bits of twine that the old woman had used to create her long tail of treasures? The thought nipped at her as if sent by the wind to remind of the old woman’s lack of appreciation.

The old woman had never acknowledged the girl being witness to anything nor did she care for her company or opinion then or now as she held the stick upright with one hand and felt for the object in her pocket with the other. But 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, would not tell her. She 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 either. Each to their habit; each to their task until something more. 

The old woman knew there were others still watching too– the ghosts. She had felt them draw closer moments earlier, risking to leave the safety of their collective, giving more 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 real. Like her, they desired to lay claim on such an object. From the invisible hand within the clouds to the darkness living in the cliffs, many did. Even the stars who were at that very time holding witness too, camouflaged by the last light across the sky, felt envy. But the ghosts were not hers to order, nor were they constrained to the cliffs either. They, like the old woman and the waves, could move in many directions giving them as much power to twist a thing to their purpose as could she. 

The old woman hesitated, reluctant to reveal the object’s nature with such eyes upon her. It was different from the other objects that rolled onto her shore. She understood therefore such a thing commanded an audience whether she agreed or not. The way it hummed against her skin confirmed that it had come from the same source that had made her. Therefore, she knew it had its task as well. 

What that was and why it had come to her shore, made her cross. Such things should not make such a crossing. It’s why the ghosts dared to leave the cliffs for a closer look. But such wonder was not hers to dwell in. 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. She then placed the object parallel to the stick with her other hand. Yes, the girl was right, it had begun and a thing undone if, of extraordinary measure, meant an unraveling. But what would unravel? Even the stars and the invisible hand in the clouds watching had no answer. The old woman steadied her hand and placed the strange thing against the stick.

The sun paused its final descent, and the wind softened to a whisper as they too watched. It did not take long before the rope began to shake and the etchings along the stick began to glow. The old woman struggled to keep her arm still. This confused the girl watching. It seemed the object did not want to be measured. But the old woman held firm, pressing it harder against the branch to complete the reading. Each to a habit, each to a task, until something more. The old woman then peered over her shoulder toward the cliffs with narrowed eyes, and the girl felt an overwhelm of panic.

The girl noted the dark figures gathered along the edge of the highest cliff had descended into large rocks at its foot. It was a conflicting sensation. Suddenly she 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 at their doubling in size, forgetting the old woman and the thing she measured. 

The carved markings running down the 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 and released the stick. As it hit the ground, the glow of the measure along its shaft disappeared. The old woman tightened her fist around the mysterious object and held it against her breast. She immediately sensed the dark figures begin to stir. 

There were objects, dropped in a crossing, that held a particular meaning within a single thought. They lead to choices, choices that rippled from one generation to the next. The old woman knew these choices, she gathered their manifestations, watching as they returned to one source. And there were objects, born on the horizon, one at a time, whose choice had not been born to an idea. They were all choice– without thought; without boundary; without fear. They were not of human making. They made humans. This was such an object.

Confirming what the old woman had found, the shadows quickly amassed as one swarm. As they descended from the rocks to the shore, the girl covered her nose as the smell of sulphur burned in the wind.

“Take it back to its hiding!” the old woman commanded, hurdling the strange object into the oncoming swell, “You cannot bury it! It must return. It is neither mine nor yours to harbor,” she reminded knowing neither would be possible as hard as the covetous sea might try.

A powerful wave tumbled forward. Sensing the dark shadows so close to its waters, she knew the sea would obey for it feared the ghosts claiming the object as much as she did. It would take the object back to where it had last hidden. Fully understanding what it now was, it would not be tempted to carry it to her shore again. As the sea slowly gentled, the old woman crawled onto the beach. The dark cloud lunged angrily at where she lay coughing up mouthfuls of water. Appearing as a murmur of starlings, it crashed upon her exhausted figure, lifting and folding her among its frenzied patterns and carrying her across the grey sky. The girl ran down the beach after, unable to locate the old woman within. A green flash exploded in the horizon and with it, the murmur vanished above the hills. The girl turned to find the old woman unconscious 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