Every day I woke fearing the sea. Fear made my shoulders slump. It soured my mouth and released acid in my stomach. Seeing my pinched face across the breakfast table, mother’s eyes shone with tears. She reminded me, “Arlith, you were happy until…” Her voice faded but I had heard her say it so often I easily completed her thought in my head, until the morning uncle Noren brought us news that wreckage of da’s schooner had been found–that he and his crew drowned in the Great Storm.
For the first month we tried to believe it wasn’t true.
Surely da will walk laughing through the door explaining how he had clung to a plank and been washed ashore on the mainland?
Then came the day shipwrights who had built da’s schooner on credit took our snug house above the harbor. We couldn’t pretend anymore.
To demonstrate for the whole village of Deep Harbor that his family was upright and fulfilling its obligations, uncle Noren rented us an old, unused fishhouse on North Cove. Despite persistent drafts and an ineradicable smell of tar and salt fish, we made its seine loft our home. Mother knitted nets in the workshop below. She–thin and never strong after the plague year when I was born–was able to sell her nets for enough to feed and clothe us, but nowhere near the amount to pay our rent or cover my school fees.
Feeling that this couldn’t be happening to me, I had to go to work competing with Deep Harbor’s poorest children. Each of us carried a pack-basket into the island’s forest. I filled my basket with fallen branches and lugged them to the village where I sold to anyone with the need–or more often the charity–to buy kindling.
Trudging downhill from the forest, leaning forward to balance my heavy basket, I winced at seeing red sails of the island’s fishing fleet spread across six leagues of Heron Bay to Pennalport on the mainland. Fear that I had buried beneath work made me shiver. No matter if the sea sparkled under a west wind or if it rolled in angry waves driven by an easterly, I was afraid of it. The sea had drowned da–had driven mother to exhaustion–and was waiting for a chance to kill me.
Fear, once loosed in my body, grew other tendrils. I became afraid that I was fading to a ghostly presence in my own village. Most well-to-do fishers who answered my knock at the door would have smiled at me when father was alive. Now the face looking down was tight, eyes staring past me. A hard voice would say, “Not today. We have enough kindling.” The door would slam shut before I had even turned around.
I might have given in to despair if it wasn’t for help from an unlikely person. In my previous carefree life–dashing out of school in high spirits, daring age-mates to jump from boulder to boulder below Jirl-one-arm’s flakeyard of salt cod–Jirl seemed to ignore us. Now, when I climbed the ramp to Jirl’s loft, the door swung open before I reached the top. Jirl’s voice–“Arlith! Kindling, again?”–sounded gruff, but his eyes made up for it by seeing me.
“Come in. Sit down,” he invited. “Salt cod or smoked mackerel?” We chewed the tough, tasty fish that Jirl always kept on the upturned barrel he used as a table. Often we sat in restful silence. Other times he asked what I had seen on the bay and always appeared interested in my answers about where boats were fishing or gulls circling.
Many in Deep Harbor would have taken this opportunity to ‘improve’ me by reciting homilies about the virtue of hard work. Jirl seemed content to let me sit across from him without trying to change who I was. Sometimes I imagined I could see thoughts within the glint of his eyes or the quirk of his lips, but whatever those thoughts were, he was not ready to express them. Soon food, rest, and silence had their way with me. Relaxation began to loosen my muscles. Eyelids heavy, my head nodded. Sleepily I would jerk awake puzzled to find we were standing up. Jirl, arm bulging with muscle, was handing me a coin or a fish to take home for supper.
Once I froze with embarrassment because he offered to take me hand-lining in his dory. Fear seized my throat and blood heated my face. I could only shake my head. For a week afterwards I avoided him even though often it had been Jirl who made the difference between my trudging home with no reward or bringing back at least some payment. Finally better sense prevailed. I carried kindling to him again even though nervous that he would renew his offer to take me fishing.
All that summer I was either bent over foraging kindling in the forest or bracing myself to knock on village doors. Each time I saw an apple tree with fruit turning red, it jolted me with fear. School would open soon. I knew time taken for lessons would limit my kindling gathering to one trip a day. How would I earn enough to pay our rent to Noren Falut?
On the first school day, there were other consequences I hadn’t imagined. The teacher, Lar, gripped my shoulder with fingers like claws, pulling me away from my old desk to a bench in the shadows at the back of the room where I shared a wobbly table, furrowed by carved initials, on which lay cracked slates and stumps of chalk for those whose school fees the village paid as a handout.
After school Noren’s son, Bal, pretended to scrunch his face in disgust. “Phew! You live in a fishhouse and smell like a bait barrel! You better roll in pine needles to cover your stink.” Shaking with suppressed anger, I walked away stiffly, basket for kindling bumping against my back, as if I hadn’t heard Bal and didn’t hear others snickering.
I couldn’t add to mother’s burdens by complaining about my fears. Each day she struggled to knit heavy netting twine until her fingers swelled. There was no one else who cared. Or so I thought until one day I was about to leave Jirl-one-arm’s loft and trudge home with his payment of a fresh cod. Instead of Jirl’s customary, “See you in a day or two,” he cleared his throat saying abruptly. “Will-you-help-me-tomorrow-on-Free-Day?”
“Help?” I squeaked.
In tongue-tied panic I thought, I have to gather kindling on Free Day to make up for payments I’ve lost by attending school.
“Cod are gathering at the mouth of Long Cove,” Jirl explained gravely. “It will be my one chance for a good catch before other fishers notice and are on them like a flock of gulls.”
Go out in Jirl’s dory? Risk drowning? No. No. No. My face was hot, tongue thick in my mouth.
“I’ll take you on shares,” Jirl proposed. “A quarter for the boat, half for me, and a quarter for you.”
This was the kind of offer a fisher would make to an adult not to a teenager. It might turn out to be more than I could earn from a week of gathering kindling. Though still unable to speak, I nodded.
Jirl cocked his head as if uncertain of my answer.
“Yes,” I choked. “Thank you.”
“First light. Tomorrow,” Jirl confirmed severely, although there might have been a hint of a smile in his eyes.
As Jirl sculled his skiff out from the beach to his moored dory, panic began to seize me. Fighting it, I fixed my gaze on the line of fishhouses on the sand. Studied the drifting clouds. Stared at the bottom of the skiff. Focused anywhere but on dark water all around us that had drowned da and was waiting to drown me.
Jirl unfurled the dory’s small sail. Seeing me sitting rigid on the middle thwart, Jirl set me to cutting salt herring to bait our hooks. When I looked up again, we were near Long Cove where we hand-lined all morning until the dory was low in the water, heavy with cod. Back and shoulders aching, hands sore from pulling in fish, I was too weary to be afraid. I managed a grin in answer to Jirl’s wink when other boats, whose fishers had spotted Jirl’s laden dory, began racing toward Long Cove.
On most Free Days, Jirl invited me to fish with him. Fear still prickled along my scalp when I agreed. If the wind died in the afternoon, I rowed the heavy dory to spare Jirl having to scull home. A quarter share of good catches added up. I earned enough to pay our month’s rent. Sometimes mother even had energy to smile at me. In another season I might be able to afford my school fees.
Fishing changed my kindling gathering, too. I began to walk the perimeter of the forest where I could scan the ocean, reporting to Jirl if I spotted gulls wheeling above a circle of dark ripples where herring or mackerel were feeding.
Though fear could still paralyze me, life eased a little until the day I made it harder for myself by allowing my anger to break out. Without thinking, I answered one of Bal’s taunts with blunt truth rather than the evasions with which I had tried to avoid his retaliation.
“You and One-arm catch enough for supper?” Bal asked scornfully.
“We filled the dory.”
“Liar! Smelly liar!”
I discovered Bal had repeated his accusation in the village when one of my devout kindling buyers demanded to know whether I recited the Truthfulness Prayer every day. Choked by the injustice of this, I just shook my head. Face grim, he told me, “Don’t bother to come again until you’ve mended your ways.” I felt his glare on my back all the way to the road.
In late fall, gathering fallen birch branches above Long Cove, I smelled cooking and heard voices.
Is there a boat hidden behind those spruce trees at the head of the cove? Fear made my mind leap to the most unlikely possibility. Raiders? Impossible! There haven’t been any raids from Lochland in my lifetime. Probably one of our own sloops was becalmed. The crew has decided to cook supper while they wait for a wind.
I turned away, thinking about where I could go next to fill my basket before the light faded. But I hadn’t gone far when a thought began to niggle at me.
I’ve been on the shore since school let out. I haven’t seen any sloops close to the island. Even though the wind has been slacking, a ship could have sailed to the harbor. Why would anyone moor in Long Cove?
Muttering to myself that I was being a fool, that I was wasting valuable foraging time, I allowed a premonition of danger to draw me back toward the cove. Placing each foot carefully so as not to snap a twig or skid on spruce needles, I climbed down toward the water, stopping just short of where the ship must be moored. A curtain of branches hid me. The smell of fish stew grew stronger. I heard a voice say in a Lochland accent, “Curse these southern calms!”
A gruff voice replied with amusement, “Patience! We’ll all go home rich. As soon as there’s a night wind we can sail to Pennalport and burn the warehouses. While they’re searching for us nearby we’ll raid this island and all the northern ports.”
Heart pounding I scrambled uphill, expecting at each step to feel an arrow pierce my back. I dumped branches from my basket and ran.
Who will believe me after Bal has spread his malice about my being a liar? Only Jirl. And what can he do?
“Raiders!” I blurted to Jirl. “A ship hidden under the trees at the head of Long Cove. I heard them talking. They’re going to fire Pennalport. Then raid here! No one will believe me. You have to come!”
Jirl shook his head. “Think, Arlith. You were lucky to escape without being seen. If they know they’re discovered, they’ll attack Deep Harbor first.” His hand firm on my back, Jirl pushed me outside onto the ramp where he studied wispy clouds drifting slowly eastward, catching the last sunlight from below the horizon.
“This calm should last until morning,” he decided. “Take my dory. Row to Pennalport. Alert the Pennal guard. I’ll tell your mother where you’ve gone.”
All night, rowing the six leagues to Pennalport, I was terrified. The ocean beneath the thin planks of Jirl’s dory was a living thing, alien beyond my understanding. Lights on the mainland twinkled like stars impossibly far away. Because I had been out on the bay so many times with Jirl, I no longer felt the water to be malevolent. It was merely indifferent to whether I lived or died, which was almost as frightening. Every gust of wind, every smack of a wave against the dory, squeezed my guts with fear of drowning–but I was more afraid of what would happen to Jirl and to mother if I didn’t succeed.
My hands were so sore from rowing that I could barely tie the painter tight to the wharf in Pennalport. The first members of the Pennal guard I told about the raiders were skeptical, narrowing their eyes and shaking their heads. I could see they thought I had deceived myself with imagined fears. Reluctantly, they took me to their dekmvir who likewise shook his head, but passed me on up to the hamor of the guard. She listened without expression to my telling the story for the third time. I clenched my hands and winced. The hamor’s eyes that had been as hard as an eagle’s, glittered with interest. “Show me your palms,” she demanded. So it happened that my fingers and palms, raw with blisters, were the passport to her belief in what I had told her. The next night when raiders arrived on a north wind, the guard was waiting for them.
Although I had spotted the raiders, rowed to Pennalport, and warned the guard, that seemed to change surprisingly little for me in Deep Harbor. It’s true that for a few days some people, once even Noren Falut, patted me on the shoulder when I passed. Bal, though his eyes held no less scorn, ceased mocking me out loud. None of that changed how poor mother and I were. The only lasting change was within me. Though I had lost da, I realized I’d gained in Jirl–not a second father–but someone I could trust. That didn’t balance, but it helped. I confessed to Jirl that I was still afraid of the sea. Jirl half smiled before saying, “Arlith, a fisher should call that ‘respect for the ocean’s power’.”
I nodded, lips twisting in a wry expression before I answered, “Yes. I guess I can live with that.”
