Against The World

Chapter 146: Those Who Came Ashore

Aurelia did not begin with the witness.

She began with a woman holding a child above the water.

“I reached her first,” she said. “She was calling loudly enough that I could find her through the storm.”

We had moved to the bench beside the fountain.

Evelyn still held one of her hands.

“What did you do?” I asked.

“Kept her above the surface. Turned a piece of wreckage toward her. There were others close enough to hear when she shouted.”

Aurelia looked at the water.

“The boat had struck before anyone called to me. Some were already gone.”

“How many?”

“Eleven came ashore.”

She answered without hesitation.

I wondered how often she had counted them.

The witness’s name had been Othrel.

He had kept the house at Tern Reach and served the shrine within it. When the survivors reached the landing, he had helped carry them inside.

“He lost someone?” Evelyn asked.

“His younger brother.”

Aurelia closed her eyes briefly.

“He asked me to find him. I tried.”

“And when you couldn’t?”

“He asked me to keep trying.”

There was a long pause.

“At first, I did.”

I looked at her hands.

The same hands that held our children.

“How long?”

“Longer than there was any hope.”

Evelyn’s fingers tightened around hers.

Aurelia opened her eyes.

“Eventually, I told him that.”

Othrel had asked why eleven had lived.

Why those eleven.

Why a stranger’s child had reached the steps when his brother had not.

“He believed I had weighed them,” Aurelia said. “That I had found one worth keeping and another worth losing.”

“Did you explain?”

“Yes.”

“Did he listen?”

“He heard me.”

She let the distinction remain.

For a while, I had nothing useful to say.

Then I looked toward the copied inscription.

“How did grief become something that could hold you?”

Aurelia’s expression hardened.

“He could accuse me. He could curse my name. He could close his shrine.”

“But he couldn’t do this alone.”

“No.”

Her voice became very quiet.

“Others made his accusation useful.”

She had not seen the tower chamber.

She had not known where that part of the restraint had been fixed.

At the convocation, Othrel had stood among people whose power exceeded his own and spoken of the duty she had failed.

“They called it an undertaking left incomplete,” she said.

“Had you undertaken to save everyone?”

“No.”

“Then—”

“I know, Uriah.”

I stopped.

Anger had brought me to my feet without my noticing.

Aurelia watched me for a moment.

Then reached out.

I sat again and took her hand.

“They knew too,” she said.

Evelyn unfolded the second drawing.

“What about this?”

The smaller mark stood near the end of the inscription.

A shallow bowl beneath three descending strokes.

Aurelia studied it.

“I have seen that used for offerings to the sea.”

“Another god?”

“Possibly. The mark alone won’t tell us which working was laid there.”

“The power tightened when a wave struck the wall,” I said.

She nodded slowly.

“Then the water may be keeping it supplied.”

I thought about the tide moving around the ruins.

Always leaving.

Always returning.

No tired keeper to stop.

No annual observance to suspend.

“Can we break it?”

Aurelia looked up.

“Yes,” she said. “But first we need to see what they built.”

We woke before the innkeeper lit the kitchen fire.

For a while, neither of us moved.

The room smelled of damp wool and the sea. Beyond the wall, someone coughed.

Evelyn lay with her face turned toward me.

“Eleven,” she said.

“Yes.”

“I wonder whether they knew.”

“That she remembered?”

She nodded.

I reached beneath the blanket for her hand.

“I hope someone told her what happened to them.”

We had no answer.

Eventually, the innkeeper began moving pots.

We got up.

Cora listened to our request over breakfast.

Then she opened the door, looked at the sky, and shut it again.

“No.”

I had expected a longer discussion.

Linnet did not appear surprised.

“The wind is turning,” she said.

“We wouldn’t stay long.”

Cora looked at me.

I remembered the promise beside the cradles.

Then put down my spoon.

“All right.”

Eleanor continued eating.

“We need timber, tackle, and a better look at those stairs before anyone puts a head beneath them.”

Eliza nodded.

“We come back prepared.”

Melody offered me the bread.

I accepted it without arguing with anyone else.

That seemed to improve breakfast considerably.

The elderly fisherman returned while we were loading the boat.

I asked him whether the village kept any records of the wreck at Tern Reach.

“Which wreck?”

I hesitated.

He nodded toward the water.

“Plenty of boats have ended there.”

“This one was a long time ago. The keeper lost his brother. Eleven people survived.”

He rubbed his jaw.

“Wouldn’t know about the brother.”

“Or the survivors?”

“Ask at the sail loft.”

I glanced toward the shed beside the inn.

“There are records?”

“There’s my sister.”

He said it as though that was considerably better.

His sister was called Enna.

She sat beside a window mending a sail with a leather guard across her palm.

When I asked about the eleven, her needle stopped.

“Who told you that?”

I looked at Evelyn.

Then back at Enna.

“Aurelia.”

The old woman regarded me for several moments.

Outside, a sailor called for another line.

“Well,” Enna said at last. “That would do it.”

She put down the sail.

Then sent her grandson upstairs for a wooden box.

The box contained scraps.

A marriage record.

A folded account for repairs.

A ribbon so old that its color had become a matter of opinion.

Enna lifted out a small book wrapped in linen.

“My grandmother copied this from another one,” she said. “That had belonged to her grandmother. I can’t tell you how many times it was copied before that.”

Mary would have wanted to hear that sentence.

I resolved to remember it.

Enna opened the book near the middle.

“There.”

The writing was uneven.

The heading named the Morrow.

Beneath it were eleven names.

It was a family account.

Not a harbor record.

The names had been kept because one of the women who came ashore had later married into Enna’s family.

Her name was Sella.

Her son was Daven.

He had been three.

Evelyn sat down beside me.

“Was she holding him when she was found?”

Enna looked along the page.

“Doesn’t say found.”

She turned the book toward us.

Kept the boy upon her shoulder after the wood turned beneath her. Said a hand held them where there was no hand.

I read it once.

Then again.

Enna watched our faces.

“You know something about that?”

“Yes,” Evelyn said softly.

“I think we do.”

The account did not contain everything.

Two names had notes beside them.

One woman had died of fever several days after reaching the house.

Another had gone north to family.

A man called Brant had helped lift people onto the landing until his injured leg would no longer hold him.

There were disagreements over a missing chest.

A payment for blankets.

Life had continued untidily on the page.

Then, near the bottom, Sella’s name appeared again.

She had returned the following year with her son.

Left a blue cloth at the shrine. Could get no answer at the door.

I looked up.

Enna folded her hands.

“That’s the part my mother used to tell. She said Sella kept going back until someone told her the shrine was shut.”

Aurelia had tried to find a dead man long after hope was gone.

A woman she had saved had stood outside a closed door with a piece of cloth.

For a moment, I could not bear how near they had been to hearing each other.

“May we copy this?” Evelyn asked.

Enna considered us.

“For her?”

“Yes.”

“You can copy the wreck account. The marriages stay.”

“Of course.”

Her grandson brought ink.

Evelyn wrote while I read each line beside her.

We copied the uncertain words as uncertain.

We left the gaps.

At the bottom, my wife recorded what Enna had told us about the earlier books.

When we finished, Enna looked over the page.

Then touched Sella’s name.

“The boy grew up,” she said.

I waited.

“He’s in the next part. Married a woman who owned half a fishing boat. Had children. Quarrelled with his cousin about the other half.”

Evelyn laughed.

It surprised all three of us.

Then she wiped her cheek.

“May we include that too?”

Enna nodded.

“I think she ought to know.”

Cora gave us very little time to admire our discovery.

The wind had freshened.

We boarded.

By the time the village disappeared behind the ridge, spray had begun reaching over the bow.

I kept the drawing case beneath my coat.

Evelyn sat close beside me.

The copied names rested between us, dry beneath their wrapping.

We could not open a chamber that day.

We had still brought something away.

At Greykeep, Carol greeted our return by gripping Evelyn’s collar with both hands.

Garrick came toward me across the nursery blanket, moving with great purpose and very little regard for the cushion in his path.

He climbed onto it.

Then stopped.

One leg remained on the floor.

The other appeared to have become someone else’s responsibility.

I rescued him.

Helena looked at our damp cloaks.

“Successful?”

“We found the place,” Evelyn said.

“And?”

“We need to return.”

My mother-in-law nodded.

Then held out a dry cloth for my son, who had decided to put his mouth against my wet sleeve.

“After you’ve warmed up.”

Mary read the copies that evening.

The Castellan compared the second mark with the drawings from the Hall of Accord.

Eleanor began listing what the next expedition would require.

I listened.

Answered what I could.

Then asked Mary for another clean sheet.

“For the account?”

“For Aurelia.”

She passed it across the table without speaking.

Aurelia came after the children had fallen asleep.

She found us beside the hearth.

I stood when I saw her.

For a moment, I did not know how to begin.

Evelyn held out the page.

“We found someone who kept their names.”

Aurelia looked at it.

Then at us.

“The people from the boat,” I said.

She sat down slowly.

My wife moved the lamp closer.

Aurelia read without speaking.

At Sella’s account, her breath caught.

Her finger moved back to the beginning of the line.

“Yes,” she whispered.

We waited.

“She held him so high. I remember thinking she could not keep her arms there much longer.”

Evelyn knelt beside the chair.

“He lived.”

Aurelia nodded, still looking at the page.

“He grew up,” my wife said. “There was more in the family book.”

That made her look up.

I told her about the fishing boat.

The marriage.

The children.

The dispute with the cousin.

Aurelia laughed once.

Then covered her mouth.

Evelyn took her free hand.

Later, when she could read again, Aurelia found the line about the blue cloth.

“I didn’t hear her.”

“We know,” I said.

“I would have answered.”

“I know.”

She held the paper carefully, as though its age were greater than a few hours.

For a while, none of us moved.

Then Aurelia asked whether the original book was safe.

“With Enna,” Evelyn said. “Where it belongs.”

“Good.”

She looked down again.

“The woman who died afterward. I didn’t know.”

Her finger rested beside the name.

We stayed with her while she read the others.

All eleven.

When the fire burned low, I asked whether she wanted us to put the account with the records.

“Eventually.”

I nodded.

She folded it along the crease Evelyn had made.

“May I keep it here tonight?”

I brought the little table closer to her chair.

Aurelia laid the page upon it.

Then, after a moment, opened it again to the part about the boy.

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