Low Water

The sea went out on a Tuesday and did not come back. Edda counted the tide marks twice before she ran to wake the keeper, who only laughed and turned over in his cot. By noon the boats lay tilted in mud that had never seen sun, and the fishing families stood at the harbour wall the way you stand at a deathbed. Edda knew the tide tables better than she knew her own birthday. She had copied them every morning for three years. The numbers in her head did not lie, and the numbers said the water should be at her knees by now. Instead there was a road. A wet black road going out under where the sea had been, paved in something too even to be stone. It led toward the horizon, and at its far end something pale stood up out of the muck and shook itself like a dog. The keeper stopped laughing then.