He was a one, that Brukie’s Sandy, a one with the grapplie hook, but this day the prize was just beyond his reach. Prize it was, too, the kind he always knew would come some day, if he was patient, if he kept both eyes on the sea.

A bottle.

And he saw, through the corked amber glass, that there was something inside it. A spiral of paper, a message from the sea. Imagine what faraway place it might have drifted from, what stories it might tell. Imagine!

So that boy, that Brukie’s Sandy, he leaned out over the stern of the Lily Maud, leaned out with the hook in his reaching hands.

Did I tell you, lambsie, that they never learned to swim, those men, those boys, of the north? It wasn’t just the promise of a slow and painful taking until your heart stopped, your blood turned white, if you fell overboard. There were things more terrifying than freezing, aye. Better to drown, it was, a fast decent droonin’, than to fight the will of the Witch when she had you in her grasp.

Made hardly a splash at all, that boy, that Brukie’s Sandy, when he lost his balance, reaching with the grapplie hook for a message from the sea. He toppled from the stern of the Lily Maud in his gansey layers, his long oilie, his great hulking seaboots.

As he fell, a rope from the stern. Snagging an arm.

A lifeline.

It held him there, held him for a time, struggling and kicking against the dragging weight of his boots. His face just clearing the waves. Gasping and gaping, he was, and swallowing the sea.

The sea, the sea, the Witch who must be appeased. For all that the world was changing, wrenching Roanhaven from its own little world, still the old ways held with those well stricken in years. And so it was that Jeemsie Neish, my granda, like those who came before him, believed it unnatural, believed it wrong, to get between the sea and the drowning. Because the sea must have its prey. Because, if cheated, it would take another in its place. Because anyone who interfered would be cursed and bring ruin on all. Aye, this was the order of things. So when that boy cried out and Sailor Finney went soft and grabbed the second grapplie hook to save him, Jeemsie Neish yanked it from the old man’s hands and flung it away. ‘The sea must have her nummer!’ he roared at the old gaak, who knew as well as any, who knew better.

And then Jeemsie Neish stood at the stern of the Lily Maud. He stood by and did nothing.