Storms were famous. In the mornings, green needles edged the beaches for miles—she walked in the herd’s tracks—turned yellow or rotted, washed out again to deep sea places—she could envision this—to blanket rocks and feed strange fishes down below—she could not envision them. The wrench and kit eluded her at first. The bucket washed up in a net of seaweed braided with balloon-shaped fishes that stung and she gave wide berth to. Whole trees fell across the shore leaving enormous gashes at tree line, balls of roots towering, and the gashes filled with starfish at high tides. She ate the starfish. She looked at the sea and the clouds. A whole life could be passed this way. Cliffs broke free, killed by water seepage and tree roots creeping, new cliffs appearing behind, taking turns at sunlight. Destruction, she saw in time, was the essential work of trees. She lay in the seagrass and calculated. How big a tree to split a mountain? How to split continent from continent? To split a yeoman from a wing?

She was a shaving, a fleck, with ever-red lips. A flag.

She stepped out of her jumpsuit and waded into the water. Sea sloshed around her legs. There was only the sea and her and that colt somewhere. She could marry him and live at sea. Only three hooves are needed for swimming. A colt should be easy to spot. She shaded her eyes. She dove. She called to him, Romeo! There was a pencil in the kit at ten fathoms. A stick of sodden gum. She ate berries three meals a day. It took weeks for her bowels to regulate. She patted bricks from the huge piles of mule dung, baked them in the sun, stacked them for a tiny dwelling. She dreamed of a wall with a window. Where was that Mule and his herd of shitters? She called to them each by name. There were many foals.

She whistled. No answer. She had not seen them all day.

The sun was very warm.

Her sun.

Time accrued like coral. Time passed and her coral accrued. Thoughts sharpened with variation and repetition. She named herself captain. She lay on the shore by her empty jumpsuit. She would replace it with mule skin. Impossible to be together (sea and shore). Impossible to be apart (sea and shore).

Acknowledgments

Thank you:

Stephanie Steiker, for your couch, for the Old Swede, for your patience and spitfire genius. The wizardly Jeremy Davies, who hung on and kaleidoscoped the book into focus through a global pandemic. And Other Stories—Tom Flynn, Javerya Iqbal, Nicky Smalley, Stefan Tobler, Tara Tobler, Emma Warhurst, the authors, board, translators, subscribers and readers—all who support books with their lives.