Pisces pressed a hand to his arm and his lips tipped into a sad smile. “There were good ones, too. Remember those shells Donnally used to collect?”

“The purple ones,” Ares answered with a laugh. “They were always in his pockets.”

Caledonia hadn’t thought of Donnally’s purple shells in turns, but suddenly, she remembered them vividly. He kept so many that their dad threatened to get rid of them, so Donnally started hiding them anywhere he could. Even inside his pillowcase. “He was going to make a mask with them. A crab mask.”

“Why purple, then?” Pisces asked.

“Because of the sky.” Ares tipped his head back to study the darkening dome above. “He was always talking about constellations and stars and making stories out of nothing. He wanted his mask to be like the crab constellation. And the purple shells were as close as he could get to the blue he wanted.”

“I still don’t know why he was so obsessed with crabs.” Pisces murmured.

Caledonia rarely ventured into her memories of her family, not until they surged out of her mind like a ship in the night and gave her no choice. When she thought of her mother or her father, or Donnally, she pictured them doing whatever they’d loved most, but as the three of them conjured her little brother, she remembered so much more. Early mornings on the bow practicing their knots while her father demonstrated and corrected their loops; stormy nights spent belowdecks with the entire crew bundled together around rousing card games; afternoons working in the box gardens while Pisces and Ares’s mom played her breathy pipes.

“Our dad,” Caledonia explained. “Donnally used to have nightmares. He’d wake up crying and afraid because he was too little to fight. Dad told him that sometimes being small was its own kind of protection. Like crabs. They’re very small and even though they have mighty claws, their first instinct is to burrow into the sand and wait until the danger passes. They don’t have to fight to survive.”

“Sometimes it’s hard to remember him that way.” Ares’s voice dipped low, heavy with memories of a different Donnally.

Caledonia had a few memories of that Donnally, too. She pinched her eyes shut, doing all she could to hold on to the Donnally of the past, but he slipped away. All that was left was her brother’s stark expression as he said, “I can’t abandon my brother.”

“Gunners ready!” Pine’s voice jolted them from their reverie as they neared the meeting place. “Stay alert!”