“I live in the lighthouse up there,” he says, pointing up the hill past the sand to a tall tower painted with slanted black stripes.

“My job after the storms is to come decapitate all the ones that wash up so they can't get into the town.”

I look around me. At all the bodies of the Unconsecrated littering the beach. “So much carnage,” I say.

He shrugs. “The tide will come in and wash them back out again,” he says. “In about six hours you'd never know there was anything here other than sand and surf. The beach will be what it always is. Just a beach.”

“But there will be more of them,” I say. “There are always more.” He shrugs. “That's just the way life is. Some days you wake up and the beach is clear and you forget about everything that surrounds us. And some days you wake up and it looks like this.

That's the nature of the tides.”

He shifts his weight a little. “That doesn't mean it's not worth being here.” I sway toward the water and dip my fingers in. “Is it safe?” I ask. “Out in the water?” He shrugs once more. “Safe enough,” he says. “It's an outgoing tide; it won't be pulling up any more Mudo from the ocean.”

I slip into the water. Waves push me and I fight them to go deeper. Until my feet lift from the ground.

The man stands on the beach and watches, the tip of his shovel buried in the sand in front of him, his hands folded over its handle. Waiting for me to return.

I kick my feet and fall back and allow the water to cradle me. I touch my lips with my fingers, licking the tang of salt from them.

For a while I let the water push and pull me, lift me, hold me as I fall. I watch the sky, the clouds, the sun, the birds darting overhead. I wait for peace and happiness but I can only think of Travis and Harry and Cass and Jacob. About how I have lost everything but this place. I try to think about Jed, shame holding me back from remembering how he came after me. How he died saving me. But a part of me also thinks he could be proud that I made it, that I survived.

That he knew what he was doing when he stormed into that Forest after me.

I feel the burden of carrying his hope with me.

I raise my head from the water and realize that I have drifted down the beach. I pull myself against the current, let the waves push me to the sand. I walk back down the beach toward the man, my limbs feeling gangly and heavy out of the water. He smiles at me as I approach and I can't help but smile back.

“Do you mind if I ask where you came from?” he says as we watch the waves crash on the shore.