“You’re looking the wrong way, back there by the woods. You turn your green eyes away from there, and look down over the bay. I know what you are.

“Look over the waves, my girl. They travelled by the stream, up to the land, looking for husbands and a soul. But woe betides the man who was charmed, for there was no forgiveness for any transgression against her or her children.”

They had come out from the trees now to the rocky beach. There was a thick fog billowing in on the tide and the wind was cold and wet, the air briny. The old woman bent down and picked a few pink rose petals growing amidst the driftwood and shore brambles.

In the fog there seemed to be a high hum, as though there was a choir in the mists. There were dark shapes in the white haze as the waves crashed on the beach. The old woman threw her cane to the side and lifted up her arms. She raised her voice over the crash of the surf and looked at Ondine as she spoke. Her words were foreign and the exhortations were blown away by the wind as quickly as the old woman uttered them. And then the old lady was gone in the mists and the waves crashed in over Ondine’s feet, and the spray felt like cold wet hands stroking her cheeks as she fell into the water, the pull of the turning tide taking her seaward.

Acknowledgements

I gratefully acknowledge the Canada Council for the Arts, Arts Nova Scotia, and The Woodcock Fund/Writers’ Trust for funding which allowed me to write many of these stories. Thanks to the Atlantic Center for the Arts in New Smryna Beach, Florida, where I worked on several of these stories during a residency in 2005. Thanks to the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity, where I finished these stories.

I acknowledge the privilege and honour in being a guest here in Mi’kma’ki, the unceded territory of the Mi’kmaq people for over 13,000 years.

Many thanks to Michelle MacAleese, my brilliant editor, for her instincts, openness, and generosity of spirit. Thanks to Janie Yoon for her unwavering faith in my work. Gratitude to the one-of-a-kind Sarah MacLachlan who one day appeared out of the Bay of Fundy fog on a dock in Parkers Cove and changed my life. To Melanie Little for meticulous and artful copyediting, and special thanks for her deep editorial touch on “Dead Time.” Heartfelt thanks to the amazing team at House of Anansi Press for welcoming me and working so hard to collect these stories into a book and sending them into the world. Thank you to Joshua Greenspon for assistance with permissions. Thanks to Alysia Shewchuk for such a beautiful cover, managing editor Maria Golikova, proofreader Linda Pruessen, and Laura Meyer, publicist extraordinaire.

Many thanks to Kerry Lee Powell for spectacular notes on every single story. To Marianne Ward for her thoughtful comments on many of these stories. Love and gratitude to Marie Cameron for reading every draft. Thank you for reading earlier drafts of stories: Sandra Lambert, Belea Keeney, Cherie Dimaline, Liz Howard, Heather Morse, Kathryn Kuitenbrouwer, Adam Lewis Schroeder, Joceline Doucette, Rick Maddocks, Douglas Glover, Jessica Johnson, Dave Johnson, Dana Mills, and Greg Foran. Thanks to Joe Ollmann for discussion on comic arts, graphic design, drawing, and story narrative. Thank you to friend and colleague Amanda Peters of Glooscap First Nation for reading drafts, and for her enthusiasm for “Eyeball in Your Throat.” Thanks to Madeleine Thien for reading numerous drafts of “The Diplomat” and “Late and Soon,” and for such insightful notes. Thanks to Stephanie Domet who originally commissioned an earlier version of “Insomnis.” Thank you to Silmy Abdullah and Shawk Alani for laughter in the mountains.