The Waterline

The liturgy of Orleske was not a prayer. It was a reading, and it went like this: at the lowest of the spring tides, the tide-reader walked the old harbor wall with a chalk board and a lamp, and read the waterline where the sea had left its marks. Every mark had a name. Every name got one of two words. Maren Ostrey had been the reader for twelve years. She had read eleven names each spring and written eleven times the same word: absent. The town gathered behind her on the wall in their coats, an…