Saltwater Liturgy

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…

The rule was written in the chapel's surviving register, and her mother had made her memorize it before she could hold the chalk: the sea returns what it takes, when it is paid to. A reader could mark returned, but then the ledger wanted a fee, and the fee was always a name that had not yet been given. Maren went down to the water at first light. The surf was full of small grey light. A girl stood at the edge of it in a coat Maren knew, a coat that had been Bo's, that had gone down with him — an…