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Rocks jut up from the endless sea like grey haystacks. I row to them for refuge, finding their waists clad with a rainbow of starfish and deep blue mussels. Seagulls call from above. I squint at the sun. In the distance is an island. Massive bluffs rise from the sea, obscuring its top, and a narrow strip of beach wraps around its base. The bottom of my boat scrapes against the rocks of its shore with a wounded moan.
I release the oars from my callused palms. The only sound is water pulling at the rocks and the gulls. The water bites into my skin and I gasp in a foreign voice. I drag my body onto the shore and pause, faintly swaying, while the sea releases me to the land.
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Jardin’s stomach growled. He pressed his bowl of lukewarm butter noodles close to his chest as he tiptoed back up the steep wooden stairs to the attic. On the fifteenth stair he did a little dance to avoid the creak. Soon he would be back in his bed, third one in from the window, eating his supper while his six brothers and seven sisters continued to slumber.
At the sixteenth step the handrail ended. He turned at the landing and started down the center of the room, creeping past the little wooden beds that lined each of the sloping walls in two tidy rows. About halfway to his bed he froze and nearly dropped his bowl.
There was something leaning over his littlest sister Echa. It had its back to him. It was short, not much taller than his mother’s hip, and it had a curly mess of yellow hair that poured from its head all the way to the floor. It raised an arm. Jardin held his breath as it pulled back a sleeve. It had boney fingers with long spiraling fingernails, almost like the noodles in his bowl. Jardin bit his tongue so he wouldn’t scream as he watched it scrape the inside of Echa’s ear with its twisted pinky fingernail. It pulled the nail out and tapped it against the rim of a black jar. Then it turned around.
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We lived next to a sinkhole. It was over a half-mile in diameter, according to our elders. It spanned the whole hillside north of Old Town. The land had become covered with houses. Tourists came to see it. They wore vibration meter necklaces so they would know the impact of their footsteps across its surface, as if that knowledge would give them an advantage.