Low Water

She did not tell anyone about the second office. There was no one the telling would have helped. The harbourmaster wanted his tables on time; the fishermen wanted the channel; the town wanted, as towns do, for the dull and on-time things to stay dull.

So Merrin kept two sets of records now. Her own, in the even printed hand, hung on the office wall for anyone to read. The other she kept in a drawer, and beside each tide she copied the small second number from the bleached post, and tried, season by season, to learn its language.

It was a count of arrivals. She was almost sure of it. Every time the water came back the way it had that grey morning — all at once, like remembering — the small number rose by one. It had been rising for a very long time.

Low water again this week, lower than the tables allowed for. Merrin walked out to where the second post stood waiting, took up the salt-stiff pencil tied to it by a cord she had not tied, and added a mark of her own. Then she stood, and waited, to see what the sea would remember.