Dawn was coming; light snuck above the horizon. Soon Moss would see what had been out there last night. She set water to boil. When they were Small Things, Cal and her had stored cooking pots and coverings in these caves and played homes with them; she was glad of that now. A brew of stormflowers may soothe her paining. But when she went to add the petals she’d just picked, she paused, hand hovering.

I don’t think they make any of us well. She’d said that last night, hadn’t she? And here she was, still trying them.

Instead, Moss hitched up her skirt. Less blood today. She lay one of the downy gull feathers she’d been searching for earlier on top of her smalls. She felt better already, more in control. Waiting outside the cave, she watched the sea turn from black to silver-gray.

Still no land.

She’d imagined it, then, last night—that shape, or whatever, out there. Another vision, just a trick of the sea fog now, in this delicate sunlight, that storm seemed impossible. Maybe she’d dreamt up Cal leaving, too. And Pa’s Blackness? Maybe everything was just as it used to be.

Soon the sunlight pierced her in a thousand different places. She took the plain water—overboiling now—from the fire and sipped it, sticking her burned tongue out into the breeze after. This sunlight was praise-soft. Moss clicked to her dog, who was soaking in the heat outside the cave, white tummy pointing up. She looked like how the stormflowers soaked in rain, spreading her haunches wide. One of her eyes slit open.

“Come on,” Moss told her. “We’re going to see what’s what.” Just because she couldn’t see anything out there didn’t mean nothing had storm-washed in. “There’ll be treasure,” she tempted.

Moss would just know—wouldn’t she?—if Cal or Pa had been out on the waves? If anything had happened …

Clicking for Adder again, she climbed down the narrow cliff path and turned for the cove. It was hotter, so sunny, the island’s weather on its best behavior after its tantrum the night before. Following a big storm, it always felt like the island was holding its breath, waiting to see how much trouble it was in. On another morning, Moss might’ve laughed at this weather, might’ve let the breeze take her skirt as she ran. But Cal was gone. Pa was full-strange and getting sicker. And something had been in the waves.

Down from the cliff, she saw just how much the wild tide had washed in. Over near the rocks at the edge of the cove, where she’d been sitting with Cal those nights earlier, the sand was littered thick with seaweed and Treasure. The air was strong with the stench of dead things, too.