Chapter Thirteen
I regret what I said about the Arctic.
Days fade behind us, and so does the warm sea. Our summer days are gone, replaced by sharp, rain-drenched winds and waves that lash at the rocks.
We pull on our rain boots and coats, doing our chores in the growing bitterness of autumn air.
No more nights sleeping under the stars, our skin damp with sweat, hoping for a breeze.
We sleep in our bed, windows latched shut, blankets piled high.
My feet curled around his, my body edged against the warmth of his chest.
I crouch in the garden, harvesting a few small potatoes and radishes with gloved hands—trying not to think of the sweet, watery taste of mangoes and pineapple.
Or the feeling of the sun on my face. I remind myself of what we’ve gained as we’ve drifted into wetter seasons.
The rain has urged along the seedlings, and the fear I once felt—that the garden might not return—has vanished, seeing it take shape now.
Clay falls back into a practiced rhythm, waking early each morning, rebuilding the path from the garden to the house so we don’t have to walk through the mud.
I tend to the chickens that we were able to save.
But our sheep are gone—there will be no wool to refill the thinning quilt on our bed, or for spinning into thread and knitting socks and sweaters and thick hats.
No honey or wax from the bees for sweetened tea and beeswax candles.
The days feel strange, a metallic quiet in the air, a soberness to each passing hour since we left the beach.
I’m not sure if it’s only me—am I simply longing for the tranquil ease of the warm bay, the palms swaying outside our window, the soft feel of the sand—or does Clay long for it too, in his own way?
Does it feel like we’ve left something behind we’ll never get back?
I don’t mention it to Clay. I tell myself that the feeling will fade, the memory of that beach will be replaced by new places, new lands.
And although we’re both quiet during dinner, I think it’s mostly exhaustion more than anything else.
Because when we climb the stairs, Clay carrying a single candle nub to light the way, and we slip beneath the blankets, our hands still find each other—like gravity, like the tide returning to shore, a thing that always brings us back together.
Settling our anxious heartbeats, warming the cold from our flesh.
He makes a path of kisses around my earlobe, traces each rib bone with his fingertip down to my stomach, and I tremble beneath his touch as if it’s the first time.
In the silence, we fold ourselves back together without words.
And all my doubts skitter away back into the shadows.
His hand presses between my thighs, steady and assured, a route he’s memorized, and I forget about the icy air whipping against the walls of the old farmhouse, the frigid sea surrounding us on all sides. I forget.
I forget…
Everything.
Clay lights candles along the windowsill, the bedside tables, even across the wood floor.
He leads me through the bedroom door, rain pattering softly against the roof, the sky a smear of deep blues through the window, the sunset lost behind them.
“Why did you do all of this?” I ask.
“Anniversary.”
I raise my eyebrows.
“Ye’ve been here a year.”
I knew the timing was getting close, but I wasn’t certain. Clearly, he’s kept track.
“A year?” I look to the window, to the island’s shoreline—the place where I scrambled up onto the rocks, soaked and shivering. Clay carried me up to the house and when I opened my eyes in his bed, it had all felt like a dream.
He takes my hand and guides me to the end of the bed, and I notice the bottle resting on the dresser—similar to the bottle of whiskey we finished months ago. “A second bottle?” I ask.
“Aye, found it in the cellar after the storm, didnae tell ye. Been saving it.”
I smile, sinking onto the bed. I expect him to reach for the bottle, but instead, he lowers himself to his knees, his hands on my thighs.
I smile at him, recognizing the familiar ache in his eyes.
He touches my hand, lifting it to his lips so he can kiss my palm.
I think his mouth is going to travel up my arm until he finds my mouth, but he stalls, reaches into his pocket, then holds out his palm.
I squint at him, confused.
Resting in his palm, I see a circular band of gold, and a flash of deep, dark blue. A ring.
“Sapphire,” he says. “It belonged to my mother before she passed. And my gran before her.” He takes in a breath, looks up at me. “That night on the beach, I didnae have a ring for ye, an’ it’s been bothering me, wishing I had something to give ye.”
“Clay—” Emotion catches in my throat.
“Not sure if the size is right.” He smiles a little. “It was never meant to be a wedding ring, my mother only wore it now an’ then. Said it carried the luck of all the strong women in her kin. I’d nearly forgotten about it. Took some time finding it, tucked in an old shoebox.”
Tears leak down my cheeks, but he wipes them away, his strong hands capable of such delicate acts.
“I promise to take care of ye.” He breathes. “Until the very end.”
The night on the beach, we made a similar promise to each other, and I hadn’t expected anything more.
I didn’t need a symbol of how he felt. But now, I hold out my shaking hand and he slides the ring onto my finger.
Incredibly, it fits nearly perfectly—only slightly loose.
As if my hand has been waiting for it. A hand that once wore a ring given by another man—a ring that always felt out of place.
But as the candlelight catches softly on the sapphire, I feel like a woman who is finally at home in her own life.
I lean forward to press my lips against his. “Until the very end.”
He squeezes my hand. “Tha goal agam ort.”
I don’t know what the words mean, not completely, but I see their meaning in his ocean eyes.
I love you.
The sea is brutal, cold and barbaric.
We’re drifting farther north. Each day the sun seems trapped behind a heavy layer of clouds, and snow begins to spiral down from the gray, bottomless sky.
We rise late each morning, neither of us wanting to brave the cold of the house, but Clay is always first to slip free from the blankets, kissing my forehead, then making his way downstairs to start a fire in the stove.
By the time I dress, pull on wool socks, and enter the kitchen, it’s at least mildly warm.
Our newly planted crop begins to wither as snow dusts the soil. But thankfully, inside the greenhouse, the temperature remains tepid. We manage to harvest fresh green onions, root vegetables, and handfuls of tomatoes. The fishing is good along the shore, mostly yellowfin tuna and Atlantic cod.
But the days feel unending, and my mind settles into a kind of somber certainty: that we will likely remain in the cold for months, maybe a whole year, before the winds push us south again.
And yet, there is something beautiful about the glacial sea, the dark, biting wind always hissing under the front door, always licking at our necks when we step outside. It feels like our wind, our life, our sea. The constant harshness of it.
Until one evening, standing at the kitchen window, peeling potato skins into the sink, I notice something glinting out on the water.
I dry my hands on a towel and walk to the back door, stepping out into the cold.
I don’t bother grabbing a coat. I walk in my bare feet down the path to the slope that drops down to the rocks below.
The light outside is dull, the sun beginning to set, and I lift a hand over my eyes.
I’ve been fooled before into thinking there is something out on the sea, when it’s only the waves shaping themselves into something they are not.
But this illusion remains, even after I blink.
It slips in and out of focus as the ocean swells upward, then reappears when the sea dips back down again.
Land.
A hard knot tightens in my chest.
This long stretch of mainland is different from before.
It stirs a memory inside me, distant but known.
I fold my arms over my chest, against the chill, and watch as the winds push us closer with each surge of the tide.
The evening sky grows darker, and a lighthouse comes into view, pulsing rhythmically from a jetty.
A short distance away, I make out a harbor just up the coast, the masts of sailboats rising like limbless trees.
This isn’t like finding the deserted beach.
There are people here, a town. A community.
Alive.
As the last of the daylight vanishes below the sea, lights string up along the shore. Homes dotting the coastline.
“Ellie?” Clay’s voice finds me.
I sense him moving up behind me, stopping on the rocks.
“Where are we?” I ask.
He is quiet, but there is a knowing in the silence. Something he doesn’t want to say.
The lights of the shore get brighter, closer, and my eyes trace the jetty, the shape of it, the soft slope of the shoreline like a bow, arching back on itself.
Just like…
An old place I remember. A life, long ago.
My eyes flick to him. “Are we back?”
“Aye.”
He touches me, but I don’t react. I’m staring at the shoreline, counting off the row of homes, until I find the one.
“Nana.”
Before we’ve even run aground, before the island reaches the jetty like it did all those years ago when I was just a kid, I’m pushing our little bamboo raft down into the water.
“Ye cannae go alone,” Clay is saying, but I’m already scrambling onto the raft, reaching for the oar. “Ellie,” he says, louder this time. “The island hasn’t stopped moving, it might get tugged back out to sea.”
“I know.” My eyes meet his, panic rising in my chest. “But I have to see if she’s there. I have to try.”
Clay’s face tenses in the dark, then he nods as he steps aboard the raft.
“Clay—” I start to say.
“I’m coming with ye.”