The Forge was dark overhead, and the stones under Abbie’s feet were turning cold again. Waves lapped at her toes. She stared out over the water, thinking about the girl from the fields.
The girl had arrived at the Shore along with two older women. They’d entered the village at fullsong, and the Forge’s brightness had made the girl’s blue eyes glitter like the silvery belly scales of a blueback fish. Abbie had tried not to stare, but no matter how she’d distracted herself, her gaze kept finding its way back to those eyes.
When the girl spoke, it was with a farmer’s rolling cadence, whereas the women had a more clipped, efficient way of speaking. They reminded Abbie of the mountain traders that came down to the Shore every verse or two. The two women were clearly sisters, and Abbie assumed the girl was the daughter of one or the other.
Abbie had barely contained a sudden urge to sing for the girl. Years under her parents’ tutelage had given her a horror of unrestrained songs, which might swell the sea or call a plague of fish lice, but the swell inside her had tested the limits of her restraint.
The memory made her chest tighten, and she forced her mind away from it. She focused instead on the water as it washed up over the rocks and trickled back down, cacophonous yet rhythmic, all-encompassing. It offered her mind a little relief from the unfamiliar feelings the girl had stirred in her. She breathed in sync with it, inhaling in long, slow draws, exhaling the same way, consciously controlling each breath.
She began to play a game her mother had taught her, matching not just the rhythm but as many water-noises as she could manage. Waves against stone was too complex to ever match it perfectly, but Abbie had played this game her whole life, and she could sound more like the sea than most of the Shorefolk.
It helped that the water responded to her. She had both skill and natural ability with song, and it allowed her a little influence over the water. This, too, was a place where she excelled even amongst her people, whose whole lives were lived in harmony with the sea.
The waves nearest her shifted subtly. Abbie doubted the women from the fields, or wherever they’d come from, would even have noticed. But she was Shorefolk, and knew the ways water responded to song. The trickles running over the stone, too, shifted a little, the sounds softening and smoothing, so that cacophony turned towards harmony.
Without thinking, Abbie began to sing.
If you’ve come back to me, my love,
With promises of finery,
I’ll send you back to sea, my love
I’ve no more use for thee
If you’ve come back to atone, my love,
With dreams and such after you’ve roamed,
I’ll send you back alone, my love
For this is not your home
And though I’ve offered you my heart
And though I’ve offered you my name
Time’s driven us apart
Our hearts no more the same
If you’ve –
Abbie stopped and squinted into the dark. Her pulse quickened. Out across the rolling water, a black line was building on the horizon. Rocks clattered away as she scrambled to her feet and began to run towards the nearest row of houses.