Sect Year 5 · first month · night of day 27 · the forty-first life: Coil Cove, her thirtieth year
Colm Reel had been talking since before the bell, and by the time the grey light came up over the Point he had talked himself into a berth and out of the house, or so it seemed to Sefa. He stood by the table with his sea-bag open on the bench and a shirt in each hand, and he was still explaining.
“Two seasons on the wrecks, the master says, and the Point’s deep water is where the money is. The Ebb Wren’s got grapnels that can lift a mast out of the weed. She came in last night on the evening tide. The master stood right there, at the door. He said my name the way you’d say a fish you’d caught by accident.”
“He said that?”
“He said something like it.” Colm folded one shirt, unfolded it, and folded it again. “I said yes before he’d finished. You’d have liked to see his face.”
Sefa was at the hearth with the kettle in her hand. She set it on the iron and watched the water begin to tick against the sides. Thirty years old, she thought, and thirteen of those spent in this house with the net-hooks on the wall and the crooked shutter that Colm’s father had hung and never once rehung.
