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Wren of the Lighthouse
Forty days ago the tide came in over Saltmarrow and never went out, and the whole town walked into the sea to meet boats that were never coming home. Now the last lighthouse keeper has one night, a boathook and the only flame left on the coast to fight back through the drowned streets, pull the tide out, and lead her neighbors — and her daughter — back to the light.
Saltmarrow is a fishing town under a lighthouse on a cold coast. On the fortieth night of spring the fleet went out and did not come back; that night the tide came in over the harbor wall and never went out again, and the townsfolk walked into the sea — they said afterwards they could hear the boats coming home, and turned every lantern on the wall to meet them. They came back as the Drowned, grey and kelp-hung, waiting in the shallows with lanterns in their eyes, and the lighthouse lens went dark. Wren Halloway, the keeper, stayed: her father's trawler was with the fleet, her daughter walked with the town. The game is her one night's walk back to the lighthouse through six districts — the tidal flats, the flooded streets of Low Town, a boneyard of wrecked ships, the cliff cemetery, the flooding tower and its lamp-room gallery — relighting the five wick-stones that draw the tide back and the lens's flame home. What she learns on the way is that the Drowned are not hunting her light; they are following it home, and the thing that took them, a salt-crusted hunger under the harbor, is following it too.
