Her Father's Poison

an by one in the morning. I had copied it out myself that afternoon, the lamp hissing at my elbow, my father'

ht, I was already on the wharf with my coat buttone

, and if you know the hand, you know the night. I had read the water since I was six years old, sitting on my mother's lap in the pilot boat with he

e water said

esting a fence. The fog lay on the harbor in a thick white fleece, and the foghorn at the point sounded twice and sto

n on a handkerchief, a smell I had not met in the ha

a yellow circle onto the water, and past the edge of the circle, out where the bar should have been

outh began to toll, pull

e the fog closed over the wharf behind me. The current took the bow and turned it toward the bar, and I let it, b

aundry, and her name washed away under a scum of foam and splintered wood. She was not a Tidal boat. No p

. A curse, low and even, the way a man swears whe

the edge of the boat, and then a head, then shoulders. The man hauled himself up the side of the skiff with

his eyes they were light brown, the color of strong tea held up to a lamp. Water ran off his

t any surprise at all, which told m

t to be out rowing," h

t I was, and no one in Tidal Bay had to say the word out

ow. "And no one else would come out onto the bar in this fog for a st

I shoul

t any heat, as if it were simply o

on and wood finding each other. I grabbed the stern line and got the boat turned, and I rowed us back toward the harbo

saw that his eyelashes were long and dark, and that there was a half smile on him

nt to know what was

hen I leaned over the side, and my wolf had sneezed and shaken herself, and I knew the green bite of it. I had sm

smile did

your name

oa

steady on the oars. That surprised me. "

oked at the dark water slipping past us. "The pric

etween the fish house and the old boathouse, where the lamp does not reach. He climbed out

watched him lift his head and take them in,

s it?"

ill, and the windows where the lamps burned in my father's rooms, and h

comes down the hill. If they find you here with me

ough to make my hands curl, but he only brought out a small flat tin, beaten and dented, sealed with wax. He held it out to me. "

t chart. It

arm and into my chest and set off something behind my ribs like a struck match. I felt my wolf come to her feet and turn h

r into the dark between the buildings, and the fog closed over him, and I stoo

pped the pilings. Th

ith a mark I had seen a hundred times, stamped into

rk of my fath