He dropped the gaff and stumbled backward. The voice wasn’t memory; it was air—wet, whispering through fog that now carried the scent of lilac, Maggie’s scent, impossible this far from land.
“You shouldn’t have pulled it,” the voice said again, closer this time. He spun, but no one was there—only mist coiling against the rails, shaping a suggestion of shoulders, of hair caught in wind that wasn’t blowing.
“I didn’t mean to,” he said aloud, and the words fell heavy. The chain below answered with a low vibration, echoing through his chest like another heartbeat joining his own.
The figure leaned closer, all shimmer and absence. “Then put it back.”
He shook his head. “It’s gone. It’s always gone.” The mist shivered, maybe laughing, maybe breaking apart. For a second he saw her face—not as he remembered but as the sea did, perfect and unfinished.
Lightning cracked far off, the sound lagging behind. He blinked, and she was gone. Only the glow remained, pulsing steady and patient like a wound deciding whether to close.
He fell to his knees, gripping the rail until splinters bit. “You want it back?” he whispered. “Then take it.”
The chain below responded—not with sound, but motion, rising faster than before, dragging everything that had ever been his toward the surface.
