The surface parted around the boat hook, and a shape resolved beneath—a thick, barnacle-armored link, too regular to be rock and too heavy to be anything made for a skiff like his.
Eli eased back and tried again from a different angle. The hook caught, slipped, caught—then held. He pulled until his shoulders sang and the link rose slow, shedding weeds like a dog shaking off rain.
Iron. Big iron. Each link as wide as his palm span, fused with time, dark as a storm that never learned to leave. It felt wrong in the daylight, like a secret that didn’t know how to be small.
He looped a spare line through and made it fast to the cleat. The skiff listed, objecting. Whatever lay below weighed more than his reasons for curiosity, which only ever made him more curious.
On the horizon, the lighthouse blinked its morning indifference. Eli checked the weather, checked the tide, checked his nerve. The last one was the only gauge that never read steady.
He thought of Maggie’s old warning—There’s knowing, Eli, and there’s prying. The sea forgives one of those. He’d married her anyway, and ignored the rest as needed.
The chain knocked the hull again, three deliberate taps, as if answering a question he hadn’t asked out loud. He felt it in the bones of the skiff and a little farther in.
He sat back on the thwart, breath shallow, and understood he’d found a story that wanted to be told by someone who wouldn’t stop listening.
