not in the place she’d left it for. Yet this is where she died and where I will stay. Before that death, she took steps to understand it, spun new spells with the knowledge, and gave them to us along with the old ones. I will continue her work.
My sisters do not see this about our future, but the truth is that I am the one that will be feared. The town will be as powerless as this hake I hold under my tongue. I and my line of daughters will chew and swallow it in time. And each time we spit it back up it will be cud, digested a bit further, broken down and changed to something new. Until we can use it to give us the energy to stay alive when the ocean rises to claim us and survival grows harder still.
These are a few of her new weathering spells for storms: When a storm rolls in, try your utmost to beat the front to your doorway and stay home until it spends itself. If home is too far, find a place that someone or some-thing calls home and shelter there—a hollow tree, a chicken coop, a rat’s nest in a quahog-shell midden. Always leave some space bare so that you may watch the storm spend itself. Do not hide behind heavy shutters or in a cellar. If the storm is out of the west or the south it will be seen coming from a long way off. So, stay knee-deep in the water and fish or call in crabs or strip mussels from rocks until the storm is almost upon you. Then retreat through the doorway and clean, cook, and eat this catch with an eye on the storm. If the storm barrels out of the northeast, keep a fire burning in the hearth throughout. If it brings snow, eat only the dandelion blades and crowns being forced in pots of clay-earth in your cellar. If it brings a surge, bare your feet while you watch and keep them bare until your first step back on the earth when the surge recedes. If it is a gentle storm, go about your business, but avoid singing, humming, or whistling it into something stronger.
There is something that we share knowledge of that is darker even than our mother’s squid-ink hair. Though we can try to stay above the water, we cannot escape our fate beneath it. Even now, waiting to see what will become of our
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