The mud flats twinkled with the light of a million stars above us in the darkest sky I’d ever seen. Emma knelt beside a salty tributary. It ran in a sandy rut from shore to sea, or at least to the deeper and murkier water waiting to rush back over the sand when the tide came in. A trapped fish—a tiny pollock, from its silver scales—wriggled furiously, its world suddenly narrowed to a salty but barely wet gully.
“I can’t believe you’re leaving tomorrow,” Emma said. Already the nights had turned colder—it was just September, but her purple skullcap was pulled down tight over her ears. Despite the chill, she insisted on going barefoot, as if encased in slick seal skin instead of human fragility. Her feet were pale, nearly blue. Asking her if she wanted to put her shoes back on would be met with amusement, so I let her be. If she wanted to warm up, she would. She didn’t need my anxiety heaped over her—not when we had other things to worry about.
I wasn’t used to the abrupt turn of weather or the frozen low tides. My blood ran warm, and hers—apparently—ran icy. I was wrapped in wool and denim and fleece, head to toe, and none of it helped.
“I’d like you to stay, Jeannie,” she said. “Can’t you stay?”
I was a shivering, chattering mess, and her request made it worse.
“Tourist season is over.” I tried to keep my voice from shaking. “My aunt’s lease is up at the shop, and the landlord won’t let us stay any longer.”
“It’s the ice.” Emma popped up and twirled along the seabed, hands upraised to the dark sky and toes ripping through the small stands of sea water. It was new moon, but the stars were bright enough to spotlight her dancing and dipping. The flame of her red hair bushing out of her hat made it look like a fireball tumbled along the sand.
“What about the ice?” I watched her, stuffing down a well of longing. It would do me no good to want what I couldn’t have.
“Homer Spit is so narrow,” she said, as though that explained everything. When I didn’t answer, she added, “The winds blow pretty fierce over the road and up the shoreline—and with the waves coming so high, and the weather so cold from here on out, it doesn’t take much to freeze the pipes and ice everything up. No one in town is willing to risk coming out this way. Well, no one except the fishermen—that’s why the bar at the end of the spit stays open year-round. They’ll endure anything for a beer.”
The sound of my laugh echoed off the stands of long, flat rocks. They were usually hidden underwater. The surfaces were still slick, algae clinging to the corners, refusing to let go, even for a second. I could understand the compulsion.
Emma plucked something out of the sand and slid it into her pocket. “I’ll admit, there’s not much to do in the off-season—you’d be bored. Still, we’d make our own fun. Shake things up a little.” She paused. “It the night to set your intentions, you know.”
The way she said it—intentions—it was like I’d never heard the word before. “It is?”
“It’s the new moon.” Her voice was firm. She sounded so far away. “A night for manifesting our desires.”
“You sound like those people who go to bore tide parties and the full moon festivals. My aunt says things are tourist schlock.”
The smile in Emma’s voice was clear when she said, “Some of it is. But intention-setting and manifesting are just the same as wishing or saying a prayer. And I wish for so much right now.”
“So…like going to church? Church on the beach?”
“Sure, we can think of it like that.” Her bare feet struck wet sand and puddles, and suddenly she stood tall in front of me. “I’ve learned some things—it’s not quite like church, but it’s not…I don’t know. It’s not like other things.”
I would miss this when my aunt and I left—the way Emma talked in circles and didn’t quite answer questions, yet still made me curious enough to want to know more. The way her hair looked in starlight. The way her words were so pretty in the night air. I’d be back on the east coast in a week or so, far from Alaska, and there would be no one like her.
“So what is it like then?” I asked, just to hear her speak again.
“We live with nature. We live with the sea and the salmon and the moose and the kittiwakes. The bald eagles and the otters. The whales. Or, I should say, we are allowed to live with nature. It’s different here.”
“Here as in Homer? Or here as in Alaska as a whole?”
“Homer, I think. But intention-setting came long before there were gods to worship. It’s just putting what you want out into the world and hoping it comes true. Manifesting our deepest desires.”
I smiled. “It’s a nice idea. If only prayers and wishes worked.”
Emma flipped her hair over her shoulder. “Maybe yours haven’t, but others’ wishes have come to pass. Last summer I wished for you, right here on this beach, and here you are. Maybe this is just a lucky spot. I don’t know.”
I wrinkled my nose and touched her hand. She was sweet, so sweet. “Do I have to remind you that there are tsunami warnings all up and down the spit. I know Homer has earthquakes. People die from silly accidents. That doesn’t exactly strike me as lucky.”
“Luck is what you make it. Perhaps you simply have to make the right offerings to the universe.”
“Offerings. What, like animal sacrifice?” I laughed.
Emma smiled, but she was dead serious when she said, “I’ve seen intentions specified with bird feathers—some with animals caught or hunted. It depends on what you wish for, I guess. The strength of the wish you’re manifesting.” She dipped her toe into the pool where the pollock still frantically squirmed. “This fish, for instance. We’ve been talking about wanting you to stay in Homer, and this fish has been witness. It would make a strong inclusion in our spellwork.”
“Spellwork? Isn’t that witchcraft?”
“Semantics. Spellwork is the same as prayer. It’s the same as yearning. It’s intention work.”
“You can keep saying intention this and intention that, but I doubt that fish intends on dying. Look how hard he’s working to get back to the ocean.” The pollock surged forward, eager to find its way to a larger pool of water.
Emma’s eyes sparkled. “I just don’t want you to go, Jeannie. I know I keep saying that, and so do you…that’s what I want. I want you to stay.”
Her lips were soft on mine then. Without thinking much about it, I nudged the pollock out of its stream. It flopped beside us, its tail slapping sharply at the sand. I kissed her again. I closed my eyes and wished as hard as I could. A flat tire on the RV. A sudden storm that froze us in for weeks. A fire over the Sterling Highway mountain pass that would making the way impossible. Even to crawl inside her skin and hide there until the spring thaw, where no one could find me.
Emma knelt abruptly and slipped the now-still fish into her hand. She held out her other hand to me. “Let’s go build the offering then. We’ll see what desires we can put out into the world.”
The tide seemed to rise behind us as we walked ashore, water creeping inward bit by bit. I shivered and pulled my scarf tighter against my throat as the wind picked up against my back. “How does this work?”
“You’ll see,” she said. “Walk along the beach and collect whatever treasures you find—driftwood, shells, seaweed, bones. Whatever you run across. Meet me back here in five minutes.”
So I did. I took off my mittens and stooped to pick up a pearly white shell, then a piece of flotsam. The water had brought back small pieces of the places it had traveled to—the coves near Seldovia, maybe as far away as the Gulf of Alaska or the Bering Sea. Water moved fast here. There was no telling how much of Kachemak Bay’s volume emptied and all the places it had seeped into. Whatever Emma and I were wishing for—asking the sea and the land and the birds to grant us—would fragments of our intentions one day end up on the shores of Russia? Or even as far as away as Japan? I imagined my scarf floating in the ocean all that way.
I laughed to myself. The sound carried over the contracting mud flats. I should leave those fancies to Emma. She was so much better at it.
Before I turned around to meet her, I looked out along the returning water. No matter what we wished for, tomorrow morning my aunt would start up the RV, and we would go. Emma would be here to say goodbye. I would cling to her like my soul would leave my body if I let go. And it would feel that way down to my bones. But my aunt would holler, “Let’s get this show on the road,” and that would be that. I would stare hard out the window, watching Emma as we drove away. Intention-setting or no, it would be nothing more than wishful thinking. I wanted to believe like Emma believed, but I didn’t live in a world where things like that were possible.
Still, I could pretend—just for one night.
I zig-zagged over the beach, my fingers burning with cold and sorrow. They were so stiff I could barely pick up the dried starfish half buried under the sand.
By the time I arrived at our meeting spot, Emma was already arranging short lengths of weathered wood in a circle the size of a manhole cover. She sat cross-legged, skirt spread over her still-bare feet. She inspected each item I handed her, her smile growing larger with each one.
“This is perfect.” She laid the tiny pollock in the center of circle, then added the starfish and the shell next to it.
“What can I do?”
“Stay right where you are.”
She completed the circle with a ring of seaweed and dried moss, a handful of bright white seashells, and a sprinkling of crumbling pinecones. She tucked a handful of feathers here and there. Sprigs of red berries. She lined the entire circle with the stones she’d collected and laid one last piece of driftwood over top.
“That’s really pretty,” I said.
“Just like you.”
The tide had entirely returned to the bay. It licked up the sand, retreated and advanced over and over again. The wind whipped my dark hair into my face. It tasted of salt.
“Would you stand in front of me so I can light this,” Emma said. I moved around the circle and shielded her from the wind. She struck her lighter to flame. It flickered but held long enough to set the top pieces of driftwood on fire. She glanced up at me. Her face was bathed in weak orange light. She gestured to the ground beside her.
“Did anyone tell you the ghost story about this stretch of beach?” she said as I folded myself down to sit. The fire spread, contained within the ring of pebbles.
I shook my head. Sparks cascaded off the wood and seaweed like tiny sprays of starlight. She lowered herself to the sand and huddled against me.
“You’ve seen the Seafarer’s Memorial at the end of the spit?”
I nodded. If I closed my eyes I could picture it—right off Otter Beach stood a small concrete structure, six pillars holding up a copper roof, and morose statue of a fisherman grasping a dock line and glaring at the road. And to the side was a separate concrete pedestal, three arches supporting an old bell.
Emma tilted her head toward the end of the spit. The memorial light glowed dimly in the distance. “Inside are the names of fisherman lost at sea are engraved on plaques that are mounted to the pillars. The date they died and the name of the boat or ship are also listed. There’s one plaque that’s missing though.”
“What happened to it?”
“No one quite knows. It looks as though it was pried up, wrenched right off the pillar, bolts and all. The story I’ve always heard is that the man to whom the plaque belonged died on board his ship and left behind a woman here on the spit.”
“So the woman took the plaque then?” I shivered.
“Maybe. The reason I’m telling you this story is because more than one person has said that on cold, dark nights like this one, they’ve seen a ghostly fisherman walking this shore and staring out to the bay.” She gestured to the water.
I followed the direction of her hand with my eyes. The stars outlined the hulking black profile of the peaks. I knew from seeing them in the daylight that they were snowcapped, and often obscured by fog even on the brightest of days. It was a wildlife refuge, for the most part, with a small airport and a few tiny towns clinging to the very edge of the land.
“For years, the woman refused to believe she would never see him again. And so on nights—again, on nights like this one—she would come out to the Seafarer’s Memorial and wait for him. A bunch of fisherman found her dead there one morning. Died of hypothermia.”
“Maybe you should put some shoes on.”
“Watch for them tonight. The lost fisherman and his lady. The both of them. Legend has it that they reunite here—on this beach. If they appear to you, your soul will belong here in Homer. Maybe more than your soul. That is what I am manifesting for us both. To be intertwined here together forever, like them.”
“That’s a little spooky,” I said. “So what happens then? Let’s say we both see these ghosts. Is it just that I’ll find a way to come back to Homer to be with you?”
“There were two kids from the high school. They came out here looking for the ghosts. They were never seen again.”
“They probably just ran off together. People do that. We could do that maybe.”
Emma smiled. The fire was more smoke than flame now. It twirled up into the wind. “There’s nowhere we could go and not be found. Not really. All I’m asking is that you watch tonight. Keep an eye out. I’ve called them with our circle.” She pointed to the embers. “And I’ve set my intentions to see them, to be with you forever. We’ll both be tied here forever.”
“And maybe dead.”
“I like to think of it more as immortal.”
“It’s a nice idea…sort of.”
We watched the circle smolder. Emma watched the beach. I stared at the bay, at the waves dancing closer and closer to shore. It grew late. When there was nothing left, she sighed and climbed to her feet. We kicked sand over the burned circle.
“I’m going to head out the Seafarer’s Memorial to see what I can see.” Emma kissed me softly. “Will you come with me?”
“I can’t. My aunt will pitch a fit.” My nose prickled with the rush of emotion building behind my forehead.
“Okay. I’ll see you in the morning.” She leaned in and whispered into my ear. “I will keep watch. Will you?”
My aunt was securing the last of her store inventory when I finally shut the RV door behind me. She pretended she didn’t see my tear-stained face, just as I pretended not to hate her just a little for not giving me another few days with Emma—or at least another hour or two on the beach with her.
“Why don’t you take the bedroom?” she said without looking at me. “I don’t want to wake you in the morning if I don’t have to—I’ll sleep on the sofa…up here.”
That was as close to an acknowledgement of the situation as I was likely to get. She didn’t like the messiness of emotions. When child protective services dropped me at her RV doorstep two years ago, she patted me on the shoulder and showed me where to sleep. She never asked me about what had happened with my parents, but maybe she didn’t need to. Maybe she simply didn’t have time: she was due for a run of festivals in Texas, and so the next day I woke up on the road, the scenery bumping by outside the window.
I nodded to her and headed back to the bedroom, slid the rickety folding door closed. My life was so small inside this room. I felt like the pollock, trapped in a gully, barely enough water to keep me alive. Outside with Emma, that’s where my world was biggest. I had the bay and the stars and Emma’s ghost story, her belief that one only need to want something badly enough for it to happen. I pulled the curtain back and peered out the back window. Emma was already gone. Not even the tail lights of her car glowed down the spit road. I could imagine her huddled at the memorial, wishing into the winds that now shook the RV.
I changed into my bedclothes. The wind whipped even more. I imagined it was the fisherman and his woman, coming to keep me in Homer with Emma—but neither were there when I looked out the window again. I stayed up all night with my head propped against the small side window that gave me a view of the beach and, in the distance, the seafarer’s memorial. I kept watch for as long as I could, hoping for any sign of the ghosts, even if that did mean death. Maybe it would be worth it if it meant an eternity with Emma. I kept watch for any sign of her, too, hoping she would give up before it got too cold.
All I saw were the dark heads of sleek seals swimming out to the end of the spit.
When I heard my aunt clunking around the kitchen in the morning, preparing to leave, I threw on a pair of jeans and a sweater. The light was coming up blue across the water, silhouetting the fishing boats heading out for the day. Emma would be coming soon.
“Eat a good breakfast,” my aunt said when I appeared. “We’re not stopping until we get to Anchorage. From there we’ll drive up to Tok to catch the 2, then pick up the 1 again when we cross over into Canada. It’ll be a long drive to Beaver Creek—I think we’ll stop there for the night.”
I didn’t care about any of that. I poured a bowl a cereal for myself and bundled up to eat outside at the picnic table next to the RV. The day grew brighter, but still the clouds clung overhead. The sound of the surf ebbing and flowing was a constant reminder of each second passing. Each car that whizzed down the spit had me sitting up, shading my eyes to see if it was hers. My stomach clenched more and more with each one that passed until I couldn’t have eaten another bite of cereal even if I wanted to.
An ambulance, lights blazing, raced down the spit. Another name to the add to the seafarer’s memorial, perhaps. Fishermen were always spearing themselves on hooks or having heart attacks, being washed overboard.
I thumbed in a message for Emma on my phone: Leaving soon. Coming?
When there wasn’t a reply, I climbed into the RV, washed out my bowl, and secured it in the cupboard.
“I’m heading out to disconnect our water and electricity hook-up,” my aunt said.
She’d never announced that kind of thing before. She was giving me notice.
I texted Emma again and went to put away my things in the bathroom. I remembered what I’d imagined the night before. Emma would be here to say goodbye. I would cling to her like my soul would leave my body if I let go. And it would feel that way down to my bones.
The RV door opened, and my aunt called, “Jeannie, come outside, please.”
Emma had come after all. I smiled and straightened my hair, my sweater. I took a step into the cold air, expecting to see her twirling over the sand. Instead, a cop car was pulling away, leaving my aunt with her hands shoved into the pockets of her parka. She turned and her face was set.
“Honey, something bad happened. They found Emma’s body at the memorial down the road. She must have fallen asleep. It was just too cold last night.”
I didn’t hear anything more than that. I turned and followed our footsteps in the sand out to the water, past our burned circle that we’d offered up to the night sky. My chest fought against the wind for air. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t blink. Tears chilled on my cheeks until my aunt bundled me up in a blanket and led me away from the bay.
She was saying something I couldn’t understand—I couldn’t understand anything. But then I heard Emma’s voice calling me from down the shore. I twisted out of the blanket. There was a flash of red hair, and there she was, dancing over the waves, skirt flying all around her. The closer she came, the further away I was.
I glanced away only for only a few seconds, but when I looked back she was gone—and I knew. She had found the fisherman. She had found the woman who’d waited for him all those years. Her soul was bound to Homer forever—and mine would be, too. I set my intention and wished as hard as I had ever wished for anything.
My aunt bundled me up again and got me into the RV. My face was raw and cold—wet from the waves or wet from my tears, I couldn’t tell. It’s all just salt. The engine started, and she jolted us out of our space, hurtling toward the highway.
She was still talking. I refused to hear her.
I would return, no matter what. I would find them this time—all three of them, on a chilly night, just like the one last night. I would search every night until my soul was stitched to Homer. Until my intentions were manifested, and my skin thawed. Until I grew silver scales, just like the pollock, and found my way from shore to sea.
Nicole M. Wolverton is a Pushcart-nominated writer in the Philadelphia, Pennsylvania area. Her debut YA horror novel A MISFORTUNE OF LAKE MONSTERS is forthcoming in 2024 (CamCat Books); she is also the author of the adult thriller THE TRAJECTORY OF DREAMS (Bitingduck Press, 2013) and editor of BODIES FULL OF BURNING, an anthology of short horror fiction (Sliced Up Press, 2021). Her short stories and creative nonfiction have appeared in dozens publications.