A welcome thing that put an awkward half smile on Saul's face.Ĭharlie'd barely stirred as Saul had gotten up, dressed, made eggs for breakfast. A new thing this, not agreed to with words, but with Charlie pulling him back to bed when he'd been about to put on his clothes and leave. Saul had lived in the lighthouse for four years before he'd met Charlie, and he lived there still, but last night he'd stayed in the village a half mile away, in Charlie's cottage.

The brisk, fresh salt smell to the air had an edge of flame: a burning smell from some nearby house or still-smoldering bonfire. Blackbirds plunged the thin branches of trees down, exploded upward in panic at his passage, settled back into garrulous communities. To his right, the ponds were dark with the muttering complaints of grebes and buffleheads. Driftwood and bottles and faded white buoys and a dead hammerhead shark had washed up in the aftermath, tangled among snarls of seaweed, but no real damage either here or in the village.Īt his feet lay bramble and the thick gray of thistles that would bloom purple in the spring and summer. There had been a storm the night before, and down and to his left, the ocean lay gray and roiling against the dull blue of the sky, seen through the rustle and sway of the sea oats. That winter morning, the wind was cold against the collar of Saul Evans's coat as he trudged down the trail toward the lighthouse. Sighted: pelicans, moorhens, some kind of warbler, blackbirds beyond number, sanderlings, a royal tern, an osprey, flickers, cormorants, bluebirds, pigmy rattlesnake (at the fence-remember), rabbit or two, white-tailed deer, and near dawn, on the trail, many an armadillo. Also need nails and to check the western siren again. Need to requisition paint for daymark-black eroded on seaward side. Overhauled the lens machinery and cleaned the lens.

Acceptance by Jeff VanderMeer