By the time she spotted the shore, if it could be called that, Miranda had half given up on ever spotting land again. The fog hadn’t lifted for over a week and from what she could tell, the mariners were navigating by faith alone. No sky was visible, yet alone a star and there was no coastline to follow. She pretended she hadn’t seen one of the men, the one in charge of plotting the course, throwing runes below deck. It made her question the wisdom of coming out in the fjords, following what some would consider worse advice than that found in runes.

She leaned out over the deck, the land drawing her forward like a magnet as the fog parted, leaving only a sinuous line of clouds that reminded her all too much of a snake guarding its prey. A strong hand on her shoulder pulled her back and she scowled.

“Don’t get too excited, they’ll take you overboard.” His eyes flicked down to the waterline before they went back to scanning the mountains. “Would hate to lose you so close to the end.”

His laugh, low and like scrapping boulders, was joined by a few of his men on deck.

Miranda didn’t find him, or the dark roiling shapes under the sea’s surface, amusing. “Don’t worry, you’ll get paid.”

“I don’t worry,” he replied as he turned. “Waste of time…as is going into the mists,” he added more quietly so only she could hear him.

Everyone said going into the mists was a waste of time. Especially for a woman. Especially for a woman with no sea experience, no business out in the wilds. But she’d studied more than anyone she knew, watched the signs better than anyone had ever recorded, and she knew there was a pass through the mists, one that had to be reached before the siren songs of war reached the edges of her homeland. It was the only way.

Miranda forced herself to look away from the sea demons below the water, to ignore the snickers from the men behind her on deck, and raised her hand as if she could part the mists still clinging to the rough edges of the mountains yet to be climbed. The sky trembled and, after three weeks at sea, she smiled. She would find the pass yet.

Almost everyone in the world has seen dewdrops on the grass. Those sparkling spheres which make fields shine with light reflecting off facets of jewels. It is a fleeting thing, a gift from dawn, recalled by a jealous noonday sun. 

They are nothing more than water droplets anyway. Pretty but unnecessary, like the changing colors of the trees’ leaves in autumn… 

My teacher looks up from reading my reflections on the dew. Her eyes, all-seeing, never revealing her thoughts, behind glasses as thick as the bottom of mason jars used for canning.

“Is that so?” Her question short, but I know not easy to answer.

“Is what so?” I have no idea where she’s paused in reading or what has caught her attention. Other students still try to interpret her expressions. I do not. Asking is far simpler and more efficient.

“That the dewdrops are merely water beads.” She looks at me and asks, “Is that what you believe?”

“Of course. It’s been proven.”

“Ah. Yes, proof is good. So different than belief.”

I frown, sensing I am stepping into a trap, but not sure what I can do. My heart is pounding and my ears begin to ring.

“What do you think dewdrops are then?” trying to sound as philosophical as her. Answer a question with a question. Always safe.

She stands and hands back my paper as she takes off her glasses with her other hand, hanging them on the beaded chain around her neck.

“Why the multiplicity of worlds, of course. What else could they be?” Then she smiles and walks out of the room.

I look at my paper and should be happy it is marked with a passing grade. I feel failure as I walk home that night and the heat of anger. How could I be so foolish to study under her? Someone who is clearly not all together, at least not anymore.

I glare the next morning at the field covered in dew and walk over, bending low so I am a mere hair’s breadth from the dew.

I gasp and run from the field all the way to my seat in the hall. My teacher says nothing, but simply writes out the next assignment for the day. I know she knows, but will say nothing, as surely as I know I have seen a world in a drop of dew.

Everyone gets desperate enough at some time to consider swimming out to the island with the dead tree.

Children whisper about it at night, under covers, with windows and doors locked tight, daring one another to swim out to the island. One might even dip their toes in the water the next day to the background of worried tittering from their friends that sounds like bushtits slipping between the hedges. But even when the summer sun beats down making the sand on the beach too hot for comfort and they swim in the bay, splashing each other with the still cold water, none of them swim out to the island. And they stay out of its shadow.

Young ones, not children and not yet old enough to have the cares of the world etched on their faces, talk about the island. After heartbreak, or failure, or deep sorrow that pools in the marrow of their veins. Sometimes one dives into the bay, fully clothed and swims mindlessly towards the island, but their heart turns cold and their eyes clear before they touch the rocky shore. They come back, or at least most of them do.

Adults are more reckless and careless, throwing around the island with the dead tree in conversation like a verbal tick or curse. They think nothing of it, but neither do they pause for long at the shore staring at the island like the younger ones do. Because there is a strange pull in their bellies at the sight of the island. They do not talk about this.

Old ones do not talk about the island. There is nothing more to say that hasn’t been said, no more dares to make than have already been made. They slip out of their houses that no longer contain multitudes in clothes that are more barren than threaded at night, when the moon is half-full, and they come to the shore. And sometimes, one swims all the way to the island, amazed their limbs are still strong enough to fight the tide and the cold.

And every once in a while, one will place their hands on the rocks and climb on the shore to face the tree and ask of it what they will.

And these ones do not come back. But they leave behind a blossom on the tree that is dead that can be seen from shore, though no one talks about that. But everyone gets desperate enough at some time.

“She’s just like her mother.”

It’s what they whispered when they thought she couldn’t hear them or when they didn’t care. It was an insult, although if pushed they’d say it was simply fact. She was just like her mother.

Except she wasn’t.

But in a small village, where everyone knew everybody, you couldn’t tell anyone that they didn’t know everything about everyone.

But they didn’t.

Before her mother left (died), she’d told Hazel that there was always a staircase, somewhere, when you needed it. It was just the thing her mother would say. Vague and confusing if you thought about it too long, but comforting if you didn’t. She didn’t believe her mother, though, and thought she was having a laugh.

Though she wasn’t.

After days spent trying to show everyone she was nothing like her mother—not strange, or fantastical, or odd, just a girl like everyone else—Hazel ran into the woods and in the dappled sunlight of the canopy she screamed. Her shriek flushed the sparrows from their roosts and seemed to shake the earth beneath her feet.

But it hadn’t.

Instead it had shook loose the stairs. Hazel rubbed her eyes with the heels of her hands, but the staircase was still there, disappearing into the woods where a staircase had never been.

But it had, once before.

And without a second thought (most unlike her mother), Hazel bounded up the stairs not caring where they led as long as it was away.

And they did.

Evelyn loved storms. She loved the way the thunder rolled across the valley. It was like the wind had transformed its motion into sound. She loved how it reverberated against her chest and made the windowpanes shake. She loved the lightening that came after and counted to see how far away it was, how long she had to wait for the eye of the storm to settle in the valley. It made even the shadows of the well-worn buildings in her village new. And, she loved the rain. The winter deluges that swept away the hardpacked dirt from the sidewalks and the dust from the roofs.

Evelyn loved every part of the storm, except for what it birthed. She hated the toadstools and mushrooms that sprouted after the storm passed, like stowaways in the ground making a break for it. She knew other people loved this aftereffect of the storms better than the storms themselves, but she thought they were mad.

Evelyn knew what came with the toadstools and mushrooms, even if no one else believed her.

A huge mound of mushrooms sprung up alongside the path she had to walk to the library and she glared at it as she passed. It looked like nothing more than a lump of brown gills, like cauliflower that had gone off, but she knew it hid a secret that she’d glimpsed when she was but a child of seven and she refused to ever eat mushrooms again.

“I see you,” she whispered as she walked passed. “I will watch you.”

No one and nothing answered her, but after she turned and was almost out of sight of the mushroom mound it shivered and shook, like it was waking up from a nap. And a dozen mud-stained eyes followed Evelyn until she disappeared around the bend in her path.

Ashleigh never trusted the cormorants that sunned themselves on the rocks outside the window of his office. His office overlooked the bay and every morning there was a group of cormorants on the rocks, wings spread like ragged capes, eyes closed against the glare of the sun or open under the weak light of cloud cover.

They weren’t raucous like the scrub jays or numerous like the pigeons, but the cormorants bothered him. He glared out his window at them even as they stood like silent winged statuary someone had forgotten to take in with the tide.

If he had ever been pressed to put into words why he disliked the cormorants, he wouldn’t have known what to say.

He took his lunchtime walk by the rocks, usually the cormorants had left the rocks by that time, and he was relieved. But today there was one cormorant still on the rocks and a girl, in a black slicker, sitting on the bench closest to the rocks. It didn’t smell like rain.

Ashleigh walked by, watching the bird out of the corner of his eye.

“They know you don’t like them.”

He started and found the girl staring up at him. Her eyes had an interesting halo around the irises. He’d seen it before but couldn’t place it.

“Excuse me?” He couldn’t think of anything else to say.

She gestured to the one cormorant still on the rock who looked like it was listening. “The swim, they know you don’t like them.”

“The swim?”

“The group of cormorants.”

“Oh.” He wondered why she knew such an odd piece of vocabulary. Most people he knew didn’t even know they were called cormorants.

“But they don’t mind you. They think it’s because you’re jealous.”

“Jealous? Of what?” He was not jealous, but annoyed his carefully planned routine had been upset. First by the bird and now by the girl.

“Because they can swim and fly, but you can’t. Also, we like the rain.”

He scoffed. “That is ridiculous. Good day.” He resumed walking without looking back when she called,

“Yes, it looks like rain.”

He turned around, but the girl was gone. And there were now two cormorants on the rock. The second shook out its feathers and droplets splattered the rock face. When he turned around to head back into his office, the first drops of rain hit his head and he could have sworn he heard laughter but there was no one around but the birds.

Come find me.

That’s all that was written on the blurry photo dropped through the mail slot in her front door on Sunday morning.

While most people’s first thought would be, “Who sent this to me?” or perhaps, “Who needs finding?” or even, “There’s no post on Sunday.”, Laura’s first thought was how much she hated that mail slot. She should have boarded it up as soon as she bought the house. It was drafty and now apparently a target for pranksters.

She stomped down to the basement and rummaged through boxes until she found her hammer and some nails. She ripped a wooden slat from a crate she hadn’t bothered to move when she moved in six months ago. One struck thumb later, she had the mail slot boarded up and had forgotten about the photo.

But the photo hadn’t forgotten about her.

It appeared stuck into the frame of her bathroom mirror when she got out of the shower the next morning. She threw it in the wastebin.

She opened her lunchbox to work through her break and found the photo on top of her sandwich and it went through the shredder. The photo, not her sandwich.

After a week of having the photograph show up in her shoe, in the egg carton, on her dashboard, and in her book, Laura threw her hands up and screamed,

“How do I find you?”

She looked down at the photograph and the writing swirled like oil on top of a puddle after the first autumn rain.

Follow the shadows on the sidewalk.

“Great,” Laura muttered. “Now I’m taking directions from a haunted photograph. I must be mad.”

But she picked up her coat and walked out her front door, photograph in hand.

“Wherever there is an ending, there is also a beginning,” Teacher said with that half-smile that made us know she was testing us with some private joke.

“That is obvious,” Jessica said with a sniff. As if she couldn’t care less about the matter, but actually was determined to sound the smartest and get the answer the quickest.

It was the last day of school for the year and I knew that we wouldn’t be allowed to leave for the Festival until one of us got to whatever point Teacher was making. The sounds of hammers and flutes could already be heard over the wind in the eaves and I jiggled my knee under the desk.

Teacher was still smiling and waiting for us to get to the answer. Mother said Teacher could have been a mystic in a cave, just a bit removed than the rest of us. On a different wavelength, she’d say, but not without fondness.

“Where there is a beginning, there is also an ending,” Joselle said as she tried to imitate Teacher’s half-smile. On her it looked like a smirk and matched her personality.

“Often, yes,” Teacher said. But that was not the answer she was looking for.

There was always a lesson to learn and I stifled a sigh while I fought the impulse to fidget in the wooden chair. It would creak and I didn’t want to be called on. I just wanted to run outside while there was still light because the days were short. And I wanted to get a maple candy with the change that would jangle in my pocket when I ran. I didn’t care about riddles and wisdom, even if they were from Teacher.

My mind wandered and the answers of the others in my class were merely humming nonsense in the background as I strained to hear more of the Festival’s sounds of preparation. When my name was called, I bolted upright out of my dream.

“What do you think it means?” Teacher asked.

All eyes were on me. I hated that. I wasn’t clever or fast or witty. And I didn’t have the personality to pretend.

“I don’t know,” I admitted. “But it makes me think of the end of the year and the beginning of the Festival.”

Teacher said nothing but slightly, ever so slightly, nodded.

“And,” I continued, “I think someday I’ll care about beginnings and endings, but right now is more important to me…now.” I finished and felt my cheeks warming and no doubt they were now red. I wasn’t an elegant speaker either.

But Teacher smiled, a full smile. “Class dismissed.”

I smiled back and sprinted out of the door into the last sunlight of the last day of the year. A good beginning or ending, no matter how I looked at it.

 If you are ever in trouble, go to the portal key. It will know what to do.

Her mother said that every day on their walk to her elementary school. Every day when they crossed the bridge and passed the one, faded, carved stone pillar in the middle of the bridge. Her mother would touch it lightly with her fingertips, as if reassuring herself it was still there.

Still solid, she’d sometimes say so soft it was nothing more than a puff of breath.

When she was six, Flora never thought there could be trouble in the world. There was her, her mother, and her routine. There were always cookies on Tuesdays and singing on Sundays. Herbs in the summer and chestnuts in the winter. Nothing changed and no trouble could ever penetrate such a bubble.

But that was before today. Flora narrowly missed crashing headfirst into another commuter walking, head down against the wind. The sky overhead was grey, the color of the sidewalk, and smelled like rain wasn’t far off. Tears soaked the collar of her shirt as they skidded down her cheeks like the tires behind her.

She couldn’t look back. She wouldn’t look back. She only had to make it to the portal key. It would have to save her. The scene at her house, etched into her mind, told her no one else could.

Shooting out between two bicycles, Flora ran across the street, straight towards the portal key. Behind her a man shouted for someone to stop her, but she dodged the startled couple pushing their stroller. She slapped her hands on the stone, cutting her palms at the same moment she felt someone drive into her, not expecting her to stop and she fell with a scream over the bridge.

Screams from the couple with the child raised as someone tackled the man who had pushed Flora over the edge. But when the couple looked over the bridge, there was no sign of Flora, no ripple in the water, and while they would never admit it to the other, they both saw a scene for a brief flash that made no sense. But they were soon brought back by the crying of their baby and the sound of police sirens drawing near.

But sometimes late at night they would awake from a dream and remember they saw a tea shop floating in mid-air about the creek that day on the bridge advertising Flora’s cream in the plate glass window, before they fell asleep again.