Navi had crossed the harbor at eight every evening for sixteen years. On the fourth evening of the second moon, she still had the old timetable pinned beside her wheel.
The new moon rose behind the hills, small and blue. The older moon shone white above it. Two bright paths lay on the water.
Navi watched the blue path break against her ferry’s bow. Three nights ago she had stood on the high dock with the rest of the town, looking up until her neck hurt. No one knew where the new moon had come from. Now the harbor tides rose at strange hours, and looking up was no longer enough.
She carried one passenger back from the low landing. He had gone across for a sack of seed. He kept it between his feet as if it might walk away.
“Last trip?” he asked.
“One more,” Navi said. “Eight o’clock.”
At the high dock, Jun was tying a red cloth to the stair rail. She made fishing nets, and the shed where she kept them stood beside the low landing. That afternoon she had moved every roll to higher ground.
“Don’t make the last run,” Jun said.
Navi looped the ferry’s rope around its post.
“You said that yesterday. The tide stopped below the steps.”
“Yesterday it did.”
Jun pointed at the water marks on the high dock’s posts. She had chalked each evening’s highest level beside its date. Tonight the water had already passed the previous night’s mark.
“There are people waiting,” Navi said.
Two workers stood by the shelter. If she cancelled, they would have to sleep there or walk the long hill road home. Navi had crossed to fetch them in worse weather than this. The evening was calm. The moons were beautiful.
Jun did not argue about the weather. She led Navi to the far rail, where they could see across the harbor.
Water covered the low landing’s bottom step. As they watched, it climbed over the next one. Loose reeds drifted from there toward the high dock on the incoming current. The old path behind the landing ran through a hollow. That hollow was filling too.
“You can take a boat there,” Jun said. “You can’t give them a dry place to get off.”
Navi looked at her ferry. The roof would keep passengers dry. It could not keep the shore above water.
She went to the shelter.
“No last run tonight. The low landing is flooded.”
One worker swore. The other asked if the tide would be down by morning.
“I don’t know yet,” she said.
Jun opened the shelter and brought out two bedrolls. The first worker took one. The second went to find a place to make his call home.
A child was standing beside Navi’s wheelhouse. Lemi held a tin of blue paint. Her fingers were blue too.
“My boat is over there,” she said.
“Your model?”
Lemi nodded. She had shown it to Navi that morning: a wooden ferry with a roof made from a bent lid. They had painted its name along the side together.
“I left it by the lower steps to dry.”
Navi could see the place. She had played there herself when she was small, launching boats while her father waited at the wheel. She knew every stone below those steps. Or she had.
“I could take the ferry over without passengers,” she said.
Jun pulled the loose end of the dock rope into a dry coil.
“And where would you stand to pick it up?”
Navi looked across again. The bottom steps had gone. The water was licking the last dry one. She could tie up, perhaps, but she would have to leave the boat for a model too small to see from here.
“No,” she said. “I can’t make that run for a toy.”
Lemi’s mouth tightened. She put the paint tin down.
“I wasn’t going to ask you to.”
Navi had already said it as though the child had made her foolish offer.
“I know. I wanted to fetch it too.”
They stood at the high rail. The incoming water carried a patch of reeds toward them. Behind it bobbed a small blue roof.
“There!” Lemi cried.
She reached toward the ladder. Navi blocked it with her arm.
“Stay behind the rail. Jun, the boat hook.”
The long pole hung beneath the shelter roof. They used it to catch drifting ropes from the high dock. Jun lifted it down and passed it to Navi.
The model turned beside the reeds. Navi leaned through the rail with both feet flat on the dock. The pole’s hook reached the little roof and slipped off.
“The hole at the back,” Lemi said. “That’s where I tied the string.”
Navi waited as the model drifted closer. She put the hook through the hole, lifted slowly, and brought the boat up without taking a step down the ladder.
Water poured from its tiny cabin. The painted name had run into a blue smear.
Lemi took it in both hands.
“The roof stayed on.”
“You fixed it well,” Navi said.
Jun made another chalk mark. While they had fetched the model, the harbor had risen past a bolt in the post.
Navi took the timetable down. She used its blank back to sketch the high dock, the flooded hollow, and the steps she could still see. At the low landing she wrote CLOSED. Beside the new water mark, she wrote the time.
“Will this tell us tomorrow?” Lemi asked.
“It tells us tonight,” Navi said. “Tomorrow we watch again.”
They stayed by the shelter until the water stopped rising. Jun checked the marks while Navi made tea for the stranded workers. Lemi’s mother came up the hill for her. Before they left, Navi found a shallow washing tub for the model. Lemi wanted to see whether it still floated, and the tub held water that would not carry it away.
The next evening, Navi opened only a short crossing between two high docks. She and Jun had watched those steps all day. They agreed to stop if water reached the red marks, even if people were waiting.
The ferry carried six passengers. Navi kept the new route sketch beside her wheel. The old timetable lay folded in a drawer; she had not thrown it away.
On the high dock, Lemi set her model in the washing tub. Its name was painted fresh. Her mother held the tub steady while the ferry passed.
Navi sounded one short note on the horn. Lemi raised her blue hand.
Beyond the bow, the two moons shone in a strip of sheltered water. Navi could look at them for a moment before checking the next mark.
Loading comments…