‘But,’ said Dot, glancing back around the room, ‘there’s no crib.’
‘Not yet,’ said Willard, ‘Florence is still nursing her. Soon, she’ll sleep in here. It’s too much of a bother to move everything. You’ll have to sleep on the couch.’
‘What about your house?’ asked Dot.
‘Told you,’ said Willard. ‘The cannery shut. If you were here, you would have known.’
Dot did not remove her glove, and so no one saw the affliction of her left hand. No one asked after the missing finger on her right, though they glanced at it uneasily whenever they seemed to think she would not notice. The cold seeped into the stump, pinching her nerves. The area throbbed often. The phantom pains and itches never subsided. Dot slept on the couch and woke each morning shivering as Willard and her mother banged pots in the kitchen. She walked down to the pier and stared out at the waves. After school, Celia would come home and they would chat a little about Alliaster, and Dot told her about Rupert and the shop and the spells that she had learned.
She found Archie in the small guest room he often slept in while he was at the house – the room that he had repeatedly offered to Dot, which she had refused.
‘We ought to start our search for the Ancient Spirit, Dottie,’ he said. ‘I’d love to see Her in Her habitat, even if only the once.’
Dot watched as Archie’s obsession with finding the Sea Spirit renewed. When he was asked by the rest of the family about his upcoming expedition, he prattled about South Sea cuttlefish, and Dot saw plainly that the man knew nothing about them.
She found herself studying runes long into the evenings by the light of the fire, teaching herself how to write with one less finger upon her hand. Her script was shaky. She threw the pens across the room and cried often. There was, however, one rune in particular that she kept returning to. She had never cast it herself, though she had experienced its use many times. A line down the centre. Three stars in the upper right corner and two crosses in the bottom left. Triangles and dashes and one great spiral that ringed the centre and would ensure, if it had been chalked upon a surface, that the rune would disappear as soon as it was used. She copied it over and over and over.
One morning, two weeks after she had arrived home to Seafarthing, Dot was in the kitchen, rummaging in the cupboard.
‘Whatever are you looking for?’ asked her father. ‘If its tea you’re after, I can make you a cup.’
‘Oh, no need,’ said Dot. ‘I’m just looking for a particular type.’
‘Type?’ he asked.
‘Chamomile,’ said Dot.
Her father scoffed so extremely that Dot’s face went red.
‘The city’s made you posh,’ he said, laughing at her. ‘Chamomile tea, of all things. There’s only one kind of tea in this house, love, and that’s Eyreish breakfast. You go sit down. I’ll make it the way you like it.’
Dot wandered around the little town, listless. She visited the Divers’ Café where she used to work. She ate a sandwich, alone, and the elderly waitresses that she had known for so many years delivered her glasses of cordial. The waitresses had both stared ather missing finger and gloved hand, and did not ask particularly thoughtful questions about her time in the city.
Her twenty-fourth birthday arrived with no great fanfare.
She had lived, after all.
Archie bought her a sponge cake from the Divers’ Café, and Celia gave her a detective novel, but the rest of her family forgot entirely.
Three weeks after Dot had returned to Seafarthing, she sat with her family at the dinner table. Polly babbled and smacked at peas with her hands, while Willard tickled her cheek and made a show of gently scolding her in a voice that was pure love. Dot opened her runes notebook. While spooning soup into her mouth, she began to balance her magic.
‘When are you getting a job then?’
Willard was looking at the bread in his hands, though it was clear he spoke to Dot.
‘She’s just come home,’ said Archie. ‘She’s healing. She needs her rest.’
‘Florence and I are paying board,’ said Willard. ‘So should she.’
‘I don’t pay board,’ Celia pointed out.
‘You’re in school, love,’ said Patrick.
‘I think—’ began Archie, but Willard interrupted.
‘You’re too soft on her, Grandad. She should be held to the same standard as the rest of us. I’m out there, knocking on doors, having interviews. She should be doing the same.’
Dot opened her mouth to speak, but her mother cut her off.
