Covenant of Salt

COVENANT OF SALT

by Erin Keating

(Content warning: grief, loss of a parent, drowning)

In the beginning, in the end, there is the sea. Iona knew this, like she knew to share her food and drink with the waves that rolled past the sea-washed lighthouse. She was a keeper worth her salt.

She’d learned everything from her father; her earliest memories were of tip-toeing through the creaking lighthouse to watch him wind the clockwork mechanism, trim the wicks, clean the lens, and mend the cracks in the brickwork even as his wind-chapped knuckles split. In the end, her father had spoken to her in a voice pitched high with fever, “I made a promise to the water, and so did the keeper before me, and the keeper before her, and so, soon, shall you.”

The day that someone had come from shore to collect her father’s body, rowing him away from his beloved lighthouse, Iona repeated the words that he’d murmured with a contented smile on his sun-spotted face.

“I am the keeper of this lighthouse. I will care for you, and I ask that you care for me.”

She’d watched until the boat disappeared beyond the curve of the horizon, toward the shore she couldn’t remember. Old shipmen would lay her father to rest beside her mother in the plot for the keepers and their families. How strange for her father to spend eternity on land, when he’d spent his life at sea.

That night, she’d drunk herself silly, cleaning the larder of beer. A bottle for her. A bottle for the sea. She couldn’t tell if the salt stinging her face was the ocean air or tears. Sitting on the metal landing outside, water lapping over the rocky reef below, she’d let her heavy boots beat, beat, beat, against the iron rungs. She’d dared the sea to take her. But it hadn’t.

So, the next morning, Iona had risen with a headache tolling like a death knell and set to work. Clockwork to wind. Lens to polish. Mortar to seal into cracking stone. When the day’s work was done, she’d sat out on the landing and shared her supper with the sea.

“Awful quiet here with Da gone,” she said. “But I’ve got the work, and I’ve got you, and what more could I want?”

What more could I want? She said it in the silent weeks between the supply ship’s runs. She said it in the midst of storms that threatened to tear the gallery railings clear from the house. She said it in the wake of her first shipwreck.

She had watched a boy no older than her go under again, again, again in the circling light. She’d held her breath each time his dark hair disappeared beneath the waves, until her chest burned, until she admitted he would not surface. Only then had she screamed until her voice gave out.

In the restless nights that followed, she whispered the well-worn words each time she woke from a nightmare. What more could I want? What more could I want? What more could I want? Until she hardly knew the answer herself.

But the sea knew.

•••

One early spring morning, the sky shone the palest shade of pink Iona had ever seen. A gentle, warm wind whispered along the gallery. Iona had loved days like this in her girlhood when, even out at sea, the world hummed with change. But Iona had grown out of such fanciful notions. The promise of spring, blooming on a distant shore, was still the same year after year. Nothing truly changed.

She made breakfast: an egg fried for herself and poached for the sea; it was very particular about its eggs. Iona perched the tin tray on her hip as she threw her weight into the heavy iron door to the landing.

Iona sing-songed, “How’s my dear?”

“I’m fine—thank you.”

The quiet morning clanged with the tin tray hitting the landing. The plate of eggs and Iona’s tea spilled through the grates, and the sea consumed it with a satisfied slurp.

Out on the landing stood a young man. Or rather, he was shaped like a young man: with shaggy hair, unlaced boots, and a cap he twisted in his long-fingered hands. Except that every inch of him was covered in chalky white crystals. The light caught strangely, making the young man look like he glowed from within. The pale pink of the sky deepened in him, until it turned a blushing shade that Iona remembered like the tide coming in: her mother, long gone now, sitting out on the gallery with a compendium of flowers painted in delicate watercolour. Her father, when her mother was sick, ordered bouquets with their supplies until the lighthouse burst with roses.

How long had it been since Iona had seen the tender red of a rose?

Iona blinked as though he would disappear—a figment of a sleep-addled brain. But he kept twisting his cap in his hands like he was wringing water from it. Flakes of crystal caught in the breeze, with a scent Iona smelled in her dreams. Here was a young man made of salt.

Beneath her feet, the sea burbled with the promise of change. Iona knew better than to hope.

“You likely to introduce yourself sometime today?” Iona snapped.

“Ah, well, I don’t recall my name at the moment, marm.” His voice warbled, like he was speaking through water.

“Don’t marm me, I’m not the bloody queen. What are you doing on my landing?”

“Well, I think I’m here to haunt you.”

Iona blinked again. She would have given life and limb for her tea, the remains of which dripped from the landing into the leaping sea below.

“Haunt me? You’re doing a sterling job of it. Don’t ghosts usually haunt folks in the middle of the night, driving them mad from want of sleep, instead of waiting politely at the door first thing in the morning?” Of all the people to haunt, why her? Wasn’t she haunted enough?

“I, well, would you prefer I come back?” He gestured vaguely around the landing. His face fell a little, as though unsure where he’d come from. Iona couldn’t fathom it either.

“No, no. You’re already here. Might as well stay.” She stooped to pick up the breakfast tray.

“Let me help with that.” The ghost knelt beside her, but Iona pulled the tray away.

“I’ll not be having any poltergeists throwing my dishes around, thank you very much,” she snapped again. The ghost’s face fell, and the sea splashed up through the landing, soaking Iona’s trousers in chastisement. 

“Hey! Watch where you’re—fine, fine—” By way of apology, she asked, “What do you figure you did before you became a ghost?”

“Before… I don’t remember.” The ghost stared out at the sea, and a storm surged in Iona’s chest as though she knew him. But that was impossible. She knew so few faces.

Maybe she simply saw the same creases on her father’s brow as he studied the movement of the water.

There wasn’t time for dwelling on it. Iona had another day ahead of her: the work, and the sea, and now a ghost of her very own. What more could she want?

•••

Her ghost was not very good at haunting. In fact, he wasn’t good at much of anything. When he mopped the floors, wide salt streaks stained the groaning boards. When he cooked supper, even the sea spat out the too-salty cod. As Iona trudged toward bed, the ghost followed close behind.

“What are you doing now, Miss Iona?”

“Going to sleep. I’m tired.”

“What is tired?” 

Perhaps he was a ghost sent here to drive her mad, after all. 

“Tired means you wait quietly in the hall until I fetch you.”

“Oh good,” the ghost sighed in relief. “I think I can manage that.”

•••

When Iona woke, the empty stairwell echoed with the familiar beat of wind and waves. Iona listened, her own heart beating in time. Perhaps the ghost had been a dream after all, conjured by the spring air and loneliness—no. She wasn’t lonely. She had the work and the sea. But when Iona noticed the trail of salt, her startled cry carried through the curving stairwell. Her heavy boots clanged on each step. Iona climbed the length of the lighthouse a dozen times a day, but for the first time, she was breathless.

Iona threw open the gallery door. The ghost leaned over the railing, the wind mussing his crystalline hair.

“Sorry, Miss Iona,” he said without looking at her. “I know you told me to wait in the hall, but the longer I waited the more the walls squeezed closer like, like…” He pulled at the collar of his shirt. “Sorry. I had to come up for air.”

The sea and sky unfurled around them, a wash of deep blue all the way out to the horizon. Iona understood, better than anyone, how much easier it was to breathe out here. Iona extended a cautious hand and patted him on the shoulder. The salt stuck to her fingers. But the ghost was far warmer than she imagined he’d be.

“Come on, we’ve work to do.”

•••

Iona mopped the floors.

“Can I—” The ghost asked.

“No.”

Iona cleaned the lens.

“Can I—”

“No.”

Iona cooked supper.

“Can I—” 

“No.”

“Well, what can I do?” The ghost asked as they sat out on the landing. Iona shared her potato stew with the sea. She’d offered the ghost a spoonful as well, but he stared like she’d insulted him somehow.

“You don’t have to do anything. You’re keeping me company while I work. After all, isn’t that what a haunting is? Never being alone?”

“Never being alone…” he repeated. The darkening sky faded to a tender purple bruise. The ghost’s salt crystals seemed to hold the darkness until he’d taken on impossible depths.

“Miss Iona, do you think you could call me Simon?”

“Good Lord, just Iona, please.” Iona chided. The sea gurgled disapprovingly beneath her. She’d best behave. “You figure Simon was your name before?”

Simon stretched his arms wide, as though he could take flight. “Mmm… I don’t know, but that name makes me feel like this sky.”

•••

After supper, Simon trailed her like a shadow from the oil room all the way up to the service room beneath the great lantern. Each footfall made a faint scratching of salt against metal. The quiet itched as Iona trimmed the wick for the night.

Until Simon said softly, with a voice that no longer warbled with water, “There’s a city far from here, shaped like a crescent moon, where the buildings are painted like peacock feathers and pretty pink flowers hang like curtains from their balconies. At night, the air is thick with the smell of spices, and sugar, and those waving flowers.”

Iona held her breath as he spoke, letting the words wash over her in a gentle ripple of salt. “What was that for?” she asked when his ringing words faded.

“I’m keeping you company. Is it working?” Simon asked. He glowed for a moment in the roving light before fading back to darkness.

“I’d say. Was that a memory, just then? Or did you make it up?”

“Does it matter?”

Iona considered this as she topped off the oil. “No, I figure it doesn’t. You have any more of those?”

Word by word, Simon built her a world.

•••

Iona’s days used to stack one on top of the other like brickwork. But now, time slipped by like water. Simon watched her with his silvery eyes as she washed her laundry, kept vigil during storms, inventoried the larder. He spoke of places half-remembered or imagined: coasts of jagged blue shale, beaches of velvety golden sand, water that washed pink against the shore. Each one filled her days with unexpected colour. Iona knew no world beyond the lighthouse, but since Simon had arrived, the salt-stained brick and roving light felt new. A home like it hadn’t been since she’d studied with her father, painted with her mother.

One supper, she caught Simon looking longingly at her plate, and when she offered him a bite of her smoked salmon, he chewed it thoughtfully and asked for another. One afternoon, he staggered on the stairs muttering something about his legs being too heavy. She dragged Simon to her father’s old room, and he fell promptly asleep. Iona watched his face—working in his sleep as though he was dreaming—longer than she’d ever admit. In the fading afternoon light, she swore that through the flakes in the salt, she glimpsed strands of dark hair atop Simon’s head.

Her ghost was becoming more and more human.

•••

Iona’s fever struck a few days after their latest supplies had been rowed out from a ship moored safely beyond the reef. One moment, she was mending the loose gallery railing. The next, the sea pitched before her.

“Iona!” Simon’s hand was cold against her shoulder as he steadied her. Strange, in all the weeks since he’d appeared on her landing, he’d never felt cold to the touch. That was when Iona realized she was too hot.

“Stay back,” Iona insisted. But Simon put a steadying arm around her and led her inside.

Simon tucked her into bed, but Iona was already somewhere far away. His now-familiar voice murmured tales of calm seas surrounded by deep green olive groves, but between his words, Iona slipped into her nightmares: her sea churning black, the hull of the ship groaning as it split. And that boy in the water. With dark hair and eyes like silver.

Though her vision blurred, Iona studied Simon’s face like a sea chart, every line taking her back to that night.

“It was you,” she whispered. “You haunted me.”

He whispered back in a voice clear, and warm, and human. “The sea knew that we were lonely.”

Lonely. She had the work and the sea. She’d never been lonely—but the fever left no strength for lies. Iona’s breath tightened with remembering, that night her father’s body left the lighthouse, how that loneliness had felt like drowning. All she’d had left were her roving light, her churning sea; always the same no matter how much they changed. Nothing truly changed. Nothing, until a young man made of salt stood on her landing and brought her the world.

Her clothes, damp with salt water. Not from the sea, she realized distantly, but her own sweat.

Her voice cracked in her parched throat. “Am I going to die?”

She didn’t want to die. Not when her beloved sea had dredged a boy from its depths to care for her, like she had cared for it: with company, and comfort, and salt.

A smooth hand caressed her forehead. “You’ll live. We’ll live. I will care for you, and I ask that you care for me.”

Against the walls of the lighthouse, the sea danced.

•••

When the fever broke, Iona blinked awake to find Simon cleaning her windows.

“Can I—” Iona croaked.

“No.” And the afternoon light shone softly through the streaky windows.

As she propped herself up on lumpy pillows, Simon brought her soup.

“Can I—” Iona asked.

“No.” And she slurped down the over-salted soup, the best meal she’d had in days.

“Well, what can I do?” Iona asked, itching to get out of her sickbed.

“You don’t have to do anything. But I’d appreciate it if you kept me company.”

Simon lent her his arm—more flesh now than salt—and they slowly climbed the stairs. Out on the gallery, the setting sun dripped like honey into the water. The ever-changing waves rippled onward. In the perfect stillness between waves, their tiny reflections smiled up at them: two figures once adrift, thrown together by the tides and bound by salt. Iona and Simon held each other upright as the sea laughed out to the horizon.

•••

In the beginning, in the end, there is the sea.

ERIN KEATING is a New Jersey-based writer, who at any given time is writing either cozy fantasy or body horror—she has given up trying to figure out what that says about her psyche. Her cozy fantasy work has previously appeared in Hearth Stories, Luna Station Quarterly, and Wyngraf. When she's not reading or writing, she's dabbling in whichever hobby has most recently caught her attention.

Covenant of Salt was edited by Louise Koren and Helena Ramsaroop. It can be found in Tales & Feathers Volume 4.