Cora looked at her hands. The earth under her palms was cool now, silent. She stayed on the ridge until dawn, thinking about the woman with the baby, and the baby’s calm, sleeping face.
Yarlist himself had been born on the ridge, in a house his grandfather built from the ribs of a wrecked whaler. He was a thin man, with the kind of face that seemed to be listening even when he spoke. His eyes were the color of the sea on a cloudy day—changeable, deep, and full of things that never reached the surface. yarlist'
“Singing what?”
Cora counted thirty-seven.
“Watch,” Yarlist said.