The Sea in Winter

by Christine Day

  Mom stirs. She props herself up on her elbow, squinting in my direction. “Good morning,” she says after a pause. Her voice is rough; she clears her throat. “You’re awake early.”

  I nod in response.

  “Is everything okay?”

  I say, “It snowed.”

  “Oh.” She sits up a little straighter. Smiles at the open window. Her hair is a tangled pouf at the back of her head. “How lovely.”

  I tell her, “Connor will think so, too.”

  “Should we wake him up?”

  She doesn’t wait for my opinion. She slides out of bed; Jack senses the movement in his sleep and rolls into the open space, flinging one arm out across Mom’s pillow. Mom crouches at Connor’s side of the bed; he’s asleep on his stomach, his face turned to the side. She presses a kiss to the top of his head and brushes his bangs back from his face.

  “Connor,” she whispers. She strokes one hand down from the top of his shoulder to the middle of his back. “Sweetie, look outside.”

  Connor groans. Shakes his head without opening his eyes.

  Mom chuckles. Gives him a gentle nudge. “Connor, it snowed last night.”

  For a second, he goes perfectly still. Then he snaps upright in bed. “Snow?” He looks out the window and his entire face lights up. “Snow!” He swings back around and throws his arms around Mom’s neck, grasping her in a tight hug as she laughs and embraces him back. “Today,” he declares, “is going to be an awesome day!”

  “I couldn’t agree more.” Mom beams.

  My heart feels lighter as I watch Connor scramble out of bed. He really is the human version of a ray of sunshine. I hope he never changes.

  I hope he never becomes a human storm cloud. Like me.

  We’re on our way to the Cape Alava Trail. This drive is much longer than the one we took to the clam-digging beach, so we’re eating breakfast in the car. Connor is making a mess of his bagel. Globs of cream cheese have smeared on his booster seat, his pants, and his chin. I’ve finished my own bagel, but my stomach is still groaning. Jack offers me a strip of smoked salmon, but I lie and say I’m full.

  “Are you sure?” He sounds baffled.

  “I’m full,” I repeat.

  “Geez. I always have room for salmon.” He takes a bite of it, tearing the caramelized pink flesh with his teeth.

  Mom and Jack are listening to their political podcast again. Since my service is too weak to keep checking for text messages that probably aren’t coming, I have no choice but to listen as they talk about climate change. About some new expiration date the scientists have set for the planet. With the rising sea levels and the superstorms and the wildfires. The end of civilization as we know it.

  I want to ask if we can listen to something else. Music. An audiobook. Literally anything other than this.

  But I don’t say a word. Because it will come out snappy. Or wrong-sounding. I will open my mouth, and my parents will tell me: This is important information, Maisie. Or: We need to pay attention. Or: This is a call to action. As if I don’t understand what’s going on. As if I don’t care enough.

  As if.

  26

  Nursery Stump

  February 19

  I keep my eyes down, focused on the slick wooden bridge we’re crossing. Its planks are dark and gleaming. My fists grip the rails as I inch my way over the trickling creek to the opposite bank. A few clumps of snow cling to the ends of bare branches overhead, and there are glistening white patches of it on the ground, but they’re thawing. Thinning into crystallized crusts. The air smells of damp stones and soil.

  I make it across the stream and keep following my parents and Connor down the path, deeper into the woods. Closer to the ocean. The ground is soft and marshy, cluttered in the soggy brown muck of decayed leaves, squishy lumps of moss. Everything in this forest is drenched in a cold sweat: the stiff pine needles, the skinny twigs, the leafy ferns. The roughened boulders. The fallen logs with frayed strips of bark.

  Eventually, Mom notices the distance between me and the rest of my family. She pauses to wait for me, smiling brightly before she asks, “How are you doing?”

  “I’m good,” I say, and I try to sound like I mean it.

  “Good!”

  She resumes walking at my side. Jack and Connor are up ahead, playing an intense round of “I Spy.” Jack has spied something green, and Connor seems desperate to figure out what it is:

  “That branch?”

  “No.”

  “That bush?”

  “Nope.”

  “This moss?”

  “No.”

  “Is it a leaf?”

  “That depends. Which leaf?”

  “This one?”

  “No.”

  Mom keeps pace with me. Sticks snap beneath our hiking boots. We sink and stumble through a stretch of claylike mud. We walk with our hands in our pockets, our gazes fixed on the uneven ground before us.

  Then she points and says, “Do you see that? That old growth stump?”

  I look up. The stump is broad and gnarled and cracked. The color of its wood reminds me of resin. A warm, amber tone. In ballet studios, open trays of crushed resin are usually set aside for the dancers. If your pointe shoes are too slippery or satiny, you can walk over to the trays, step into them, and grind the resin dust into the smooth fabric. It will help you gain traction.

  It’s what I should have done, on the day of my accident.

  “It’s called a nursery stump,” Mom tells me. “See the tiny little saplings and green sprigs growing out of it? It’s become a home for other plants. Pretty cool, huh?”

  “Mhm.”

  We carry on. Mushrooms appear in clusters along the edges of the trail, with little round caps the same color as eggshells. Some small critter skirts through the undergrowth nearby, rustling through the leaves. The mist seems to thicken in the canopy above us, like the tree trunks are growing directly into the clouds.

  “We’re getting closer,” Mom says. “Can you hear the waves?”

  I focus for a moment. And sure enough, I hear them. A rumble like the wind. A steady rush of noise.

  “There was a mudslide in this area once,” Mom tells me. “A major one. It buried an entire Makah village.”

  My head snaps up. “What?”

  She gestures vaguely toward the sound of the water. “It happened in the 1700s,” she says. “This beach was one of our settlements for whaling expeditions. And there were a lot of families here. A lot of lives were lost.”

  Fear slithers down my spine. I glance around at the seemingly peaceful woods. “What caused it?”

  “The earthquake, probably,” Mom says. “Around the same time, there was an estimated magnitude nine earthquake in the Pacific Northwest. We didn’t have the technology to measure it back then, of course. But we have the stories passed down from generation to generation. And we know that what happened here set off a tsunami in Japan.”

  “Really? How is that possible? Japan is so far away.”

  She shrugs. “The ocean has always connected us.”

  27

  Petroglyphs

  February 19

  We reach the beach. And here beyond the tree line, the waves crash and roar. They roll and churn, hurtling over each other, collapsing across the shore. The seawater is gray today, and the horizon is gone, swallowed up by a bright white fog. The breakers seem to roll in from the edge of the world. From nowhere and everywhere, all at once.

  “There are a few little islands off the shore here,” Mom says. “But in weather like this, it’s impossible to see them.”

  Jack and Connor are still way ahead of us, laughing and speaking in pirate voices—off on a mission to find some gold in this gray landscape. This beach is peppered with round stones and broken seashells. The sand is dark and smooth and wet, gleaming like sealskin as the water pulls back. Driftwood logs are shoved against the far end of the beach, almost to the tree line. They’re clean and massive and bent in gentle a
ngles. They look like the bones of an ancient giant, one that roamed the earth a long time ago.

  “Come this way,” Mom says. “There’s something I want to show you.”

  I follow her down the shoreline. The rocks slide and crunch beneath our hiking boots. When bits of shell slip in, the sound is like gravel mixed with porcelain. And the waves keep rolling in, folding and foaming and smashing. They topple over sharp boulders that protrude from the shallows. The sea spray flings high through the air, dashes across the rocks. Another wave sweeps in, breaking over the boulders with a clap like thunder. A splattering gust.

  I’m being careful with my knee. Placing each step slowly. Cautiously. I feel a twinge just above my kneecap, but it only lasts a second. Not like my other muscle spasms.

  As Mom continues to lead the way, I discreetly pull my phone out of my pocket. Check for notifications. Nothing. No service.

  I swallow the disappointment and drop the phone back into my pocket.

  Mom and I approach a wide boulder, flat on one side with markings etched into it. Shallow grooves drawn into the rock. There are ovals with lines down the middle. A face with pronounced eyebrows, round eyes, a straight little line for its nose, and a circle for its mouth. Its head is attached to a boxy torso, with squiggly open arms. Below one extended arm, in the corner of the rock, there is another face. Or maybe it’s a moon. Whatever it is, it’s disconnected from the other shapes. A lone circle with a curved nose and eyebrows, flat dark eyes, and an open mouth.

  “Whoa.” The word rushes out of me. I’ve never seen anything like this before.

  “Incredible, aren’t they?” Mom says. “When I was a little girl, and my family still lived out at Neah Bay, this was one of my favorite places to visit. We would drive down here, and my cousins would all want to build sandcastles, or look at the tide pools. Do normal kid things. And I was the random weirdo who wanted to go around and examine every single rock for more drawings. For more messages like this.” She laughs a little at herself. Smiles a small, private sort of smile. “Growing up, I wanted to become an archaeologist. Have I ever told you that?”

  I look at her and shake my head.

  “Well, that was a long time ago, of course,” she says. “By the time I was enrolled at The Evergreen State College, I was no longer sure about what I wanted. Then I met your dad while he was stationed at JBLM, and . . .” She trails off. Meets my eyes.

  And I look away, because I know the rest of this story. I know that she and my dad were married young. I know Mom got pregnant before his deployment. I know that he was killed in action before my first birthday, and Mom never went back to school, because she had to find another job, and suddenly she was juggling two part-time positions as well as first-time motherhood, and even though she had her mother to help with the babysitting, it was never really enough. She was young and lonely and grieving. It was the hardest time of her life, and having me there only made it harder.

  Mom reaches out. She cups my cheek in one warm, gloved hand, and turns me to face her again. And she says, “Dreams change.” She says, “Realities change. People change. We all go through it in different ways.”

  I hold her gaze. She strokes my cheek with her thumb.

  Then Connor comes shrieking across the beach, shouting, “Mom! Maisie! Look!”

  We turn to him. He’s flapping his arms in his bright yellow raincoat. Jack is a few paces behind him, gesturing at the sea. And as Mom and I look out at the water, I realize the wind has picked up. Cold, briny gusts whip my hair behind my shoulders, tug at the sleeves of my jacket, at the little pink pom-pom attached to my beanie. The fog has cleared a bit. The horizon is still hidden, but the mist has pulled farther away from the coastline.

  “It’s a whale!” Connor says. “We saw a whale.”

  Jack and Connor reach us. The four of us stand together, watching and waiting for the whale to show itself again. For the flash of a tail. Or a sudden spout.

  And there it is. A burst of mist. The rolling curve of its back.

  We all gasp and cry out. Connor throws his hands up and cheers. We watch the choppy gray waters, waiting for another glimpse, for the possibility of an entire pod. But nothing else happens. The moment passes, and it’s just the four of us, surrounded by the rhythm of the sea, the cool blasts of air, the ancient rocks.

  28

  Sea Cliffs

  February 19

  We eat lunch on a driftwood log, facing the ocean. And then we start to hike back the same way we came.

  “It’s going to be another long drive to Cape Flattery,” Jack says as Connor protests over the lack of gold and treasure he’s found on this trip so far. “We need to move, in order to make it to the cape while there’s still daylight.”

  And so, I follow my parents and Connor back into the rustling ferns and swaying trees. Up the wet, winding boardwalks and through stretches of mud that cake my hiking boots in sludge. Across the bridge above the Ozette River. And finally, eventually, all the way back to our car.

  We drive north for over an hour.

  The roads to Neah Bay are long and laced through thick evergreen groves. We curve alongside steep, vertical bluffs. We catch glimpses of the Strait of Juan de Fuca, which is also shrouded in patches of mist. Like tufts of clouds that have somehow become stranded on earth.

  And there is more snow here. The tree branches are dusted in white and drooping. Streaks of gray slush have gathered down the middle of the road. Blades of grass poke through the inch-thick blanket of snow on the ground.

  We make it to the trailhead at Cape Flattery. Connor is the first to climb out of the car and run up to the bulletin board at the head of the trail. There is a map of the area, some historical and ecological information, an excerpt on the Cape Flattery Lighthouse on Tatoosh Island, and some reminders to be respectful of the wildlife, and to closely supervise young children. There is also a stack of walking sticks propped up beside a handwritten message encouraging visitors to use them. Some of these walking sticks are decorated with beaded strings and feathers.

  “Cool!” Connor yells. He takes one and stands it upright; the stick is taller than he is. But he reaches up and touches the pink feather attached to it. “Maisie, do you want this one? You can have it.”

  “I’m okay, Con.”

  He looks up at me. “Don’t you want to try and use it?”

  I shrug. “I’m fine.”

  “But, Maisie—”

  Jack says, “She said no, bud. That’s enough.”

  Connor turns to Mom. “Mommy, do you want this? Could you bring it, in case Maisie changes her mind?”

  “Of course, sweetie.” Mom takes the walking stick from him, lifts her phone in her other hand, and gestures at the oversized blue chair a little farther down from us. The words “Neah Bay, WA” curve across its top, along with a painting of the lighthouse. “Let’s take some family photos before we walk down!” Mom says. “Come on, everyone, real quick.”

  Connor and I both groan.

  “But, Mommy,” he whines. “I want to look for treasure.”

  “How about we take pictures on the way back?” Jack asks. “It should be the golden hour by then, anyway. Perfect for photography.”

  Mom sighs. “Okay,” she says. “On the way back. No buts.”

  We start to move down the sloping trail. Sharp winds cut through the trees, filling the woods with an echoing hush. Branches dance and bob all around us. In the distance, I hear a splintering crack and my head snaps up just in time to see a short branch fall from the canopy, crumpling in the undergrowth below.

  We reach narrow wooden staircases that draw us deeper into the forest. Our hiking boots land on the crooked planks with hollow thumps. Mom is lifting her phone, taking pictures of the forest from every possible angle. Connor is still chattering about treasure, and Jack is trying to explain to him that we aren’t going to another beach. That we will not reach the water here. And that we absolutely will not leave the designated trails, the boardwalks. />
  My boot skids slightly on a damp stair. I catch myself, but the impact tweaks my knee. I feel the muscles around it burn and tighten into a knot as I keep following my family. But I fall back a little bit. Shake it out. Take a deep breath.

  It’s not that bad; I can get through this. I can push through.

  I take another steadying breath. I think of the auditions this spring. The possibility of a summer intensive on the East Coast. And I keep walking, moving forward, the only direction I need to go.

  Mom turns to check on me. “How’s the knee?” she asks. “We’re doing a lot of walking today. Is it too much?”

  I tell her, “It’s totally fine.”

  “This is the most physical activity you’ve had in months,” she marvels. “Does it feel nice to be out and about?”

  I nod and she grins at me, pleased.

  At the bottom of the trail, the boardwalk splits in a few different directions. There are multiple viewpoints from the top of this sea cliff. The crash and roar of the water has been muted to a mumble at this distance, the waves are so far below. The winds whistle and shift all around us.

  The fog has rolled even farther back, a clouded gray wall miles off the shore. There are still tendrils of mist threaded through the evergreens that rise along the surrounding bluffs. But the sky is peeking through the thinning white haze overhead, in pale blue patches. And these flashes of blue have deepened the color of the water to sapphire. Which is fitting, because the small islands here remind me of emeralds in the rough. And the boulders peeking out from the lapping waves remind me of polished onyx.