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WreckedClos-Poulet, Bretagne
May 1758
She thought him dead at first.
A man, draped lifeless upon a wedge of broken hull, cheek pressed against the timber as tenderly as a lover’s as he rose gently up, gently down with the exhausted breath of the sea. The storm had raged all night, howling and hurling itself against the shore, rattling the windows so hard that it had taken all of Luce’s will not to fling them open and feel its cold breath on her face. Only the chintz drapes, her mother’s great pride, had stopped her. Papa had brought the fabric all the way from India, and there was no telling how Gratienne would have reacted had Luce allowed the weather to spoil them. And so, she had kept the windows closed, watching the storm as it battered the gardens and orchard and pried at the roof of the dovecote as though it would rip it free and toss it, rolling and bouncing, down the sweep of rain-soaked fields and into the furious waves.
It was the kind of weather that stilled the world and sent folk hurrying indoors, that closed shutters and covered mirrors for fear of lightning strikes, that caused ships to fly before it into the harbor at Saint-Malo. One ship, at least, had not been fast enough.
Its remains dotted the gray water. Shards of decking, slabs of hull, tangles of rigging. Luce narrowed her eyes against the glare of the early morning sun, skirts held out of the weed and foam. She had seen the sea’s victims before, of course. Many times. Could not avoid it, with the storms that blew in from the northwest, tearing down the Manche, leaving ruined ships and their dead strewn across the beaches of Clos-Poulet like flowers after a wedding feast. Faded petals across the sand. This man’s face, however, lacked the telltale pallor of death. And did he cling to the timber? She had seen men who had lashed themselves to ships as they broke apart, only to wash ashore, drowned, their fingers open and empty. But no rope bound this man to his floating sanctuary.
Not dead, then.
A quick glance down the cove’s curved, rocky shore. There were folk from Saint-Coulomb about; she had seen them as she’d climbed down the steep path from the cliffs. Men in their low boats, and shawled women, heads bowed as, like Luce, they combed the beach for treasure in the storm’s wake. Brandy and waxed packets of silk; coins and tea and candles. The men, however, had pushed out into deeper water, sails cutting the gray horizon, while the women had rounded the rocky point separating the cove from the next beach, where, farther along the shore, the path to the village lay.
But for a scattering of foam and weed, the beach was empty.
Decided, Luce tossed her boots, stockings, and garters to the gold-gray sand and shrugged out of her heavy men’s overcoat. She wore it like a shell, that coat; a briny leather casing that hid the soft, female truth of her. Her long, dark hair had been tucked safely within its collar; it unraveled around her shoulders as she bent to unlace her woolen caraco, then unbuttoned her breeches, sliding them down her bare legs. A final glance along the beach and her battered black tricorn joined the motley mound of clothing upon the sand. Clad in her chemise and stays, Luce picked her way to the water’s edge.
One, two, three steps and she was shin deep. Four, five, six and the fine cotton of her petticoat was dragging at her thighs. Luce’s skin prickled. It was May, and the Manche had not lost its wintery bite. Seven, eight, nine and she was pushing off the sandy bottom with her toes, diving clean and strong into the first rush of sea and salt. She opened her arms and scooped them back, gliding toward the man.
A feeling of dread as she neared him. What if she was wrong? What if he was tangled, not clinging? Dead instead of living? Would he roll languidly to greet her, already bloating, eyes glazed and sightless?
Too late now. She had to know. A few strokes more and she was at his side: a man from the waist up, clinging to the surface while his legs fell into shadow. His eyes—to her relief—were closed, his skin pale against his dark hair, but when Luce touched his wrist she felt the fluttering of his heart. A tattered sail and rigging trailed about him. She grasped the rope and turned for shore, swimming hard, towing the cumbersome load behind her.
The tide was coming in. Papa always said that Saint-Malo’s tides were the most powerful in Europe and that, together with the city’s position, surrounded by the Manche on three sides with a happy proximity to the trade routes between Spain, Portugal, England, and the Netherlands; its treacherous necklace of reefs and islands that caused even the staunchest of navigators to falter; and the legendary, protective storm-stone forming its mighty walls and ballasting the hulls of its ships, was what gave it its enviable strength.
Luce let the water help her, let it push broken man and ship both toward land.
When the hull scraped against sand, she drew away the rigging holding him to the timber. He sank beneath the surface as though he were made of marble and not flesh. Panicked, Luce dived after him, wrapping her arms about him as the Manche dragged him hungrily down. How heavy he was! She opened her eyes—the familiar salty sting—and checked to see if the ropes that had saved him were now conspiring to drag him to his death. They were not. Yet still he sank, arms trailing slowly upward, dark hair wafting like weed. She kicked harder. Felt, through the water around her, a nameless prickling against her skin. Surprised, Luce stilled and heard, clearly, the rumble of distant thunder.
Storm-stone.
Sailors on stricken ships sometimes helped themselves to their storm-stone ballast, hoping the stones’ magic might save their hides. Luce plunged her hands into the pockets of the man’s breeches, scooping the fist-sized ballast stones free. They grumbled as they sank, tiny granite storm clouds heavy with magic. Lightened of his burden, the sailor lifted easily in Luce’s arms. She pulled him to the surface and on toward the shore, his head lolling against her shoulder, his fingertips trailing in her wake.
He was taller than she, and well-knit, but she managed to drag him clumsily onto the beach, her chemise twisting around her thighs, her feet sinking in the wet sand. His own feet—bare, perfect—were hardly clear of the water’s grip when she lowered him onto the beach and sank down beside him, gasping. The Manche hissed regretfully, stroking at the young man’s bare toes, the cuffs of his breeches.
Be still, Luce told it silently. You have had your fill of sailors today. You shall not have this one, too.
The sun slid above the storm clouds tattering the horizon, washing the water in weak spring sunshine. It drifted over the near-drowned man, catching at his face. He groaned a little and frowned, closed eyes scrunching tight as though he feared the day.
Luce could not blame him for that. His ship, his crew were gone, the former heaving and rocking itself into death in the deeps of the night, dragging the latter down with it. It seemed that only he had survived.
The strike of a ship’s bell drifted faintly from the clifftop above. Eight strikes; eight of the morning. Luce pushed herself to her knees.
He lay on his back, eyes closed, dark hair—as dark as Luce’s own—fanning across his brow. Long black lashes were startling against his skin, his eyelids the faint mauve of the palest mussel shell. Beads of water glimmered silver on his skin.
Copyright © 2025 by Kell Woods
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