Wayfinder

Ciondo had blown out the lanterns for the night when Sabin remembered her mistake. Lately arrived to help out on the sloop for the summer, she had forgotten to bring in her jacket. It lay where it had been left, draped over the upturned keel of the dory; wet by now in the fog, and growing redolent of the mildew that would speckle its patched, sumfaded shoulders if someone did not crawl out of warm blankets and fetch it up from the beach.

    The wind had risen. Gusts slammed and whined across the eaves, and moaned through the windbreak of pines that lined the cliffs. Winter had revisited since sundown; the drafts through the chinks held the scent of northern snow. The floorboards, too, were cold under Sabin's bare feet. She looked out through the crack in the shutter, dressing quickly as she did so. The sky had given her a moon~ but a thin, ragged cloud cover sent shadows chasing in ink and silver across the sea. The path to the harborside was steep, even dangerous, all rocks and twined roots that could trip the unwary even in brightest sunlight.

    Stupid, she had been, and ever a fool for letting her mind stray in daydreams. She longed to curse in irritation as her uncle did when his hands slipped on a net, but she dreaded to raise a disturbance. The household was sleeping. Even her aunt who wept in her pillow each night for the son just lost to the sea; Sabin's cousin, who was four years older than her undersized fourteen, and whose boots she could never grow to fill.

    ~A girl can work hard and master a boy's chores,' Uncle Ciondo had summed up gruffly. 'But you will never be strong enough to take the place of a man.'

    Yet the nets were heavy and the sloop was old, its scarred, patched planking in constant need of repairs. A girl's hands were

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