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The outport of Greywater Arm is a small collection of weathered buildings built inside a ring of rocky cliffs. The road runs from my grandfather’s house, up on the southern cliff, down a winding track to the village. I can hear the gravel road crunch beneath my shoes as I walk into town. There’s a small church with the cemetery out back. Somewhere back there is a headstone with the name “Delmar” carved into the top of it. Below it are Esteban, Andrés, and Maeve. The last time I saw it, I remember being struck by how only my dad’s name had a date for his death. I remember being upset seeing my mom’s and grandfather’s names on the stone back then. I suppose by now they’ve put the date under my grandfather’s name. I think about taking a detour into the cemetery, but it’s been so long since I was last here that I don’t think I could even find the grave anymore. So I keep going.
The small town wharf is centrally located, and in the water around it most of the moorings are empty. Boats are out, working. I remember reading that fishermen usually go out early to catch the best fish. There’s one larger boat tied up to the wharf, a sailboat, its sails furled and the name on the stern, The Sea Witch, rendered in simple block letters.
As I cross the street, there’s a large rock placed near the entrance to the wharf. On it, a bronze plaque reads, “To those who’ve died at sea, lost but never forgotten.” The list is long, but as I scan it, near the bottom I see the name “Andrés Delmar – 1992”. I trace the lines of the name with my fingers, thinking about what it was like all those years ago.
I don’t really remember Greywater Arm the way Mom describes it: a warm, lively house, people in and out, dinner parties, card games, and stories, with my dad holding court among friends he’d known since school. She’s told me he was an amazing sailor, almost like he was born to it, like the wind did what he wanted it to. Once, in a misguided attempt to make me feel better about being different from the other boys at school, she told me Dad had looked different too, that I look just like him, and that he’d found his thing, sailing, and been so good at it that everyone wanted to be around him. It didn’t help. It’s hard to find your thing when you live thousands of kilometres from the ocean, even when you feel like if you could just get behind the wheel of a boat and put the wind at your back, you’d be right at home.
I leave the monument behind and start down the wharf, scanning the few boats left on the moorings. I wonder which of those is my grandfather’s. As I walk down the wharf, an older woman comes out of the cabin of the boat that’s tied up. As she turns, she catches my eye and freezes. “Andrés!” she calls out, then catches herself. “No, of course not. You must be Mateo!” I stop mid-stride and look at her: the same dark knotty hair that my father, grandfather, and I all share, the same deeply tanned skin, and the same sparkle in our eyes. I recognize her almost instantly as the woman from my parents’ wedding photo. Before I can speak, she deftly steps off her sailboat and onto the wharf. “You are Mateo Delmar, right?” she asks. I nod, and then ask the first question that comes to my mind: “Are we related?”
The woman gives a little chuckle and shakes her head. “No, I’m Inés,” she says, then pauses for a moment. “Although I suppose I’m almost like family. After all, I’ve known your grandfather since before he came here.”
“You knew him before he moved to Greywater Arm?” I ask.
“Oh yes, my dear,” Inés says. “I sailed under him, many decades ago.”
“He was the captain of a boat?” I ask eagerly. Inés nods, and before she can speak I ask, “Which one of the boats out on the harbour is his?”
Inés gives a wide smile, showing where she’s missing a few of her top teeth. “Your grandfather didn’t have a boat. Never had one here. Swore he’d never sail again, the superstitious old fool, not after we washed up here.”
“Washed up?” I say the words back; they seem odd. “Washed up from where?”
Inés’s eyes narrow on me, like she’s deciding how much to tell me. Then she gives a little nod, as if she’s made up her mind. “Why don’t you come aboard, my son?” she offers, gesturing to her boat.
I hesitate. Mom has told me a hundred times not to go anywhere with strangers. But Inés isn’t exactly a stranger. She knew my name before I said it, and she’s standing next to Mom in the wedding photo in my grandfather’s room. And she knows things about my family that no one has ever told me.
I have to duck a little to get through the small cabin door on Inés’s boat, but once inside, it’s a cozy space: a small galley, a door behind me to the head, and a door at the front to the small bedroom. Most of the space is taken up by a well-worn seating area set up around a wooden table.
“Welcome aboard,” Inés says, entering behind me. She moves past me to the bedroom door and steps through, pulling the door closed behind her. I’m not sure if I’m supposed to follow or not, so I look around at the various objects collected in the room. Like the rooms of my grandfather’s house, the sailboat is filled with nautical knick-knacks and pictures of boats. Then I spot it: small, in a heavily worn frame, is a picture. It’s me and my mom on the wharf, my dad beside us, his head turned, paying more attention to the boat he’s tying up than to the camera. It’s the same picture I’ve wondered over on our wall at home for so many years.
Inés comes out of the bedroom holding something small wrapped in a cloth. Before she can say anything, I hold up the framed picture and ask, “Where did you get this photo?”
“I took the picture. You recognize it?” she says.
“We have the same one at home,” I tell her.
“Ah yes, I forgot I’d gotten a copy made for Andrés. Well, in that photo you would have been –“
“Two,” I say, interrupting her. “It was the summer of 1990.”
“That’s right,” she says, adding, “Your father had just taken you and your mother sailing. She probably didn’t know it at the time, but she would have been pregnant with Nora, so technically Nora’s in the photo too.” She smiles her big grin that shows off her missing teeth.
I look at the photo, trying to remember sailing with my dad, and I try to picture my mom, the person who wants Nora and me as far away from water as possible, deciding to go sailing with us.
“You know I taught your father to sail?” Inés says, seeing my interest in the photo.
“He didn’t learn from his dad?” I ask. I’d always imagined him and my grandfather on a boat together as my dad learned to sail.
“No, b’y, I told you,” Inés reminds me. “Since your grandfather and I were shipwrecked and washed ashore here, he never set foot in a boat. Your dad tried for a while. In the end it fell to me to teach him how to sail. No way I was going to let the son of the Great Esteban Delmar not know his way around a boat.”
“The Great Esteban Delmar?” I ask.
Inés nods, sits down on the sofa, and gestures for me to sit across the table from her. I take the seat. It’s well-worn and comfortable, and I sink into the cushions and listen.
“Your grandfather was the greatest pirate captain ever to sail the 8th Sea,” Inés begins.
The 8th Sea. I think about the book I found last night, the one my dad typed out from my grandfather’s stories.
“Isn’t the 8th Sea just a story my grandfather told?” I ask.
“Just a story? You don’t know about the 8th Sea? Your mother never told you?” she says, a note of indignation in her voice.
“In the book my dad typed up, there were mermaids with pearlescent tails who fall in love with pirates. That’s not real, is it?”
“Mermaids?” Inés lowers her voice and leans in close. “I’ve seen a whole school of them push a boat off a sandbar after it ran aground. And pirates – there were pirates aplenty in the 8th Sea. And more than that: leviathans so large they can swallow a ship, kraken who drag boats to the deep, and birds the size of horses, ridden by monsters who’ll snatch away anyone with a bounty on their head.”
As I sit enthralled, Inés slides the small cloth-wrapped object towards me across the table. As she carefully unfolds it, she says, “Captain Esteban Delmar, your grandfather, was one of the greatest adventurers and treasure hunters ever to sail, and he did it all with this.”
The dark cloth falls open, and inside is a small brown object no bigger than a tea biscuit. The surface is smooth, but grains of wood run along it like it’s been carved from some ancient tree. Inés gestures for me to take it, and I pick it up. It’s warm in my hands and perfectly smooth, except for one small groove and a little notch. Instinctively I press my finger to the notch, and the object pops open. Inside is what looks like a compass face, but there are no direction markings. The needle seems to be made from the same wood. It spins slowly for a moment, then turns sharply and settles, pointing towards the stern of the boat.
“What is it?” I ask, trying to work out which way north is. I’m not sure exactly, but somehow I have a feeling this one doesn’t point that way.
Inés stares at the compass, nodding, before answering my question. “This is a kelpwood compass,” she says. “It belonged to your grandfather. He gave it to me before your father was born, to make sure he didn’t go on any crazy adventures. There’s a fair few pirates in the 8th Sea would’ve fancied taking that off his hands, one way or another.” She draws her finger across her throat at those last words.
“They would have killed him for a compass that doesn’t point north?” I ask.
Smiling, Inés continues: “Aye, that needle always points to where you need to go. Your grandfather followed it to treasure, a fine bit of it, and then eventually across the Morrow Line to this world.”
“The Morrow Line?” I ask, still staring at the compass.
“The line between our worlds,” Inés adds.
We both sit for a moment in silence as I stare at the compass. Inés is the first to speak. “You know, your father asked me for this compass seven years ago, the day before he set off. I wouldn’t give it to him.”
At the mention of my father, my attention snaps up from the compass dial to Inés. “What do you mean, set off?”
“Haven’t you ever wondered where he was going when he sailed out into the storm?” Inés asks.
It’s been so long since my father died that I’d forgotten about the storm. I only remember bits and pieces of that first year when Nora was born. Something had changed in him, something seemed different, and then one morning he wasn’t there anymore. We had the funeral, but without a casket, since his boat was never found.
“He left to cross the Morrow Line, to go to the 8th Sea,” Inés says.
“Why?” I ask.
“He wouldn’t tell me,” Inés says, adding, “but I think the reason they’ve never found a wreck, why nothing ever washed ashore, is that he made it. Without the compass. I told him no, told him to stay here with his family, like Esteban did. I wondered for many nights after he disappeared if I was wrong. Now that you’re here, I know that we can cross. We can find him, and we can bring him back.”
I think about the last seven years of my life: the boy without a dad at all the school events, the boy who doesn’t look like anyone else. It would be good to have him back, to have all those moments together at last.
I look at the compass. The needle has stayed fixed on a point somewhere aft of the boat the whole time. “You say it points to where I need to go?” I ask. Inés nods and watches me as I stand and climb out of the cabin onto the deck. The compass leads me to the back of the boat, and then I hear it.
“MATEO!”
It’s my mom’s voice. I look up and see her out on the wharf, holding a small bag of groceries in one hand and clutching Nora’s hand tightly with the other.
“What are you doing?” Her voice is distraught. “We’ve been looking all over for you, my son! I thought you’d fallen into the ocean. I thought you might have gone swimming, or… I don’t know.”
Quickly I snap the compass shut, tuck it into my pocket, and step off the boat. “Mom, it’s okay. I’m okay,” I say, trying to calm her down. “YOU!” Mom’s voice turns to ice, and her gaze goes right past me. She lets go of Nora and hands me the grocery bag. I turn to see that Inés has come out of the cabin. Mom steps right up to the edge of the wharf and lets loose.
“What are you at, having him on this boat? Isn’t it enough that you got his dad killed? You thought since we were in town for a funeral, you might as well get him killed too? You’re going to stay away from him, you old witch! And don’t you dare think about coming by tonight. I don’t care if you were Esteban’s oldest friend – if I sees you up to that house tonight, I’ll… I’ll… throw you off the cliff!”
Mom’s face is turning red with anger as she speaks. Her voice sounds different, too, rougher and quicker, like Reverend Hiscock’s on the answering machine. Inés, for her part, seems calm. When Mom is done yelling, she finally speaks up.
“I’m glad you got that off of your chest, my dear. That bitterness you’re holding is going to infect those kids. And leaving them not knowing where they came from – it’s a sin. I won’t come by tonight if you won’t have me, but you should look at those two. They’re not Andrés. He was some sailor, I’ll give him that, but he was a show-off and a braggart, and you knows it as well as I do. Those two, they take after you. Every bit of you, my dear.”
At these last words, Mom looks deeply furious, like she’s about to lash out and hit Inés. Then all of a sudden she turns and quickly walks past Nora and me. “We need to go home now,” she says hurriedly as she passes, a sign that Nora and I should follow.
As we ride in the car back up to my grandfather’s house, I think about how to ask my mom my questions. Why is she so mad at Inés? Why hasn’t she ever told us about the 8th Sea? But no matter how much I think, I can’t figure out the right words.
When we get to the house, Mom sends Nora inside and then bends down slightly to my level. “Mateo?” she asks, making sure she has my attention. I nod. “That woman is very dangerous. Please promise me that you won’t go talk to her again.” I nod my head and open my mouth to ask one of my questions, but it’s clear from the way Mom has stood and turned away that this isn’t the time.
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