Once upon a time…

I was a lean boy when I first carried a sack of broken saints across the straits. We ferried them at night. Not for trade, but for the Tide of Eyelids—a hush-time when elders said the sea blinked, and whatever it saw grew heavy. Statues, boats, guilt. We learned to move only when the swells were wide awake.

I served many masters: a monk who scraped paint from faces, a widow who sold splinters of halos, a captain who hid books in barrels of salt. I dodged soldiers and zealots. Once, in a ruined church, I heard a voice in the cracked plaster. It told me the sea would blink before dawn. I told the captain. He laughed. We set off anyway. When the tide’s eyelids fell, the water thickened like honey. Our oars locked. We would have sunk if I had not tossed the sack of faces overboard. The sea swallowed them and let us pass.

Now my hands shake. At night I hear waves practicing their blink. I keep one carved face on my shelf. When the sea sleeps, I do not. I wait, and I remember who it spared.