Once upon a time…

We woke in the saltlight of World’s third moon, the dunes whispering like old women. Our group had six: Keta with her listening drum, Torin the tinker who smelled of cedar smoke, Yara who read currents, twins Mako and Len with their basket-kites, and me, Sela, who remembered stories. We were hired by the tide-priests to unbind the witches’ nets from the mangrove flats. Nets were illegal now—anything that took more than it needed was—but hunger makes old habits look holy.

The witches weren’t women with hats. They were widowers and aunties and young men from the north village, people you see in the market, people who still called the mangroves by their mothers’ names. They believed the sea had turned its face because we’d given our faith to instruments. They wove their nets from ghost-fibers that glimmered at dawn and took all the silver spines in a gulp, leaving slick, empty water.

We walked the roots at low tide. Crab-holes popped like knuckles around us. Keta laid her drum to the wet wood and beat a slow heart; the sensors inside caught the mangroves’ sap-sigh, translated it to a hum, which we sang back. In the new rites, we ask permission of plants before we cut them. The old rites said you didn’t need to ask if your hands were clean. My grandmother whispered both through me, a braid of prayer and apology.

We found the first net caught on a root like a pale skin. Torin’s tool—a harp strung with tempered wire—sang to it. The ghost-fiber pulsed, tried to slip, but the twins lofted their kites and the wind pulled the strands taut. Yara’s fingers were blue from the salt as she unpicked knots, muttering the names of every fish she’d ever eaten, a tally against greed. We worked until our backs hurt and our mouths tasted of rust.

On the second day, the witches came—faces I knew from weddings, funerals, market-day haggling. Their leader, Olan, had eyes like a storm shelf. “You think your little songs can feed our children?” he asked. His people carried poles, not spears, but poles can break bones.

Torin lifted his hands. “We’ll show you what the flats can spare,” he said, and we did. Keta beat the permission rhythm, and the mangroves replied like they were laughing and crying both. The sap-hum mapped the ebb and told us where the beds were thick. We offered a calendar of taking and leaving, the new custom of gleaning days and fasting days, painted on driftwood with squid ink.

Olan spit into the mud. “We used to take when the moon told us.” He looked up at the third moon, thin as a fish-bone. “Maybe the moon is in your drum now.”

“Maybe it always was,” I said, and his eyes softened for the length of a wave.

We got a season’s peace. The nets went quiet. The kites flew every market day to show the wind’s favor, and the tide-priests blessed baskets, and the witches—our neighbors—learned to bind smaller weirs that let the fry pass. We taught their children the permission songs, and they taught us the old names we had forgotten.

That winter, a storm unstitched two villages. The ghost-fibers we confiscated could have tied roofs, but they had rotted in a heap because we had been righteous. We cut our palms on the memory. Olan stood with me in the rain, his hair pasted to his skull, and we braided what we had. We made nets that weren’t for catching.

When spring returned, the flats were thick with silver spines. We stood knee-deep, the mangrove roots gripping our ankles like kin. Keta’s drum sat quiet on the root, wet and shining, reflecting the third moon’s sliver. A mullet leapt; for a breath it hung above the water, scaled with stars, and fell. We watched the rings travel out, their echoes stitching the silence between us.