Keelhaul Joe rose from the surf each dusk with one purpose. He meant to drag the captain who drowned his crew down into Davy Jones's locker. But the sea would not let him climb free. Every night he clawed toward the shore, and every night the same girl stood waiting on the sand. Her presence tied him to the deep like an anchor chain. The island elders sent her. She was their tide-reader, and they swore only her eyes could bind him back beneath the waves. Joe watched her from the shallows. Salt water ran from his sleeves. Iron shackles still hung at his wrists, and the cold in his chest never eased. The girl was young, with sun-bleached braids and bare feet. She carried a crooked stick. Fern Gully knelt in the wet sand and scratched a wave pattern near the waterline. When she finished, Joe felt the pull tighten. The pattern held him. He could not pass. Then Fern stopped. She stared at the marks she had made. Her jaw tightened. She dragged the stick sideways and wiped the whole pattern away. "I'm not doing it," she said. Her voice shook, but she meant it. "They can send someone else." A second shape rose from the tide beside Joe. Silas Deepwater, his drowned quartermaster, hollow-eyed beneath a dripping hat. Water leaked from the bones of his hands. Silas had served Joe on the galleon, and he served him still in death. "She's leaving the shore, Captain," Silas rasped. "The elders won't like it." Fern heard him. She turned and saw the two dead men standing in the surf. She did not run. She gripped her stick tighter and looked straight at Joe. "You're the one they're all afraid of," she said. "Old Joe. The one from the deep." Joe stepped closer. The chains dragged behind him through the foam. "They send you to hold me under," he said. His voice was low, like water over stone. "Why do you keep wiping the marks away?" Fern's eyes filled. "Because I don't want to. Every night they push me out here. Every night I say no and walk home." She threw the stick down. "I won't be their hook to catch you." Silas leaned toward Joe. "Without her patterns, nothing binds us to the shore." Joe understood then. The girl was the only leash the elders held. And she had just cut it. He looked at the ruined marks in the sand, then at Fern. "Then go home," Joe said. "And don't come back." Fern backed away up the beach. She did not scratch a single line. She turned and ran into the dark, and the pull on Joe's chest went slack. For the first time, no pattern held him. Joe walked free onto dry sand. But the elders would soon learn their tide-reader had refused them. And they would come to the shore themselves to finish what she would not.