Finn's daughter, Eira, was born with saltwater in her lungs. The midwives said it was a bad omen. "She'll never be rid of the sea," they warned, but Finn laughed. He was a fisherman. The sea was his church, his curse, his paycheck.
Then his wife, Maren, drowned.
They never found her body. Just her shawl snagged on the rocks, kelp tangled in its threads. Finn burned it. Eira, only six, watched the flames and said nothing. She hadn't spoken since.
By twelve, Eira's silence had become a creature of its own. She'd wander the cliffs at night, barefoot, her hair crusted with brine. The villagers called her draugr-caller—a child who beckoned the drowned. Finn ignored them. He taught her to mend nets, gut fish, read the sky. She learned fast, her hands deft and cold.
But the sea changed.
Fish vanished from their traps. Storms brewed in cloudless skies. And Eira began leaving offerings on the shore: dead gulls, sea glass, her mother's wedding ring. "She's bargaining with it," the priest hissed. "That girl's not right."
Finn swung a fist. The priest spat blood into the tide. No one spoke of Eira again.
The nightmares started in July.
Finn would wake choking, his bed soaked with seawater. Eira stood in the doorway, dripping, her eyes black as low tide. "She's coming," she'd say—the first words in six years. Then she'd vanish.
One night, he followed her.
Down the cliffs, through the fog, to a cove he'd never seen. The sand was too white, the waves too quiet. Eira knelt in the shallows, her nightgown floating around her like a jellyfish.
"Eira!"
She turned. Her face was Maren's.
Finn stumbled. When he looked again, Eira was Eira—pale, solemn, holding a conch shell to her ear. "She's angry," she said. "You shouldn't have burned the shawl."
A wave hit Finn's chest, ice-hot, dragging him under. He fought, but the current had hands. Maren's hands.
Eira's voice cut through the water: "Take me instead."
Finn woke on the beach, coughing salt. Eira was gone.
The village searched for days. Weeks. Finn sailed every dawn, his nets empty, his prayers raw.
On the first frost, a knock came. Finn opened his door to a girl with Eira's face and Maren's eyes. Her hair dripped seaweed. Her skin smelled of deep water.
"You kept the sea from her," she said, voice echoing like a conch. "So it kept me."
Finn reached for her. She dissolved into foam.
Now, Finn rows beyond the horizon. His boat rots. His beard crusts with ice.
The villagers say he's mad.
But on still nights, when the moon bleeds silver, they hear it too—a girl's laugh, tangled with a woman's sigh, rising from the waves.
And the nets, heavy with fish no one dares eat.