The first thing Mira noticed when she stepped off the battered ferry was the smell.
Not the usual briny breath of the ocean, but something rancid — salt and rot, woven together on the thick, choking fog that hugged the docks.
She pulled her coat tighter around her.
Gull’s Hollow hadn’t changed. Weather-beaten houses sagged under the weight of too many storms. The salt line, a pale ring of crusty white, circled the village like a ward. Children were forbidden to step over it. Tourists laughed at it. Mira had left at eighteen, convinced the salt was just another superstition — a fairy tale for a town that time had forgotten.
Now, she was back. And her mother was dead.
Ahead, the village council was gathered near the town square, sacks of coarse salt slung over their shoulders.
Even now, with her heart hollowed out from grief, Mira rolled her eyes at the sight. Rituals and salt and songs to keep the sea at bay — what had it ever saved them from?
“Storm’s coming,” croaked old Elias from behind her, appearing as if conjured from the mist. His long coat flapped around his boots as he ambled closer.
“Good time to stay inside. You remember the rules, don’t you?”
“Don’t cross the salt. Don’t break the line. Don’t—”
She waved a hand impatiently. “I remember.”
He peered at her for a long moment, then nodded and limped off into the gloom.
The storm hit that night like a beast raking its claws against the village. Windows rattled. Waves chewed at the rocky cliffs below. Mira lay awake, staring at the cracked ceiling of her childhood bedroom, listening to the wind whisper through the walls.
At some point — she didn’t know when — she heard something crunch outside.
Something stepping over salt.
By morning, the storm had blown itself out, leaving wreckage in its wake. Shingles torn from roofs, boats smashed against the piers. The fog hadn’t lifted. It seemed thicker now, clinging to skin, seeping into lungs.
Word traveled fast in small places.
Jonas Harrow, the town drunk, was missing. His fishing shack sat dark and flooded, the door hanging open on broken hinges. No one could find his body — only a slimy trail of seaweed that led from his home down toward the cliffs.
When Mira passed the broken section of salt line near the south dock, she stopped cold.
The break was small — barely three feet wide — but it gaped like a wound in the earth. And something… wrong… pulsed beyond it.
Like a heartbeat buried in the surf.
She backed away and found Elias waiting for her.
“You see it, too,” he said grimly.
“Someone needs to fix it,” Mira said.
“No,” Elias said, voice low. “It’s too late for that.”
By the third night, the village dogs refused to go outside.
A fisherman found a mass of jelly-like flesh tangled in his nets — and promptly threw himself into the sea hours later, babbling about the “Drowned Mother” with seaweed in his teeth.
Mira confronted Elias in the pub, where the handful of remaining villagers huddled around smoky lanterns.
“What is it?” she demanded. “What’s really out there?”
He took a long drink before answering.
“A bargain,” he said. “Made long ago, when the sea tried to swallow us whole. We trapped her — a creature from the deep, older than anything we know. She wanted tribute. Blood, maybe. So we offered salt instead.”
Mira felt ice creep along her spine. “The salt was a prison.”
Elias nodded. “And now it’s broken.”
On the fourth night, the Drowned Mother came.
Mira woke to the sound of wet footsteps slapping against the cobblestones outside. She peered through the warped glass and saw her mother — her dead mother — standing at the broken salt line, face pale and dripping, smiling with cracked lips.
“Come to me, my girl,” the thing whispered.
Mira stumbled back from the window, heart hammering against her ribs. The council would never believe her. They were too old, too afraid.
If the salt circle wasn’t repaired tonight, the Drowned Mother would be free to claim Gull’s Hollow forever.
She needed salt.
Enough to seal the line.
She found it in the town hall — a dusty barrel left for emergencies. Grabbing a battered tin pail, Mira sprinted toward the cliffs, the fog curling around her legs, the sea howling below.
The creature was waiting.
It rose from the surf like a queen ascending her throne, dripping seaweed and barnacles, bones woven into its hair. It had Mira’s mother’s eyes — but none of her kindness.
“You don’t have to fear,” the Drowned Mother crooned. “Cross the threshold. Break the line forever. I can give you anything you’ve lost.”
Tears burned Mira’s cheeks. She wanted to believe it.
Wanted her mother back. Wanted everything to be the way it was before.
But she knew a lie when she heard one.
With shaking hands, Mira scattered salt across the gap, chanting the old words her mother once whispered over her cradle.
“By salt, by stone, by sky and bone — be bound.”
The Drowned Mother screamed — a sound like waves tearing apart a ship — and lunged.
Mira poured the last of the salt, completing the circle just as the thing reached for her.
The creature struck an invisible barrier and dissolved into a geyser of mist and foam, shrieking all the way back into the churning sea.
Every morning, before the sun burned off the last wisps of mist, Mira walked the perimeter of Gull’s Hollow with a sack of salt slung over her shoulder.
She mended every crack. Strengthened every thin patch. She knew now that the salt was not just a barrier — it was a promise. A price paid in vigilance, in fear, and sometimes in blood.
The village shrank. Year by year, more houses fell into ruin, more people left for the mainland. But Mira stayed. She stayed because someone had to.
One morning, as she traced the line along the southern cliffs, she paused. There, just beyond the reach of the salt, stood a child — pale and dripping wet, seaweed tangled in her hair.
The child smiled.
Not a sweet, human smile — but a wide, unnatural grin that stretched too far across her face.
Mira gripped the sack of salt tighter and stepped forward.
The Drowned Mother was patient.
And the sea was always hungry.
