What the Tide Left

Cala found it on the beach before dawn, half-buried in wet sand at the tideline. A box. Human-made, which meant giant-made, which meant it was the size of a shed. Metal, mostly, with a seam of rust running along one edge where the sea had been working on it for longer than anyone in Solverde had been alive.

She should have left it. She should have gone back to the bakery where the dough was rising and the ovens were waiting and the morning market would not care about a box on the beach. But the seal was intact. She could see that even in the grey light before sunrise, and an intact seal meant the inside might be dry, and dry meant whatever was in there might still be worth something.

She circled it twice. The sand around the box was smooth, which meant it had come in with the night tide, not been here and uncovered. New salvage. The divers would want to know about it. Sera would want to know about it. Everyone would want to know about it, and the moment she told anyone, the box would belong to the community salvage process, which was fair and right and exactly how things should work, and she would go back to baking bread while someone else opened it.

She pressed her ear to the metal. Nothing. No hum, no ticking, no sound of liquid shifting. Just the cold surface and the faint vibration of the waves through the sand beneath her feet.

"You're going to make me late," she told the box.

The box said nothing.

She went back to the bakery. She started the ovens. She shaped the loaves and set them to proof and did not think about the box, except she thought about the box constantly, and by the time the first customers arrived at the morning market she had already decided what she was going to do.

Tomas was at his usual table at the Driftwood, doing whatever tavern keepers did before the evening crowd showed up. Inventory, probably. He looked up when she came through the door, which was unusual, because Cala didn't come to the Driftwood in the morning. Cala didn't come to the Driftwood much at all.

"I need to post a salvage notice," she said.

Tomas raised an eyebrow. "You?"

"I found something on the beach."

"What kind of something?"

"A box. Sealed. Metal. Big."

Tomas set down whatever he was counting. "How big?"

Cala held her arms out, then wider, then gave up. "Come look at it."

They stood on the beach together in the full morning light, and the box looked different now. Bigger, somehow. The rust seam caught the sun and turned the color of dried blood. Tomas walked around it the same way she had, slowly, one paw trailing along the metal surface.

"That's not from the dockyards," he said. "The metal's wrong. Too clean under the rust."

"I know."

"Could be from further out."

"I know."

He looked at her. "You didn't open it."

"Of course I didn't open it."

"But you want to."

Cala looked at the box and the box sat there, patient and enormous and full of something that might be nothing and might be everything, and the bread was done and the market was running and she had done the right thing by reporting it, and she would keep doing the right thing, because that's what Solverde was built on, and she only wished the right thing didn't always involve waiting.

"I'll post the notice," Tomas said. "Salvage crew will be down by afternoon."

"Good."

"You want to be here when they open it?"

"Yes."

He nodded, like that was the most reasonable thing anyone had ever said, and they walked back to town together while the tide came in behind them and covered the box's footprints in the sand.