At Driftwhistle Harbor, morning tide was pulling harder than it should have.
Toma stood on the main dock with one hand on the rope rail and one hand on a small boat’s line. The boat rocked beside him, bumping the ice with a soft, lonely tap. Under the blue-white ice, the sea gave a low boom, as if it were waking up.
All along the harbor, the frozen skin of the bay was loosening. Thin cracks shone where there had been smooth ice a moment ago. A few small boats, tied at the docks for the winter, shivered and creaked as the tide tugged at them. The rope rails strained tight. One dock line sang a thin, worried note.
“Not so fast,” Toma muttered, giving the line a careful pull. He knew this harbor well. He knew which ropes were old, which docks held firm, and which sounds meant trouble was coming. But this tide was moving faster than usual, and that made the old ways feel less certain.
From the bakery lane, Nell called, “Do you want bread, or do you want help?” She tried to sound cheerful, but even her voice sounded small against the booming ice.
A little farther off, Mira in her red hooded coat was already trotting along the edge of the dock, leaning to look where the ice had pulled away. “The gap is wider here!” she cried. “I saw it first!”
Toma looked from the rocking boats to the widening dark water between the ice and the shore path. If he waited, the boats might drift farther out. If he spoke too late, the others would keep guessing instead of helping. One small boat had already slid closer to the open water, and the safe path to shore had become narrower than it had been at dawn.
He drew a slow breath, feeling the cold wind press at his coat, and saw at last that he would have to choose quickly how to start moving the boats before the harbor split the path in two.
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