Toma began his morning walk before the gulls had finished waking. He liked the harbor best at this hour, when the snow still held last night’s shapes and the lanes were quiet enough to hear the sea breathing under the ice.
He stopped first at the dock, where the small brass bell that usually hung by the rope rail was gone. In its place sat a neat little snow sculpture, smooth as a dumpling and polished by careful hands. Farther on, at the cookhouse door, the missing spoon had been replaced by a tiny snow fish. By the coat rack outside the schoolhouse, a red ribbon had vanished, and a snow bow rested in its place.
At first, Toma could almost forgive it. The sculptures were tidy. Thoughtful, even. But as he crossed the lane toward the tool shed, he saw one thing that made him slow to a stop: the harbor’s long iron hook, the one used to pull in tangled nets, was missing from its peg. A snow sculpture stood there instead, shaped not like a fish or bow, but like an arrow with its nose turned toward the breakwater.
Toma looked from the empty peg to the arrow of snow, then down the lane where the usual work of the harbor was already beginning. Soren was near the rope rails, listening to the wind. Pip’s wet black eyes peeked from a crate by the dock, bright with interest.
Toma kept his hands behind his back and considered the lane, the breakwater, and the people busy enough to miss a small worry until it grew teeth. Should he stay at the edge and watch a little longer, or step closer and ask who had been carrying things away?
What happens next?
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