Chapter One · The Night the Tide Ran Black
The lighthouse had been dark for a hundred years before I lit it, and dark a hundred more it would have stayed if the sea had its way. I climbed the ninety-nine steps every dusk with the lantern oil sloshing against my hip, and every dusk the salt wind told me the same thing in its long grey voice: give him back.
I never did. Some debts you carry up the stairs with you. Some you bury in the cellar and feed once a year, on the night the tide runs black.
He washed up on the third such night, face-down in the wrack, a dead man with a living man's hands. I should have rolled him back into the surf. Instead I dragged him up all ninety-nine steps — because the lantern had gone out, and I was so tired of being the only light on this coast.
— from Saltgrave
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