The ferry comes to Harrow Cove once a week, and it does not wait. The new keeper stepped off with one suitcase, one coat, and a letter that said the lighthouse was "in good order, mostly." The word mostly was doing a lot of work.
2
On the desk in the lamp room, three rules in a harbour master's handwriting. The first two were sensible. The third had been underlined twice, hard enough to tear the paper, and the keeper read it four times without it getting any friendlier.
3
Ines walked up at dusk, said the three rules out loud in case reading wasn't enough, and walked back down without turning round. Behind her the lamp caught, coughed, and threw its first light across the water. The keeper decided not to think about rule three yet.
4
By midnight the fog came in so thick you could stand a spoon in it. The beam went about forty feet and gave up. The keeper found the horn, pulled the chain, and the whole Cove learned what a lighthouse sounds like when it is worried.
THE FOG, THE SLOOP, THE ROCKET
5
Marisol, fishing sloop, four souls, drifting east on a current nobody had mentioned. The keeper narrowed the beam until it was a single bright finger and held it on her bow. Rule one was fine. Rule two was fine. The oil gauge, however, had started to have opinions.
6
Then the little skiff Tern came round the point with three aboard and no lantern, and there was one rocket on the rack. The keeper sent it up. For nine seconds the whole bay was orange and every boat on it knew exactly where the rocks were.
7
Dawn. Seven souls home, nobody lost, one rocket spent, six cans of oil left and a register to write it all in. The keeper wrote it all in. Then, because the note had said so, they cleaned the lens.
8
A grey cat walked up the tower stairs that morning, sat on the gallery, and did not leave. Ines said it had belonged to the last keeper. The village decided it was a good sign. The keeper looked at the oil gauge, looked at the sea, and decided to keep the light again.
KEEP THE LIGHT
🔦 Play Tide Keeper on the Arcade — keep the oil topped up, keep the lens clean, and when the night is long, choose.