She was supposed to come last week, Tuesday. She never arrived. No one was really surprised when she didn’t, those who live by the sea will never forget its raw power, but there was always hope. Hope it was that clung to the hearts of wave-battered Coll Vale, hope that the terrible storm had failed to bring down their ships with its wild fury.

               Hope held out until dawn of the following day. Every boat accounted for except the steamship Augustina. She had been bound for Coll Vale with a cargo of miscellaneous goods; coal, tools, flour from the mill up the coast. The storm had hit, and she had never arrived in the small harbour. The residents of clucked and muttered with looks as dark and grim as the cold stone of the houses.

               The gale had brewed during the night, cold and menacing. Wind whipped the sea into a great frenzy and rain lashed hard enough to rattle windows in their frames. Dawn broke, black, and moody. Fern watched the dark, roiling waves from the front steps of the ancient cottage by the lighthouse where her father was keeper. Her mother was just inside, busy in the small kitchen. She was always busy during brewing storms; her husband’s role was crucial to the tight-knit community. The lighthouse projected the only beacon that could guide souls safely into the protective embrace of the harbour. He would not leave his post until the storm subsided, no matter the day or night. Endless cups of coffee and hearty soup were the families’ weapons against the exhaustive hours and bone-gnawing cold. The light must never go out, whatever the cost.

               Fern was first told this at age five, old enough to share the burden of her families’ occupation. Little Fern, on skinny legs, was tasked with bringing soup to her father during the night of a wicked summer storm. The morning had been red and stick, and the humidity rose all day. Her father had kept a worried eye on his barometer and as the mercury crept higher, he casually remarked that he thought it would be a long night. Her mother’s brow wrinkled as she pressed her lips together. After lunch she instructed Fern to climb the creaking ladder to the dirt basement and bring up carrots and potatoes. Fern, feeling put out, had whined. She was frightened of the basement in a vague, child-like way and besides, it was much to hot to light the stove.

               Her mother rebuked her sharply. Her father would have no relief until the storm, staying with the light until danger had passed. It was their duty to keep shipping traffic safe, people and the good Lord were counting on it. Chided, Fern slunk off to obey her mother. She didn’t really understand, duty and souls in peril on the sea are very far away things to such a young girl. But she did understand her mother’s tone and felt some stirrings of obligation towards her father’s sacred occupation. As she got older, Fern was trusted with more and more with the work of the lighthouse. Her first acts of devotion to the light were bringing her dear father the endless cups of coffee and scraps of meals. When she was small, crossing the slick granite between the house and the light was terrifying. Her shoes slid dangerously over the rock and sometimes the rain lashed her so hard that her face stung, and her wool hood plastered to her head. Fern soon got used to crossing the precipice and was always glad to enter the cramped stairway of the lighthouse and climb to the haven at the top. Now as a girl of 12, Fern’s duties had expanded to include helping her father clean the lenses of the light, an essential twice-yearly job. Fern had always touched the crystal with awe, the surface reflected the sun and seemed, to Fern, to be full of the light of Heaven.

That first summer storm was typical of its kind, they were always a crime of passion, a temper tantrum that flashed quickly but soon burned out. Far more dangerous were the early spring gales. The weather still bore the peevish obstinacy of winter. Ice had not fully relinquished its hold, still snatching desperately against the thaw. These storms were juggernauts, slow moving and deep. Into this type of storm, the Augustina had disappeared.

               The storm shook Fern. Never before had she seen the water rise so high and so fierce. It had threatened to overwhelm her on her trips to the lighthouse, she could swear that the sea had reached for her. Several times she had been saved only by the railing strung between the cottage and the lighthouse, the sturdy ropes had been frozen into great sheets of ice by the frigid wind.

               The following day rose clear and cold, the sun shining in apology for the previous vitriol. All day things washed up on shore. Most often it was loose cargo, damaged and ripped from some hapless vessel who had seen to the securing too late. Other times the leavings were more macabre, marred bodies of the dead. Broken and twisted by the waves and debris, the dead were laid out in the church cellar until burial. The lucky ones had relatives who came to take them home, provided they were identified speedily. Always more names were added to the book kept by the Vicar, the church bell tolling sadly for each in turn.

               Coll Vale had hoped for the Augustina, but it wasn’t enough. Two days after the tempest, the sea began to give up its secrets. A body was found bobbling and lolling in the current, a black bloated face slowly sloughing off into the salty water. Someone in the town knew him by his trouser buttons and he was identified as a deck hand of the Augustina. Throughout the day other grisly discoveries were made, each a soul who had died far from home, with no one to offer comfort in the anguish of their final moments.

               Some days later, the ship was found. Augustina had been broken on the rocks several miles out to sea. She had been wrecked cruelly close to safety. Augustina had raced the storm and lost, leaving the sea to swallow up its prize in hungry darkness.

               Fern knew her father felt these deaths. Though he had done his duty, the ship had gone down. Breathing men who would see no sky again, the lights of Coll Vale beckoning in vain. The vicar would always visit after a wreck, offering reassurance to the family and to her father in particular. The people from town would be especially generous with kind words. Losing such a dependable lighthouse keeper would be a real blow and there was always such trouble filling the position, with its poor pay and difficult work. Other reasons were also spoken of but never openly.

               Even so, Fern had heard rumours about the man who had tended the light before her family. He had been a steady man broken by the loss of ships under the bright eye of the lighthouse. Though blameless, it haunted him. Soon he claimed that the light guided the spirits to him, saying that even after death many still tried to follow the light to safety. The man only spoke these things in whispers, over beer with friends or when the fatigue of his job made him forget himself.

               He was looked on with pity and his assistant was shaken by the change but even so, the keeper’s death had been shocking to tiny Coll Vale. No one wanted to give credit to his strange ramblings but the death was so odd for someone so experienced. The general facts went thusly; during a storm, the assistant the light of his master’s lamp as he left the cottage and headed to the lighthouse. The thin glow staggered as if the holder was having difficulty walking. Near to the lighthouse and well inside the safety of the guide ropes, the lamp light had paused for at least a minute before winking out. The assistant rushed downstairs to admit his friend into the lighthouse, thinking only that the small lamp had been blown out by the wind. When he opened the door, he found himself staring into the empty darkness of the night and the gale. He had shouted, he had searched as thoroughly as he could, but the weather and his duty tethered him to his post. He found nothing.

               Nothing was found by any of the searchers who set out in the subsequent days. The search was thorough, but no trace of the keeper was ever found. He was presumed washed away in the maelstrom. The assistant kept repeating a singular question, “but why was he just standing in the dark?”. People remembered the growing gloom in the keeper’s mind and drew conclusions that they only spoke in low tones. The assistant had not stayed on.