Free The Gracekeepers by Kirsty Logan

pulled her gloves back on and rowed back to her house. Still, each time she rowed out, she let her fingers dip closer to the sea. There would be no harm in touching it. There would be no harm in slipping off her boat and into the water. And what would be the harm, really, if she stayed down there? When Callanish was a child, her mother told her that the trees were to be worshipped because they had been there before everyone who’d ever lived on earth had been born, and they would still be there after everyone who ever lived on earth was dead. But Callanish knew that the sea had been there even longer.
    One evening, as her fingers dipped toward the surface, she saw the supply boat approaching. She pulled on her gloves and rowed back to her house. Now she would not need seaweed or fish or the swallow of the sea over her head. She tried to be glad. She felt scooped-out, hollow as a shell.
    She accepted the delivery without speaking. Her silence did not seem to matter, as the deliveryman kept up a steady stream of words without leaving any gaps for a response as he hauled cages of graces from the boat to the dock to the porch to the kitchen table. He spoke of trading routes and wheat shortages; of an abandoned ship found floating, perhaps empty for years, crewed only by cats; of a baby born with gills and webbed hands, a half-fish monster buried alive at the World Tree by its landlocker mother, and good riddance to the beast; of a new trend for tattooing the bases of one’s fingernails purple; of a boy who had his hand cutoff for chopping down a tree; of whispered scandals among military officers. Over the years Callanish had heard all these stories, with small variations. Everything changed and nothing changed. His chatter felt like having a record playing quietly: a soothing background hum. She sat at her table, her gloved hands pressed tight between her knees, so he couldn’t possibly see. She had received thousands of graces, delivered by dozens of different supply boats, and none had yet seen her hands. The government decreed that she should receive just as many graces as she needed to stay alive—but the exchange of Restings for food was not the only thing keeping her alive. Wearing her gloves and slippers was just as important as eating. Given the choice, she would rather not be buried still-breathing under World Tree.
    Finally the supply boat was empty and Callanish’s table was full.
    “Farewell,” said Callanish, just as she always did. The deliveryman may have wished her farewell back, but it was getting hard to pick out individual words from his avalanche of sound. She was sure that he was still talking even as he sailed away.
    —
    T he days passed. Callanish rested bodies, took her payment, filled her aching belly. One morning, she rose to a storm approaching from the north: the sky dark, the water choppy and licking up over the edges of the porch. The anxious trilling from the grace-cages made her want to cover her ears.
    She took her rowing boat out between the lines of graces, pulling open the cages as she passed. Most of them were too weak to fly. Those that could get out of their cages might make it some way before falling into the sea to drown. Those that couldnot fly would stay in their cages and drown. If she took them into the house, they would die because she had no food for them. Whatever she did, she could not save them. She wasn’t supposed to free the birds, but who would know? Who would care? A small crime; another secret that could only hurt the one who kept it.
    When all the cages were open, she lashed her boat flat to the dock. Of the newly delivered graces, not yet used for Restings, only two remained, caged in the corner of her house. She didn’t have enough to feed them, and no one would approach with food for days after the storm. She opened the cages and flung open her front door, thinking that the graces would spread their wings and fill her house with a flurry on their swift path