The first time a travelling peddler told her that salt could protect from every kind of cruel magic and inhuman creature, she laughed until tears stung her eyes. She turned away to wipe them dry, how foolish, how foolish some people were, and then she told that fool so.

Later, alone under a moon like a little dish that the salt of stars had spilled from, she left her cottage and walked down to the beach. And while the moon rolled empty across the sky, she stood staring out at the waves that had always washed in the worst troubles of her life. The sea was no barrier to them. It was the womb from which they were born, all salt and malice, and nothing in a peddler’s myths or pockets would protect her from them.