Anchor with rope and flowers sketch

The rope was older than the anchor. Her grandmother had spliced it from flax the year the castle roof came down, and it still smelled of tar and damp stone. Ada ran her thumb over the scrollwork cut into the iron flukes, the curls worn smooth by spray, and thought of the smith who must have carved them in a shed on the quay. Somebody had wanted this thing to be beautiful even while it was meant to hold a ship against a gale. Foxglove and sea holly had pushed up through the window arches, their petals hanging like small bells above the altar, and a wren scolded her from the crossbeam.

The heart was the last thing she found, stamped into the shank where the rope had always rubbed. Her grandmother's initials were scratched beside it, and under those, in a hand Ada didn't know, the word home. She sat back on her heels on the cold flags and understood that the anchor had never been stuck. It had been kept here on purpose, held fast the way you keep a promise you don't want to break.

She left the knot undone. Below the cliff the tide was turning, and she could hear the boats knocking at their moorings. Ada let the rope slip through her hands and watched it fall over the edge in a long, pale line, unwinding all the way down to the water.