Dreamcatcher and feathers on a thigh

Ada bent a hoop of green willow and bound it with tarred twine, then laid the web across it in small square knots, the same mesh she used for crab pots. She left the middle open. "That's the door," she said. "Bad dreams are too big to fit through it. Good ones are small enough to slip in and get caught." Three ash beads her husband had turned on his lathe before the sea took him went onto the bottom cords, and the feathers went on last, each tied on a different length so they would swing when anyone opened the door.

Mabel hung it from the iron bedhead that night, and the wind came up off the water and moved the feathers all through the dark. She counted them the way other children count sheep, and somewhere past the forty-third she fell asleep.

In the morning the Second Mercy came in on the flood, late, her mainsail split to ribbons and both men alive and shouting for tea. Mabel ran the whole length of the slip in her bare feet. Back in the loft the willow hoop still hung by the bed, and one feather had worked loose from its cord and drifted down onto the net needle. Ada left it lying there, and the light came through the empty web in squares.