The Seaside Village
Peter wound his way through the nets, baskets and bustle of the city’s fishing quay and onto the beach beyond. He headed for the higher ground at the back of the bay, where the scrubby seagrass made for slightly easier walking than the shifting softness of the dry sand.
He followed a thin track over the far headland and down into the next bay with its strange collection of dwellings.
The cove was narrow and sheltered, a perfect place to anchor, or pull ashore, boats and ships that needed repair. The shipyard that had built itself around the inlet was humming quietly as the homes beyond baked in the afternoon sun.
There had been times over the history of the shipyard that a vessel had proved too damaged, or the owner too miserly, and the workers had pulled it ashore, braced it in various ingenious ways, and taken up residence.
At least half the houses in this village were boats of various sizes and modifications. There were old fishing boats, turned on their sides to form sturdy barriers against the winter winds, then built onto and around, until the original hull could barely be seen.
Another one had been placed upside down on the walls of an ancient stone cottage, a quick fix for a missing roof. And its neighbour, once a pleasure craft for a noble who’d run afoul of a king several generations before, sat within the supportive embrace of four walls, not unlike it had all that time ago on the ocean.
The object of his visit was one such structure. A grand old galleon that had been rolled into a pit dug for the purpose, braced with its own masts and now played host to a number of small apartments.
He walked up the gangway to the main deck, then headed astern to what had been the captain’s quarters. The door opened before his knock and the woman on the other side stood back to let him in.
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