It all felt surreal, the way the world continued on as normal afterlife as one knew it came to an end. A neighbor mowed his lawn despite the high heat of the summer afternoon. Children free from the shackles of school shrieked with glee as they chased each other through the hissing sprinklers, their mother watching from over the rim of her glass of iced tea from the shaded shelter of her porch. Cicadas shrilled in the trees, and old women grumbled and complained at the noise but in the end, could do little more than re-adjust the volume on their television sets. Even the incessant drip of water from the showerhead in her bathroom that leaked no matter how many times she tightened it felt like part of a life she no longer had claim to.

Why did it have to come to this?

Why couldn’t he have just left her alone?

Too many “why’s” that came too late to be answered now. The only thing that remained was what already came to pass, and what was still to come in the form of blind consequence.

It was an accident. A freak chain of events. I never meant to hurt him. The thoughts cycled chaotically through Maise’s head, as if repeating them enough times could reverse the horrors of what transpired not more than an hour earlier. But then that sound—that horrible, gut-churning, world-shattering sound—tore down whatever semblance of a shield she started building around herself, filling every corner of her head until there wasn’t room left for anything else.

Except for the guilt. And the shame. And now, the growing fear.

The kitchen at the diner where she works (worked?) was absurdly small; two people couldn’t pass each other going in or out without getting in each other’s personal space. It was one of those things that you had to learn to deal with. And she tried—she tried so hard—to remind herself of that when Greg reached up and over her to retrieve a mug while she made a fresh pot of coffee for booth two. Tried not to react when he pushed his hips flush against her backside, a noticeable bulge notching between her asscheeks .

Had it been any of her other coworkers, the incident would have been passed off as an accident. Nothing more would come out of it than faces deeply flushed with embarrassment and a hasty apology, maybe an awkward laugh. But no one else had a track record of touching her in inappropriate places whenever the chance presented itself like Greg did, or constantly made sexual innuendos directed only towards her, or possessed the complete incapacity of taking “no” for an answer. For two years—two long, torturous years—she made excuses for his behavior, endured it, ignored it. Swallowed her hurt and shame when the other diner employees told her it was only an accident that he touched her breasts whenever he helped her clear dishes off a recently vacated table, or when they agreed with him that she looked too gloomy and needed to smile more, or when they said that he was a nice guy who deserved a chance and she was just being mean by turning him down all the time.

Today, though, there was no polite, stammering decline or shy shuffle out of way; there was only the immediate, visceral reaction of someone who was utterly exhausted and completely done.

A sob escaped her throat, releasing a fresh wave of tears that burned the skin of her cheeks, rubbed raw from the number of times she scrubbed the rough fabric of her uniform sleeve across her face as the horrific event began to replay behind her closed eyelids, the memory seared into her mind in excruciating detail.

If the timing had been different, the only wound he would have received would be to his pride, the result of an open-hand slap across his face followed by a blistering verbal onslaught. One moment’s difference, and his disgusting behavior towards her would have finally been exposed for everyone to see. Then maybe, maybe, she could be free of his harassment.

Instead, Maise had a pot of hot, black coffee in her hand.

It was one of those heavy-duty style pots made of thick, reinforced glass, designed to withstand the high demands of a popular breakfast diner. The decal on the side that proudly proclaimed it to be shatter-proof was obliterated as the glass spider-webbed under the force of impact, proving that of the numerous tests it was put through to earn that claim, being smashed against a human skull was not one of them. Boiling liquid sloshed over the rim in a dark brown tidal wave, instantly turning the skin on Greg’s face an angry shade of red. The scream that tore from his throat silenced not only the kitchen but the entire dining area, arresting all conversations and tasks for what felt like an agonizing eternity. In her mind’s eye, Maise watched again and again how his hands came up to his face as if to claw the pain away, sinews and tendons standing in stark relief. Watched him stumble backwards, his feet slipping out from beneath him. Unable to do anything but witness him topple over backwards in slow motion.

Then came the sound.

Bile surged in her throat and she clapped her hands over her ears, willing herself not to scream if for no other reason than she knew it wouldn’t do any good, that nothing would stop the memory of what bone colliding with a tile countertop sounds like: at once hollow and solid, and horribly wet. The sound of his body landing on the faded linoleum practically didn’t exist by comparison.

With that accursed noise echoing inside her own pounding skull, she was forced to watch what remained of the memory play out, though now it was less substantial, unraveling as the realization of what she’d done sunk in. One of her last moments of clarity was leaping over his prone form and into the employee break room to grab her purse and keys, dissolving into nothing more than a flurry of light and sound as she made a frantic dash to her car parked outside. By the time her adrenaline began to recede and rationality made its tentative return, she was back in the double-wide trailer she called home, locked in her bedroom with her back pressed against the thin, fiberwood door, curled into a tight ball on the floor, hoping she could disappear if she wished hard enough for it.

She had no idea how long she stayed like that—minutes, hours, maybe even days for all she knew—but eventually she found the strength to lift her head, peering around with tear-stained vision. It was strange, how everything was exactly how it was when she left for work that morning, yet felt so different at the same time. The full-sized bed, chest of drawers, and nightstand were in the same place as when she moved in three years ago, not long after Mama died. Other than a couple of lamps, a small stack of books and a framed photo of her and her mother, the room was devoid of any other furniture or decorations.

The spartan decor was not limited to her bedroom; her whole trailer contained only the basic necessities she needed to get by. A few of her friends interpreted her stylistic choice as modern minimalism and complimented her resistance against the need for material possessions. Others said her homemade them feel uncomfortable and depressed, comparing it to a monk’s cell in a monastery from the middle ages.

Neither side was right in their observation, though neither was really wrong, either. While her sparse lifestyle wasn’t a deliberate statement against consumerism, the truth of the matter was she simply didn’t care for stuff. It had taken Maise the better part of the year following her mother’s death to get rid of all the crap she had accumulated from garage sales and thrift stores since they moved to Ohio, and Maise wasn’t about to fall into the same habits that came to consume her mother’s life.

All the easier to pack up and move away. Or put into storage until you’re out of jail.

The thought bowled into her head like an eighteen-wheeler running a red light, dragging yet another replay of that afternoon’s events behind it and leaving an even stronger feeling of sick helplessness and anxiety in its wake than before. She hadn’t even considered the full ramifications of her actions beyond being fired. As soon as the paramedics learned what happened—and of course the others would have called them, everyone knew you weren’t supposed to move someone who just suffered a traumatic head wound—they in turn would notify the sheriff, especially after they learned that the person responsible for inflicting the injury fled the scene immediately after. What would her coworkers say when they were interviewed as witnesses? Did they see what happened as an accident, or an unprovoked attack? And when the sheriff showed up at her door—because it was only a matter of time before he did—will it be to take her statement, or to arrest her?

No… No, she couldn’t rely on them to defend her. She never got any help from them whenever she brought up Greg’s inappropriate behavior before. Even the managers treated her like she was overreacting. There was no one left on her side. Nobody had ever been there to begin with.

It was that realization, though an extremely depressing one, that finally had Maise moving away from the door and pushing herself to her feet, joints stiff from being folded too tightly for so long. It only took three jerking steps to cross her bedroom to the small bathroom attached to it. It was cooler and dimmer in here than in the rest of the trailer, and already she felt clearer-headed than before, as though the bathroom’s narrow confinement helped reshape her thoughts into something more streamlined and manageable. A splash of cold water on her face helped even more, and as she groped for a towel her hand brushed something resting on top of the toilet tank, just hard enough to make it jump and ring against the porcelain lid. The sudden noise in the otherwise silent trailer startled her, eyes snapping open even as water continued to drip into them.

If people commented on the purposeful lack of decor around her home, they might similarly remark on the random single black and white conch shell sitting on the back of the toilet in her otherwise bare bathroom. Absently, she picked it up, holding it for the first time in years. She had forgotten how heavy the shell was, the pads of her fingers ghosting over the rough ridges and the cool, smooth interior. Unlike all the trinkets and other useless junk her mother hoarded, the shell had a meaning, a representation of something important in Maise’s life: her last link to her home on the northwestern coast.

Not that she remembered much from that life. When she was twelve she had been injured in an accident, and the resulting infection led to a fever so intense that it damaged her long term memory… or at least that’s what she was always told. Snippets of memory sometimes returned in short fits and bursts, usually while she was engrossed in another task and typically in the form of random images rather than chunks of recollection from her childhood: a beaten kettle on an iron wood-burning stove; fishing boats bobbing on the open sea, gunmetal grey water capped with white foam; entire alien worlds held within tidal pools; an old woman seated by a window, muttering to herself as she worked knots into a fisherman’s net. The memories were always brief but intense, a window thrown open into another life that at once did and did not belong to her. As soon as she tried to grab hold of one, to delve deeper into the snapshot her subconscious decided to share, the memory dispersed like mist under the sun. Her mother was never any help. No matter how much Maise pleaded and begged, she refused to discuss the subject. Whatever happened to her in Washington was bad enough to traumatize them both in some way, and one of her mother’s ways of coping with it was to act as though it never happened.

Maise may have been the same way, had it not been for the great, jagged purple scar slashing across her left palm, crossing the underside of her wrist and ending halfway up her forearm. One of her first Internet explorations had been looking up different kinds of scars and what created them, but nothing came close to resembling the one she had. It was just another unanswered question, branded on her skin as a constant reminder of a past lost to her.

A car door slammed somewhere outside her trailer. Maise jumped, her heart spasming so hard behind her sternum that for an instant she feared it had stopped altogether. She held her breath, straining to hear the sound of footsteps on her gravel driveway or the authoritative knock on the storm door over the blood thundering in her head. When neither came she slowly released it, her chest aching from holding it for so long, but she did not allow herself to relax. She had wasted enough time feeling sorry for herself; she needed to work on getting her story straight for when (not if) the sheriff questioned her on what happened in the diner that afternoon. She moved to return the shell to its rightful place on the back of the toilet, then paused.

A memory, long submerged in her subconscious, was rising to the surface of her mind; the first to do so in years. The trailer bathroom faded away and instead she was standing at the threshold of a cottage, built on a rocky cliff surrounded by succulents and flowering hickory bushes. It was early; the low marine layer was only a few shades lighter than night and so dense that had it not been for the sound of the ocean breaking against the shore far below, it would be easy to believe that she and the cottage were the only things that existed in the whole world.

Someone approached her from inside the cottage until they stood beside her. Like all of her memories, only certain details were clear to her. She could not see the face of the woman standing next to her but she could see her hands with crystal clarity: wrinkled, spotted and ancient, but still strong and steady; the hands of someone who did not merely endure the harsh coastal elements but thrived off them. Maise recognized those hands. They were the same ones she saw working on the fishing nets, working knots and charms for good luck into the frayed rope. Instead of rope, those hands were holding the very same conch shell Maise was clutching in the real world.

Then, she spoke.

“Child,” she began in a voice that was much like the hands it was attached to; aged, yet sure, steadfast. “Try as I might, I cannot change your mother’s mind, nor do I have the authority to go against her decision. But I cannot fault her for it. She does not understand the ocean as you and I do, nor does she understand that no matter how far away she takes you, no matter how deep she tried to plant you in the dry earth, that which belongs to the ocean will always return to it.” One of those gnarled claws reached forward to take hold of Maise’s much smaller hand, the one that still ached from the still-healing purple scar that now marred her pale skin, to place the conch shell on her open palm. “But, if there is ever a time you find yourself to be alone, or without direction, listen to the memory of the ocean. It shall guide you home.”

The memory faded like a dream after emerging from a deep sleep, leaving her once again alone in the small, shadowy bathroom. It was the longest, most vivid memory she ever had, and its loss sent an unexpectedly powerful stab of panic through her. Maise collapsed to her knees, tears streaming down her face and the spines of the shell biting painfully into the flesh of her hands as she clasped it to her heart. “Come back,” she gasped into the silence, her plea escaping unheard down the drain pipes and the bathroom’s single air vent. “Please.”

But there was no answer; no one left to answer. Her mother was gone. Her father was never part of her life. What friends she did have had their own lives and problems to worry about. And now she wasn’t even sure if the grandmother she only just remembered, who left her with nothing but a cryptic message and an old shell, was even still alive. She was completely alone.

“If there is ever a time you find yourself to be alone, or without direction, listen to the memory of the ocean.”

What good was that advice to her now? What did that even mean, “listen to the memory of the ocean?” Maise looked down at the conch shell, its shape distorted by a haze of tears. For one brief instant, she was overcome by a flash of blazing frustration and helplessness and she wanted to do nothing more than smash the shell into a million fragments on the bathroom floor. She was about to do it, too, raising the hand clutching the shell high over her head with the full intention of bringing it down with crushing speed, the bones in her hand be damned, but the moment passed just as fast, leaving her feeling ashamed at how close she had been at losing control. Slowly she lowered her arm, cradling the shell in both hands as if in apology.

Listen to the memory of the ocean. Maise had no idea what the “ocean’s memory” meant, but she did know that by holding a seashell up to one’s ear, you could supposedly hear the sound of waves crashing against the shore. But she didn’t know how true it was because in her memory she had never tried it for herself.

There’s no time like the present, she thought dourly, especially since the future seemed so uncertain now. Maise began to raise the shell to her ear, then paused. At first, she was confused by her own hesitation but she quickly realized it was because she was afraid. But afraid of what? Certainly not of what she would hear. She already knew it wasn’t really the ocean inside the shell and nothing more than her own blood flowing through her ear, echoed back to her by the hollow interior. It wasn’t going to be an answer to her problems, no easy solution out of her predicament. And definitely was not going to answer the old woman’s mysterious riddle. So if she was so certain of what wasn’t going to be there, why was she so afraid to learn it for real?

Or… was she afraid of something being there?

Before she lost her nerve for good, Maise pressed the opening of the conch to her ear.

The bathroom was plunged into darkness.

Maise gasped, but instead of air her lungs were flooded with water, bitter and salty and terribly cold. The floor vanished beneath her, leaving her suspended in a void with no sense of which way was up or down. She thrashed her arms wildly, legs kicking, but no matter how hard she fought she was continually dragged down, down, hundreds, and then thousands of feet with no known end. The cold intensified, leeching the summer tan from her skin until it was as white as bone, then to a ghastly shade of blue, sucking the memory of heat and warmth from her pores. Her movements began to slow, her limbs as heavy and useless as they became little more than dead, frozen meat.

But the cold was nothing compared to the pressure. It closed around her like a giant’s fist, a terrible force unlike anything she ever experienced, anything she could ever imagine existing. It came from every direction: pushing down from above and up from below and constricting her from every known way. Though she was overcome by the cold and her own panic and fear, she was fully aware of how everything was being pushed in on itself, her collapsed lungs and withered heart, the crush in her pelvis, and compression of the gaps between her vertebra. Inside her head she felt a tremendous pressure, pushing outwards as well as inwards, threatening to tear her apart and crush her into nothingness at the same time. She did not know where she was other than in the middle of the ocean or how she got there, but that was no longer important; all she knew was she was going to die there, alone, in the dark with the cold and the pressure.

Then, just as fast as it started, it all stopped.

Maise was still in the ocean, suspended in its vast emptiness, but everything that made it horrible was suddenly gone: no more crushing pressure, no more splintering cold. Even the darkness began to abate, retreating from absolute black to tones of sapphire and indigo. Everything was so still and quiet that Masie wondered if this was actually death, and if she was to spend the rest of eternity buoyed in this silent, weightless realm of twilight.

All things considered, it wasn’t that bad.

When the singing started she knew for certain that this was the afterlife, because nothing on earth could sound that beautiful. It rose from out of the white noise of the ocean, beginning as a low, haunting hum that soon swelled into a full chorus of unearthly voices; a heavenly choir blended with whalesong heard only in the open sea. Maise allowed her eyes to drift shut, content to listen to the ethereal melody for the rest of eternity.

The music drew closer, growing in strength. The longer Maise listened the more she became aware of something happening inside her. A small tickle, the slightest irritation, bloomed inside her heart where there had only been peace and acceptance a moment before. It was easy to ignore at first, its presence overridden by the beautiful music, but it quickly grew until it demanded her full attention. Maise frowned, trying to pinpoint the source of the disturbance in her newfound bliss, but it was evasive, refusing to be soothed, like an itch she could not scratch.

The singing abruptly stopped.

Maise’s eyes flew open, fearing she had done something wrong to lose the beautiful gift, that her agitation chased it away. The ocean continued to change around her, lightning from midnight blue to deep cobalt, pierced with wavering shafts of light cast down by the sun on the surface high over Maise’s head. As for the source of the mysterious singing, there was no trace. She was just as alone as she was before.

Something moved through the water in front of her. It was so fleeting and far away that Maise was sure she had imagined it. Then she saw it again, materializing through the murky haze. It was indistinct at first, a long and sinuous shape gliding effortlessly toward her. It didn’t look like any animal she knew of—it was the wrong size and shape to be a whale or a shark—but the ocean was so unimaginably huge, so much of it unexplored, it was possible for it to be anything. What she did know was that she did not feel afraid.

Soon it was close enough for some details to become clearer. The long serpentine tail was lined with ridge-like fins along the sides and down the spine of the tail that rippled as it swam like any fish, but there was nothing fish-like about the rest of it. It did not take a marine biologist to know that fish did not have what looked like hair growing from their heads, not did they have such toned abdomens. And as for those shoulders…

A giddy sort of laugh escaped her, releasing a stream of bubbles from Maise’s mouth. Sure, why not. We’ve already established heaven is actually located in the middle of the ocean. Why not add mermaids to the mix?

The singing started again, but this time in a single voice of a deeper timbre, wrapping around her like a warm current. And Maise knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that the song was meant for her, and her alone. The feeling in her chest, once an insatiable itch, transformed into something else; a sensation that she could only describe as “cozy.” Peaceful.

The creature stopped coming toward her and hovered in the water instead, the long, powerful tail undulating just enough to keep it in place. It was still too far away for her to see its face clearly, but she could feel the intensity of its gaze on her.

Still singing, the mermaid extended a hand out to her. Its upper arm looked like it was lined by slender barbs or spikes, but the gesture was anything but threatening. The feeling of warmth and peacefulness that started in her heart spread to every corner of her body, rising to a crescendo in time with the beautiful music.

She understood what it meant. She knew what she had to do.

It was time to go home.

—

Maise emerged from her vision with a great gasp of air, spine arching backwards and limbs rigid, her whole body shuddering violently before whatever power had a hold over her fled at once, leaving her to collapse bonelessly on the bathroom floor. For a long time she could only lay there, as weak and helpless as a newborn, pulling in great lungfuls of air as if she had just been saved from drowning.

Eventually, her body stopped shivering and her breathing evened out, but it was still some time before enough strength returned to her limbs for her to push herself so she could lean against the shower door instead of laying on the floor. Even after she was able to open her eyes without the room spinning around her, she could do little more than sit perfectly still, staring at nothing, trying to work out what had been real and what took place only in her head. The rational side of her brain told her that the Atlantic was five hundred miles away, that of course, she had not been magically teleported to the middle of the ocean and back again, and she definitely had not been serenaded by a mythical creature that in no way existed. But no matter what logic dictated, that could not erase the lingering taste of saltwater on her tongue nor the memory of the mermaid’s song from her mind. It was as if, with each perfectly remembered note she felt something changing within her, shuffling her entire life perspective, transforming her from the inside out. Maise had no explanation for what happened to her, yet it felt more real than any of the memories that came before.

 It was then that she realized she was still holding the shell, which someone miraculously survived the death grip she was sure she was exerting on it while stuck in the throes of her vision. She started to raise it to her ear again, then paused. The first time she listened to it, she hadn’t expected anything to happen; now she knew deep in her gut that if she listened to it a second time, her life would change forever, though she didn’t know in what way.

Would that really be such a bad thing? A change from working a job where she barely made a living wage and only a handful of college credits under her belt? A possible criminal conviction for attempting to murder the man who harassed her for years with a coffee pot? An endless string of memories of battling—and losing—her mother’s hoarding addition? It wasn’t a bad life, and Maise didn’t like thinking of it as one. That being said, there wasn’t any harm in taking a chance to make it better…right?

Before she could hesitate again, Maise pressed the shell to her ear once more. She braced herself to be sucked down into another vision, but it never came. There was only a faint rushing sound, an echo of a memory of waves crashing against the shore. Tears welled in her eyes, but before disappointment could defeat her, she heard it; faintly at first, like a sigh caught on the wind, but quickly growing in strength as it rose from the nooks and whorls buried deep inside the shell: the mermaid’s song, exactly as it had been in her vision. Maise gave a small sob, cradling the shell tenderly to her ear. Inside her chest, she felt her heart begin to bloom, opening to receive the music like a lover opening their arms for an embrace.

Home. Come home.

Maise listened to the songs for a few moments longer. Then she got up, went back into her bedroom, and pulled her duffle bag out of her closet.

—

Maise drove. She didn’t know where she was going, or how long it was going to take to get her there; all she knew was she needed to go east, that she needed to get to the nearest shoreline as soon as possible. It was a feeling so strong she was almost sick with it, but she could not resist it any more than a bird could resist the instinct to fly south for the winter, or a caterpillar to spin a cocoon when it was ready to become a butterfly, so she drove with the sun at her back for hours and into the darkness of the night.

She was somewhere in the heart of Pennsylvania when the high emotions and adrenaline that fueled her for most of the day began to wane. It was close to midnight she was forced to pull over at the first roadside motel she came across so she didn’t fall asleep at the wheel and end her quest before it began. It was not until she deposited her duffel bag on top of the dresser and she herself sat on the sagging mattress in the seedy little room that the reality of what she was doing finally caught up with her.

Looking back, it was hard to believe that the actions she took were her own when they felt more like those of a woman possessed by an unknown force. She had stuffed only clothing, toiletries, and other essential items into her duffle bag, throwing some food she found in her pantry into the back seat only as an afterthought. Then she drove to the nearest bank and withdrew her entire life savings, most of which was from her mother’s small life insurance policy that had gone largely untouched until then. She started driving east without a backwards glance. Her cell phone was back in her trailer, abandoned on the kitchen counter. She told no one what she was doing, left no letter of explanation, and no way for anyone to contact her. Never before had she done something so rash without considering the consequences. She never skipped class in high school out of fear of getting caught, never stayed out drinking late because she didn’t want to risk being hungover at work the next day. Now she had gone AWOL on the same day she seriously injured someone, fleeing not only from town but the entire state. And for what reason? Because she was serenaded by a mermaid she saw in a hallucination that was induced by extreme mental stress? That her desire to not be alone was so strong that she left everything behind to chase a fantasy? (Of course, if she was lucky, maybe that would get her off with an insanity plea when Greg took her to court for assault and battery.)

Maise retrieved the shell from where it had been nestled safely in her purse since she left the trailer. The mermaid’s song began again as soon as she held it to her ear, and she had to pull it away just as quickly before she was overpowered by the need to run back out to her car and continue driving into the night. No, this was something she had to do, consequences be damned. If she turned back now the rest of her life would be wasted away by regret until she was nothing but the same bitter husk her mother turned into at the end. Even if she found nothing when she arrived at the ocean, at least she could say for the first time in her life that she didn’t stand idly by and do nothing.

With a sigh, Maise laid back on the thin pillows, keeping the shell close enough that she could still hear the song of the sea, but far enough away to keep from doing anything else impulsive. She slept. And she dreamed.

She dreamed of a roiling sea, writing like a wounded animal beneath a low, stormy sky; a long, rocky beach pounded by the angry surf; a cave tucked into a secret cove, half-flooded by the incoming tide; and then something, hiding in the furthest recesses of the cave, watching her from the shadows with cold eyes sharp with intelligence and pain. A shift of movement in the low light, a shimmer of iridescent purple and indigo: the hint of something at once so beautiful and terrible and altogether impossible that her mind stopped comprehending what she was looking at, and everything faded to darkness.

—

Maise woke just before dawn the next morning, feeling fully refreshed despite having only a few hour’s sleep that was rife with vague yet intense dreams. She took a quick shower, checked out of her motel room with the help of a bleary-eyed desk clerk, and was back on the road before the sun crested the horizon.

Six hours later, she caught her first glimpse of the Atlantic Ocean.

The highway Maise followed took her further north than she expected, but it was a small price to pay in exchange for avoiding the urban sprawl of New Jersey and New York. Her journey finally ended on the northern arch of Massachusetts’s Cape Cod peninsula, in a picturesque New England fishing town. It was made of a collection of colonial and Cape Cod-style houses, clusters of shops and bistros catered to drawing in tourists, and proudly boasted of a proud maritime history at every available opportunity. Maise didn’t pay much attention to the town itself, but rather drove through with single-minded determination to the only destination that mattered.

She left the main road as soon as she was able, easing her car down a street that was little larger than a footpath and nearly hidden beneath a wash of fine white sand until it finally dead-ended into a dune. Maise killed the engine, but did not get out of her car right away. Now that she was actually here she wanted to take the time to savor the moment, even though she didn’t know what she was going to find waiting for her on the other side of the dune. Taking the shell from her purse, and a deep breath to steady herself, Maise opened the car door and stepped outside.

The first rush of ocean air in Maise’s face was so wonderful it made her head spin. It was a heady mix of salt and sand and sun-baked rock and dried seaweed, and the wind coming off the water was the purest she’d ever felt. She took off her shoes and, leaving them tucked safely behind the front wheel of her car, proceeded to climb straight up the dune. It wasn’t a steep climb, nor was the dune very high, but she sank into the fine warm sand up to her ankles with every step, making it laborious and slow-going. Maise was panting by the time she reached the top and thinking it probably wouldn’t hurt to hit the gym more than once or twice a week when she got home, but she instantly forgot her discomfort the moment she laid her eyes on the Atlantic Ocean.

Although Maise knew she had lived near the ocean for at least the first twelve years of her life, the combination of years that passed between then and now and her shrouded memories made it feel like she was seeing it for the first time. No photograph could capture its beauty; no screen, no matter what size, was able to communicate its sheer vastness and scale. The water was smooth and calm beneath the cloudless sky, glittering and sparkling with reflected sunlight. Rows of waves marched forever inland with a never-ending roar, starting as innocuous swells far out at sea that grew in speed and size until they peaked, curled into themselves, and came crashing down in a fury of white foam and froth. The line of the horizon occasionally broken by a fishing boat or sailboat taking advantage of the beautiful weather. From this vantage, it was easy for Maise to believe that she was standing at the very edge of the world.

The dune Maise was standing on swept down to the short beach that wasn’t more than a dozen yards wide. She more surfed than walked down its face, and in a few quick strides was standing at the water’s edge. The first touch of seawater on her toes sent delightful shivers running up and down her body. It was amazing how the simple act of letting the remnants of the waves wash over her lower legs made her feel so happy and peaceful. Less than 24 hours ago it felt like life as she knew it was at an end; now it felt like it had happened to someone else in a reality completely separate from the one she was living in now. Her only lingering regret was that she had not made this journey sooner.

Her joy became somewhat diminished when she listened to the shell again. The beautiful singing was still there, but it had changed, in almost every way possible: in pitch, in cadence, in tone. Even the alien language sounded different; as if it was spoken in another dialect altogether. Had she gotten something wrong? Was she wrong about this whole thing?

No… No, she refused to believe that. The effect the song inside the shell had on her was too strong to be a delusion, her decision to leave home feeling like the only right one she ever made. She closed her eyes and focused on the new song over the endless crash of the surf against the sand bar, reaching deep inside herself to discover the truth she knew was there. She was sure she made an unusual sight, standing there alone holding a conch shell to the side of her head, but she could care less what anyone else thought. But the beach remained completely deserted, as though she was destined to be at that place at that time to unravel this mystery about herself. Her feet had gone numb from the cold seawater and her shoulders and the top of her head burned from standing under the sun, but she was oblivious to all physical discomforts as well as the passage of time. It was past noon by the time Maise opened her eyes again, her spirits restored.

It was also at this time that her stomach gave an almighty growl, acutely reminding her that she had not had a decent meal since before she went to work the day before. She needed to be smart about what she was going to do next, and the first step included not making any major decisions on an empty stomach. It took more than a little effort to tear herself away from the ocean and start the trek back inland, promising herself that she would be back and never let the ocean out of her sight again before she was able to move.

Once she started, though, she found it hard to stop. As soon as she was in sight of her car, her backside began to ache at the mere thought of having to climb back into the broken-down bucket seat of her little coup. She kept walking instead, past the quaint seaside cottages with their white picket fences to the main road she turned off from. She thought she recalled seeing a small bistro not far from where she currently stood. Luckily her intuition was correct, and after only half a mile of walking, she was seated at a table on the building’s second-story balcony where she could see the ocean’s glittering horizon while she contemplated her course of action over a basket of fried clam strips, a BLT sandwich and a glass of iced tea.

While she had stood on the beach, listening to the new song inside the conch shell, Maise realized she had been only half-right in understanding its message. The only reason she could come up with why the song she heard inside the conch was different now was because the language of the ocean—just like the rest of the world—was not homogenous. It wasn’t enough for her to go to the coast closest to her; she needed to find her song, and only then would she truly find home. And she knew the only place she ever called home, deep in her heart if not in her memories, was the tiny cottage perched on the cliff overlooking the northern Pacific Ocean.

Clear across the opposite side of the continent.

Maise didn’t feel discouraged, per se, but she was now faced with the puzzle of the best way to go about getting there. The obvious option was to drive straight across the country, which would put her in Washington in under a week, but the idea of being away from the ocean for that long made her stomach feel sour. That also meant passing through Ohio again. Maise shuddered, her mind assailed by the image of a mass of state troopers waiting for her the moment she crossed the state line. It was a ridiculous thought, but she still wanted to avoid going that way by any means necessary. (She knew going around the state was also an option, but not only would doing so take her away from the ocean for an even longer period of time, she also didn’t want to risk getting lost with no smartphone to help get her back on track.) Flying was also out of the question, not only because anyone looking for her would immediately know where she was the moment her ID was scanned, but because the mere idea of airplanes petrified her to the core. That meant her only other choice was to drive the entire U.S. coastline.

Of course, rationality tried to talk her out of it. A trip like that would take weeks to complete, maybe even more than a month. Her resources were limited, and her little car might not even be capable of making that kind of trip. But her heart had been in charge of all of her actions for the past 24 hours—for the first time in her life, if she was going to be honest with herself—and it was not about to give up that control. The number of pros outnumbered the cons. Maise had never been on an extended road trip before (she didn’t count driving across the country with her mom when they left Washington). Besides, how many people ever had the opportunity to see the country like this? She had enough cash to make it all the way there if she paid attention to her budget. In regards to her personal quest, driving the coast meant she could listen to the ocean every step of the way, just to be sure she didn’t end up in Washington only to be disappointed because she missed something crucial. And if she wasn’t able to find what she was looking for even when she made it to Washington, at least she’d be able to return to Ohio with armor forged from good memories and the knowledge that she had done something with her life other than just endure it. If nothing else, maybe she could find someone who still lived there who remembered what happened to her when she was a kid and how she got her scar. At least one solved mystery was better than none.

Maise took her time finishing her lunch, enjoying the opportunity to appreciate living in the moment for what it was instead of thinking about the things that happened in her past she could not change, or things in the future she had no control over. She paid her bill, left a generous tip, and started to walk back to her car, ready to start her long relationship with the open road.