Shrouds for a ship.

The ship, and nearly all her crew and passengers with her, were lost on the 22nd of May. On the 24th, Dorothy started making model boats.

Her fingers hurt a little, of course. Red, cold, and sometimes even damp, they caught on the makeshift sails and left unsightly blotches on the hulls. The hulls were one of the hardest bits. Hours were consumed by the whittling and painting and drying. The rigging was even worse; the threading she used was almost impossible to keep a tight grip upon, and the variations of beige and brown and black meant they often vanished entirely if dropped to the dirt floor. As for the masts, these took an enormous amount of time to shape and it was even worse to find them in good condition. Shorter than her forefinger, only an uncommon patience and a sort of determination (which felt out of place in her own body) kept Dorothy working at the masts so late into the night. The finished product, although, made the entire labour seem somewhat more worthwhile.

People used to talk about those boats. They were all similar, but overall rendered extraordinary by the wood she used, stained naturally by deep maroons and browns. If you bothered to go around the houses in the town, many of which contained one or more of the boats, you could even notice subtle variations in the colours of the sails. If that wasn’t enough, they were very beautiful little things. The first time Dorothy made one, she allowed herself a scrap of pride; being the first one, she already knew where it would go, too. After some rearranging of the mantelpiece, not even her favourite photograph – that of herself and her two sisters – withstood the pressure of competition with the model ship. It was pushed to the very edge, nearest the fire, and behind the painting of Dorothy’s children. The Amelia took centre stage.

Visitors loved to comment on it. Of course, they didn’t know Dorothy had given it a name, so to them it had little else but that casual aesthetic pleasure derived from nameless vessels, amongst other things. “We had no idea you were so talented,” gushed the vicar, and he and his wife left behind a bundle of cold meats and cheeses. Many gifts came to the house then, fresh from the marketplace. Watercress, parsley, carrots. She ate and lived on what came, naturally as courteous and grateful as the times required, but it was the comments on the ship which brought all the joy. It looked like art; it looked like a play thing; a child would adore it. Dorothy’s nephew certainly did. Thankfully he wasn’t nearly tall enough to reach the shelf and no small hands ever found the sails, and even better, it gave her an idea.

So the enterprise began; and this time, she wrote names on the hulls, brightly lettered and shining. The first boat for sale went down the street to the house of a fisherman whose feet hadn’t touched water since May, and whose fingernails suddenly harboured a garden of dirt under them. It took him a few minutes to appreciate that it was his own son’s name penned on the side, but after the tears there was gratitude.

“Your sister would be forgiving. We can’t resent the ocean itself,” Dorothy murmured to a woman around her own age. Lace-sheathed hands and fingers wandered by the narrow masts, lingered at the portholes and the figurehead. The recipient was careful her tears wouldn’t ruin the crepe over her arms.

So it went on, and not always as planned. The cartographer smashed the ship Dorothy gave him underfoot, while she watched and blinked. There was such a tremble in the hands of one lieutenant that he snapped a mast without even trying. That had been difficult to forgive, and she told him so.

“They’re one of a kind. I can never make one exactly like that again. The materials for each one is different,” she said.

“It looks like all the others. Just a different name.” It was a distantly given reply, and more than a little hollow.

“There are different trees for different ships. And you may never find another tree quite like that one again. It’s worth remembering.”

The lieutenant kept it, anyway.

She could not have kept at her work if not for the quiet house. Rising at seven in the morning, it was two hours on the beach, a few hours back in the house to read and write, and then work began again at noon. The Western Australian sun was kind by June, even if the wind wasn’t. It meant easy craft, quick drying and no bad smells. Bows and sterns were best formed in gentle sun, and painting soon finished. Interruptions were near constant in the first few months; a boat in every third household, thankful and weepy individuals who leaned over to kiss her hands. But after eight months, Dorothy’s offerings ceased. Her gown and her thoughts were still no lighter. After a year, not even the vicar called.

Shipwrecks faded into obscurity, but three dozen little ships on mantelpieces no different to Dorothy’s sung her praises. A lack of bodies washing up on rocks had made everything less of an ordeal.

Eighteenth months from that day in May, Dorothy was scraping gristle from bone in the dark, clutching the hilt of a kitchen knife. Of course, she had already eaten. Bleached and white, the bone notched perfectly in the hole already carved out of the hull, which had finally abandoned the stench of brine. In a pale brown, a paintbrush reached across and began the first layer on the surface. After an hour Dorothy washed the blood from her hands and wrote, as neatly as she could, David.

But it could never equal the first ship she made, whatever the skills acquired, whatever the greater precision or the strength in her hands or her resolve. That ship which she had kept for herself alone had no companion and no voice. It stood by itself, presiding over the household, a monarch in its own right. David would go back to his grandfather.

Rising, Dorothy crossed to the fireside and, now steady, she reverently brushed her hand over Amelia’s little sail. For the first time in nearly two years, she felt the skin of her daughter.