Chapter 1: Madeline

I don’t think the tires of this car were ever meant to handle cliffs.

They squeak every time we curve, every dip in the road making the whole frame shudder like it’s too old or too stubborn to admit its time has passed. But the man driving doesn’t seem concerned. If anything, he thrives.

“Had a fox steal my dinner once,” he says, hands loose on the wheel as he navigates another hairpin turn like we aren’t two feet from vertical death. “Right out of my hands, cheeky bastard. Didn’t even look guilty.”

I nod like I’m listening. I am—kind of. But most of my brain is glued to the window, to the impossible, wild thing just outside.

The ocean.

The real kind. Not the flat, placid postcard version. Not a beach or a boardwalk or some curated corner of shoreline with volleyball nets and sunscreen. This is the Atlantic in full throat—cold and wind-raked and feral, crashing into black stone like it’s holding a grudge. I press my hand to the window. It’s freezing.

“First time seeing it like this?” the old man asks. He grins, like he already knows the answer.

I tear my gaze away. “What gave it away?”

“The awe. And the fact you haven’t blinked in about four minutes.”

I laugh. The sound is too sharp and too small at the same time. “Is it always this—”

“Dramatic?” he offers.

“I was going to say violent.”

He gives a satisfied nod. “That too.”

His name is Albie. That’s how he introduces himself when I climb into his tiny white cab with two bags, a clipboard, and a heart pounding so hard it feels like my ribs are going to bruise from the inside out.

“I’ll take you all the way up,” he says, eyeing me like someone who isn’t sure if I’m brave or just foolish. “Most people stop at the ferry. But if you’re heading to the Andersons’ company, they’ll want you near the harbor. Buckle up, kid. Northhaven ain’t close, and this road bites back.”

I buckle up.

And now here we are.

The cliffs go on forever, sharp and dark and jagged, dropping into water that churns like something ancient is waking up beneath it. Birds wheel through the air, their cries lost in the wind. The sky is bruised blue and swollen with mist, but shafts of pale light keep slicing through like the clouds can’t quite hold together.

Albie talks again.

Something about a woman named Mabel who once made the best herring pies in the province, until she ran off with a tugboat captain and now lives in Saint-Pierre or jail, depending on who you ask.

“She said she was going out for flour and just never came back,” he adds, chuckling like it’s his favorite story. “Left the oven on and everything.”

I smile, but the nerves creep back in.

This is real.

This is happening.

I’m twenty-two and I’ve landed an internship that people twice my age are still trying to get into. I’m going to be working on a real research vessel, out on the water every single day. Whale tracking. Water sampling. Data collection. Breathing the same air as the creatures I’ve been obsessed with since I could walk.

No parents. No professors. No backup.

Just me and the sea and the strangers who are either going to welcome me… or eat me alive.

“You’re quiet,” Albie says after a while. “Not second-guessing the whole thing, are you?”

“No,” I lie. “Maybe. No.”

He snorts. “That’s how you know it’s real.”

We dip again, the cab groaning as the tires hit a stretch of gravel and pine needles. Trees crowd in on either side now—dense, ancient-looking evergreens so thick they feel like walls. Mist hangs in the branches, curling between trunks like smoke.

I lean forward. “Is that… a forest?”

“Sure is. Spruce, mostly. Little bit of fir. Locals call it the Drownwood.”

“That’s… comforting.”

Albie chuckles again. “Don’t worry. It only eats people on Tuesdays.”

I don’t ask if he’s kidding. I’m not sure I want to know.

We pass a mailbox shaped like a seal, a stretch of moss-covered fence, and then—finally—open space again. The cliffs return, taller than before, and the sea is visible again—green-gray and monstrous and endless. I can’t take my eyes off it. I feel it in my teeth. The pull of it. The call.

My hands are sweating. I don’t realize I’m gripping my clipboard until I look down and see the paper warped from my palm.

“Almost there,” Albie says, turning onto a narrower road still. “About five minutes. You’ll see the sign.”

I swallow. “The welcome sign?”

“Of sorts,” he says. “Though around here, it’s more like a warning.”

We dip into a valley between two cliffs, the road narrowing until it feels like the trees themselves are going to reach through the windows. My heart pounds harder.

And then, just like that—like some curtain being pulled aside—we crest a small rise.

And there it is.

A crooked wooden sign, barely hanging on by two rusted bolts, the paint faded and weather-bleached.

WELCOME TO NORTHHAVEN

Pop. 412. Good Luck.

That’s it.

No balloons. No flower baskets. Just that.

And beyond it?

A village stitched into the side of the coast like it’s been scraped there by wind and time. Weathered houses with red and green roofs, clustered close to the shore. A single road winding down into the harbor. Fishing shacks, rope piles, and dock posts that look older than the country itself. Seagulls circling like sentries. Smoke curling from a chimney near the cliff’s edge. A boat. Two boats. A dozen more, bobbing gently in the inlet below.

My breath catches.

This is it. This is the place.

For the next three months, this strange, fog-soaked, sea-gnawed little village is going to be my home.

The ocean roars in the distance.

And my heart—traitorous, stubborn thing that it is—roars right back.