They were simple people, Derya and Antoni. A cosy home above the sea, with whitewashed walls and drying herbs in the windows. Antoni fished, and Derya sang to his nets for a bountiful harvest.

They, like much of the rest of their friendly village, believed the usual things: no whistling at sea, a coin as they left port for safe passage, never speak the name of a storm. But there was one belief they only whispered.

If you lose something precious, you can ask the sea to return it. But you must bleed for it.

Derya and Antoni had lost something. A child, perfect in his stillness. 

Derya had held him for hours, ignoring the offered sympathies from the midwife. Said his name, though they’d never agreed on one. She braided sea lavender into his blanket. Kissed his unmoving brow.

Then the wind came through the shutters, and Antoni gently took him from her arms.

For weeks after, the house was silent. Derya did not sing. She wandered barefoot through the tidepools, trailing her fingers in seawater until they puckered. Sometimes she smiled at nothing. Antoni, heart wrapped in guilt, tried not to look at the door too long when she left.

Then, one night, she told him.

“There’s a place,” she said, voice soft and quiet. “The Drowned Courtyard. You bleed by the statue, and the tide listens.”

Antoni’s stomach turned. “You can’t believe that.”

“I do,” she said. “And you do too.”

He told her the old stories. How Grandma Auri once broke a music box and made a wish for it to be whole. The box washed back ashore, its porcelain now restored, but the tune it played sent her into fits. She screamed at night, saying the notes were singing her death.

“The sea keeps count,” Antoni said. “It doesn’t forget. It doesn’t give. It only trades.”

“I would give anything,” Derya said.

He held her as she wept against his chest, and promised not to go. She tucked the story away like a stone in her pocket.

“I’ll be good,” Derya promised.

And for a time, she meant it.

---

The day Antoni took the boat out, the wind was kind and the fish were running. Derya stayed behind to clean, humming under her breath, the first time in weeks. As she reached to dust the shelf above the hearth, her hand brushed something small and woollen.

The socks. Sea blue, and tiny. She had knitted them in her second month, when hope still shone like sunlight.

Her breath caught. Then, slowly, she slid open the drawer by the bed. Within a folded muslin shawl laid the umbilical cord she’d kept in secret, wrapped carefully with dried herbs. 

It was Spring Tide, that rare occurrence when the sun, moon and earth aligned to bring the tides to extreme lows, revealing parts of the coast usually hidden. Surely, that was a sign for Derya.

That afternoon, she walked out barefoot, carrying the socks, the cord, and a fish knife.

The Drowned Courtyard waited in silence, half-buried in salt and time. A forgotten piazza, scattered with statues so eroded by the sea they no longer had faces. Seaweed trailed from their arms. Barnacles clung to their feet.

She waded ankle-deep, searching until she found the right statue. A woman, cloaked, arms raised in welcome. Derya stepped into the pool at the statue’s feet, the water there unnaturally still.

She unsheathed the knife, drew it carefully across her palm.

Her blood dripped on the coral, dark as wine.

“I want him back,” she whispered. “Let us be together.”

She let the socks fall into the water. Then the cord. They drifted slowly outward, then downward, the sea receiving them like an offering.

A wave rolled in, small and sure.

---

That night, Antoni came home to an empty house.

Her shawl was still on the peg. The tea had been set to boil, then forgotten. At first, he thought she’d gone walking again. But there was something in the air, a stillness that hung heavy and strangely.

He waited. Minutes turned into hours.

When the door opened at last, she stood in the frame with her hair soaked and tangled, salt crusting her sleeves. Her eyes were wide and distant, but when she met his worried gaze, he saw the swirl of tidepools in them.

“I’m tired,” she said simply.

He helped her into bed. Drew the blanket over her gently. Then stopped.

Her belly was round beneath the fabric. Swollen, like it had been before.

His mouth opened, but no words came.

“I don’t remember,” she murmured. “But I feel full. Like the sea is moving inside me.”

Antoni held her hand, suddenly small and frail in his grasp. She fell asleep quickly, and in the quiet, he could hear the rhythm of waves from below.

---

At dawn, she was already in the kitchen, singing softly.

She fed him toast. Told him about a dream she couldn’t quite recall. Caressed her stomach lovingly like it had always been this way.

Antoni kissed her temple and said nothing.

That night, he watched her sleep again. The wind pushed against the shutters, and the air grew thick with salt. Derya stirred.

And then, her water broke.

The scent came first: brine, driftwood, seaweed, the deep metallic tang of old tides. A scent that did not belong in this house, in this moment, but yet twined undeniably around his wife.

Derya reached for him.

“We’re ready,” she whispered.

Outside, the sea had risen.