They were less than a mile from the tip of the peninsula, and Arrella slowed the motor down and turned the boat port, squinting for any sign of buoys or bottles visible beyond the growing stretch of water behind the island. The first plastic float was just right of the direction they took and swooped over the waves of the motor behind them. It was the same size and shape of the buoys that Arrella’s uncle had given to her dad last Christmas in Sitka. She almost turned the motor completely off to turn all the way around and crawl the skiff back down the foaming streak the motor had left. Roger picked up the large black net and wobbled to the tip of the bow, scooping the handle down as swiftly as he threw baseballs in the yard. He used both hands to pull the net back in and dump the inflated ball onto the skiff floor. It was light blue, black Japanese calligraphy running horizontal and unfaded. Arrella turned off the motor and stared down at it with her cousin, silence cloaking the images and sounds within both of their heads, too far away and too in the past for them to taste their horror as they could have truly happened.

“Let’s go.” He finally said, taking a seat at the tiny plank underneath the bow, and she turned the motor back on and steered back to the direction they were going, but only at half the speed. The wind cawed spats across their heads and screamed over the tops of the trees of the mountain they cruised past, only hurting the tips of their noses and giving more reasons to keep their eyes open. Their coffee from J.T. Brown’s-a Homer Simpson sticker on Arrella’s and a lion sticker on Roger’s-was still sitting in the cupholders near the motor, miraculously unspilled from thirty minutes of fast chopping across the waves from Craig. An early winter Saturday morning had finally been rainless enough for them to brave it, speeding to see how much they could find and how much they could save.

They were far enough around the tip for Arrella to turn the boat starboard, further behind the island. Nothing was in the water except for the rocks peeking out of the water, fifty feet from the pebbled island shore. Nothing was on them, object or animal or even seaweed.

“Over there.” Roger was looking in the opposite direction, barely off the tip of the bow in their direction. Arrella couldn’t see what was in front of him, but she sped up anyway.

“Slow down.” He said. She did. Instead of reaching for the net, he was close enough to grab the toy with his hands. Arrella stopped the motor, letting the boat and the bay sail them on their own, climbing over the seats to him and the sight he held in his green flanneled arms.

It was a large plastic doll, a Japanese boy with sculpted spiky hair and in a black jumpsuit. He smelled like Arrella’s old American Girl doll instead of three years of the Pacific Ocean. There was a painted watch on his left arm with regular numbers, but tiny Japanese calligraphy on the band underneath.

“Poor kid.” Roger breathed, turning the doll to face him without any sad expression. Arrella looked back on the shore behind them. There still wasn’t anything else Japanese that had washed up. A trumpeter swan was there instead, waddling over the bare pebbles as if the two people in the skiff nearby didn’t exist.

“Roger, there’s a swan there.”

“Here?” This time he looked up with an expression, shock that seemed more appropriate for what they had taken from the bay than for something beautiful and rare. “Well, what do you know?”

“You never see them anymore.” Arrella sat cross-legged on the bench before the motor and stared at the lost bird as if that was their purpose for coming out here. Roger stayed on his bench and stared along with her.

“You really don’t.” The doll slid out of his lap further towards the floor “He’s a long way from where he’s supposed to be, though.”

“Probably just making a rest stop. He needs the silence.” Roger turned towards her again with his lips in an opposite arch from his eyebrows.

“How come?”

“He’s had a rough time and he needs to think.” She turned back to him, holding out her arms. “Can I hold that doll?” He handed it to her, and she saw its hazel eyes, the paint faded into barely nothing from all the storms she would never see it survive. She couldn’t stop herself from rocking it “Whose doll do you think this was?”

“If they’re alive, they wouldn’t think losing this was the most terrible thing.”

“You don’t know what they would think.” Arrella laid the doll on its side, facing away towards the port side of the boat as she stepped back into the cubed pit to seize the outboard motor. She turned it on and turned it away from the shore, glancing back at the swan that finally looked in their direction. It didn’t fly away or look as flawless as before.

Roger pointed left again, and she could see it now: square, hollow, holed and upside down. This time, Roger took the gaff hook and hiked it back towards the boat with enough force to rock it until he stepped his foot back and steadied it just as quickly. It was yellow, with pink Japanese calligraphy underneath the handles and the number “12” sandwiched between the letters. Twelve slots rested within the crate, each big enough to hold a bottle. The taste of beer snuck onto Arrella’s tongue, but she made herself think of milk instead.

Another buoy was fifteen feet away, rounder and firmer and black without calligraphy. It looked too plain to be from across the sea, maybe just an Alaskan buoy that wasn’t typically the ones Alaskans used. But Roger pulled in something else with it: a green glass ball wrapped in thick, soggy and rancid rope that broke soon as he lifted it up, but caught underneath with his left hand. He kept it with him at the bow.

“This I would miss.”

He held the ball on his lap as tenderly as he had held the doll, snuggling it between his knees instead of settling it on the floor. Their grandma had strung Japanese buoys in a chandelier within her beach shelter, there for every Christmas since Arrella was seven. She let him hold it instead, turning off the motor and taking the doll back into her arms, speaking against the adult in her head.

“So would I.”

She took her coffee from her cup holder, and handed him his, both sipping after a bump of cheers with more shivers than spirit, praying without making the decision to.

Somehow it was still hot.

During her Southeast Alaskan girlhood, storms remained within Grace Bolling long after the days cleared. She now lives within her newfound home of Ashland, Oregon; rediscovering adventures and lessons in all angles, resolving to brave the storms in order to confront the demons behind them.