Things had always gone over the cliff. Peat bricks spent from burning, fish skeletons picked of flesh, tufts of gritty wool loosed from skeins. Elin’s uncle walked off its edge the year his health turned. He chose his exit one ordinary night, leaving a cordial goodbye and the diagnosis he had never shared tacked to the kitchen cabinet. She often thought of her uncle’s bones rolling over the seabed, of how the churning waters below must have washed them clean. Elin’s parents, too, went over the cliff — first a poplar box of her mother’s ashes, then, months later, her father’s. This left Elin and her brother at the helm of the house, living as sensibly as they had growing up, quietly relying on one another, two middle-aged children.
For long stretches, Elin’s brother would be out at sea on fishing jobs. Those lonely weeks, Elin focused on the knitting so that he would have something new and warm. He’d return with his windburned skin blotched purple, gripping a line of cod he’d nicked from the haul, a dumb, proud smile on his face. She was always glad to see him, to have his wordless company in the house. But then, impossibly, there was the end of him, too.
Before she received his ashes, she had imagined them as a pile of stodgy black feathers. They arrived instead as a mound of whitish sand in an ordinary ceramic vessel. As she overturned the pot and sent the last of her brother over the cliff, he dispersed into grains, pocking the surface of the ink-colored sea below.
When the seeds arrived, Elin thought they were a memorial gift. People from across the island had sent fruit baskets: apples, berries, oranges, shipped in from the mainland. Elin had subsisted on them in her paralyzing grief, tossing the rinds into her garden until it was full of pith and husks. The rest she tossed over the cliff’s edge. It had been a few weeks since the funeral; the flowers from the ceremony, now sitting in her house, had dried and cracked into shards. Someone had sent seeds, something for her to sow when she was ready. Elin held the small glassine envelope up to the light to see the specks rattle around. The package came without a card or return address on its mailing envelope. The only words were printed in bold type over the waxy seed packet: plant. That’s what I’ll do, Elin resolved to herself, and what you’ll become. From the closet she pulled a spade and left it by the door to pick up again at the right time.
Elin’s house had been in the family longer than the island kept records. As the only home planted on the flat-topped mount, it offered a complete view of the isle: its verdant grassland, its wildflowers, scrub birch, spongy moss. A cluster of wind-battered houses hugged the coastline. Elin knew which family belonged to which house and for how many centuries each had been rooted to the island. Neighbors had survived side by side for as long. They traded and lent their crop yield during slim harvests. Elin’s uncle had kept the family’s garden of potatoes, carrots, beetroots, turnips. The food we grow ourselves is fit, went the islanders’ proverb.
If their house creaked or fell out of joint, Elin’s brother had known how to mend it. But when he was gone, really gone, the house was left under her care alone. Elin took up her duties with devotion in her heart, but the weariness of daily fixes set in. It wasn’t long after her brother passed that the home grew shabby from shortcuts. Elin stopped chasing off the grazing sheep that pulled up the grassy plots of root vegetables. The lichens that crept up the jagged basaltic cliff bloomed onto the roof and footpaths like painted flowers. The garden hadn’t pushed up anything in months because Elin failed to properly fertilize the soil; it had been her brother’s job to collect the shattered whale skulls and sea wrack from the shore after it rained.
The sea was an extension of the house, always there, swirling and driving into the foot of the cliff. Elin had a habit, one her uncle had scolded her for, of taking a deep bow over its edge, teetering to see what was going on below. From up there, the clouds moved like smoke. Squinting hard through the mist, she could just make out the tips of black rock and sun-bleached sheep bones as the tide below retreated.
After her brother’s death, the breaking waves thundered into Elin’s dreams. She rolled her ship over the swells, a captain in command. She found him in there, too, but under the ship, ensnared by thin ribbons of seagrass. Swaying underwater, he looked exactly himself but bitter, unhappy. Those dreams made Elin avoid the cliff entirely. She decided to dedicate herself to the land. She would make something out of nothing, send a prayer of gratitude into the ground. While tending her sheep-torn plot one morning, she thumbed a few holes in the wind-scabbed ground, forgoing the spade, and tapped in the gifted seeds from the envelope. She swept a handful of dirt over them. Whatever they are, she thought, I hope they push something up.
Lambing season came, and the islanders gathered at the top of the mountain. Together, they drove the free-grazing sheep to the lowlands and penned them in a tight circle. Each islander took up their role. Some carried the sheep, a pair of hooves in each hand. Shearers sat among growing piles of fleece. In the huddle of pickers, as close to her neighbors as she’d ever be, Elin helped pick out the burrs from the wool before it went to the spinner.
Anna, who lived at the foot of the mountain, where the sea-cut rock formed a canyon, talked about how her husband was going away for a job. Her son, too, would be on the mainland for university. Under the dull light of the farmhouse, as they pulled blades of grass from the fibers, Elin asked what Anna would do with an empty nest.
“What do you do, Elin?” Anna asked sharply.
Elin breathed in the callousness of the question. “Not a whole lot.”
Anna went on to talk of the luck she was having with her garden that season and the funny thing that had happened — the package of seeds someone had mailed. She admitted she had no idea where they came from. Christian piped in to say he had also gotten seeds through the post and had recently planted them. The others in the circle had, too; everyone in the village had. “Perhaps,” Tove wondered aloud, “the municipality sent them as part of some campaign.” From the seeds grew a myriad of flora. Gardens held leaves of exotic shapes and hues, growths they had never before seen on the island. They agreed the plants grew like mad and brought some color for a change.
“It’s the mainlanders trying to poison us,” Nils said.
“Stop that,” Anna snapped.
The group continued their work until the last of the cleaned wool was wound. One by one they left the farmhouse for home, their duties done. Elin lingered, replaying the conversation that had hardened in her like a clot. Back home, the delicate green sprigs had begun to coil upward from the soil she had packed with her hands. She drove home, half expecting to find an explosion of greenery over the house. In the garden, though, the very first leaves had only just unfurled. Even in the dark, she could see the thin, flattened hearts of them.
The rooted buds lived in the same soil as the food that would carry her through winter. Every day, Elin noted the growth in the crops, then the growth from the seeds. When it was clear that the yellow-speckled plants were overtaking the others, she decided to pull them up. No good thing grows like that, she thought. She tugged at the thick stems that tunneled into the earth. Cracks formed around the base of the plants, threatening to tear up everything with them. After a few pulls, she sunk her spade deep into the ground, exposing their long, ropy rootstalks, tangled around the fibrous little veins of her vegetables.
Elin ripped away until the plot became a hole. She salted the earth and moved what she could salvage of the crops to the other side of the house. As she bagged the torn-up lot, she made a silent plea to have enough food for the coldest months, and in exchange she would stop being so easily fooled. Without looking, Elin heaved the bag of mangled plant parts into the sea below. Whoever sent the seeds, she quietly fumed, should have identified themselves. Her anger burned hotter the more she acknowledged that her own keenness had led to near ruin.
Once the crops were sorted, Elin sat at her desk, pen to stationery. If you have received an unmarked envelope of seeds, please dispose of them immediately. She erased the last bit, then corrected it: Please deliver them to the Olsen house. She considered this invitation and felt a renewed devotion to the idea. These unsolicited seeds are of unidentified origin and may be a danger to our land, she continued. Thank you for your cooperation. There were thirty-four households on the island, and she wrote to each by family name, then slipped an envelope into every letterbox.
The next morning, Elin checked for new mail. One piece was a late-arriving condolence card, another a stark envelope with nothing but her address printed across the front. She tore it open just enough to see a bold, black pl. Elin strode to the cliff’s edge. The sky was clear of clouds and birds, except for a small colony of puffins hovering on the hillside. Without looking, she flung the seed-filled envelope over.
In the days that followed, more of her neighbors’ seeds arrived in her letterbox. The first minutes of her day were edged with expectancy. Elin tore the envelopes open, snipped the tiny bags, and poured the seeds into an old tin. Together, they looked like a batch of loose tea. Elin examined them closely, as though they might reveal something. When the tin was full, she carried it to the cliff’s edge and shut her eyes before letting the collection slide from the lip of the container toward the water below.
“See?” she said, daring no one. “I can live with it. I don’t have to look, but I can live with it.” Unable to resist a quick peek, though, Elin opened her eyes and took in the vastness of the sea. It was calmer in the middle distance, where the water flattened at the edge of the sky. As the sun sunk, the cloud edges burned violet. What must I look like, Elin thought, standing in the cold like an aged statue? If her brother were around to catch her lost in thought, he would loudly call the nickname she hated. “Hey, Blue,” he might say, “snap out of it.” She almost heard her brother’s teasing voice carry on the wind. But nothing sounded except for the intermittent crush of waves below. Where only dead things went.
Now when Elin drove into town, she stopped her car to pull suspicious-looking weeds from her neighbors’ yards. Some shoots were too green, some not green enough, purplish, spotty, large, huge. Elin knew how unhinged it seemed, her stomping out of her car to tear things from the earth. Once, she stepped on a dead fulmar before realizing it — less a bird than a mound from all the tires that had trod over it. On a trip to the letterbox, she found an anonymous note. Stop pestering, Elin, it read. There are people who appreciate blooming gardens and ripe fruit. Don’t spoil it for us. She crumpled the letter between her hands.
Elin was giving the recent batch of seeds a swirl in her tin when the phone rang. Over the line, Karin, the ceramicist, said an unsteady hello; there was an emergency town hall tomorrow evening that she might want to attend, some important matters on the docket. “It’s related to” — Karin paused, searching for the right words — “homes and gardens.”
The islanders gathered in a low-ceilinged room of the municipal building. Over the hum of voices, the mayor mumbled a welcome into the microphone. “I understand many of you are concerned,” he said. “We will dedicate this town hall to the urgent matter. Neither local nor national authorities are behind the packages you have been receiving. There is an open investigation but little to share right now.”
Elin scanned the hardened faces of her neighbors, their uneasy postures. They all kneaded at their meaty, windburned hands. The mayor said the floor was open, prompting a rush to the microphone stand in the center aisle. A woman adjusted its height and spoke. “I planted the seeds about three months ago thinking they were turnips. My mother-in-law and I trade seeds, and I figured they were from her.”
“What’s the state of them now?” the mayor asked.
“Well, they’ve flowered, and then I knew they weren’t turnips,” she said. “Nice-looking, but completely choked my other vegetables. And so I’m here because I would like to know how to get rid of them — and also find out who is sending them and what for.”
The islanders took the mic and spoke woefully of their ruined plots, negative crop yields, cracked pavements from jutting rootstalks. They told of black, mold-sprouted vegetables. The unnatural colors of the leaves. All the while, as the seeds turned into colorful beasts, the islanders were forced to wallow in their loveliness.
Maja stepped to the mic, looking shrunken next to her husband. “I want to thank everyone for the kindness you have shown us. It has been a very difficult time. As you know, we suffered a stillbirth last month.” Her husband lent a supportive arm to her back. “I bring this up here because I had been eating the fruit from the seeds.”
A roar rose in the room, and the mayor fumbled for his mic. “Everyone, please come to order. Let’s not speculate on — ”
Maja spoke over him, gravel rattling in her throat. “We ripped up everything, the good crops, the bad, everything. And then we buried our boy on the mainland, far away from this shit. And do you want to know something? I am still tripping over roots.” The bereaved couple walked up the aisle and out of the building.
In a sudden grip of duty, Elin hurried to the mic. She had not prepared any remarks. “You may have seen my letters,” she started. “I have taken up the collection.” She hoped her words would settle the room and assure everyone that the danger was being neutralized. “Please continue sending your seeds to the Olsen house. I am securing them for disposal.” Elin thought that sounded too formal. “I collect the seeds, and I dump them into the sea from my house on the mount.”
“Why would you do that?” a voice called out.
“Over the cove?” said another. “Well, that explains it.”
Elin fought against the chatter in the room. “We toss a lot of things into the sea,” she said, her tone wavering. “It’s rocks below, nothing else.”
“Elin,” the mayor interjected, “the protocol is for burning. The seeds should have been burned.”
As the islanders’ voices climbed to a clamor, a woman with a pitying smile capped a hand on Elin’s shoulder. “I think what they’re trying to say is that you’ve given the seeds a new place to grow. Rocks, sunlight, water.” The woman counted all the nurturing things on her arthritic fingers. “You should see it down there lately. It’s something.”
Elin imagined green shoots winding up the basalt cliffside. A sprawling green blanket over the rocks. Islanders, pinpoints from the height of her house, flailing for help. She reached for her handbag and flew out of the building where the islanders’ voices still carried.
It was only midevening when she arrived home, but she leaped straight into bed. The crushing sea outside remained a shush in her ears. A cascade of thoughts kept her awake. She berated herself for her own pride and carelessness. For the failed campaign, the neglect of her home, the days of hunger ahead. For whatever lurked below the cliff.
When light began its bleed into the room, Elin, dazed from the sleepless night, wrapped herself in a heavy coat and pulled on her boots. She keyed into her brother’s shed for his kayak and stuffed a handful of trash bags into the cockpit before starting downhill. Elin would clear whatever had grown in the cove from her errant seed disposal. As she walked down toward the water, she kept her eyes on the footpath to avoid sight of the gardens, their upturned soil and stubborn, colorful growths.
The wind whipped at the coast. Elin blinked through its sting. All night she had agonized over what she might see when she finally got down the cliff. But to her relief, the sea churned as ever, and the mist fizzed overhead: no soaring greenery, nothing unfamiliar. A seabird’s bones rested in formation at her feet. Elin pulled the kayak to the shoreline and slid into position before pushing off into the water. It had been a long time since she and her brother had taken the kayaks out. She struggled to balance herself. A pod of kayakers on their early morning ride glided in the distance.
As Elin paddled out, low waves licked the sides of the narrow vessel. The arching panorama distracted her from the chop of the water. Nearing the cove, she passed a dead fulmar rolling along the water’s surface. Another bobbed close by, dead as the first and dead as the others that came into view ahead. They swayed in the sea’s rhythm. Soon, Elin saw how they also littered the surrounding rocks. The wind animated their feathers. Along the rocks, she could just make out a green-and-yellow tangle reaching upward, her seeds borne.
Elin opened a trash bag and began to scoop up the dead birds, knotting the top once the bag was full. When the weight of it threatened to sink her, she let go of the bulging plastic sack and watched it disappear on its descent to the seafloor.
The kayak listed as she drifted further into the cove’s heart. Elin realized that a pair of arms from the kayaking group was waving at her, not in greeting but in warning. She now noticed the water’s violent pull, how it dragged her deeper into the inlet, the place that frothed with terrible things.
She laid her paddle across her lap, submitting to the calamity, and let an apology unwind, repeating the words so that the end crashed into the beginning. When the kayak finally tipped over, Elin let out a yelp as she rolled into the glacial cold. The boat’s bottom rocked on the surface. Underwater, she could not see the kayakers darting toward her. She could only see the shimmy of the waves, the silhouettes of birds, the world upside down before the weightlessness of rescue.