Someday a storm would come and wash the house away. She knew this, of course she knew this. And if it wasn’t a storm then it would be the decay of rotting wood in the foundations; her house would collapse upon itself, fall into the blue waters. It might happen while she was asleep, and she would drown. Or it might happen while she was on the waters collecting her traps, and she would return home and find no home to return to.

Either would be fitting, she thought.

She wasn’t born at sea, but oh, she might as well have been. Her mother died and she’d gone to her aunt and would have lived that life if her father hadn’t come back to port a week after and heard. Clomped into his sister-in-law’s home reeking of salt and blood and swearing that no child of his – not even a daughter – would live a town life. She killed her first man at nine, with a knife. Led her first raid at fifteen. A captain, one of the few women doing it, at twenty.

Lobstering or pirating – she wasn’t born at sea but she was fine dying there.