The Wreck Below Candor Light

You are Maren Sollis, keeper's daughter, alone in Candor Lighthouse while your father rows out to assess last night's wreck on the rocks below. The morning is windless and white — frost on the lens-room glass, your breath a small cloud, the sea flat as pewter. From the gallery you can see the wrecked hull of a small sloop tilted on the shoal, but it is what you heard at dawn that matters: a slow knock, three beats then two, rising from somewhere inside the lighthouse walls. Something — or someone — is still alive in there.