The Midnight Ferry By Katie Merx

When Kata tells people she’s tending lighthouses in Iceland for the summer, they usually tilt their heads and say, “How interesting.”

What they mean is: “Are you nuts? What are you doing with your life? Are you OK?”

At 48, Kata is not sure she’s ever been OK, at least not in the way people like to hear. Divorced after twenty years of silent detachment and walking on eggshells. Kids in college, halfway across the country, living interesting lives she tries not to comment too much about on social media … for fear of embarrassing them. A layoff package instead of a promotion. And so, she’s traded her air-conditioned office for a tiny, cool room in a small cottage in view of Stykkishólmur’s Súgandisey lighthouse. She’s taken a summer volunteer job with the Vegagerðin, the Icelandic Road and Coastal Administration, the organization that maintains the small island nation’s lighthouses and other navigational aids.

The temporary post allows her to travel to beacons around the western reaches of Iceland, tending to their lights, while she struggles to relight her own. And her small room affords her a view of one of the most stunning harbors in the country, in Stykkisholmur, where she watches the light rotate through the short Icelandic nights, foggy mornings and dark storm clouds. She logs the weather, sweeps the walkway, drinks far too many kaffibolli – cups of coffee – that go cold faster than she can finish them. In exchange, she lives rent-free and answers only to the weather.

She came here to remember how to be happily alone with herself, and maybe how to write again. For the first 15 years of her professional life, she chased stories that mattered. But with marriage, and then children, the life of a hard-news reporter didn’t work. So 15 years ago, she transitioned to corporate communications. She liked devising strategies and messaging, and that she still got to report and write. Some days it was truly invigorating. Other days … she wondered if any of it really mattered. Now, with a few months of cushion from her severance package, she imagines returning to the pen … or at least the laptop, to find her voice again and maybe write something new that matters. She really hoped to find the passion in herself that she’d become disconnected from. She wondered how she had lost it. So far this summer, however, her notebook has filled only with half-thoughts, half-stories, to-do lists, things that seem funny after a glass of wine but not with the next day’s coffee, and Icelandic vocabulary picked up from the harbor master, grocery clerks, overheard café conversations, hiking guides, an app on her phone. Ljósvörður – lighthouse keeper. Elska – darling. Systir – sister. Words she mouths in bed at night like prayers.

It starts on a Friday night just after midnight, that time in an Icelandic summer when the sun lays just below the horizon, but the sky is not dark. She’s perched in her camp chair outside the lighthouse door, wrapped in the worn-edged, red-plaid search-and-rescue squad blanket she’d found at a Red Cross resale shop in Reykjavik, a steaming kaffibolli balanced on the armrest (decaf at this time of night), the notaleg hlýja (cozy warmth) seeping into her palms.

Then she sees it: a small ferry boat drifting into port. Its hull is painted an old dull blue, lanterns swaying gently. On deck: passengers in heavy coats and wool shawls, a boy running in circles with a wooden toy boat. A man tips his cap up at her.

She squints. It must be some historical tour, a local re-enactment group from Flatey Island, kannski (maybe)? But when she checks the next morning, the harbor master shrugs. Ég veit ekki. I don’t know. Her look makes it clear she thinks it is brennivín (Icelandic liquor) not kaffi in Kata’s bolla. No mention online. The ferry schedules list no midnight runs. Hmmm, she thinks. It looked fun. She could get an outfit from the resale shop, join in, write a story about the Flatey Island reenactors.

The next Friday, she’s waiting again. There it is, sliding in like a ghost. A woman on deck leans on the railing, silver hair tucked under a knitted cap, eyes sharp under the soft lantern light. Kata lifts her hand, tentative, her voice catching in the salt wind.

“Halló!” She tests the word. “Um … Hverjir eru þið?” Who are you?

The woman’s smile is broad and welcoming, surprised but delighted. “Gott kvöld, elskan. Good evening, darling,” she calls back. “Come aboard?” The woman is speaking in Icelandic, but Kata is delighted to find she understands most of what she’s saying. It’s even better than when she’s watching an Icelandic show on Netflix and forgets to turn on the closed captions until they use more complicated vocabulary.

Kata laughs with such pure delight that the feeling as well as the sound surprise her. “Is it a tour? Leikrit? A play?” She tries the Icelandic word, hoping it’s right.

The woman beckons with a gloved hand. “Better to see for yourself, ljósvörður.” Light keeper.

Something in her chest says já, (pronouncing it correctly to rhyme with cow) yes, before her head can argue nei, no. Kata steps onto the gangplank. The rope is cold and coarse under her palm.

When she looks up, the harbor is the same, and also not. She’s standing on the pier with the passengers, but the air feels thicker, full of salt and woodsmoke. The buildings are low stone sheds and timber houses with turf roofs. A horse stamps near a post. Somewhere, a creaky fiddle plays a sweet folk tune.

A man in a thick wool sweater claps her shoulder. He smells like fish and brine. He reminds her of a gruff old editor from the paper. But there is a pleasant, teasing twinkle in his eye … also like that gruff old editor. “Komdu, systir. Come, sister. Hungry?”

She startles delightedly at the word – systir. Sister. “Yes ... Ég er svöng.” I’m hungry. She tries the words shyly, her tongue stumbling over the vowels. He laughs and nods politely as if she’s fluent.

She follows the party down a narrow lane. Children dash barefoot past her, giggling. These children are up quite late, she thinks. But it is summer, she corrects herself, and the night is bright. Just then, someone calls out, “Kvöldið er bjart!” The night is bright! It is indeed. The sky is awash in rose gold light. Kata’s favorite Icelandic summer night sky.

They reach a timber hall she recognizes. It’s the old fish-packing house near the harbor, the one wrapped in scaffolding and caution tape just yesterday. Tonight, it glows inside. She hadn’t noticed them take the scaffolding down. It had to have happened ... she wonders to herself, today? Perhaps while she took an afternoon catnap?

Inside, oil lamps flicker on the beams. A long table is flooded with bread, dried fish, wooden bowls filled with potatoes. A young fiddler plays near the hearth. The room smells of salt, peat smoke, and something sweet she can’t name.

The woman with the silver hair pats the seat beside her. Kata sits, feeling her reporter’s notebook press against her hip in her coat pocket. Somehow, she realizes that it, and she, are out of place, or rather, out of their time. She keeps it hidden, afraid to disrupt this … what is this? This experience? This feeling? This dream?

She tries to stay present, afraid of losing this place and returning to her own time. She listens to the swirl of old Icelandic. Some words catch her ear: sjór (sea), vindur (wind), saga (story). She tests them under her breath. She pleads with herself to remember every detail, seeming to know it can’t last. The woman hears her and smiles.

“You like our words, ljósvörður?”

“I do. I like how they feel in my mouth. Like sweet round crowberries. Or … the sea.” She’s always thought in metaphors, attempting to liken the unknown to the known. Once, that made her a good reporter, a good storyteller. But now, out of practice, Kata flushes a bright red and the heat of it reminds her of when she learned her job was being eliminated. But instead of the panic that had come with that flush, tonight, surrounded by this warm, friendly group, she was delighted to be feeling anything. Feeling was good.

The woman pours her a small glass of brennivín. “Drink. Listen. Remember,” she says.

The fiddler shifts his bow and begins a softer melody. Around the table, voices hum, then blend into a quiet old sea shanty Kata doesn’t know. She listens, catching the refrain as it loops like the tide:

Ég man þig við sjóinn gráan,
I remember you by the grey sea,
Ég man þig í norðurljósum,
I remember you under the northern lights,
Ég man þig þar sem öldur láta,
I remember you where the waves lie down,
Ég man þig. Komdu heim.
I remember you. Come home.

Her lips move with theirs. The words taste briny and soft on her tongue. She doesn’t know if she’s singing to them, to someone she’s lost, or to herself. Maybe all three.

They eat and talk and sing, the shanty looping back in gentle echoes, as if the old hall breathes memories.

When the fiddle quiets and the candles burn low, the silver-haired woman stands. “Come, systir. Time to go.”

They walk her back through the hushed lanes in the bright early morning sun of Icelandic summer. She wills them silently to slow, to turn in to an inn or an open door, to dance on the dock, to keep this evening from ending. She tries to memorize the faces: the boy with the fiddle, the man who called her sister, the old woman who might be her future self, or her past self. She sings the song silently to herself, trying to retain the words and the melody.

At the dock, the boat rocks softly in gentle, glassy water. Kata turns to the woman. “Who are you?” she whispers.

The woman only smiles and tucks a strand of Kata’s hair behind her ear, like a grandmother does. “Light keeper, you have seen the night. Now find your story, reclaim your light.”

When Kata steps onto the gangplank, the boards under her Merrill boots turn back to the familiar breakwater gravel. The harbor is empty. The ferry is gone.

Above her, the Súgandisey lighthouse beam turned, but it was absorbed by the warming sunlight.

Kata pats her pocket. Her notebook is there, waiting to be filled. She flips it open as she steps into her doorway, the first words bubbling up before she even sits down.

I am the ljósvörður, she writes, and for the first time in what feels like years, I have a story to tell.