Ballast

Bram climbed into the little boat, and it rocked hard — once, twice — under the weight of his churning feeling. Water slapped the sides. For a second it really seemed they might go over.

Then Ballast settled, low and heavy, right at the center of the boat. He didn't grab the sides. He didn't paddle frantically. He just lowered — got wider, got heavier, got closer to the water — and the boat, which had been about to tip, steadied around him.

"There," he said. "Feel that? The wave's still here. We're still in it. But we're not going over."

Bram's breath was still fast. "It's not gone."

"No," Ballast agreed, with no apology in it at all. "Big feelings aren't supposed to be gone in a second. That's not a thing that's broken about you. A wave takes the time it takes. Our whole job, you and me, is just to stay upright until it's passed under us."

They sat together in the rocking boat. Ballast did one quiet thing, over and over: he breathed all the way down, slow, so that Bram could feel the boat sink and rise, sink and rise, with him.

"You don't have to copy me," Ballast murmured. "But if you want a thing to hold onto, hold onto the bottom of the boat. The lowest part. The heaviest part. Feel where it sits in the water."

Bram pressed his hooves flat against the boards. He felt the boat's low belly resting in the harbor. He felt how it wanted, naturally, to come back to level — how a wide-bottomed boat is built to right itself.

"That want-to-come-back-to-level," Ballast said, as if reading him, "that's already in you. Same as it's in the boat. You don't have to make steadiness. You just have to stop fighting the water long enough to let it find you."

Slowly, slowly, Bram's breath began to drop from his throat down into his chest. Not because he ordered it to. Because he stopped ordering it to do anything at all.

The wave passed under them. It really did. It lifted the little boat, tilted it, and then set it gently down on the far side, and the water went smooth and ordinary, the way water does once a swell has rolled through.

Bram blinked. The enormous feeling that had felt like it would last forever had — not vanished, exactly — but moved through. It was behind them now, a swell heading off toward the far shore.

"It went by," Bram said, amazed.

"They always do," said Ballast. "That's the part nobody believes while they're in it. The feeling tells you it's permanent. It's very convincing. But it's a wave, and a wave is a thing that's passing, even when it's right on top of you." He gave the smallest smile. "We didn't make it leave. We just didn't tip. And not tipping was enough to still be here when it left."

Bram looked back at the smooth water where the wave had been. He hadn't fought it. He hadn't won. And somehow that was exactly why he was still upright.