The Bottle

Maren Voss has kept the lamp at Harrow Point Lighthouse for eleven years — alone, by routine, without incident. One November morning in 1953 she finds a sealed glass bottle wedged in the tide-rocks below the tower. Inside is a folded message in her own unmistakable handwriting, describing events she has not yet lived. She tells no one. Over the following days she watches the weather, the sea, and the slow clockwork of her life, and the future the message describes arrives, exactly as written, until the only thing left to do is pick up a pen and write it.