By Stephen Hodgson
HIGHLY COMMENDED in the September 2026 Competition
The salt stung Edith’s cracked lips. She stood where the sand meets the cold of the North Sea, her clothes heavy with damp and her cheeks moist with tears.
Beyond the crashing grey foam of the Northumbrian coast, the horizon remained empty, a flat grey line.
Three moons since those hateful ships had crested the same seas. She had seen the sail first and then the dragon-head. Three moons since the steel, the fire, and the frantic screams of the villagers as the men from the north raided.
Her twelve-year-old daughter, Hilda, had been one of those taken.
Every dawn since, Edith had stood on the shingle, frozen by a desperate, agonizing hope: that the next sail on the horizon would bring her child back.
“Edith.”
A hand, heavy and warm, settled on her shoulder. Alfred stood beside her, his breath plume-white in the bitter morning air.
“She is not coming back,” Alfred said gently, his voice competing with the roar of the tide. “The sea only takes. It does not return what is stolen.”
“They might sell her back,” Edith whispered, her eyes fixed on the distant grey water. “They might demand a ransom. A silver arm-ring. A bushel of barley. Anything.”
“They are not like us, Edith. These men from the North have no compassion. They will have sold Hilda by now (or worse, he thought to himself). She is gone from us.”
Alfred turned her gently away from the water, forcing her to look at their rebuilt timber hut. “Hilda would not want you to turn to stone on this shore. Our hearth is cold, and the village needs its weaver. Come home, my love.”
Edith looked down at her hands, raw from the freezing wind. Tears broke again, hot against her cheeks. “No, I still feel her. She lives on in my blood. I cannot return until I know for sure. I will stay a little while longer.”
Judge’s Comments: ‘A historical tale set in a past of sea raiders, timber huts and a woman’s heartfelt loss. Well drawn imagery that places the reader into a specific moment in time.’
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