The cottage radio smells like dust and orange peels. Tess has the volume up like the static might confess.

“Last Light Station to any vessel showing a lamp in the east cove—identify.”

A voice arrives that is not in the east cove. It is a skipper talking about crab pots and a different headland, the names wrong for this chart, the laugh too far away. Then it fades, then it comes back stronger, as if the air had a hallway.

“Ducting,” Tess says, not like a spell, like a tool. “A layer of air can bend radio the way the lens bends light. You hear a real person who is not here. The harbor log still says zero ships.”

The static puts a half-word in your ear. Your brain finishes it into help. The radio, when you actually listen, is saying kelp.

Tess’s log lies open. Her pencil has already written no visual hull and fog thick and a question mark that looks like a hook.

The answering wink still happens, upstairs in the glass, whether you radio it or not.

You write the skipper’s wrong headland in the log so your memory cannot tidy it into a local ghost. Fog loves tidy. Science loves the leftover mess: a real laugh, a real boat, a map that does not match. Tess flicks the volume down, then up, as if manners might help the ionosphere. They do not. The layer of air does not care if you are brave. It cares if it is colder above than beside, or the other way around—enough of a bend to make a hallway. You taste metal on your teeth, which is only the station’s old air, and you wait for the next cough of a voice that is not your problem to rescue.