The Gracekeepers

This speculative tale is set in a water world with archipelagos of islands, where people are either damplings (born, raised, living, and dying on the water) or landlockers. The two mix sporadically and usually with distrust at events like religious revivals or when the circus comes on land. They also interact when there's a death, as damplings go to landlocked gracekeepers to bury their dead, a process that involves prayer and the body being placed in the sea with a captive bird marking the spot until the bird dies. The two groups collide when Callandish, a gracekeeper, is asked to bury a member of the Excalibur troupe and meets North, a dampling who works with a semi-tame tiger. Each recognizes a certain loneliness in the other and a need to somehow rectify past mistakes; ultimately, Callandish takes off to visit her mother and to find North, hoping to fulfill her need for companionship and forgiveness. The evocative descriptions of life as a gracekeeper and circus member or as a dampling or landlocker give the work a magical tone. The future Earth setting, in which oceans have risen so high that there are no continents, is something touched upon but not stressed by the author, helping readers to immerse themselves in the narrative.