A Drawing In The Wet Sand

Then something inside pressed against the glass. A hand. A small one. Five fingers, and nothing at all between them.

Where it touched, the fog wiped away in five clean streaks.

Behind it was only dark, and something in the dark breathing fast enough to cloud the glass again.

I moved my lantern to my left hand and laid my right hand flat over the small one.

The glass stung like a cooking stone.

I left my hand there.

On the other side, the fingers spread until each one lined up with one of mine, with only glass where my webbing was.

Then the small hand pressed back.

"Ossa!"

Elder Imbri had come back down the sand alone, his lantern on a pole, and stopped twenty steps away.

"Get away from that thing. Both of you. Up the beach."

"There's a hand in it," I said. "A little one."

"Then they send their young first. What falls on the Long Ebb belongs to the sea. You know the law, Tide-Keeper."

"I know it," Grandma said. "I know the other one too. The Tide-Keeper stays on the sand until the bell."

"And the girl?"

"The girl is my apprentice."

The old burns on his shoulder showed silver in his lantern light.

"When it opens," he said, "I won't come back down for you."

Then he carried his light up the beach toward the cliffs.

The small hand slid down the glass and was gone.

Something thumped inside, again and again, like a fish in the bottom of a raft.

I stood my lantern in the sand, hooked my right hand under the metal rim of the window, and pulled.

The metal was much hotter than the glass.

I held on to the count of three before Grandma tore my hand away.

My palm came up white, then swelled into one long blister.

It was the hand I'd meant to lay on my mother's stone.

Grandma packed wet sand into it and folded my fingers shut over the cold.

Inside, something clanked.

The whole top of the egg rose on a seam, and steam rolled out, smelling like a tree after lightning.

Someone climbed out.

She was tall and narrow, in gray clothes made all in one piece, scorched black down one side.

Her skin was brown and dull, without any shine, and her neck was bare.

No gills, only a pulse jumping there.

I didn't know her name was Hana then.

I didn't know anything.

She reached back into the dark and lifted out a child, then another.

Five of them, the biggest no taller than my shoulder, all crying.

No soldiers climbed out after them.

Whatever those ships were doing up there, they hadn't thrown fire at us.

They had thrown children.

Little ones cry the same everywhere, it turns out.

Grandma did what any grandmother on the Long Shore does for a crying child.

She opened her gills wide, and she sang.

I sang with her, because I always sing when I'm afraid.

You have to understand: to us, open gills and an open mouth are the softest thing a face can do.

I never once thought about our teeth, all those small sharp rows of them.

You don't, when they're yours.

The woman swept the children behind her with one arm.

Her other hand came out of the bag across her chest holding something short and thick, and she pointed it at Grandma's face.

She said something to the children, hoarse and steady.

I didn't know the words then. I know them now: "Stay behind me."

Grandma didn't step back.

She closed her gills, slowly, one side and then the other, and stood as still as a marker stone.

"Selu," she said, barely moving her mouth. "Yours too."

I shut mine.

The woman's arm shook.

For a long time the only sound was the sea, hissing along its far bright line.

Then she lowered the thing to her side.

She didn't put it away.

She dropped to her knees and began to draw in the wet sand with one finger.

Seven long shapes, pointed at one end.

Under them, a circle, and she scratched back and forth through it until it was more furrow than circle.

From the ships, lines ran down to twelve small eggs, and she tapped each one as she counted.

I didn't know then that the circle was a world.

Beside the twelfth egg, she drew a little girl, stick arms and a cloud of hair.

Then she held a flat, shiny card up to Grandma's lantern.

Caught inside it, like a face in still water, was a girl with curly hair, laughing, hugging a gray animal with long legs and a tail like a hank of rope.

"Junie," the woman said.

She touched the card, then the stick girl, then her own chest.

"Junie. Junie."

Her voice broke on it every time.

She had drawn the eggs on the sand.

She hadn't drawn the sea.

So I knelt beside her and, with my good hand, drew a long wavy line far past her eggs.

I pointed at the glowing edge of the sea, then at the small moon sitting low above it.

Then I swept my hand from the wavy line across all twelve eggs and the little girl, and smoothed them flat.

She stared at the empty sand.

Then she looked out at that far bright line the way someone looks at a door when they hear a step behind it.

I watched her understand that she had landed on the bottom of the sea.

I looked the other way, toward the Last Stone, where the twelfth fire had come down among the graves.

Somewhere near it, under a skin of violet sand, was a stone with my mother's name on it.

The sea wouldn't reach it for almost two hours.

I picked up my lantern and turned back to the eggs.

Grandma was already bending to the five children, palm up, gills shut, waiting until the smallest took her finger.

She pointed her staff at the lights on the cliffs.

"I'll walk these up. I'll be back before the bell. Stay where I can find you."

The woman took one step after them, then let them go.

The next egg lay three hundred steps farther out, sunk to its window.

It was still too warm for my hands, so I dug while she felt along the hull.

Under the sand was a panel, striped like a sea snake.

The wet sand kept sliding back in.

It took us most of what was left of the small moon to dig down to it.

She pushed the short thick thing into her bag, set both hands on the stripes, and did something too fast for me to follow.

The top lifted.

Four faces looked up into my lantern light, all crying.

She looked at each face.

She touched each head, one by one, as if counting them again could change the answer.

Then she sat back on her heels and looked out across the flat, at ten more shapes and all the dark between them.

The small moon went under, and far out past the graves, the sea turned.