Three Strokes Of The Bell

The bell sat in Grandma's left hand, its cord hanging where she'd worked it free.

She was looking at the water, not at her arm.

Far out, Hana's one light went on getting smaller.

I took the bell.

The sea's glowing edge touched the Second Stone.

I struck the bell three times.

All over the dark, the mothers' lanterns swung and turned for shore.

All but one.

Nobody had taught Hana the bell.

I held it out to Elder Imbri, and he took it.

"After the bell," he said, "nobody goes out."

"I know. I rang it."

He had an arm around Grandma, and she leaned on her staff with her good hand.

Grandma didn't tell me to stay.

She told me how to come back.

"Swim across the Turning. Never against it."

I hung my lantern around my neck and walked into the water I had just closed to everyone.

Then the bottom dropped into a channel, and the whole sea leaned on me toward the cliffs.

I put my head under and opened my gills.

I had breathed the sea all my life, but never out here, where the pull runs every other night of nineteen years.

It tasted exactly the same.

That was the worst part.

The grave stones came up out of the dark beneath me, row on row.

Grandma had given me her marks a hundred times.

The Last Stone at your right shoulder, the notch in the cliffs straight at your back, and she's at your feet.

I lifted my head.

The marks lined up ten steps to my left.

There, under the moving water, one pale stone stood a little crooked among the dark ones, something cut across its face.

I couldn't have read it from there.

I didn't have to.

Ten strokes.

I could have had my hand on it in ten strokes.

The right hand, the one I'd saved for it all night, was open and stinging in the salt.

Just past the stone, Hana's light sat on the water.

I kept swimming.

I didn't turn my head again.

Hana stood beside the buried egg, chest-deep, shaking so hard the water shivered around her.

She'd set the mother's lantern on the last dry curve of hull and was pounding the window below it.

Pressed to the glass from inside was a gray cloth horse.

She saw me and said, "Junie," and hit the glass again.

The striped panel was crushed between two grave stones.

I twisted until my palm tore open again.

Nothing moved.

So I went under and put my face to the window.

The horse jerked away, and four small faces scrambled back from me.

Underwater, I couldn't close my gills.

To them I was all teeth and spread gills, looking in.

Hana ducked under, screamed into the hull, and came up choking.

Her voice had nowhere to go down there.

Mine did.

I pulled at her bag.

She understood and dragged out a rope.

I tied it around her waist and mine with a net-knot, so the Turning couldn't peel me off the hull.

Then I went under and pressed my mouth to the egg.

I sang Hana's song.

Five notes stepping down. One back up. The long low one to rest on.

A song underwater isn't loud.

It goes into things: stone, metal, the bones of whoever is listening.

Once through, and nothing.

The rope went tight at my waist.

Above me, Hana was holding on for both of us.

I sang it again.

It's the only song I've ever sung over the graves, and it wasn't for my mother.

Ten steps behind me, the sea went on getting deeper over her name.

The third time, on the long low note, something on the other side of the metal hummed it with me.

Small. Off-key. Holding on as long as I did.

Then a clank, inside.

Junie told me later she'd known the handle all along.

She wasn't going to open it for the faces.

She opened it for her mom's song.

The top rose on its seam, and the sea poured in.

I reached into the rushing dark, found a small hot arm, and shoved it up into Hana's hands.

A second.

A third, with something soft and soaked crushed between us.

A fourth.

I swept the egg end to end.

Nothing else.

When I came up, Hana had all four against her, her face pressed into the wet curls of the one holding the horse.

Behind us there was only moving water, all the way to the cliffs.

No going back through that with four children who couldn't breathe it.

The Last Stone stood forty strokes away, its top well clear.

I took two children on my back, their hands locked hot around my neck.

Hana held the other two, and I swam us across the current until it set us against the stone.

The bottom four steps were already under.

We climbed the other five, past the line cut for the worst tide anyone remembers.

On top, I set my lantern on the side that faced the graves.

Out by the egg, the mother's lantern went under.

Hana wrapped the children in silver blankets.

One of the children pointed at the sky.

The ships' lights were still blinking together like one slow heart.

Then one ship went dark.

It came apart the way a raft comes apart in a storm, slowly, and every piece caught fire.

There was no sound.

The pieces fell across the face of the big moon like stars coming loose.

Then the next ship.

Then the next.

Six of them, until the sky over the Long Shore was full of falling light.

The smallest kept blinking, alone, keeping time with nothing.

I know now who was on them.

Every grown-up who had put a child into an egg and stayed behind.

That night I only knew that Hana knew.

Hana covered Junie's eyes with one hand and kept her own eyes open.