Who Was Tapping
The rain stopped all at once, the way warm rain does. Wren stepped off the last wet plank into the shallows. The water was the temperature of a held hand. Plum sat on their shoulder with her feather tufts flattened, blinking her heavy sleepy lids. Small drips slid off the ends of her brows. Wren dug their toes into the sand, which was ribbed and firm, like corduroy. Then the dripping stopped too, and the whole sea went quiet. Into that quiet came a sound. Tock. Tock-tock. It came from far out, where the moon lay flat on the water. "Let's go and see who's tapping," said Wren.
Plum lifted off and flew one wingspan ahead, then waited. She did that the whole way out: fly, wait, fly, wait. Wren waded after her. The sand changed as they went. First the ribbed part, then a soft cold patch that squeezed up between their toes, then a stretch of broken shell that crunched like sugar. Wren held their arms out for balance. A warm current slid past their knees and then a cool one, and Wren laughed at the difference. Tock. Tock-tock-tock. Closer now. Plum turned her whole head around to look at Wren, which was her way of saying she had heard it too.
They stopped at a tide pool to rest. Wren ran a finger along the rim of it. Barnacles, rough as a cat's tongue. Weed like wet ribbon. One small snail with a shell as smooth as a thumbnail. Plum stood in the shallow water and lifted her feet, one and then the other, the way owls do when they are not sure about wet. "Maybe it's a crab knocking on a door," Wren said. Plum ruffled. "Maybe it's the moon," Wren said, "tapping to be let in." Tock. Tock-tock. It was not a hurrying sound. It was patient, and very slightly out of time with itself.
Past the tide pool the water went shallow again over a long pale sandbar. And there, in a bay of calm water, was the tapper. She was enormous and grey and slow, a sea cow with a back like wet stone and a mouth full of soft whiskers. She was lying on her side. With the flat of her tail she was patting the water. Pat. Pat-pat. Each pat woke a ring of tiny lights in the dark water, blue-green and drifting, like sparks that had decided to be gentle. Wren stood very still. Plum landed on their shoulder and gripped, light as a folded coat.
Beside the big grey shape lay a smaller one. Her calf, curled in the warm shallow, eyes shut, one flipper resting on his mother's side. The rings of light spread over him and faded, and she patted again, and the light came back. She did not look tired of it. She looked like someone who could do this all night and had. Wren understood, the way you understand a thing without saying it. She was making a lamp out of the sea so the small one could sleep. Plum made the smallest sound in her throat. Wren reached up and smoothed the wet tufts above her eyes with one finger.
Wren crouched down and laid a palm flat on the water. Pat. A little ring of lights opened around their hand and drifted away. Wren did it again, softer, in time with the big grey tail. Plum hopped onto a knuckle of drifted wood and knocked her beak against it. Tock. Tock-tock. The three of them tapped together, badly at first, then better, until the bay was full of slow blue rings sliding into each other. The sea cow's whiskered mouth moved. She did not stop and she did not look up, but she let them stay, and she made room.
When the calf's breathing went long and even, the tapping thinned out and stopped. Wren lay back in the shallows the way you lie back in a bath, ears under, sky above. The tide had turned. It took Wren's shoulders and heels and carried them, slowly, toward the sandbar. Plum came down and stood on Wren's chest, her feet gripping the wet jacket, her heavy lids sliding shut and open and shut. "Let's go and see who's tapping," Wren murmured, to nobody, to Plum, to the whole warm water. Behind them the big grey shape sank a little and rested, and the lights went out one ring at a time.
The sea set them down on the warm rise of the sandbar the way you set down something you have been holding a long while. Wren rolled onto their side. The sand here was dry on top and cool underneath, and it took the shape of them. Plum shuffled in against Wren's neck, all damp feather and small warm weight, and tucked one foot up. Far out, the water kept moving without any help from anyone. Wren's eyes closed. The tide came in under the sandbar and under Wren and under Plum, and went on carrying them, gently, all night.
