The Pool That Would Not Shine
The rain stopped between one step and the next. Dara felt the last drops land on her shoulders and then nothing. Warm water moved around her ankles, and the clouds slid apart like a curtain pulled back. Moonlight dropped onto the sleepy sea all at once. River surfaced beside her, whiskers beaded, and shook his head in a quick silver spray. "It came back," Dara said, meaning the light. The shallows were suddenly full of it, pale and wide and gentle, running out to where the water turned deep. Dara waded forward. Her shadow went ahead of her across the sand, long and thin and perfectly calm.
Something else was shining too, lower down and closer. When Dara swept her hand through the water, small green sparks swirled up behind her fingers and faded. She did it again and got a whole curl of them. River rolled over and over until he was wrapped in his own glowing ribbon. The sparks lived in the warm shallows, too small to see one at a time, and they only lit when the water stirred. Dara walked slowly so her feet made quiet comets. The whole bay seemed to be breathing light. She laughed once, softly, and the sound did not carry far over such still water.
At the end of the bay stood a shelf of dark rock with a pool held in the top of it, round as a bowl. Dara climbed up to look. The pool was deep enough to put both arms in, and clear, and completely dark. No sparks. No comets. Just the moon sitting on its surface like a coin. River pulled himself up beside her, dripping, and peered in. "It should have some," Dara said. "Everything else does." The pool had been cut off from the shallows for a long time, high and quiet above the tide. Dara looked at the glowing water below, then back at the dark bowl.
She went down the rock, knelt, and cupped her hands full of the shining water. The sparks swirled green between her palms. She climbed back up with her arms held stiff in front of her, water slipping out at her wrists, and by the time she reached the top her hands were empty except for a thin shine that was only wet skin. She poured in what was left. The pool stayed dark. River made a small sound that was not quite a laugh. Dara looked at her hands, which had held something for a moment and then had not. "Fine," she said. "Something bigger."
She found half a clam shell, wide as a saucer and smooth inside. She filled it. She climbed the rock sideways, slowly, watching the water tilt and slop against the rim. Near the top her foot slid on weed, and the shell tipped, and a bright green sheet spilled down the stone and vanished into the sand. Dara sat down on the ledge with the empty shell in her lap. The moon had moved. Her arms ached in a small, ordinary way. River climbed up, settled his chin on her knee, and lay there breathing. The dark pool held its coin of moon and did not change at all.
Dara stayed where she was for a while, which was not the same as giving up. She listened to the sea folding over itself down the beach. She counted the drips coming off the rock above her. Then, near her foot, something moved: a hermit crab no bigger than her thumbnail, dragging a striped shell three times too grand for it. The crab was trying to get up the wet stone toward a smaller pool on a higher step. It climbed. It slipped. The shell knocked against the rock and the crab went back down to the bottom, legs waving, and started again. River lifted his chin to watch.
Dara propped her elbows on her knees. The crab tried the steep middle of the stone and slid. It tried the left side, where the weed grew thick and slick, and slid. It tried a seam in the rock that ran at an angle, caught two legs in it, climbed a whole hand's width, and slid. Each time it fell it rested for a breath. Each time it started it went somewhere slightly new. It was not fighting the rock. It was reading it. Dara leaned closer, and her shadow fell over the crab, so she moved her head aside and let the moonlight back through.
"Try again, a little differently this time," Dara whispered. The crab did exactly that. It went back to the angled seam, further along, where a thread of water ran down from the higher pool and kept the stone dark and soft. It climbed the wet line instead of the dry rock. Its legs found grip in the slick. Up it went, steady as a slow clock, shell swaying, and tipped itself over the lip into the small pool above with a sound no bigger than a raindrop. Dara sat back. She looked at the thread of water the crab had followed. Water, going down, finding its own path through stone.
She slid off the ledge and knelt in the wet sand where the shelf met the beach. If she could not carry the shining water up, perhaps she could bring it along. She dug a trench with the clam shell, from the glowing shallows toward the lowest edge of the rock, scooping fast, heaping the sand into a wall. The sea pushed in behind her. The trench filled, glimmered green for one beautiful moment, and then the walls sagged and the whole thing was just beach again. River stood on his back legs to see. Dara sat on her heels, breathing hard, sand to her elbows.
"Again," she said. "A little differently." This time she cut the trench narrower, and she did not go straight. She followed the slope the way the crab had followed the seam, letting the channel bend where the beach already wanted to bend. She packed the walls with wet sand, pressing with the flat of both hands. River came and pushed sand too, with his chest and his chin, which was mostly helpful. The water came in and found the bend and held. The walls stood. But the far end stopped a whole arm's length short of the rock, and the sea slid back out, and the channel drained and sat empty.
Dara did not cry and did not quit. She worked along the last stretch on her knees, lining the channel with flat stones the size of her palm, the way the crab's seam had been lined with stone. She wedged them edge to edge so the sand could not slump between them. She ran the last part up into a shallow groove in the rock that was already there, that had always been there, that she had never once looked at. River paddled the length of it to test, nose first, and bumped out the other end. Dara pressed one more stone into place with her thumb. Then she sat down in the wet sand to wait.
The tide came up the way tides do, without hurrying. It reached the channel mouth, slid in, bent where the channel bent, ran over the flat stones, climbed the groove, and poured in a thin bright rope into the dark pool. The sparks went with it. Green light unrolled across the bottom of the bowl and swirled when the water turned. The pool lit from the inside, so that the rock around it glowed faintly too, and the coin of moon on its surface was suddenly sitting on something awake. Dara watched without moving. Somewhere on the higher step, a striped shell no bigger than a thumbnail moved once and settled.
They climbed up and lay on the warm flat rock beside the shining pool. River stretched out full length, paws loose, and the light from the water moved slowly over his wet fur. Dara trailed one hand in and the sparks gathered around her fingers like something saying hello. "Again," she said, half asleep, "a little differently this time." Her eyes closed. The sea went on arriving, quiet, bringing more light up the channel she had made. River turned his head and put his paw into her open hand, and her fingers closed around it, and neither of them let go, and the pool shone on without needing anyone to watch.
