The Last Sweet Petal
Iris waded through the warm shallows with her pouch held high. The water came up to her knees and no higher. It was so still that the moon lay flat on it, like a dropped coin. Everything in the bay was asleep. She opened the pouch, and the smell came out — dried sea-roses, warm and sweet, like honey left in the sun. That smell was how you woke the sleepy sea without startling it.
Iris brushed a petal over a sleeping limpet. The limpet stretched, slow as a yawn, and held on tighter. She waved the sweet smell across a hollow of small silver fish. They turned once, together, and drifted off to the deeper dark. "Wake up slow, little sea, wake up slow," she said. The mussels opened a crack. The ribbon weed lifted. Behind her, the water began to whisper against the sand, the way water does when it is nearly awake.
At the far end of the bay was one tide pool, round and deep and still. Nothing in it had moved all night. Iris looked in her pouch. One petal was left, curled like a sleeping moth, and all its sweetness was still inside it. She lifted it carefully. Just then something heaved itself up onto the pool's warm rim: a young sea turtle with barnacles on her shell and salt drying on her flippers.
"Oh," said the turtle. "That smell." She stretched her neck toward the petal. "I have been swimming since the sun went down. I only wanted to sleep somewhere sweet." Iris held the petal close to her chest. The pool needed waking, and this was the last of the sweetness. The turtle did not ask again. She just rested her chin on the stone and watched the petal with tired, patient eyes. The moon slid a little lower.
Iris sat down on the rim with her feet in the pool. She thought about it properly, the way you think when nobody is hurrying you. One petal. One sleeping pool. One sleepy turtle. The warm water moved around her ankles. And the moon, looking in, showed her the whole round pool, dark and quiet and waiting. Iris smiled. She knew what water did with things. She had watched honey go into tea a hundred times.
She held the petal under the surface and rubbed it soft between her fingers. The sweetness unfolded into the water. It spread in slow rings, out and out, until the whole pool smelled like warm sea-roses. The anemones opened their fingers. A sleeping crab turned over and clicked. A starfish crept one arm up the stone. "Wake up slow, little sea, wake up slow," Iris whispered, and the pool woke all the way through, gently, from the middle out.
Then the turtle slipped in. She floated with her flippers out flat and her eyes half shut, lying in the sweet water like a leaf on tea. "It is everywhere," she said. "The whole pool." Beyond them, the tide came in over the warm flats, quiet as a blanket being drawn up. The limpets held on. The weed swayed. The bay breathed out, and the smell of sea-roses went out with it, across all that moving water.
Iris lay back on the smooth rim with her cheek on the stone. Her pouch was empty now, and she did not mind. The pool smelled sweet enough to sleep beside, and it would still smell sweet in the morning, and so would her hands. The turtle drifted closer until she bumped the stone. Small fish came into the pool to see what the sweetness was. The moon rested on the water and did not move.
"Wake up slow, little sea, wake up slow," Iris said, though the sea was awake and it was only her left to go. The turtle lifted one flipper out of the water. Iris put her hand on it. It was cool and leathery and heavy, and it stayed. The tide came in and went out and came in. The sweetness held in the warm pool. Iris closed her eyes, holding on, and the water rocked them both.
