The Long Way Across
Faye held the shell with both hands, and the light inside it wobbled. It was seawater with a blue sparkle in it, the kind the sea makes on warm nights. Plum sat on her shoulder with her sleepy lids half down. Far out at the rocks lay a wide pool that had gone dark, and Faye meant to pour the sparkle in. Somewhere across the shallows, something knocked. Tok. Tok. It was slow and hollow and friendly, like a spoon on a wooden bowl. Plum turned both tufted brows toward the sound. Faye lifted the shell and started walking.
Two ways went out to the rocks. One was the long sand path that curved around the whole bay, pale and easy under the moon. The other went straight across the flats, where the water lay shallow and warm as a bath. Straight looked shorter. "We'll be there in no time," Faye told Plum, and stepped in. The water came to her ankles. Her feet made soft prints that filled at once. Tok. Tok. Plum shifted and held on, and the blue light swung in the shell, and the rocks did not seem to come any closer.
The flats were not straight at all. A ridge of sand pushed Faye left. A pool of green weed pushed her right. She went around a bank of mussels, and around a crab who was moving his house, and around a long bar of sand that curved the wrong way. Each time, the rocks slid off to one side. Faye laughed under her breath. The shortcut was taking longer than the long way ever would. But the water was warm, and the shell was still full, and Plum was humming the small way owls hum. Tok, went the dark. Tok.
There were things to see that the sand path never had. A ray lay sleeping under a thin blanket of sand, breathing, and Faye stepped wide around her. Small fish stitched past her ankles in one silver thread. The moon lay on the water like something somebody had dropped. Plum turned her head all the way around to look back at the shore, which was far away now, and small. Faye held the shell steady until the blue sparkle rocked and settled. "One step, then wait, then one more step," she said, and the words fit the walking.
Then the sand ran out. In front of her the water went from gold to deep blue, a channel between the flats and the rocks, wider than she had thought. It was the last of the way. Faye stopped. She was afraid of water she could not see the bottom of. She said so, out loud, to Plum, and saying it made the fear a small thing sitting beside her instead of a big thing inside her. Tok, said the dark water. Tok. Plum stepped from her shoulder to her head and waited. Faye put one foot in, up to the knee.
She did not go all at once. She went to her knees, and waited. She went to her waist, and waited, and the sea held her there, as warm as the shallows had been. "One step, then wait, then one more step." Then there was no bottom under her, and she was floating, and floating was only lying down on something very large and very patient. She swam with one arm. The shell stayed up in the other, dry, its blue light swinging slowly over the water. Plum rode on her head like a small grey hat and said nothing at all.
Her knees found rock. Faye climbed out onto the warm shoulder of stone, and there was the wide pool, dark and still. She knelt and poured. The blue sparkle left the shell and spread, turning, until the whole pool was lit from underneath. Plum's sleepy eyes went round. And now Faye could see the knocking: a hollow log caught in a crack of the rocks, lifted and set down, lifted and set down by the tide. Tok. Tok. It had been calling her the whole long shortcut, and she had come all that way to find it.
Faye sat with her back against the warm rock. The pool glowed below, blue and slow, and the tide knocked its patient knock, and the long way and the short way were both behind her. Plum shuffled close and leaned in under her arm. "One step, then wait, then one more step," Faye said, quieter now. The sea climbed the rock and slid back again. Plum's heavy lids came down. Faye closed her hand gently over Plum's soft wing and let her own eyes close, and the knocking went on, slower, further off.
