One Cold Thing
"Is the sea warmer at night, Plum?" Bree asked. She walked into the shallows until the water reached her knees. Plum rode on her shoulder with her heavy, sleepy lids half closed. The water was warm, like a bath left standing. The sand under Bree's feet was warm too, and soft, and it squeaked a little when she wriggled her toes. The moon lay flat on the sea and did not move. Bree took one more step. Something under her foot was cold, so cold it made her lift her heel and laugh. She reached down into the dark water and closed her fingers around it.
She brought it up dripping. A flat piece of sea glass, round as a small moon, the colour of milk. It was cold in a sea that was warm everywhere else, cold as a window in winter. Plum leaned close and turned her head almost upside down to look. "Where did you come from?" Bree said. She held the glass against her cheek. It did not warm up. "Warm sand, warm water, one cold thing," Bree said. Plum clicked her beak once, which was how she agreed. The tide pushed gently at the backs of Bree's legs, as if it were pointing.
They went along the shallows together, slow as the slow water. Bree held the glass in her open palm so it could stay cold. Plum flew ahead a wingbeat at a time and waited for her on the rocks. There were tide pools everywhere, dark as cups of tea, each one warmer than the sea. In the first pool, small fish hung still. In the second, a crab moved sideways under a leaf of weed and thought better of it. Bree lowered the glass into each pool and felt the water with her wrist. Warm, warm, warm. The glass stayed cold in her hand.
Plum hooted, low and soft, from a rock shaped like a sleeping seal. Bree waded over. The pool below the rock was deeper than the others, and the moon sat in it whole. Bree put her hand in and felt the water change. Warm at the top, cooler further down, and at the very bottom, cold, a thin cold thread coming up through the sand. She pulled her hand out, surprised. "There's a spring down there," she said. "A cold one, right under all the warm." Plum blinked slowly. The glass in Bree's palm suddenly felt like something with somewhere to be.
Bree took a breath and put her face in the water. Down at the bottom, pale in the moonlight, lay a ring of pebbles, laid neat as stitches around the place where the cold came up. There was a gap in the ring, one pebble wide. Bree came up and wiped her eyes. "Somebody dropped it," she said. "Or the tide did." She reached down. Her arm was not long enough. Her fingers waved above the pebbles and came back with nothing but cold water. Plum shuffled closer along the rock. "Warm sand, warm water, one cold thing," Bree said.
Bree gave the glass to Plum, who held it in her beak without a sound. Then Bree took the biggest breath she had and went down head first, kicking, with her hands out in front of her. The water went warm, then cool, then cold against her face. Her fingers found the pebbles. She counted them, which helped. She came up happy and took the glass back from Plum's beak, and it was still exactly as cold as it had been when her foot first found it, which somehow felt important. "Once more," Bree said. Plum lifted both tufted brows.
Down she went again, slower this time, letting the cold come up to meet her. She set the glass into the gap in the ring. It settled with a small click she felt in her fingers more than heard. The ring was closed. When Bree surfaced and the water went flat again, the moon found the glass and the whole pool lit from the bottom, pale as milk, so she could see every pebble and her own two feet. Plum glowed at the edges in that light. They watched it for a long while, saying nothing, breathing.
Bree waded back to the warm shallows and lay on her back with her ears under the water. The sea held her up the way a hand holds an egg. Plum came and sat on her middle, light as a folded towel, and rode along. The tide moved them both toward the sand, slowly, without being asked. "Warm sand, warm water," Bree said, "and nothing cold left anywhere." Her eyes closed. The water carried her in until the sand took her, warm from the whole long day, and Plum's feathers rose and fell with her breathing.
