No Sooner, No Later

“Hmmm-mmmm-mmmm,” went the sand. The sound came up through the boards of the boat and into Yara's bones, low and round, like a song hummed into a jar. It was the dunes, humming while the evening wind combed over them. Yara sat cross-legged on the deck of the Sand Sparrow with a map open on her knees, and she did not want to sit still. She wanted to dig.

Yara was eight. She had a red scarf, a brass compass that pointed mostly south, and a great many plans. What she did not have was treasure. Not a coin, not a pearl, not one gold button. Her best find so far was a bottle cap with a lemon painted on it, and she kept that in her pocket and called it her luck. In her other pocket she kept a small secret worry, that she might be the kind of pirate who never finds anything.

The map had turned up that morning, folded small and tucked into the biscuit tin. It showed the dunes in brown ink, and Nim drawn as a lump with two humps and a cross expression, and one neat X near the middle. On the back, in faded writing, it said: “X is ready when the Tallow Star sits on the camel's hump. No sooner. No later.” The letters had little curls on the ends, like handwriting Yara had seen before, though she couldn't think where.

“No sooner. No later,” Yara said out loud. She looked up. The sky was the pale blue of watered milk, with hours and hours to go. “That's a long time to do nothing,” she said.

Amara sat on the other side of the deck, mending a sail. Her needle went in and out, slow and even as a heartbeat. “It is a long time,” she said. “The best kind. What will you do with it?”

Yara did not know. So she took her little shovel and chose a spot where the sand looked promising, which is to say it looked like sand, and she dug. She dug until the hole came up to her elbow. The sand was cool on top and warm two fingers down, and there was nothing inside but a small white snail shell, which she put in her pocket anyway.

Amara came over to look at the hole. “That's a fine hole,” she said. “Straight sides. Very professional.” “There's no treasure in it,” said Yara. “Not in that one,” said Amara, and she went back to her sail.

So Yara dug a second hole, because the first one had clearly been in the wrong place, and the second hole went down through sand the color of cinnamon and came up with nothing at all. She sat on the edge of her own hole and sighed a sigh with a whole afternoon inside it. Nim stopped chewing, looked at her, and went back to chewing.

Then Amara lit the little stove in the middle of the boat, set a pot on it, and dropped in a handful of mint. The smell came curling across the deck, green and sharp and sweet. Yara's nose forgave the world a little. “Do pirates drink tea?” she asked.

“Pirates drink whatever's hot,” said Amara, “and they drink it slowly, because a cup that's gone can't be enjoyed twice.” She poured two small glasses. Yara held hers in both hands and let it be too hot for a while, and that, she found, was something to do.

Waiting was easier with something in her hands. So Yara listened. She heard the sail creak, and Nim's slow chewing, and the dunes humming their long hum. She listened again and heard more hums than before, some high and thin, some low as a boat's belly, all of them braided together.

“Hmmm-mmmm,” went the dunes. “Hmmm-mmmm,” went Nim, quietly, the way you hum when you think nobody is listening. Yara laughed. “You're doing it too.” Nim stopped. Then she started again, a little louder.

The sun slid down. The mast's shadow stretched across the deck like a long finger pointing at the evening, and Yara found she could measure it in hands. One hand of shadow. Two. Three. She marked each one with a chip of chalk and wrote beside it what had happened while it passed.

“ONE: tea. TWO: Nim hummed and then pretended she hadn't. THREE: a beetle crossed the deck carrying a crumb bigger than itself, and I did not help, because it seemed to know what it was doing.” Four hands. Five. The sky went from watered milk to apricot to the deep blue of a mussel shell.

Amara looked over her shoulder at the map. “That corner of yours is empty,” she said. “Old maps leave it for the things you see on the way. Fill it in.” So Yara did. She drew the kettle with its steam, Nim's cross face, the snail shell, and the beetle with its enormous crumb.

By the time the first star came out, the corner was crowded. After that the sky filled up fast, like a tipped bowl, until there were more stars than Yara could count and some she could only see if she looked just to the side of them. The whole sky looked like spilled sugar on a dark table.

“Which one's the Tallow Star?” Yara asked. Amara pointed low, near the horizon, at a small star the color of candle wax. It seemed to sit quite still. Yara watched it for a long time. “It isn't moving,” she said.

“It's moving,” said Amara. “At the speed of a star, which is the only speed it has.” She sat down on the cool sand with her back against the boat and patted the place beside her. “Come and be slow with me.”

Nim knelt in the sand and folded her long legs under her, and sighed, and put her chin down. Her hump made a soft hill against the dark. “When the Tallow Star sits on Nim's hump, we dig,” said Yara. “No sooner,” said Amara. “No later,” said Yara.

So they waited. Yara named the stars she could see after things she liked: the Snail Shell, the Lemon, the Warm Tea. Amara named one the Mending Needle. Yara named a fat one after Nim's hump, and Nim made a noise through her nose that might have been a laugh and might have been a sneeze.

The Tallow Star crept. It crept the way a drop of honey creeps down the side of a jar, so slowly that Yara was sure it had stopped, and then she looked away and looked back and it had moved a whole finger. Twice she said, “That's probably close enough.” Twice Amara said, “Close enough is a different star.”

Yara's secret worry came out of her pocket and into her mouth. “What if it's just a hole again?” she said. “What if I waited all this time and it's sand and a bottle cap?” Amara didn't laugh. “Then we'll have the best hole in the desert,” she said, “and a good evening, and I'll still be here.”

The star crept on. The dunes hummed, softer now, and the wind smelled of cool sand and mint tea. Nim's breathing got long and slow. Yara lay back against Nim's warm side, and the waiting stopped feeling like a thing to get through and started feeling like a place to sit.

Then Yara sat up. “Amara, it's on her hump!” The Tallow Star sat right above the soft hill of Nim's back, small and yellow and sure of itself. “No sooner,” said Amara. “No later,” said Yara. “Now.”

They dug together, side by side, Amara's shovel and Yara's, and Nim watched with her chin on the sand. Down through the cool top layer, down through the warm middle, down through the cold that lives deep under dunes. Yara's shovel went clink. “Sand doesn't clink,” she said.

It was a tin. Small, freckled with rust, with a lemon scratched into the lid. Yara sat back on her heels and stared at that lemon for a long while. Then she opened it. Inside was a sea-glass marble, smooth and green as a wave. A paper bird, folded crooked. And a drawing of a girl, a tall woman and a camel, with a lemon in the corner.

The girl in the drawing wore a red scarf. At the bottom were big wobbly letters: FOR ME WHEN I AM BIG. Underneath, in a four-year-old's best and most careful writing, it said: FROM ME.

Yara looked up. Amara was studying the sky with a very calm face, the face she wore when she was trying not to smile. “You wrote the map,” said Yara. “The curls on the letters,” said Amara. “You noticed.” “I buried this?” “You did. You were four. You wanted to find it right that minute.”

“So you said wait,” Yara said. “I said wait,” said Amara, “and I said as long as it takes, and then I drew a map so you could find it when you were big enough to enjoy the waiting. And you were. I watched you fill in that corner all evening.” Yara looked down at the drawings. The kettle. The beetle. The snail shell. The star.

“You made me wait four years,” said Yara, and she was grinning. “I made you wait one evening,” said Amara. “You did the rest yourself, with your tea and your beetles and your star names.” Yara put the marble in her pocket beside the lemon bottle cap. Two treasures. The secret worry was gone from her pocket entirely.

She set the paper bird back in the tin and the tin in her pocket, and then she drew one more thing in the corner of the map, a small star sitting on a small hump. Her chalk was worn down to a nub. The dunes hummed. Nim's breath went in and out, long and slow, and her hump was warm as a loaf just out of the oven.

Amara folded the map and slid it under Yara's cheek like a pillow. The tea had gone cool in the glasses and nobody minded. The stars spilled on and on across the dark, and the sand hummed its long hum, softer now, so soft it was more a feeling than a sound.

Yara closed her eyes. In her pocket were a bottle cap, a snail shell, a marble and a paper bird. Under her cheek was a map with no empty corner left. Nim hummed once, and the dunes hummed back, and everything went quiet and warm and slow, and Yara slept.