Zuri and the Moon-Shell With a Window

Plip. Plip-plip. The tide folded onto the sand, soft as a blanket being shaken out. The moon had laid a silver path across the water, and the path came right up to Zuri's toes. Zuri was a little sea turtle, small enough to sit in a bucket, with a shell the color of a wet olive.

Behind her, Nana sat on the warm rock. Nana was a very old turtle with a shell like a mossy hill, and she hummed while she worked. She was sorting her moon-shells into a jar. Each shell was pink or cream or pearl, and each one was a night they had watched the moon together.

Malik was there too. He was Zuri's big brother, and he had built a sand turtle near the water and was patting its back flat. "Mine is bigger than yours," he said. Zuri didn't have a sand turtle. She had a flipper-flap dance, because the water was warm as a bath.

She spun. She flapped. Her back flipper went whack against Nana's jar, and the jar toppled. Toppled means it tipped right over and fell. Plink, plink, plinkity went the moon-shells, all over the sand. One shell rolled into the water and a wave took it away.

Nana looked up. "Oh my," she said. "My shells." Zuri's mouth opened. She meant to say, "It was me." What came out was nothing at all. Her shell felt heavy, heavy, heavy.

Nana asked, "Who bumped my jar?" Zuri looked at the sand. "Maybe the wind," she said, very small. The wind was not a bit sorry. It just blew the moonlight around. Her shell felt heavier.

So Zuri tried to fix it. She gathered the shells in her flippers and dropped them back into the jar, click, click, click. She lined them up in a spiral, the way Nana did. But one shell was missing, the one the wave had taken, and the spiral had a gap in it, like a smile with a tooth gone. Still, she pushed the jar back to Nana. "There," she said.

"Thank you, shell-kin," said Nana. Zuri's shell felt heavier than ever. Heavy like a bucket of wet sand.

Zuri tried one more thing. She slid into the shallow water to look for the missing shell, with Nana's rock right there beside her. She put her face down and opened her eyes. The moonlight came through in wobbly silver stripes, and the sand was smooth, smooth, smooth. No shell. Just a little crab scuttling off to bed. She came back up. Her shell felt heavy, heavy, heavy.

Nana patted the rock beside her. "Come sit," she said. Zuri climbed up and tucked her flippers in. Nana said, "When my shell feels heavy, I say the true thing out loud. Then I can put the heavy thing down." Zuri whispered, "It was me. I spun too fast and my flipper bumped your jar. The wave took a shell. I'm sorry, Nana."

Nana was quiet for a moment. Then she said, "Thank you for telling me the true thing. That was a wobbly, brave thing to do." She lifted the jar and turned it slowly. "Look. The spiral still goes round and round. It just has a window in it now, so the light gets in." Then she set one small pearl shell in Zuri's flipper. "And this one is for the night you told me."

Malik leaned over. "I'll dive for the other one tomorrow," he said. "I'm the best diver." "You're the loudest diver," said Nana. Zuri giggled, and the giggle came out wobbly, and then not wobbly at all.

They sat together while the moon climbed higher. Zuri's shell felt light, light, light.

"Hmmm," hummed Nana, low and round. Far out, a whale hummed back, slow as a sigh. The waves folded onto the sand, shhh, shhh, shhh. The air smelled of salt and warm seaweed.

Zuri's eyes grew heavy, heavy, heavy, but her shell did not. The silver path on the water rocked gently, back and forth, and carried the whole wide ocean off to sleep.