Mermaid bedtime story: Mia and the Song of the Coral Reef

Chapter 1Whispers in the Shallows

Forty-two shells lay neatly arranged on the warm sandstone ledge. Mia stroked the curve of a tiny striped periwinkle, her fingers dusted with dried white brine.

"Still playing with snail houses, baby Mia?" called Leo from the wooden jetty. He tossed a wet clump of weed into the swell, splashing his older friends. They laughed, their voices sharp and thin against the rumbling surf.

Mia did not answer. She tucked her knees inside her navy-and-coral rash guard shirt, feeling the snug warmth of her turquoise swim shorts against the baking rock. Forty-two was a very respectable number, but it was not extraordinary. It was missing the true wonder—the one shell that proved her beach was steeped in secret wonders.

Out on the drop-off ledge, a swell rolled past the green-velvet boulders. The afternoon sun pierced the cresting foam with clean amber needles, lighting a wedge of emerald sea lettuce down below. Tucked inside the green weed sat a spiral shell. It gleamed with mother-of-pearl ribs, glowing pink and cool silver like a wet teaspoon.

"Holy barnacles," Mia whispered.

The tide was creeping inward, licking the barnacles along the stone. Mia dropped to all fours, ignoring the cold spray that misted her freckled nose. She crawled across the slick rubbery bladderwrack toward the lip of the pool. As she drew nearer, she heard something over the rhythmic slosh of the foam. It was not the wind. A clear, chiming note rose up through the saltwater, steady as a struck bell.

*Listen close, listen deep, where the ocean sings to sleep.*

The grandmother song her mother hummed at night seemed to rise straight from the spiral. Reaching out with both arms, Mia stretched past the rim of the rock. Her aqua water booties found no purchase on the emerald slime. Her rubber toes squeaked, lost their grip, and pitched her forward.

*Gloop-splash!*

Cool silk swallowed her whole. Mia tumbled into turquoise bubbles, her wavy hazel hair billowing out like an umbrella. She squeezed her eyes shut against the sting of brine, then popped them open. Her right fist shot forward, closing around the smooth ridges of the glowing spiral.

A sharp gasp ruffled the water behind the waving ribbons of brown kelp.

Mia froze. Two luminous violet eyes peered back at her from the shadows. The girl had sea-glass green skin that shimmered under the dancing light. Her dark hair floated in the tide, sprinkled with pinpricks of pale pearl, and her translucent shoulder fins were trembling.

Mia kicked her legs in a panic, breaking the pool surface with a noisy sputter. She gulped a lungful of salty wind, shaking the wet bangs from her forehead. The older boys were already strolling toward the ice-cream shack, their backs turned.

Down there, the sea-glass face had looked terrified. Mia wiped her chin on her sleeve and pulled her chin down toward the dark water. Taking a massive breath, she plunged beneath the surface once more.

The green girl was retreating backward into a crevice, folding her iridescent aquamarine tail close to her belly. She watched Mia like a cornered sand-crab.

Mia let out three small bubbles. Raising her left hand, she tapped her fingers three times against her canvas mesh pouch. It was what she always did when she needed to think, or when she needed to show she meant no harm. Then, keeping her lips loosely closed, she let a quiet hum drift through her throat. It was the snail-calling tune, rolling soft and sweet through the brine.

The little mermaid stopped fluttering. She pressed her hands to her seagrass tunic, her tail fluke drifting motionless in the sunlit surge.

"Swish and ripple," the mermaid murmured. The sound carried underwater like chiming glass. "You know the quiet hum. But you are a dry-folk."

Mia pointed toward the open bay and gave an apologetic shrug, bubbles leaking from her nose.

The mermaid looked past the ledge, her violet eyes clouding over. With a slender finger, she pointed beyond the shelter of the rocks toward the deeper slope of Whisper Reef. Where bright orange fan-corals should have swayed, vast mounds of stone lay bare and chalk-white, bleached clean of every living glow. A tear slipped from her eye, turning into a tiny, buoyant pearl that floated away into the kelp.

Mia’s chest began to ache. Her breath was running out; she needed to kick for the sky.

Before Mia could stroke upward, the mermaid darted forward with the speed of an arrow. Around Mia’s neck, the sea-child looped a necklace of woven golden weed, knotted with three translucent, aqua-colored pods.

A soft *pop* rippled against Mia's ears. A clear, weightless sphere of dry air bloomed over her head like an invisible glass bell.

Mia drew a sudden breath. Sweet, cool air rushed into her lungs.

"I am Sari," the mermaid whispered, tucking her tail fins inward as if embarrassed by her own courage. "The air-pods will keep your surface-lungs light. But only three swells remain before the red sun sinks into the bay. When the seven o'clock tide pulls the foam back from the jetty, the pods will melt to salt. Will you come beneath the shelf? Whisper Reef is turning to bone, and it will not sing alone."

Mia held the chiming shell against her chest and looked toward the deep, shadowed shelf. She had an evening bath waiting on shore, but the sea had just answered her song.

Chapter 2The Silent Forest

Mia kicked her aqua booties, trailing a string of silver bubbles into the open bay. Sari swam beside her with effortless swishes of her aquamarine fluke. The sea deepened from pale turquoise to cold sapphire, carrying a smell of ancient brine and crushed shells. Ahead lay the great shelf of Whisper Reef.

Mia stopped kicking. Her invisible air-dome bobbed lightly against her shoulders. She expected gardens of fire-coral, purple fans, and emerald plumes. Instead, rows of massive antler-branches and rounded brain-mounds stretched out like an abandoned graveyard of chalk. Ghostly bone-white arms reached toward the dim surface. Ash-gray dust coated the ridges where tiny anemone mouths should have danced. The silence was not peaceful; it was hollow and heavy, like an empty bedroom with the curtains drawn.

A golden-yellow shape darted out from behind a lifeless ledge.

"Halt! Desist! Unsanctioned bipedal intrusion!" squawked a tiny, high-pitched voice.

Pip the spiny box pufferfish tumbled into their path, fluttering his clear fins in frantic circles. He took one horrified look at Mia’s sneakers and swelled ten percent larger, his golden spikes bristling like toothpicks.

"Ahem, scientifically speaking," Pip wheezed, his huge indigo eyes darting from side to side, "this shelf is strictly condemned! No splashing, no whistling, and positively no uncalibrated surface singing! Do you want Barnaby to hear? He has ears like sea-snails! Well, technically he has sensory antennae, which are far more terrifying!"

"Pip, hush," Sari pleaded. She drifted toward a rounded stone that still bore three tiny bumps of lavender flesh. "These sprouts are still breathing. If we do not warm them with the lullaby, they will turn to gray lime before dusk."

Sari opened her mouth. Her throat worked, but only a squeak came out. She tucked her tail fins inward, shivering against the cold current. "Swish and ripple," she whispered. "I cannot find the tune. My grandmother had the true chime, but mine is just thin water."

"You have it," Mia said gently. She pressed the chiming spiral shell against her ribs and tapped the rhythm with her heel against the rock. "Sing with me. *Listen close, listen deep, where the ocean sings to sleep.*"

Her seaside voice rolled out through the air-dome, warm and steady as a cup of sweet tea. Sari caught the pitch. The mermaid's note wound around Mia's like a strand of river-silk. Down in the chalk crevice, the lavender bumps shuddered. A soft, lilac shimmer crept across the pale limestone, glowing like a newly lit candle behind frosted glass.

*CLACK-CLACK-CLATTER!*

The seafloor shook so violently that sand puffed from every crack. A shadow vast as a thundercloud swept across the reef, blocking the amber sunlight. Through the forest of withered kelp crashed Barnaby the Reef-Curator.

He was colossal. His shell of rough volcanic rock was the size of an overturned rowboat, bristling with snapping orange anemones and crusts of ringing barnacles. Two bulbous stalk-eyes swiveled down upon the girls, glaring past a bristling grandfather mustache of stiff white whiskers. His massive left claw—an iron-hard mallet of slate and orange—snapped in a slow, ominous metronome beat. *Click. Clack. Click.*

"Surface noise!" Barnaby rumbled, his voice grinding like boulders rolling in heavy surf. "Frivolous, reckless clatter! Songs bring the storm-crush! Clack-clack-clatter! Silence alone keeps the shell unbroken!"

"No, Barnaby, look!" Sari cried, pointing at the lilac sprout. "They are waking!"

"They are dying!" the ancient crab roared.

With terrifying speed, Barnaby whipped out a heavy net woven from stiff, blackened kelp. He cast it over the glowing seedlings, wrenching them from the limestone with a dull crunch. He bundled the faint lights into the dark hollow under his belly plates. Turning his volcanic bulk, he kicked up a blizzard of gray grit, scuttling down into the abyssal gloom with the last sparks of Whisper Reef held hostage.

The cloud of silt settled slowly, leaving the chalk forest colder and darker than before.

Sari sank onto a ledge of dead staghorn coral. Her kelp-dark hair drifted across her face as she curled her tail tightly against her ribs, weeping silently. Tiny pearl tears slipped from her chin, floating up into the murky water before vanishing. "I ruined it," she sobbed. "I was too quiet. The Curator will bury them in the black vault, and they will never see the sun again."

Pip drifted beside her cheek, now puffed up to the size of a honeydew melon. His blue ribbon fluttered around his tail like a distress flag. "Scientifically speaking, our chances of retrieval are exactly zero point zero percent. The basalt vault has six-foot slab gates, an exterior moat of electric rays, and urchin-tumbler locks that require twenty-two claws to operate! Claws, I tell you! Neither of you possesses even a modest pincer!"

Mia watched the deep trench where the monster crab had disappeared. She tapped her fingers three times against her shell pouch. The three air-pods at her throat felt light and fragile; the afternoon was slipping away, and the tide would not wait for tears.

"Barnaby is as big as a rowboat," Mia said aloud, her voice clear inside her bubble.

"A rowboat with murder-tongs," Pip added helpfully, trembling on his spikes.

"A boat needs air," Mia continued, swimming around the spot where the crab had dug his heels into the silt. "He has living anemones riding on his back. Anemones need fresh current, or they shrivel up and drop off. Pip, where does the water go when he seals the vault?"

The little pufferfish blinked his enormous indigo eyes. A tiny jet of water squirted from his mouth, and with a soft *pfft*, he deflated back to the size of a tea mug. He looked down at his fins, suddenly terribly interested in a speck of gravel.

"Well," Pip mumbled, shifting from side to side. "Technically... there is the northern fissure. The chimney above the kelp pantry. The cleaner shrimp patrol it twice a day to sweep out the molted barnacle shells."

Sari lifted her head from her hands. "The cleaner shrimp shift? At five o'clock?"

"A quarter-past five, to be precise," Pip grumbled, crossing his tiny fins. "And it is strictly forbidden for anyone who does not possess a guild badge! It is against all thirty-seven chapters of the Reef Safety Ordinance!"

Mia took Sari's cool, webbed hand in her own warm one. "Barnaby made those rules because he was frightened. But you cannot keep flowers in a dark cupboard and expect them to grow. We have to go get your garden back."

Sari looked at the empty white stone where the lilac light had just been. A spark of stubborn courage flared behind her violet eyes. She straightened her spine, smoothing her emerald tunic. "Swish and ripple," the mermaid said, and this time her voice did not shake. "Show us the fissure, Pip."

Pip groaned a long, bubbly sigh that set his spines shivering, but he turned his yellow snout toward the black volcanic trench and fluttered his fins. How could two eight-year-olds and one terrified pufferfish slip past iron-clad claws into the heart of a sunken stone fortress?

Chapter 3Into the Midnight Vault

The northern chimney smelled of damp soot and old salt. Mia wiggled through the cold stone gap, dragging her knees over slicks of rubbery weed. Sari slipped after her like an eel, her emerald scales catching tiny flakes of mica. Last came Pip, who squeezed through with a faint *pop* that set his tail ribbon trembling.

Inside, the vault opened wide and dark. Glistening obsidian walls rose into jagged shadows, studded with centuries of hoarded sea-glass that caught the faint amber glow of caged drift-lanterns. Mountains of smooth beach pebbles, bottle stoppers, and iron ship-bolts lay piled like dragons' gold.

Right in the center alcove, under a ceiling dripping with dark moss, Barnaby rested. His volcanic shell looked like a sunken boulder. A low, stony snore rumbled from his shell-mouth with every breath: *Hrr-clack, hrr-clack.* His giant left pincer lay curled in front of his belly, twitching in a slow, rhythmic metronome beat. *Click. Clack. Click.*

Beside that monstrous orange claw lay the kelp net. The lilac coral sprouts inside flickered like dying embers.

Sari drifted forward without making a ripple. Her fingers worked with patient gentleness, picking at the stiff knots of bull-kelp binding the seedlings. Mia hovered beside her to keep watch, but her gaze wandered to an obsidian pedestal just two arm-lengths away.

Resting on a cushion of purple sponge was a slender cylinder of carved violet coral. It was the Tide-Flute Core. Tiny wave glyphs ran along its polished ribs, swirling like ripples made by skipping stones. The object hummed with a quiet, velvety warmth that tickled Mia’s ears inside her bubble.

"Holy barnacles," Mia whispered. Drawn toward the gentle music, she took a light, drifting step closer.

Her shoulder brushed a hanging curtain of bronze weed. A shower of pale, powdery sleeping-kelp spores drifted down through the water, floating directly onto Pip’s golden snout.

The pufferfish froze. His indigo eyes widened until they nearly popped from his face. His snout twitched once. Twice.

"Ah... ah..." Pip squeaked.

"Pip, don't!" Mia gasped.

"*Achoo!*"

The sneeze sounded like a cork popping from a bottle. Pip swelled instantly into an enormous, spiky basketball, bursting with startled air. The kick of his sudden inflation sent him spinning sideways through the water. He ricocheted off a shelf of amber jars and slammed squarely into the obsidian pedestal.

The stone pillar wobbled. The violet Tide-Flute Core slid from its velvet cushion, tumbled through the water, and struck the basalt flags below.

*CRACK.*

The sound was sharp and sickening, like a teacup shattering on a hearthstone. The ancient coral cylinder split in two, breaking cleanly across its middle. From the jagged fracture burst an acoustic shriek—high, shrill, and deafening. It tore through the dark water, vibrating straight into Mia’s teeth.

The obsidian cavern shuddered as the awful screech tore the silence apart. Gray fissures ripped through the glowing lantern-moss along the walls, their gentle amber light dying into dull ash. Far out in the trench, the distant hum of the living sea snapped shut like a book.

Barnaby surged from his shell with terrifying speed. His stalk-eyes flared crimson, his grandfatherly whiskers bristling with fury.

"SACRILEGE!" the old crab roared, his gravelly voice clattering like a rockslide. "The core! The ocean's voice! Clack-clack-clatter! Greed! Surface greed has shattered the deep!"

Sari threw herself in front of Mia, spreading her webbed hands wide. "Barnaby, wait! It was an accident! She was only looking—"

"Lies from the air!" Barnaby bellowed. His right claw swung like an anchor, shoving Sari back toward the deep alcove. With a deafening boom, a six-foot slab of basalt dropped from the ceiling, sealing the mermaid behind iron-hard stone.

"Sari!" Mia cried, swimming toward the barrier.

"Thief of the shallows!" Barnaby pivoted, his massive shell churning the water into a boiling froth. "You bring only fracture! You take what you cannot understand! Return to your dry bones and leave the silence to die in peace!"

The great crab opened his colossal siphon valves. A violent geyser of pressurized water erupted from his chest plates, aimed straight at Mia’s chest.

Mia dove downward as the current struck. Her fingers caught the broken top half of the violet flute, its wave glyphs biting cold into her palm. Then the jet of water hit her like a runaway train.

The invisible air-dome around her head compressed, squeezing her ears. She tumbled backward into darkness, swept up into a roaring blowhole chimney that twisted through the volcanic rock. Water roared in her ears, rushing faster and faster, dragging her away from the sprouts, away from the trapped mermaid, away into the wild dark.

*WHOOSH.*

Mia broke the surface of Pebble Bay with a violent, gasping cough. Freezing evening wind tore at her wet hair. The sea-air hit her lungs, shockingly cold after the warmth of the deep. She tumbled across the wet jetty shingles, scraping her knees on the sharp stones.

Beneath the bay, a muffled rumble shook the seabed as the ancient vault doors locked tight.

Mia sat alone in the dim gray twilight, clutching half a broken coral stick. Out across the blackening water, no light answered. Sari was locked hundreds of feet below in a tomb of stone, the reef was dying, and the tide was already running out.

Chapter 4The Sound of Salt and Stone

The twilight wind nipped at Mia’s bare shins, sharp and sour with damp seaweed. She sat trembling on the sharp shingles of Pebble Bay. Her knees burned where the flint had bitten, smeared with gray grit and pink scratches. Far across the empty channel, the water lay still as cooling lead. Salt dried stiff on her cheeks, tight and prickly beneath the track of hot tears she could not brush away.

In her lap rested the shattered top half of the violet flute. She lifted the broken coral stem to her mouth and blew a shaky breath through its mouthpiece. Only a hollow hiss came out. The acoustic belly was gone, left behind in the vault. Without a widening chamber to catch the sea-winds, the carvings were merely silent stone.

Mia reached into her damp canvas pouch. Her cold fingertips brushed past the spotted whelks and the seal-shaped sea glass before settling on smooth perfection. She drew out her crown jewel. The Pearl-Chime Shell glowed with soft strawberry-milk light in the dimness, its spiral lip swirling inward like a whirlpool carved by fairy tools.

Her thumb traced the jagged fracture on the purple coral stem. The break was not straight; it dipped into a crescent groove that mirrored the shell's pearly base. She held the two pieces together in the dying light. The rim of her favorite seashell slotted into the cracked coral with a tiny, clean *clink*, locking tight as puzzle pieces.

Mia rapped her knuckles against her knee, once, twice, three times, staring down at the hybrid shape.

If she fastened it to the flute, the sea would never give it back. Her shelf at home, with its tidy jars of frosted glass and lined-up periwinkles, would always have an empty spot in the center. The other children in town would never see the wondrous thing she had found. It would lie down in the dark forever, washed over by cold salt.

A gust of wind carried the smell of supper from the cottages along the bluff. Warm yellow lamps blinked on behind cozy curtains. Up there, dry socks waited beside the hearth. Down below, Sari sat trapped in stone, listening to the suffocating quiet.

Mia pulled two slippery ribbons of brown kelp from the high-tide line. With quick, determined pulls, she wound the rubbery weed around the seam, knotting the tough thongs until the spiral shell and the carved stem were welded into one slender horn.

Lifting the weed necklace from her collar, Mia examined the bulbs. Two of the three emerald pearls had melted into cloudy film, their breath spent. Only one mint-green pod remained, pulsing softly like a firefly. The sun was slipping fast behind the headland, leaving barely half an hour before the seven o'clock bells.

Mia walked down the slick shingles into the foam. The icy wash gripped her ankles, but she did not turn back. Clasping the spliced horn to her chest, she tipped forward and let the black tide swallow her.

The sea was velvet and ink beneath the chop. Guided by the pale mint aura around her face, Mia kicked her aqua booties into the gloom. The familiar trench was gone; in its place rose a barricade of tumbled basalt blocks, piled high by furious claws. Barnaby had choked the passage.

A tiny yellow form wriggled out from a crack between two green sponges. Pip’s transparent fins fluttered wildly, his golden spines dotted with gray mud.

"Ahem! Scientifically speaking," Pip wheezed, his little indigo eyes rolling with dizzy terror, "this masonry is entirely unapproved!"

Before Mia could reach for him, the little fish drew a gigantic gulp of brine. With a soft *whoof*, Pip inflated like a prickly melon, wedging his spiky yellow belly between two massive boulders. The sharp spines bit into the rock, groaning under the strain, but he pried a narrow gap open.

"Hurry!" Pip squeaked through clenched lips, his indigo face turning nearly purple. "My ribs are not designed for structural engineering!"

Mia squeezed her shoulders through the freezing crack, dragging the spliced flute close against her ribs. She tumbled into the vast expanse of the Great Tide-Arch just as Pip popped loose behind her, tumbling like an empty balloon into the shadows.

Here, the open deep was wild. The incoming evening tide smashed against the arch’s limestone pillars, sending turbulent cross-currents spinning through the gloom. Water battered Mia’s chest, trying to rip the mint-colored bubble right off her neck. Her arms ached from clinging to the hybrid horn, but she kicked forward toward the center pedestal where the acoustic socket waited.

The water parted with a heavy, sucking thud.

Barnaby climbed from the curtain of bronze weed, his colossal volcanic shell glistening like wet coal. Orange anemones bristled along his back, and his long white beard-bristles swept forward in fury.

"Still you bring your thieving hands!" the Reef-Curator bellowed, his voice clattering like falling gravel. He raised his massive left pincer high above his head, the jagged iron-hard teeth snapping open to smash the shell-flute to dust.

Chapter 5Lullaby of the Tide

"Clack-clack-clatter!" Barnaby’s great pincer cast a shadow as wide as a rowboat. "Surface hands bring only theft and ruin! You smash the ancient voice, then bring common river-scum to mock it!"

The jagged black claw cocked back, ready to strike.

Suddenly, an aquamarine flash streaked across the gloom. Sari burst from a narrow fracture beneath the archway pillar, her double fluke snapping with fierce speed. She threw her small arms wide right before the descending pincer, dark kelp hair streaming behind her like a battle pennant.

"Stop, Barnaby!" Sari shouted, her silver voice ringing through the cold salt. "Look at her! Look at what she carries! It isn’t human greed that chokes our home—it is your fear! Silence cannot keep us safe from the tide!"

The old crab blinked his great stalk-eyes, the claw pausing mid-strike.

Mia swam right up beside the trembling mermaid. Her water booties pushed against the rushing current until she hovered inches from the colossal crab's whiskers. Gently, Mia held out the spliced horn in her open palms. The strawberry-milk spiral of her favorite shell caught the dim water light, clean and lovely against the violet coral stem.

"I didn't bring this to take anything away," Mia said, looking right into his weathered face. "I brought my best treasure. The prettiest shell I ever found in Pebble Bay. It’s for the reef, Barnaby. A gift, so nobody has to be alone in the dark."

The hermit crab stared down at the little hybrid horn. His orange armor shuddered, bristling barnacles clinking together like quiet bells. Fifty years of heavy stone and fearful silence seemed to press against his bent back.

Mia took a breath of her mint-sweet air and began to sing. Her small hum climbed through the water, gentle and true, just like the bedtime tunes she sang to sleepy snails:

"Listen close, listen deep, where the ocean sings to sleep."

Sari took Mia's hand, her violet eyes shining bright. The mermaid joined in, weaving a rippling silver harmony around the words. The music curled like ribbon through the cold depths, warm and sweet as fresh clover.

Barnaby’s giant claw began to tremble. A grandfatherly sigh rattled deep in his shell, clattering softly like rolling pebbles. Slowly, with wonderful, gentle precision, his smaller pincer reached out. He cradled the spliced stem and guided it into the acoustic pedestal in the center of the archway floor.

The shell slotted into the stone with a chime like ringing crystal.

Far above, the very last beam of sunset lanced through the rolling swells, striking the arch like pure liquid amber. Cross-currents swept through the fluted throat, whistling down the spiral chamber of the strawberry shell.

A magnificent chord burst through the Great Tide-Arch. It was not a roar, but a grand lullaby that shook the gloom to pieces. Blinding waves of rose-pink, mint-green, and deep lilac surged outward from the pedestal. The chalk-white branches along the reef drank the light like thirsty flowers. Sponges unfurled in brilliant amber, sea-anemones opened like fireworks of spun silk, and the whole bay woke up singing.

Whisper Reef looked like a sunken city of lanterns. Everywhere Mia turned, luminous schools of neon tetras danced around towering spires of plum and turquoise coral. Soft velvet sea fans swayed with the rhythm of the incoming tide, glowing with inner fire.

Down by the pedestal, Barnaby raised a tiny pincer and wiped a shining pearl of salt from his white bristle mustache.

"The vaults," the old crab rumbled softly, his gravelly voice smoother now, like stones washed by a friendly surf. "I shall open every heavy door. Let the tide roll through the larders. Let the music run wherever it pleases."

Near Mia's collar, the last mint-green bulb gave a tiny *pop-pop-fizz*. The sweet circle of air around her chin melted away into cool ocean salt. Sunset had touched seven o'clock, and the bay was gently calling her home.

Sari swam close, her translucent fluke glowing like moonlight. She reached into the folds of her seagrass tunic and pressed something hard and smooth into Mia's fingers. It was an emerald river-pebble, polished flat by years of tumbling surf, warm and round as a button.

"From the sunlit shore," Sari whispered, smiling with all her heart. "Keep it near your bed. Whenever the wind blows across the bay, we will share the song."

Pip fluttered up, round as a teacup once more, his indigo eyes bright. "Ahem! Scientifically speaking," he chirped, doing a triumphant backflip, "that was an entirely magnificent performance. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a fifty-year nap to finish."

Mia squeezed Sari's hand, turned, and kicked toward the sparkling surface.

She broke through the gentle swells into the cool night air. The water around her shoulders chimed with faint, lingering music, warm and sweet. She waded up onto the crunching shingles of Pebble Bay just as her mother's voice drifted down from the cliff path:

"Mia! Time for supper, love!"

Mia stood on the shore beneath a dusting of silver stars, her clothes wet with salt and her toes buried in cold sand. Her collecting pouch hung loose and completely empty against her hip. Yet as she smiled across the glowing waves, her chest felt fuller than all the treasure chests in the world.