by Gabrielle Idso
The cottage perched on the cliff edge like a barnacle. Its walls were a mosaic of shells that caught the morning light and threw it back in a thousand minuscule rainbows. From deep within the walls, a lullaby drifted from a moonshell. The notes were soft and familiar. Nerida’s hands trembled.
She reached for a peach-speckled conch to drown out the music. Inside the conch, she heard the echo of a forty-year-old argument between sisters who hadn’t spoken since. One hissed about betrayal. The other sobbed. Nerida let the voices run and then put the shell back in its place.
She had built this home shell by shell. She took the objects people could no longer bear to hold. The house stood solid with each deposit of calcium pressed into the mortar. Lovers’ promises whispered from white periwinkles. Children’s nightmares spiraled through nautilus chambers. The last words of the dying rattled like loose change in abalone shells.
This was the price of the work. She held everyone else’s memories so tightly that her own slipped away like sand. She was a cataloger for the visitors who arrived with shaking hands and hollow eyes.
“I can’t keep this,” they would say. “But I can’t let it go.”
Nerida took their shells without judgment. She added them to the furniture and the foundation. The cottage was a museum of things too precious to keep and too painful to lose.
The cry of gulls drifted through the sea-glass window. Nerida was cataloging a sand dollar when she heard footsteps. A dark-haired boy stood on the rocky trail. He was perhaps ten years old. He carried something clutched like a wounded bird against his chest.
He knocked three times.
“Come in.”
The conch in his hands was shattered. It was held together by the boy’s grip and several failed attempts at glue. Nerida took it from him. She heard only silence. The shell was dead.
“What was in it?” She asked.
“My mom’s voice,” he said, frowning down at the seashell. A glint of wetness flashed in his eyes as he turned toward the window. “She used to sing me to sleep. I recorded it before she died.”
Nerida turned the shards over in her hands. The damage ran too deep. The voice was gone.
She looked at the boy. He had dark blue eyes and a specific set to his jaw.
“What is your name?”
“Thomas Clearwater.”
“And your mother?”
“Elena.”
Nerida went still. The name tugged at a memory buried beneath years of other people’s voices. She studied the boy again, the curve of his cheeks and the dark hair falling across his forehead.
“What was her name before she married?”
Thomas frowned. “I don’t know.”
“You must know.”
He shook his head. “She was just Mom.”
Nerida looked down at the broken conch. “Without her full name, I have nothing to search for.”
Thomas pulled the pieces against his chest. “But you have to help me.”
“I’m sorry.” Nerida opened the door. “You should go.”
He did not move.
“She told me once,” he said. “Her old name.” He stared down at the broken shell, his mouth moving around half-formed sounds. “Um… it was…” He squeezed the pieces tighter. “Something-well?”
“Tidewell,” Nerida said.
Thomas looked up. “That’s it.”
The cottage creaked around them.
“Elena Tidewell,” Nerida whispered. “I cannot fix this, Thomas. I cannot bring her voice back.”
She kept still for a moment. Then she crossed to the far wall and took down the moonshell from the oldest alcove. The lullaby was still playing.
“Try this one instead.”
The boy pressed the shell to his ear and closed his eyes. When he opened them, they were wet.
“Did you know her?” He whispered.
Nerida knew the voice in the shell. It was her own voice, a song she had given away forty years ago. She would not tell him that.
“I did,” she said. “A long time ago.”
“How did you get this?” Thomas asked.
Nerida looked at the shell worn smooth by her own hands. She did not answer. Instead, she rested a hand on the boy’s shoulder.
“This shell holds your mother. That is all that matters.”
A salty breeze drifted through the window. It stirred the voices in the walls.
“You should go. A storm is coming.”
Thomas ran down the path and shouted a thank-you over his shoulder. Nerida watched him go. She was left alone with the memories and the secret.
The broken conch sat on the table. One day, she would try to fix it, if only to hear her sister’s voice again. She had been telling herself that for years.