The Bell Beneath the Waves

The harbor wakes before the sun. Nets slap wood. Ropes squeak. The air tastes like salt and oranges from the market cart that rattles past your street. You tug on your boots, hop the last three steps, and skid into the brightness of morning. Everyone in Coralbay is getting ready for Sea Lantern Night, when fireflies are welcomed back with paper lights and the bell from the lighthouse sings the first clear note of summer. It always sings. It has sung since your granddad was a kid who slid down rails like you do now.

Except this morning. The bell is quiet. The lighthouse stands tall on its knuckled cliff, pale as a gull’s belly, and the bronze bell inside holds its breath. You stop on the pier and wait for the sound you know. Nothing. Fish slap in a barrel. A dog yips. The bell is a closed mouth.

“Rafi,” your mother calls from the stall where she sells smoked mackerel and sweet buns. “Don’t lean. Those planks bend like old knees.” You step back and she presses a bun into your hand. Sugar sticks to your lip. “It will ring,” she says, though she keeps glancing at the cliff. “It always does.”

You say, “What if it forgot?” She snorts, the way she does when she worries.

It’s a strange quiet. You listen past the market chatter for the low hum of the bell’s metal. Once, you could hear it even when it wasn’t ringing, a sleepy whale in your ear. Today there’s only the slap of flags and distant breakers. A gull drops out of the sky and lands beside you like it had a plan. It pecks at something and pushes it forward: a pale spiral shell, pink as a sunrise on the inside. You crouch. The conch is warm from the sun. When you lift it, your fingers prickle, like someone whispers against your palm.

You hold the shell to your ear. Not the usual ocean roar. This is a tiny voice in a long hallway. Come closer, it breathes, a hiss of sound the way wind speaks in reeds. Find me where the tide turns twice.

You lower the shell, heart knocking. “Who’s me?” you whisper into the curl. A woman with hair like rope stops and laughs. “Talking to shells now, little fish?” She winks and moves on. You breathe in the smell of tar and cinnamon. The shell rests in your pocket, warm as a secret.

Above, the lighthouse door opens and the keeper steps out. She wears a faded blue sweater with patches at the elbows, and her eyes hold the sky like bowls hold soup. People call her Ms. Kettle, because she always has tea. She stares down at the water as if reading it. Then she looks at you, and for a heartbeat you think she heard the whisper too.