Salt and Ivory

Mara Sokol measured rhythm by the creak of floorboards and the way sunlight carved a golden stripe across the battered grand in her shop. The bell above the door had a loose tooth that jangled like a shy metronome; when she wound the old clock behind the bench the pendulum sighed and the shop smelled of lemon oil, boiled linseed, and the faint, honest sour of seawater. Outside the workshop window the harbor spread like a restless thought—ropes, gulls, the dark backs of fishing boats leaning into their moorings. She kept a jar of sea-glass on a shelf, a tangle of green and blue caught from the surf by her grandmother's hands. The smallest piece, a palm-sized shard with a frosted edge, sat wrapped in cotton beneath the ribbon of an old photograph. Ines had called it the piano’s heart.

Mara liked to begin mornings with a simple ritual. She patted the bench three times, as if settling someone into a seat, then ran her fingertips along the keys, listening for the memory inside each note. She had the hands that villages sometimes called blessed, the strong wrists and small careful thumbs that could coax a cracked soundboard into singing again. Apprentices came and left; customers argued about whether lacquer should shine like the sea or like new paint; the landlord threatened more than once to raise the rent. Still, when she pressed middle C and the room filled with that transparent bell, Mara's muscles unclenched like sails catching wind. This was how she paid for coffee and for the jars of glue with funny labels from the city. This was how she kept her grandmother's portrait above the workbench, the woman in it with hair like salt and crooked hands.

That week the town prepared for its festival. The Hollow Festival was a soft bell in the calendar—concerts on the pier, fishermen's chowder competitions, lanterns floating like a cluster of small moons. It also meant an important commission: a restored upright, Ines's old ’47 Mahogany, had been offered as the centerpiece in the festival's gala. If Mara finished it on time, the grant from the festival committee would supply new tools and a roof that didn't drip when south storms came.

She lifted the warped lid and ran a rag over the inlaid crown. The sea-glass—the tiny soul Ines always tapped before a performance—was where she expected it, tucked in a hollow behind a plank. For a moment, listening to the harbor breathing beyond the glass, Mara believed the rest would be routine. She made a list: sand the rim, reseat the bridge, call Clara about the tuning. She didn't know the list would become a ledger of things lost.