Morrow Read the Tide Pool

“That bottle is winking at me!” cried Morrow, skittering sideways across the dry sand. He was a small red shore crab with a shell as shiny as a tomato after rain, and he had been hunting for a particularly stripey pebble when he saw it. Half-buried near a ribbon of seaweed lay an old green glass bottle. Sunlight flashed through its round bottom, blink-blink-blink, as if it had a secret eye. Inside was something pale and folded. Morrow tapped the bottle with one claw. It gave a deep, bottley clonk. “Gull!” he called toward the shore rocks. “Please bring your excellent beak. I have discovered a suspicious container!”

Gull swooped down from the smooth landmark rock where she had been polishing a mussel shell on the stone. She was a white-and-grey seagull, broad-winged and bright-eyed, with a small blue string tied around one leg so Morrow could spot her in a crowd of birds. “Suspicious?” she asked, landing beside him. “Is it full of pickles?” “Better,” said Morrow. “It is full of paper.” Gull tilted her head, peered through the green glass, and gave the stopper one neat tug. It did not move. She tried again, bracing one foot on the bottle. Pop! Out flew the cork, then out slid a wet-looking roll of paper, which uncurled across the sand between them.

They hurried around the smooth landmark rock, keeping to the firm sand while the water whispered behind them. From the front, it was simply a rounded grey boulder. From the shoreward side, its shadow made a dark triangle. Gull flew up and stared down at it. “The triangle matches this!” she cried, pointing with one wingtip at a tiny triangle drawn near the map’s red X. Morrow pressed his face close to the rock. At the bottom, nearly hidden by a wrack of dry seaweed, he found five scratches. One long scratch curved away from the other four, exactly like the five watery fingers in the map’s final picture.

“A tide pool,” said Morrow. “The X marks a tide pool.” He felt so pleased that he did a fast little sideways dance, accidentally kicking sand onto the map. Gull shook the grains away with her beak. “Which tide pool?” she asked. “There are dozens.” Morrow looked again at the final picture. The pool had five fingers, but perhaps every pool near the sea had fingers. The painted X lay beside a squiggle that might have been seaweed, a crab, a cloud, or a very small grumpy octopus. The sea gave a larger swish against the rocks. One of the pools they had crossed earlier filled right to its edge.

For a moment Morrow wanted to dash in every direction at once. He could search under rocks quickly, but he could not see which pools were being swallowed by the rising tide. Gull could see them all, but her beak could not reach beneath their rock ledges. “We have been doing this backward,” Morrow said. “You find the pool from the sky. I find the mark between the rocks.” Gull gave a brisk nod. “And neither of us will race ahead without telling the other.” Morrow tucked the smooth shell clue beneath a curve in his own shell, where it held snugly. Then Gull lifted the map in her beak and climbed into the air.

From above, Gull called the shapes as she saw them. “A round pool beside a long pool. Not it. A pool like a bent boot. Not it. A pool with six fingers, one finger very bossy. Not it.” Morrow ran beneath her voice, weaving around seaweed and hopping over narrow runnels of water. Each time Gull named a possible pool, he ducked between its nearest rocks to search. He found a bright green anemone that shut like a fist, a tiny shrimp wearing no trousers, and a silver spoon-shaped fish who stared at him rudely. But he found no chest, no X, and no five-fingered pool.

It was no bigger than a loaf of bread, made of dark wood with a lid banded in greenish metal. Morrow pulled. The chest scraped forward one claw-width, then stuck. Sand had packed around its bottom, and water poured faster into the little cave. “Gull!” he called. “It is here, but it will not come!” Gull pushed her head through the arch as far as she could. “Can you dig behind it?” “Only if I stop pulling,” said Morrow. He looked at the spreading water and the chest’s shining clasp. Pulling felt urgent. Digging felt slow. But he remembered the black pebbles, the arrows, and every clue that had only worked when they had looked properly.

“Do not pull yet,” Morrow said. “Tell me where the water is coming in.” Gull lifted off, circled above the pool, and landed again. “There is a narrow channel on the left, feeding the cave.” Morrow scuttled to the back of the chest and began to dig there instead. Sand flicked behind him in two busy fountains. “A little more to your right,” Gull called. “The chest is angled toward the arch.” Morrow dug until his claws ached. At last the chest tipped, not toward the water, but onto two smooth stones. “Now!” Gull cried. Morrow shoved with all his strength.

Inside lay shining shells of every sort: pink scallops striped like sunrise, blue limpet shells polished like buttons, spirals that gleamed cream and gold, and one tiny shell that flashed green when Morrow tilted it. There were no piles of coins, no crowns, and not a single pickle. Yet the chest seemed fuller than any chest Morrow had ever imagined. Gull lifted a silver shell in her beak and turned it toward the sun. Little spots of light skipped over the sand. “This is better than a sandwich,” she said. Morrow chose the green-flashing shell, then looked along the beach at the animals who had watched them hurry past.

A family of sand hoppers bounced beneath seaweed. Two shy hermit crabs peered from borrowed shells near the whale rock. A line of tiny plovers hurried along the wet edge, stopping whenever the water hissed. Morrow shut the chest gently. “A treasure hidden on a beach should not spend all its time in a box,” he said. Gull’s eyes brightened. She flew to the landmark rock and called, “Shell lights! Come and see shell lights!” Morrow carried the chest in careful sideways steps to a broad patch of dry sand. He could not carry it fast, but this time he did not need to. Gull walked beside him, keeping the lid from wobbling open.