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Fire ammonite pools3/29/2023 ![]() ![]() Her photo appeared in the newspaper once after she won a prize from the local art society with a portrait of me holding a branch of myrtle. She exhibited her drawings in a few local shows. Her favorite subjects were her garden, her family, and her rock pools. Nan made some sketches of it after dinner and my sister and I sat at her feet, pretending to do the same, but drawing mermaids and unicorns and dragons instead. ![]() We kept that starfish overnight in a bowl in the sunroom at the front of the house. She would bring back wonderful things: shells, bits of glass tinted green and red and blue, volcanic rock, fish bones, and, one time, a small purple starfish with bristled limbs, each one like a lumpy toothbrush. Nan was the only one who ever went exploring there, wearing her wellingtons and a gaudy headscarf. To the south, the tidal pools I was always afraid of as a child, the water sucking at the black rock with dreadful power. To the north is a small bay that used to be a popular tourist destination before the seas began to rise and flooded all the beach houses. There are no other jobs nearby, and hardly anyone left around. I collect the weed each day and sell it to a company that turns it into all sorts of things: nori sheets, organic face masks, fertilizer, women’s multivitamins. Now, the tide leaves great nets of seaweed draped across the lawn where we once played. So too the big eucalyptus and the rope swing, peeled from the garden by a summer storm and pitched into the waves. ![]() The garden I used to play in with my sisters during the school holidays has eroded into sand, the callistemon and morning glory all gone. Soon there will be waves lapping at the back door and barnacles adorning the ceilings and floors. It is more than a century old, and its foundations are turning to salt and foam. Although she left it to me, I still cannot think of it as my own. Only the pull of the undercurrent, ruthless and silent and cold. I wanted to go after her, but I knew that if I walked into the waves there would be nothing for me there. I opened my bedroom window, the frame stiff with salt, and looked down at the sea. I offered her my room, but she refused and instead slept in the armchair, slumped like an old coat. She would not take anything to eat or drink. She held them so close I could see the shadow of the flames through them, and I wondered at how she did not burn. When she put her hands up to the heat, I saw they were plump and broad, ribbed like palm fronds. She came inside and sat down at the fire without saying a word. The full moon shone in her teeth, and her face was blunt with cold. It was winter when she returned, hauling herself up the rocks from the sea, slippery with new skin, dimpled with fat. ![]()
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