Sea Glass Wishes

By Pam Knapp

Tom’s mother was surly like the weather. Droplets of fine mizzling rain clung to her hair as she huddled into her shoulders and clung to her phone. Late in the season, clouds were the same flinty-grey as the beach pebbles. The sea, thick and choppy, threw waves onto the shingle. Her short jacket proved little resistance to the autumnal bluster, so she perched herself on stone steps leading from beach to promenade in hope of some shelter. It would have to do. This was the spot. It had been sunny when they’d left for the seaside this morning and her hopes had been high. It had been her own mother who’d insisted that Tom be wrapped against the elements, ‘Even if her own daughter wanted to dress like a ten-quid tart.’ Her mother had a knack for words barbed with spite. No wonder she’d been left by every man who might have made a good father. 

Tom, small for his six years, picked at stones to throw into the thick, churning waters. He knew that somewhere among these countless stones was the special ‘one’ that his Gran often spoke of, the one that Aladdin had rubbed clean to get his three wishes. Everybody knew that the famous lamp was put into stories just so that the stone could remain undiscovered. Tom, even at his young age, understood this concept clearly. His mother and grandmother had in their ways, both been excellent tutors in subterfuge. 

Tom trawled the shore for the artifact, uncovering stones that although, not ‘the one’, took his fancy. Some had spying holes through their centres. Gran had told him that if there were fairies around, you could see them through stones like these. Whites and greys, ambers and sparkling dimples of quartz were collected for later inspection. His pockets bulged and clacked with discoveries. 

His mother called out to him and waved, glad, despite herself, that she’d taken Tom’s coat as directed and snatched up his wellingtons too. It was rough today; he would have been soaked through and she would’ve had to endure the thorny, ‘I told you so’ lecture. Her heart smiled as she watched Tom, wrapped in his padded cocoon, hood strings drawn tight around his chin: a little red coated beacon weaving in and out of waves that stretched landwards and licked at his boots. 

She recalled how her mother and everyone else she knew, had told her how her life would be over if she kept the little life that grew inside her. They had been wrong. She loved her boy more than she could imagine loving anything. She knew that when his father saw him, he would feel the same about him. They’d all three of them, be together and her razor tongued mother wouldn’t be able to stop them. She wasn’t the child that she was when Tom was conceived. She had responsibilities now; she was a mother. Her boy only needed his father now for things to be right. Things would be as she knew they should be for her and her boy. She checked her phone for the umpteenth time. She wondered if he’d got the wrong time or place. He was late. She rang again. No reply. She redialed. She was certain that this time he’d meant it. 

Tom’s eye was caught by a smooth disc of opaque green. He held it to his eye but could see nothing through it. He moved it aside, locating his mother on the steps before trying again. The drying sea glass misted over, blanching its former emerald. Tom thought that perhaps, this might be ‘the one’. He wondered how it might work, how to release the magic held beneath its scoured shell. Gran would know. She knew how things worked. He crouched low to douse the disc in waves to reignite its beauty. He tried again to see his mother through the murky lens. 

Tom tumbled forward. Then over and over in the rolling grey of waves. Quickly, he was out of the shallows and the weight of the water kept him down, the treasure in his pockets anchoring. Cold water slammed into his body as salty fingers of icy liquid slid through his hood and into his ears, then pushed up through his nostrils, burning like fire down into his throat. The tide wrapped itself around him, pulling him further from the shore and further from the surface. Sounds became muffled hushes and low bubbling scuffs. Tom tumbled on through heaving swells. In ones and twos, booty toppled from his pockets. Cold pressed so hard on his chest that breathing was stoppered and he felt the quiet press down on him too, as the darkness thickened. 

When Tom’s mother looked up from her phone, he was nowhere to be seen. The beach was quite empty. Waves quietly smoothed the shore with bubbling foam where he’d been just a moment before. She stood upright and rigid. Her head swung from side to side in expectation of spotting Tom’s red coat. He wasn’t there. She dashed to and fro, calling, screaming then crying his name. The few who saw her distress called for help and doled out what empty comfort they could. Her phone and hopes were left on the beach with the last remnants of her childhood.

A thrumming engine brought the coastguard to fish Tom from the water. He was easy to spot as soon as the water lost its bounty to the buoyancy of his coat. Hands pushed down on Tom’s chest emptying sea water from his lungs until it spewed from his mouth. Coughing, and shivering, he sunk into the arms of a man in orange who told him that his mother was waiting for him. Tom wondered whether Gran would be angry. Still clutching the small emerald in his hand, Tom rubbed it hard with his thumb and made his second wish. 

Pam Knapp lives in the UK’s rolling countryside of the Sussex Downs. Optimism is her greatest asset. She plans to market it as soon as she can find a promoter. Her writing can be found in Green Ink Poetry, Owl Hollow Press and Sledgehammer Lit, and others.