Chapter 36
While it was still dark, Mira slipped from beneath the covers of her warm bed where Dante slept on, unburdened.
Accustomed to padding about in the dim light before morning yawned itself awake, she slipped into her black swimsuit, threw a light tunic over her head, and secured her belt around her waist. She let the door close with a soft click after she pocketed a hunk of cheese to nibble on the way.
Mira stood in the damp, waning night, letting her skin adjust to the cold.
The yellow moon hung low in the sky, casting its pale light on the path, while scattered stars still winked above.
Closing her eyes, Mira drew a deep breath of the bracing salt air.
She ate a bit of the sharp cheese and started her pilgrimage, barefoot, to the shore, mirroring the quiet of the night, chanting and singing barely above a whisper.
Some might have described her walk as lonely, but not her: she was surrounded by the siren call of those who’d come before, the long, winding line of water women like her.
Her mother was recovering from a recent illness, and Daniella was living at her university in Venezia, far off in the north, so she’d have the cove to herself. She relished the solitude.
At the moment when the sun’s rosy fingers stretched over the peaks of the twin islets to the west, Mira’s lips ceased their chant.
She’d reached the shore, where the water lapped ceaselessly at the smooth gray and white rocks.
Mira picked her way through the stones, the soles of her feet calloused and toughened by over forty years of treading on this surface.
The water was brisk, not yet warmed by the sun, and small crabs and schools of fish scuttled and darted away from her steps.
She waded deeper, letting herself sink into the water, bending her knees until the Mediterranean Sea closed over the top of her head like a secret hatch.
This was her favorite bit: when the sea took over and carried her body, weightless in the pull of its current.
Mira stretched her arms wide and gave herself to the water’s tug, her tanned face fanned by her floating hair.
It was spring—late May—and time to harvest the sea.
Mira surfaced for a breath and dove again, gaining ground as her strong arms pulled through the water, feet kicking an even, measured pace.
Her destination was the familiar protected lagoon where the sea lapped the rocky shore.
Another breath, another dive. An icy stir of anxiety nudged Mira’s stomach.
Visions had visited her again in the night, and they flashed through her mind now: the lagoon bed decimated and empty, bits of fishermen’s nets snagged on the remains of the shells.
Mira exhaled a stream of air through her nose, and bubbles rose to the surface.
The lagoon had the protection of the Italian government, the coast guard even now likely anchored nearby.
The noble pen shells, though they looked tough enough, were actually quite delicate and endangered by pollution and overfishing.
Mira understood this well; the legacy of the water women faced extinction, too.
This was the source of her worry and the visions that disturbed her sleep.
Mira’s lungs burned as she pushed her six-minute limit of holding her breath.
Breaking through the surface, Mira gasped and treaded water as she gulped the air her lungs craved.
In the time it had taken her to swim the quarter mile, the sun had already risen above the horizon, the rosy-pink dawn fading to the promise of another bright day.
The calls of seabirds searching and diving for their breakfast reached her ears, and she turned toward the shore.
It was a short distance around the island’s curve to the lagoon.
She spotted the white coast guard vessel bobbing just inside the lagoon’s mouth.
Mira raised a hand in greeting and received the brief blast of an air horn in reply.
She was a woman of few words; the standard exchange signaled the whole of their conversation.
She pressed on and swam toward the boat, forcing down her mother’s urgent voice that echoed in her head like a beating drum, still, after all these years, the voice that repeated the same words: duty, reverence, faithfulness.
“Say it with me, Mira. Again. You mustn’t forget.
” The voice was softer now, more of a whisper than a shout, but old habits surface now and then.
The sea grew shallower, and its current relaxed as Mira swam through the lagoon’s entrance, swaying green seagrass and the occasional orange or purple starfish visible beneath the transparent waters.
Unclipping the short scalpel from the belt she wore around her waist, Mira planted her feet in the seabed and sank her toes in the sand, the field of mollusks fanned out in front of her.
This was why she’d come. Her purpose was as clear as the crystal water that buoyed her.
Mira nodded to the pair of men who sat watching on the boat’s bow with their hands shading their eyes against the sun’s glare, banished all other thoughts from her head, and began her work.