A Comb of Wishes by Lisa Stringfellow

Author:Lisa Stringfellow
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2021-11-29T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 21

Sea Heart

Heat radiated from the sand as Kela picked her way across the beach. At the base of her favorite palm tree, she collapsed and closed her eyes, her head cradled in the sway of the trunk. A line of sweat marched down her back like a column of ants.

Trying to slow her breathing and organize her thoughts was impossible. Her mother’s life was in the hands of whatever thief had stolen the comb. She kicked the sand as sour panic filled her mouth.

Kela thought about going to see Lissy. She had been excited this morning to tell her about Mum, but that feeling had shriveled to dust. Lissy might react like Pop, like Mum had never died. She wouldn’t understand.

Kela looked down at her bag and noticed the crinkled corner of one of the sheets she had taken from Mum’s files at the historical society. She pulled out the loose pile of papers.

On top sat the letter Lissy had found. The account of the deadly hurricane of 1667 from a man named William to his sister. She read it again, then leafed through the other pages. Most were handwritten in Mum’s careful script. She pulled one out.

April 2004—Interview with Mrs. Montrose Banks. Cane Hall, St. Rita. Mrs. Banks, age 102, is my maternal great-grandmother. I met with her to record a family story about an ancestor who drowned at sea. She tells me the story was passed down to her as a child by her grandmother Mrs. Etheline Motts.

Kela never knew that Mum had officially recorded the stories from her family. Even in the heat of the late morning sun, a chill raised the hairs on Kela’s neck.

Quashey was a free colored man. He was known around the island for his fine carving skill. His greatest wish was to buy his wife’s freedom as he had for his two children, Meera and Occo. One evening, he heard Meera singing a strange tune as she put her sister to bed.

He asked her where she had learned it and she said from her “water friend.” He knew she had met one of the seafolk. He asked her to take him to hear the song too, and since she loved her papa, she did.

From their skiff, Meera called out to her “water friend.” The sea woman swam up next to their boat. Her long, twisted hair floated on the waves. Meera’s papa threw a net over the sea woman and caught her. “This sea woman will bring us enough money to buy your mama’s freedom,” he told his daughter. Meera cried and told her papa no, but he wouldn’t listen.

Without warning, a powerful wave knocked them out of their boat and Meera sank beneath the water. The clouds turned black and a fierce storm whipped up. Though her papa got back into the boat and made it to shore, he never saw his older daughter again; all he had was little Occo. “And the sea raged. My grannie said everyone on the island felt its anger that night,” said Mrs.

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