第2章 第7節 鐘
The Bells
"Count the bells," the old voice had said on the tape.
For days the words had circled in Nora's restless mind.
Now, standing on the , she finally understood them.
Long ago a chapel had been built on a low island.
When the sea rose, the whole church was covered by water.
"If the goes out," Gabriel said, "the bells are uncovered."
"If you wait for low water, you can walk straight out to it."
They watched the grey sea slowly pull back from the rocks.
A muddy path was revealed, glistening between pools of weed.
"If we hurry, we will reach it before the turns," Gabriel said.
The old bell rose from the mud like a drowned finger.
Bells that had been silenced for years hung green with .
"One rings on its own when the current moves," Gabriel explained.
Nora counted the slow, uneven tolling across the flats.
The pattern matched the flaw hidden inside the lullaby.
"It's here," she said. "This is where she wanted us to look."
Beneath the , the stones had been recently disturbed.
If someone had buried something, this was surely the place.
Nora knelt and dug with her cold and shaking hands.
A box was pulled at last from the black mud.
Inside, wrapped in cloth, lay another unlabelled tape.
"If the sea had taken this, the truth would be lost," Gabriel said.
Far out, the had already begun to turn back.
"We must go now, or we will be trapped," he warned.
Clutching the box, Nora ran with the water at her heels.
If they had waited one hour more, the bells would have drowned them.