Lost At Sea

Lost At Sea

There was a picture that used to hang on the wall in her grandmother’s front room. It portrayed a dramatic seascape, full of different types of sealife in many colours. She used to love counting the different types of fish, and trying to spot new details in the coral and seaweed. What always drew her attention most, though, was a wooden chest that nestled on the sea floor, partly hidden by plants. It was old and worn, but enough of its vibrant red paint remained to catch her eye. It had a delicate silver filigree pattern that traced across its surface, only slightly marred by its time in the water. The large keyhole on the front showed that someone wanted its contents protected enough to invest in a lock. It must have been down there a long time, since small, jagged holes dotted its edges, large enough to admit the smallest of the fish, but not to reveal its secrets.

She asked her grandmother every time she visited how the chest had ended up at the bottom of the sea, and what was in it, and her grandmother’s answer was always the same.

“What do you think?”

They came up with so many theories that it would be impossible to recount them all. A shipwreck was the obvious starting point to many of them, but the size and destination of the ship, and the make-up of crew and passengers changed with every telling. One time the chest might have belonged to a young woman, travelling across the ocean with her dowry to meet an unknown suitor. Other times it was the property of a pirate captain, and contained maps to buried treasure, or the treasure itself.

On more fanciful occasions, they decided the chest was a hiding place for a mermaid, who kept her trinkets in it, or that it held evidence of a nefarious crime and had been thrown overboard so nobody would find it.

She wondered what the fish thought about it, and imagined them having conversations amongst themselves about where it had come from. The younger ones played games in her mind’s eye, swimming in and out of the holes. She wished they could tell her what they found inside, but that would have ended the guessing game, which was such a central part of any visit.

That was long ago, and now the picture takes pride of place on the wall in her living room. Her own grandchildren come to visit, brandishing their smartphones and their electronic games, and bemoaning the lack of broadband in the house. But, eventually, they are drawn to gather around the picture and ask her how the chest ended up at the bottom of the sea and what’s in it. Her answer is always the same.

“What do you think?”