The Girl Who Collected Broken Sea Shells

Author's note: This is a short story I won the Susie Warrick Young Writers Award for in 2018.

She had left town many years before I arrived, late in the summer of 1998, but her legacy was still the talk of the town. I first heard about the Sea-Shell Girl from the children at the school, shortly after I moved to Billy Island, I was a teacher back then. She had fascinated them, and even the youngest ones could still remember her story. Some of the kids tell me that she was a mermaid, while the old lady who ran the village shop, Agatha, was adamant that she was a selkie, a seal-girl from the ocean, looking for her long lost love on the land, the person who had stolen her seal-skin. The local copper, when pressed, declared the girl to have been a ‘homeless lunatic’ that the locals liked to romanticise. Despite my misgivings, I found her story intriguing, and as I grew to know our little town and its inhabitants, the more I believed the stories they would tell. 

No one can pinpoint exactly when she came to Salty Cove, but everyone tells me that one day she wasn’t there, and the next there she was, roaming the beaches early one morning. Of course, the only thing strange about her in those early days was that she was a visitor. Back then, before technology reached Billy Island, the only way people found the place was when they washed ashore. The people on the island were born here, lived here and died here. Now it’s a very different place, the tourists coming in their droves to take photos of the pristine beaches and fishing villages, leaving behind their rubbish and their vacent holiday houses. But she disappeared long before they built the bridge to the mainland. 

Of all the strange things about this girl, the most peculiar thing about her was the shells. Every morning, at dawn, when the waves were lapping at the damp sand, and the sunlight sprinkled light liberally on the surface of the waves, you would see a thin figure making her way along the shoreline. She picked her way among the seaweed, the thick, sweet stench of the sea wrapping itself around her like a blanket. Admiring everything on the beach, at intervals, she would stop, bend over and pick something up. Her long silvery hair would fall over her shoulders as she turned the shell over in her hands. Every day, without fail, the girl would walk the length of the island, smiling hello to all the inhabitants of the secluded isle: to the children throwing themselves off the rotting jetty; the old men hauling in the nights catch, silvery green scales glittering in the dawn light, with the salt crusting on their coarse beards like barnacles; the island-folk strolling in and out of the only store as they buy the fresh sweet smelling bread; gossiping, haggling and chattering like a flock of cockatoos. She would stroll along the beach, the sand sinking between her toes, her eyes glancing side-to-side, searching and searching. They all had theories for what she was looking for among the shells. The children like to imagine she had a pirate’s treasure map, and was searching for gold. But I wasn’t so sure when I heard the folklore. 

The shells that line the pristine beaches of Billy Island are gorgeous, great ice-cream cones of pastel tones, iridescent pearls washed up as a reminder of life that was lived in another realm, under the waves. Tourists, nowadays, scour the rubbish-strewn, busy beaches searching for these pristine reminders of nature’s beauty, complete shells taken home across the bridge as a souvenir. Often enough I have seen the children I teach rushing down to the beach at dawn after a storm to collect the perfect specimens to sell on the mainland, I have heard they fetch quite a high price now. But back then, when the Sea-Shell girl roamed the island, almost all of the shells were perfect. Every single one, conches, oysters, clams, cowrie, scallop, Triton, tulip and moonshell, they were all perfectly formed, undamaged, as if the waves brought each shell from the bottom of the sea in its gentle caressing hands and placed it softly on the sand, unharmed. Why, one could see the perfection of these shells as a metaphor for life on the island, untouched by civilisation. But back then, the Sea-Shell girl never looked for the brightest shell, the shiniest, the biggest, the most beautiful shell on the beach, no, she only collected the shells that were almost perfect, a tiny hole, a crack, a strange discoloration in them, what a strange lass she must have been, the girl who collected broken sea shells.

She collected a lot of broken hearts too, as many of the island’s youth fell for her enigmatic smile and her otherworldly looks as she traipsed the length of the shoreline every morning, looking for her imperfect shells and collecting driftwood that she placed in a little colourful woven basket she slung over her slender shoulders. She would chat jovially with each one, smile a warm ‘G’day’ as she wondered by, or offer up a gentle wave, perhaps bend down to stroke a dog, but she was never ‘one-of-them’. I feel a bit sorry for her actually, as an outsider, she must have been very lost in the world, that silver-haired girl and her broken seashells.

The old woman, who ran the village shop, sat me down one day, cleaning her floury hands on her apron and looked me straight in the eye.

“I heard you have been asking around about that girl, the one who collected those shells.” I admitted I had, and she agreed to tell me what she knew about her, what I am now relaying to you. She added a final curious note however, about why the girl did what she did.

“She was looking for her heart, her broken heart among those shells, you know, son. They say that she was in love with a young sailor boy, back in the day, who drowned, out there near those rocks.” She pointed out of the window to the familiar sight of the rocks at the headland of Salty Cove, perhaps that was what she was looking for, a reconcillation with her heart, and with the sea. 

Not one islander could tell me who she was, where she lived, nor what she did with all her broken seashells, but for the short while, the seashell girl was as much a part of the nature of Billy Island as the silvery gums were, as beautiful and as peculiar as the shells that lined the shoreline. But no one ever knew her whole story.

No one can pinpoint exactly when she left either, she just disappeared one day, long before I had ever heard of Billy Island. I have started to think, that perhaps she was indeed a selkie, or a mermaid, washed up on the land, that girl with her broken heart who collected broken seashells.