Bram and the Tidemark Button — Before the foghorn’s first low moo, Bram tucked his smooth blue button under his wing and tapped the same safe piling three times. Read the full story →
Before the foghorn’s first low moo, Bram tucked his smooth blue button under his wing and tapped the same safe piling three times. He wanted to know why the button, found in a crack of the ferry dock, clicked softly whenever the tide turned. The click-click led him away from his warm post, past tar-smelling ropes and sleepy sailboats, to the shadow beneath the lighthouse steps.
There, the button slipped from his feathers and plinked into a tide pool. Bram plunged after it, filling his pouch with cold briny water and one startled sardine. The little fish shimmered beside the button, and both began to click together like tiny castanets. “That’s not a button,” squeaked the sardine. “It’s the missing eye of the old harbor clock.”
Bram carried the fish, the button, and a mouthful of seawater back as the sky turned peach. When he set the button into the clock by the ferry gate, the hands shivered, bells chimed, and every boat found the right tide home. Next time you spot Bram on his piling, see if you can find the little spark that still makes him tap three times before the foghorn’s first low moo.
