The Crab Parade

By the time the fog began to slip over Lantern Quay, Tobin was already busy making the evening neat.

He had stacked two crates beside the lower pier, checked the salt ropes once, and was straightening a loose board with the care of someone fixing a crooked picture. The quay smelled of seaweed and warm tar, and round glass lanterns were blinking on one by one along the leaning wooden piers.

Then Tobin heard a soft clatter from the tide pools.

At first he thought it was shells rolling in the water. But it was crabs. A whole parade of crabs was marching out of the shallow pools in a steady line, legs tapping the mud. Each crab wore something tiny and strange: a scrap of ribbon, a button, or a shiny coin. They held these bits like treasures and kept moving together, not toward the edge of the quay, but straight inward.

Tobin stepped closer and frowned. “Crabs don’t usually carry messages,” he murmured. “And they certainly don’t march to the center of the quay.”

Nell leaned out from the tea-room door, her yellow apron bright in the fog. Pip hurried out from the lantern posts, boots muddy and eyes wide. One said the crabs were a procession to follow. Another said they should be stopped before they got into trouble. Another said they ought to be left alone, because maybe the crabs knew exactly where they were going.

The line of crabs did not wait for anyone to agree. They kept marching farther out of the tide pools, over the wet mud, and toward the quay itself.

Now Tobin could see it clearly: this strange parade was no longer staying at the water’s edge. If he wanted to keep it from wandering all the way into the center of Lantern Quay, he would have to choose what to do next—and soon.