“Rumors and legends,” he says, furrowing his brow. “Who be ye, maid? Where ye come from?”
“That’s…complicated.”
His knowing look digs down several layers. “The past, she can be thorny, aye?” His voice is full-bodied and pleasant, quieted in respect for the still-slumbering AJ in the sanctuary. “Then ye be in the right place, sure. A church—she’s meant for the broken, to hold ’em together.”
I’m not broken. I open my mouth, but the words do not come. Perhaps because they aren’t entirely true. I’m not broken, exactly. More a piece of something—like the bottle glass. There’s much more to me…somewhere.
How little I have to offer my AJ.
“Come, I’ll show ye.” He strides into the sanctuary.
“This seems too sacred for brokenness.”
“Depends on who’s finding these pieces. And what’s holding ’em together.”
Now that the sun is streaming through the windows, I can see what we’re standing on—a vibrant mosaic. It melts from the wall all the way down the center aisle, a waterfall flowing into a sparkling river between the pews. Hundreds of pieces of stone and glass lie beneath our feet, grouted into a majestic portrayal of the Cornish sea. I fish out the bottle glass I found and hold it out before me. “I found this today.”
He blinks, wiping one hand down his beard. “May I?”
I hand it to him, and the man kneels with difficulty, trying the piece in the unfinished edge of the mosaic at different angles. Then he rises and walks to a place where the edges of the sea are green and lays it in a blank space where it fits perfectly, drawing out a richer color.
It’s exactly right.
“May I keep it?” he asks, and I nod.
“You made this.” I stare down at the hundreds—thousands—of broken fragments of seashell and rock and glass smoothed beneath our feet. I step back and a picture of Jesus’ disciples comes clear on the wall, the water from his body flowing in blue,green, and milky-white stones and shell pieces down the aisle where we stand. “How long did this take you? Where did you come from? France, if I might guess.”
His smile is amused. “I come from Greece, long years ago. I learn at my grandfather’s knee, Dimitrius Stavrakis, and he shows me how broken bits make a story.”
I rise, walking backward to grasp the entirety of the picture. If I squint I cannot even see individual pieces—just the effect of men supping together, and the outpouring of water that rushes down the chapel floor. “The rocks up there are darker.”
He huffs down the aisle and crouches, perching on the edge of a pew across from me. “How long do ye guess it took me to make this?”
“I…I cannot even imagine.”
“Twenty-seven years, and still working. When I come here from Greece on the boat, I am running away. I have lost my pretty wife. And my precious…” His eyes swim with tears and he does not finish. “My family, they are gone. Mother, father, two brothers, my Nikoleta, and our…our baby girl. It was the revolts.”
Memories collect in his throat, silencing him for a moment. I kneel beside him and lay a hand on his back. Who sits with him and untangles all the evil he’s suffered? How lonely he must be. Untold tragedies are etched into every line around his eyes and mouth.
“I come here and want to work hard. I know how to do the tiles, and they like. I collect pieces on the shore, like my grandfather did in Greece. Blues and greens and reds…and I make the water. But I work slow, and the beaches, they change.”
I run my hand along the smoothed stones. “What has made them change color?”
He shrugs. “Many things. Time. Life.” He rises and moves toward the front again, kneeling to touch the stones. “Here,they open the mines on the rise, smelting copper. Sulfur leaks into the water, makes rocks darker. Then down here”—he takes a few steps down the aisle—“here, they discover iron. Makes a reddish-pink, and cloudy. And then here”—he points at the most beautiful, crystalline rocks of pale blue—“is where the ship crashes into the rocks and there is something like salt in the water. Makes the rocks look like this.”
He rises, looking over his years of work. “It is the story of Cornwall. Of many tiny moments over long time, and the picture they make.”
“You’ve done beautiful work, Mr.—”
He smiles, his eyes nearly disappearing into his browned cheeks. “Call me Lambros.”
“Light. Your name means light.”
He looks at me. “My parents, they wish me to keep a lighthouse in Greece.”
“So they named you accordingly.”
A nod. He is impressed. “Perhaps they are disappointed that I am not.”
