The Fires Beneath the Sea ebook

by Lydia Millet

  In some ways he was still a baby, boy telepath or not. Before their mother left, he still slept in their parents’ bed when he got scared at night. Now he crept into her own room sometimes, because he had nowhere else to go. Their dad had taken to working late most nights since their mother had left and usually fell asleep on the couch in his study, his desk light still on, a thin blanket hastily pulled over his legs. So Jax couldn’t curl up with him.

  “OK, moviegoers,” said her dad, and laid down his napkin. “We have six minutes for pie-eating. Then on to swashbuckling. No disrespect to your baking skills, Lolly, but eat fast, kids.”

  “Underappreciated,” said Lolly. “That’s my lot in life.”

  By the time they drove home from the movie, it was raining hard, and trees were whipping around in the wind. They’d all raced to the car from the shelter of the theater lobby but got drenched anyway, and now Cara and Jax sat shivering in the back with a fleece blanket pulled over them. The wipers made a rapid thwock, thwock across the cracked windshield of their beat-up wagon as Max and their dad, in the front, argued about the star of the movie.

  “You’ve gotta be kidding,” said Max. “He was supposed to be what—a French naval officer? He sounded like he was from New Jersey.”

  “I didn’t think the accent was so New Jersey,” said her dad. “Maybe Normandy coast. The peasantry, of course.”

  “Get out,” said Max, and cuffed him on the shoulder.

  Then he put his iPod buds in his ears, sank down in the passenger seat, and turned to gaze out the window, beating the rhythm of his music on the seat cushion with one hand.

  “Gimme that,” said Cara to Jax. “Hey! You stole, like, the whole blanket.”

  Jax said nothing, only shivered, so she let it go. Water coursed down the glass, and for the hundredth time she ran through the brief words of the note in her head. Have to go. Danger. What could it mean? Her mother didn’t exactly live on the edge; she was a biologist, after all, not a James Bond type. She worked at the far end of the Cape, at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, where she studied seals and other marine mammals. Her mother was beautiful and generous and everyone loved her. What danger could there possibly be?

  Cara felt a flush of fear.

  She’s totally OK, she thought. She’s fine.

  But if she was fine, why wasn’t she back by now?

  Their dad spun the wheel, and they turned and headed up their own street, which sloped toward the water’s edge. Suddenly their headlights swept over something out of place, and she stared out her window as they passed.

  It was a tall, blurred figure, hooded. Maybe wearing a dark coat or a cape; she thought it must be a man, from the size, but she couldn’t see the face.

  The figure was just standing there, facing them, arms hanging down at his sides. He didn’t move a muscle. In the night, in the rain.

  But stranger than that, the strangest part of all, was that it looked like he was floating in water.

  It looked like he was surrounded by it—not by raindrops but by solid water, suspended in it. Hanging.

  She felt the tiny hairs on her arms prickle.

  “Jax! Did you see that guy?”

  Jax, teeth chattering, swiveled to look out the rear window.

  “A person in a hood or something, just standing stock-still in—in the rain,” she said. “Did you see him?”

  Jax turned back to face forward, his eyes glazed over and slightly dull.

  “That wasn’t a person,” he said.

  A few minutes later she tucked him in, as she often did after he finished reading (at the moment it was A Brief History of Time). She pulled the curtains and checked the floor for snails, frogs, and lizards. One disgusting experience involving her bare feet and a cicada had made her extra careful.

  “They’re all in the tanks,” said Jax sleepily, rubbing his eyes.

  She turned out every light but his favorite lamp, a scale model of the moon. Impact craters and all.

  “So Jax,” she said as she sat down on the bed and pulled the blanket up to his chin, “what did you mean, that wasn’t a person? You kind of creeped me out tonight.”

  Jax turned over, his eyelids heavy.

  “He was the one who came to dinner. The one who was at our front door,” he murmured.

  She felt a chill come over her.

  “So …,” she said slowly, “what did you mean by not a person?”

  “He didn’t have a signal,” Jax said, and burrowed into his pillow.

  He’d tried to explain to her once, the time when she got mad at him for pinging her, that pinging was like reading the patterns of energy in people’s brains—not the kind of passive, low-level sensing he did when he first met people and decided whether he could trust them, but a more intense kind of interpreting. A kind of decoding. Jax wasn’t proud of himself when he pinged, but sometimes he couldn’t resist.

  He called the energy patterns he sensed a “signal,” even though that wasn’t technically what it was, he said.

  “Maybe you just couldn’t read him,” she suggested.

  “Nothing to read,” he mumbled. “He was just …”

  He turned onto his other side, his eyes closing.

  “… not alive.”

  And then he fell asleep.

  Two

  Cara woke up as dawn was breaking, a faint light leaking through her window blinds. To her the morning felt quiet and almost disappointed, the way it always did after a big rain, with the slow drip-drip-drip of water off branches and leaves.

  She crossed the cool bedroom floor in her bare feet. Her room was at the back of the house, on the bay side, which meant she had a view—over the porch roof that sloped down beneath her window, through some feathery branches—of the water and the sky across Cape Cod Bay. If you flew straight inland, her mother had once told her, you would see Plymouth Rock and the fake Mayflower ship they kept moored there for tourons.

  Max’s room faced south and Jax’s north; her parents used to sleep in the big single room of the attic, right under the sloped roof, with a big glass skylight overhead. Her mother liked to lie in bed and look up at the stars.

  She walked lightly down the stairs. Rufus was curled up on the runner in the front hall; he’d kept a vigil there every night since her mother had disappeared.

  “Come on, Roof,” she said. She snapped on his leash and slipped into her flip-flops.

  They walked along the pretty residential streets bordering the marshes till they got to a lonely sand road that wound past a small, reedy shellfish cove. The ground was covered with tiny fiddler crabs that skittered into their holes in great waves. She and her mother used to walk Rufus here together; her mother had pointed out those tiny crabs, as well as the big osprey nests on their manmade posts rising out of the wetlands.

  There was no one around, and the sand was wet from the rain. She listened to the crunch, crunch, crunch of her sneakers across its grainy surface.

  “OK, Rufus,” she said finally, and unclipped the leash. At the end of the road, sticking up on the other side of a dune, was a modern-looking beach house that was all glass and sharp angles. It was a rental property, and outside the high season it was mostly empty. “Run!”

  In the cool of the morning she watched him go—farther and farther away, till he rounded the bend of the dune and was lost to view.

  Then she started walking after him, her mind wandering. Her dad had said hurricanes to the south were bringing the storms, and this was hurricane season. He said the hurricanes were getting bigger these days than they used to be, growing more powerful and coming more often.

  She felt a shiver of foreboding.

  “Rufus!” she called.

  The sun slanted off the roof of the big modern house as she shaded her eyes to squint at it. Maybe, she thought, he’d found something at the waterline, a fish to gnaw or a crab to paw.

  But then he reappeared, running. Nearer, nearer, nearer, and she saw he was wagging his tail. He looked hap
pier than he had the whole summer. And just as she’d thought, he was carrying some kind of bone in his mouth.

  “Hi again, boy,” she said, and rubbed behind his ears.

  Instead of worrying the bone, he dropped it in front of her. It was actually a piece of wet driftwood.

  “I don’t want that, Roof,” she said. “I don’t chew on sticks like you do. Remember?”

  He nosed it toward her feet and knelt, paws together, in front of it. Tail still wagging, tongue out.

  “You want me to throw it?”

  She picked it up and tossed; he wheeled and fetched it.

  “Let’s keep walking,” she said. “We can play fetch when we get home.”

  But he dropped it in front of her again and barked once, loudly.

  “Geez, Roof,” she said, and picked it up. She would have to carry it.

  Then she noticed.

  Lightly scratched words. The letters were so thin she could barely read them.

  CONSULT THE LEATHERBACK.

  She turned it over. There was one more word.

  CARA.

  She dropped it, shocked. Her hand was shaking.

  “Who gave this to you, Rufus?” she asked the dog, leaning down and gripping his sandy snout in her hand.

  He just kept wagging his tail.

  Maybe it was one of her friends, messing with her head. Maybe Hayley or Jade? But Hayley didn’t come up here, as far as Cara knew. Plus these days she was busy in the mornings because she went to work with her mother, who ran a hair salon. She helped out with the shampooing.

  And Cara’s other best friend, Jade, had gone up to Maine with her family till school started. They didn’t like the crowds.

  Anyway, this was way too weird for either of them.

  When she and Rufus reached the end of the road, and the tide was practically lapping at her feet, she couldn’t see anyone at all. Not even a fishing boat on the water. The big modern house looked locked up and empty.

  Rufus gave a low woof, his sound of recognition.

  “What now?”

  And then she saw something in the waves—round, small, and brown. Dark eyes. She was astounded: it was another otter. She could hardly believe it. First the ocean side, now the bay … it was a plague of otters, practically.

  She had to remember to ask Jax about it. Maybe, with global warming, otters were migrating differently these days, or something.

  After all, two summers ago great white sharks had been found swimming in the waters off Chatham. That June, dozens of dead sea lions had washed up on the shore. And a couple of summers earlier, a Florida manatee had swum into the mouth of the Hudson River and then headed past the Cape, too.

  None of that was supposed to happen.

  And now, two sea otters. Sea otters that were supposed to live in a whole other ocean.

  But there was no sign of anyone who could have given Rufus the piece of wood. All she saw was the high tide lapping at the toes of her sneaks.

  When the waves pulled back they left tiny airholes in the sand.

  Jax had left by the time she got home, picked up by the camp carpool, and Max and his friend Zee, short for Zadie—who wasn’t his girlfriend, though Cara thought maybe she wouldn’t mind—were getting ready to ride their bikes to the tennis courts before it got too hot.

  “Look,” she said to Max, and held out the driftwood.

  He turned it over and over.

  “Uh, that’s great, Car. A piece of wood. Real awesome find.”

  She grabbed it back and studied it. It was dry now, and you couldn’t really see the words anymore—they must have been etched too lightly, because all that was left was a couple of lines where the C and K had been. They looked like random chicken scratches.

  “They’re gone,” she muttered.

  “What?”

  “The words. Max, someone had scratched a message on it—my name and the words Consult the leatherback.”

  Max stopped putting his helmet on and looked at her curiously. Then he laid a hand across her forehead.

  “You cool? Don’t go getting spooky on me, sis,” he said. “We don’t need two Jaxes in the family.”

  “C’mon, Max,” called Zee from the street. She was already on her bike, impatient. “We barely have time for a set. I gotta be at the boat by 10:30!”

  “Coming,” he called, and pushed off, jumping the curb. She watched them pedal away, dipping and weaving their bikes playfully under the pitch pine and bear oak trees.

  She couldn’t blame him. Max was the practical one in the family, even if he wasn’t his usual friendly self lately; and the words definitely seemed to be gone.… She felt lonely and wanted to call Hayley, but Hayley was still working. Her mom got mad when she talked on her cell at work.

  Consult the leatherback.

  Her dad was supposed to drive her to the Hyannis mall to buy school clothes. But she knew he’d only agreed to it to be a dutiful parent, so her heart wasn’t really in it, either.

  “I can just buy stuff online, if you want,” she said to him in the kitchen, where he stood drinking his last cup of morning coffee. The kitchen windows faced the water, and lately her dad had a habit of just standing there staring out, his mug forgotten in his hand.

  “It’s Jax’s last day at camp,” said her dad slowly. “How about we pick him up and go on a whale watch? Teddy Soderstrom’s boat has empty seats since it’s the end of the season. He just called to see if we wanted to hitch a ride. It’s been a while, hasn’t it?”

  Teddy was an old friend of the family who was also the captain of one of the whale-watch boats in Provincetown.

  “OK,” she said.

  As they drove to Jax’s camp Cara considered telling her dad about the driftwood. What if it was someone stalking her or something? Danger.

  Then again, maybe she’d made up the words. Maybe, as Max had hinted and she herself feared, she was losing it a bit. And her dad already had enough to worry about.

  “Why don’t you go find your brother,” said her dad when they pulled into the parking lot. “I’ll wait here.”

  She wove through the milling crowds in the nature center lobby till she found Jax standing beneath a display on crabs, with a giant pink crab model in the middle. He was typing on his phone.

  Of course, it was more than a phone. It was one of those all-you-can-eat smartphone deals: GPS, video, Internet, blah blah blah. You could point it at a star in the night sky, and it would tell you the name of the constellation.

  Jax was the most teched-out family member by far. He had to be, according to him. Data are key.

  “Hi, Cara. The European green crab, Carcinus maenas, is believed to consume approximately $44 million in New England shellfish per year,” he said, then looked up from the phone and smiled sweetly.

  “Very interesting,” she said, taking his hand. “Want to go see whales?”

  “Carcinus maenas is among the 100 worst invasive species in the world,” he went on.

  “I need to talk to you in private,” she said, steering him out through the front doors toward the car. “Once we’re on the whale boat. Dad’ll probably get talking to Teddy and then come and find me. OK?”

  “Sure,” said Jax easily, and slid into the backseat.

  “Hello, Jackson,” said their dad. “Did the camping session come to a satisfactory conclusion?”

  “Enh,” said Jax, and shrugged. “I give it a 6.8. High marks for red-tailed hawks, eels, and square-backed marsh crabs. Low marks for food. Too much Chex Mix. Mid-range marks for so-called leadership. I like that guy Robin, he’s nice, but Amy, the other counselor? Everything she says goes up at the end like a question. Even if it’s not an interrogative at all. ‘This is a nature experience? So I’d like you to put away all your portable electronics? That means you Jax?’ Or when I was collecting specimens, she goes, ‘I don’t think picking that up is too appropriate?’ Like that.”

  “Possibly insecure,” said their dad, nodding sagely.

  “Dim
bulb,” said Jax.

  “So we’re going to P-town to see whales,” went on their dad. “Did Cara tell you? Last time we were out on a whale-watching boat, you were five. Do you remember?”

  “There is ample evidence that cetaceans are stressed by whale-watching ecotourism, which can affect their behavior, migration, and breeding,” said Jax.

  “But you’re the guy who brings baby frogs into his bedroom, then leaves them under a cushion,” said Cara. “Doesn’t that affect their behavior, migration, and whatever?”

  “Few frog species participate in seasonal migrations,” said Jax.

  “Argh,” said Cara.

  At the end of the gangplank, her dad was clapped heartily on the back by the captain, an old friend. Like his namesake stuffed bear, Teddy was big, puffy, and comforting.

  “Welcome aboard, Sykes family,” he boomed. “Lemme show you my latest gadgets.” And he toured them around the boat, pointing out computer hardware and fancy seat covers.

  He was trying to be jovial, Cara could tell, but once he leaned close to her dad and said something low. Her dad shook his head, and Teddy gripped his shoulder as though to strengthen him.

  They were talking about her mother, obviously. Her parents’ friends didn’t like to ask about her mother being missing in front of her or Max or Jax, she’d noticed—as if, when they acted like everything was business as usual, that would keep the kids happy….

  Finally the boat motored away from the pier and Cara was able to get Jax alone at the rail while their dad, who barely knew Mac from PC and claimed to believe that cell phones “might well be the Devil’s handiwork,” pretended to be interested in Teddy’s new high-tech gadgets.

  She told Jax about the driftwood message, quickly and half whispering.

  “Max thinks I’m crazy,” she said when she finished, and rolled her eyes, ready for Jax to make fun of her, too.