The Fires Beneath the Sea ebook

by Lydia Millet

  “… and I think maybe part of me was hoping that by going away, even for just two days, I might—I might return to find something had changed. Or more precisely, that things had returned to the way they used to be. In other words … that your mother would magically be here when I got back.”

  Cara shot a quick look at Jax and saw that, like Max, he was studiously staring out his window. All of a sudden things were very interesting outside all the windows, in fact.

  “And it impaired my judgment. You could have been hurt far worse than you were, Max, and that would have been partly my fault.”

  “Come on,” said Max after a moment. “Don’t make this so global, Dad. You didn’t do anything wrong. You went to a conference, I got in a fender-bender. Accidents just happen.”

  “If that’s a fender-bender, I’d like to see a head-on collision,” muttered Jax under his breath, but luckily their dad was still talking and didn’t hear.

  “… but I’m afraid you’ve got to take responsibility, too,” said their father. “You weren’t authorized to take the car out, Max, except for emergencies and to pick me up at the ferry. I was perfectly clear there. You knew that.”

  “Yeah,” said Max. “But—”

  “No buts,” said their father. “I’m sorry about your arm, I really am. But I’m also going to have to ground you. Until school starts.”

  They were silent. Max was the one who’d gotten hurt—he’d gotten hurt for all of them. And now he was grounded.

  It wasn’t fair at all, thought Cara.

  Max wasn’t saying anything, and she couldn’t see his face to know how pissed off he was.

  The radio droned.

  “… for the first time in human history, the Arctic could be ice-free as early as within the next few years—meaning mass drownings for polar bears….”

  Listening to it, her dad shook his head.

  “Will they cover a new car for us, at least?” asked Max. “I mean, I get that the premiums will go up. And that really sucks. But will we get a new car soon?”

  “As far as I know,” said their dad, preoccupied.

  “I’d feel bad,” said Max—trying to inject some levity, Cara thought—“if you, like, had to hitchhike to teach next week.”

  Her dad shushed them and turned the radio volume up. “This is the stuff your mother is working on,” he said.

  “Global warming, right?” said Max. “The paranoid left-wing conspiracy that doesn’t really exist.”

  Their dad looked at him sharply, then saw he was kidding.

  “Left-wing, right-wing, rubbish,” said their father. “It’s a little thing called science.”

  “Actually,” said Jax, “technically she’s working on ocean acidification, which is related to climate change via the CO2 connection but not the same phenomenon.”

  “So, this weekend,” said their dad, once the news turned to sports, “we all need to sit down and have a talk about what’s going to happen this fall, how things will work with just the four of us, and how we’re going to deal with the problem of your mother being missing. Going forward. We need to talk it through. OK?”

  Cara raised her eyebrows; Jax shot her another sidelong look.

  “And we’ll pick up a pizza from Red Barn and watch a movie afterward,” added their dad, as if to lessen the blow.

  “Sure, Dad,” answered Max, their delegate to the older generation. “We’ll talk.”

  “I wonder if Hayley should be here,” said Max.

  It was the quietest hour of sunset, the sky a dim pastel-colored wash of fading colors over the trees and the water of the bay silvery-black and lapping at the shore. Faintly they could smell barbeque smoke from down the street and hear the sound of mosquitoes hitting the neighbor’s blue-light bug zapper.

  They’d eaten dinner early and were sitting on the porch, swinging back and forth. Their dad, who seemed to have given them a free pass on chores for the day, was inside tidying up with Lolly. He’d said that after that was done he’d do some pruning in the back before it got dark; gardening took his mind off things, Cara suspected.

  “I mean, didn’t you say she turned out to play the role of the arbiter, or whatever I was supposed to be? So maybe she should be here for the ritual too,” Max went on.

  “I talked to her earlier,” said Cara. “Her mom’s not letting her come over for a while. She’s mad because Hayley showed up all exhausted and dirty from the sleepover and wouldn’t admit we did anything, you know, out of the ordinary. She didn’t want us to get in trouble, so she just said we stayed up late talking. But then she collapsed and slept, like, forever. All day, up until an hour ago. So anyway, her mom’s making her work at the salon till further notice.”

  “So,” said Max. “We need to prepare, I guess.”

  Jax nodded. “There are some things we need. We need salt, for example. It should be sea salt, ideally.”

  “I think there’s some in the kitchen,” said Cara.

  “Then we each need something of Mom’s. It could be even hair, from her hairbrush. I got the feeling it should basically be something that has her DNA. Or something a dog would use to track her scent, you know? Though I couldn’t exactly swear to that.”

  “Creepy,” said Max. “Eye of newt, or whatever.”

  “Huh?” asked Jax.

  “Wow, something you don’t know,” Max marveled. “We had to read it in English this year. Macbeth. The play by Shakespeare? There’s witches in it, and they have this recipe for a potion, I think: eye of newt, toe of frog. Then something else I forget. Wait, maybe the hair of the dog … ?”

  “The point of the whole deal,” said Jax, “is it’s a warding spell, basically. When we do the ritual, we make her safe from him. At least, for a while. More than that, I don’t know.”

  “So what else?” asked Cara.

  “There are a couple of herbs I think we have in the kitchen. Apparently they’re ancient. People have used them for centuries even though you can pick them up for $1.99 at Stop & Shop.”

  “Who knew,” said Max, deadpan.

  The sprinkler started up in front of them, going back and forth in the humid, dusky air. Its movement was hypnotic and oddly calming.

  “No, really,” said Jax. “The selkie told me there are things all around with these properties. These properties that seem to defy physics, defy chemistry. And some of the things with extraordinary properties are totally basic-seeming—even trivial. You’d never think they were anything more than that. Unless you knew. Unless you had this secret, ancient knowledge. It used to be passed down by word of mouth, between generations of—shamans, I guess she called them? But now that tradition has died out. It’s all, I don’t know, TV and advertising and selling things and the old secrets have been lost.”

  “To all but the seal people,” said Max, a bit mockingly.

  Max could mock, but Cara didn’t mind. She knew with perfect certainty about the world that was hidden—knew it was there, though she didn’t understand it. So Max could mock, but she didn’t mind. The mockery had no teeth.

  “Not seal people, exactly,” said Jax, and was going to explain, but Cara stopped him.

  “We should focus,” she said. “We don’t have that long for the gathering. Tell us what else we’ll need.”

  The sprinkler, which had started low, had gotten taller until the lines of spray were falling down on the roof of the porch as it passed them.

  “Dad,” called out Max, craning his neck around the corner of the house, “you made the sprinkler too big. Can you cut it down? We’re about to get wet here.”

  “But I didn’t turn the sprinkler on,” their dad called back. He was clearly still in the kitchen.

  Cara looked at Jax. In that second of recognition—Cara thinking Oh, not again. How stupid can I be?—the lines of water coming out of the sprinkler shot up into the sky suddenly, as though the water pressure had hit infinity.

  At the same time the water turned color—turned dark red, red as blood. The
n it was pouring down on the roof, hitting the roof of the porch so hard it leaked through the cracks above them, flowing down over the sides in thin curtains of red.

  “Inside!” Cara screamed, and all three of them piled through the front door. She slammed it behind them, and they stood there breathing hard.

  From the kitchen, Lolly called out a question—what was going on, or something. Before they could answer, or even pay attention, Max said: “Rufus.”

  He had been beside them on the porch, curled up on the wooden slats as they swung.

  “Oh no,” said Cara.

  How could they have left him behind?

  “I’ll get him!” said Max, and before they could stop him he had opened the door and was through it.

  “Don’t bring him in!” yelled Jax, but it was too late: there was Rufus, Max holding him by the collar with his good hand, the arm in the cast hanging limp; the dog was soaked, soaked in the blood-red water.

  “Oh. No,” said Cara again.

  “Max, you don’t get it,” urged Jax. “You have to get him out of the house! Now!”

  Rufus growled.

  And Cara knew it, she knew it instantly.

  He wasn’t their Rufus anymore. He was inhabited.

  “Max invited him,” said Jax. “Now he’s in.”

  And then Rufus smiled.

  It was far worse than the growling. It was one of the most frightening things Cara had ever seen.

  It was like his lips were being formed into a grin by some force beyond him—a manipulation, a form of cold, ugly puppetry.

  “Jesus!” said Max as the dog swiveled its head and looked at him. He snatched his hand off the collar as though it was hot to the touch.

  “Get him out!” cried Jax.

  Cara grabbed a coat and threw it over the dog’s head, his teeth snapping, head thrusting up and down. She backed him up toward the door as Max wrenched it open, and then they had him out again and the door slammed behind him.

  “What were you doing to that poor dog, for Chrissake?” asked their dad, sounding angry. He stood in the doorway to the kitchen, holding a dishtowel.

  He’d never been able to stand it when people mistreated animals.

  “He was—” began Jax.

  “We think he got skunked,” rushed Max. “Maybe right in the face? He was bringing it in.”

  “I don’t smell anything,” said their dad.

  “That’s because of Cara’s quick thinking, then,” said Max.

  “Huh,” said their dad. “Well, if he was really skunked you’ll need the special soap. It’s still under the basement sink from last time. I’ll let the three of you deal with it.”

  “Will do,” said Max.

  “And don’t bring him inside, whatever you do,” he added before retreating again.

  “He’s right about that part,” whispered Jax. “When the water dries off Roof, or isn’t in him anymore, he should revert. I hope. But for sure we can’t go near him, at least until then.”

  “Whew,” said Max. “So that was the guy I saw? He can do that? Horrorshow.”

  They sat down on the bottom stairs of the staircase, all three of them in a row. Cara thought the sound of the sprinkler had stopped, but she wasn’t sure. They could hear a faint but steady scratching at the door. She wondered if any of the neighbors had come outside, had watched the blood-red water shoot up into the sky and rain down on their house in a torrent.

  They’d get some weird looks tomorrow if the neighbors had noticed. That was for sure.

  “Wait him out,” said Jax. “It’s all we can do.”

  “But what about the warding charm?” asked Cara. “What if it’s not dry outside by then?”

  “We’re lucky on that one,” said Jax. “Except for the Rufus factor, that is. The path of the ritual is from the back of the house, the basement door, right down to the water. The front yard’s not part of it.”

  “But he could attack, couldn’t he?” said Max. “If he still has … that … inside him.”

  “Probably someone should leash him,” said Cara. “We should tie him up. Shouldn’t we? I mean it’s not only us—he could hurt someone else, with the Pouring Man telling him what to do. And then poor old Roof would be blamed. And none of this is his fault.”

  “But it’s too dangerous,” said Jax.

  “I’ll do it,” said Max.

  “With a broken arm? Great idea,” said Cara.

  “I’ll do it,” Max insisted. “I can still use my fingers a bit. It’s not like the hand is completely useless. Enough to snap the leash anyway.”

  Before they could stop him, Max had grabbed the leash from its coat hook and was outside. The door closed behind him.

  “That’s just great,” said Jax. “What if the man gets in him, too? Then what? Because he wasn’t with us last night, he isn’t as safe as we are. He’s got no protection.”

  “You have to tell him that,” said Cara. “We do.”

  They expected sounds of growling and biting outside, but none came. Cara felt nervous. It was too quiet.

  “I have to see,” she said, and opened the door a crack to peer out.

  At the end of the porch Max was lying facedown, turned away. Rufus was leashed to the rail—but he was also hunched over Max, gnawing.

  Gnawing.

  “Max!” she cried, and without another thought she jumped out and was on him. The dog was growling and snapping, but she didn’t care—she dove past him, grabbed Max and dragged him, and then he rolled over and was crawling, too, and they were at the door and the dog was biting at their shoes, had one of Cara’s shoes off and pulled it right off her foot so that her sock-foot dragged across the porch slats. … She felt the dog’s wet mouth on her ankle and a pang of fear, but then Jax was there and they were in.

  Jax slammed the door closed again.

  Breathing hard, she grabbed Max’s shoulder.

  “Max! Where’d he bite you?” she asked.

  Max rubbed his eyes and then raised his broken arm weakly. Halfway between the elbow and the wrist the cast was almost gnawed through, with a gouge in it that was nothing but a pulpy, dirty mass of plaster and gauze.

  There was something on it that looked like blood, red smudges and smears, but she realized it wasn’t Max’s blood. It was the red water soaking Rufus’s fur.

  The not-dog’s teeth hadn’t reached Max’s skin.

  They lay there, recovering.

  “Children?” called Lolly. “What’s all the ruckus about? Are you playing too rough out there?”

  Rolled eyes.

  “Just—uh, just playing normal!” called Jax. “Sorry! We’ll try to be quieter.”

  They waited for a second, making sure she wasn’t coming out into the hallway.

  “Thanks, Car,” got out Max finally. “He faked me out. He let me clip him, and then he knocked me down. I held him off with the cast, but—”

  “How does it feel?” asked Jax.

  “It’s OK, I think. A little sore. I’ll have to get it fixed—”

  “Max, listen,” said Cara. “You can’t take on the Pouring Man. What we did last night? It gave us some protection from him. Facing him down, I mean. But you don’t have that protection. So you have to be really careful of him.”

  “Promise, Max?” asked Jax. “Let us take the risks.”

  Max just groaned, a groan of frustration. Or annoyance.

  Then he said, “I totally remembered, by the way.”

  “Remembered what?” asked Cara.

  “What the witches said. We had to memorize it. ‘Eye of newt and toe of frog, wool of bat and tongue of dog. Adder’s fork, and blind-worm’s sting, lizard’s leg and howlet’s wing.’ ”

  “What’s a howlet?” asked Cara.

  “No idea.”

  “Probably an archaic form of owl,” said Jax. “Luckily, we don’t have to dissect anything for this particular charm.”

  “Thank the lord for small mercies,” said Max.

  Ten

>   “There isn’t any incantation,” whispered Jax. “Nothing for us to say but Mom’s name. There is something I have to think—that is, hold in my mind, is what the selkie said—at a certain point while we’re casting the herbs on the ground. Part of a rune poem in an ancient language. Something about the North Star. I think it means, more or less, ‘The star keeps faith with us, never failing, always on its course through the mists of the night.’ ”

  “Uh, right,” said Max.

  “Say it how it really sounds,” said Cara, curious.

  “Tir biþ tacna sum, healdeð trywa wel wiþ æþelingas; a biþ on færylde ofer nihta genipu, næfre swiceþ,” recited Jax.

  It sounded very strange—as though Jax was speaking in tongues, which Cara had seen once in a horror movie Max forced them to watch that involved snake-handling.

  “So, nothing to, like, chant?” asked Max. “No toil and trouble?”

  “You’re off the hook,” said Jax.

  The three of them were huddled just inside the back door that led outside from the kitchen, down a narrow gravel path through their small backyard and beneath the pitch pines to the water. Their dad had gone to sleep in his own bed, instead of on the couch in his office, for once, so he was two floors up, and—they hoped—wouldn’t be able to hear them.

  “Once we make the salt lines and cast the charm, each of us stands in position. You have the positions, right? Everyone’s clear on that?”

  As soon as it was midnight they had to draw three lines in salt, one from the back door and two from the back corners of the house, all the way down to the water. Then they had to walk along those lines and sprinkle herbs they carried in china bowls—part of an herbal charm, Jax called it, that included dried seasonings from their mother’s spice cabinet, things like thyme and fennel. It was part of a “tenth-century Anglo-Saxon charm,” according to Jax, passed along to the selkie by someone else, and that was all Cara had taken in.

  The selkie was a messenger, Jax said.

  Cara felt nervous. Her palms were sweating.