He smiled freshwater pearls at me, the white shiny kind they farm by force-feeding sand to oysters. It gave me the all-over shivers. "Imani don't want your gifts."
"Let me tell you something about the Pacific," and here he leaned in so close I could see his hair roots, how flaky brine stiffened his tawny locks. "One taste, and it gets its hooks into you. For the rest of your life you'll crave it like oxygen. The gift of yearning. That's what I leave to the thief who stole our bride."
In that instant, I wished Bingo existed outside my fantasies so I could chase that prick off my doorstep. "I know some curses too," I told California. "Bless your heart." I slammed the door in his face.
I slept sentinel against the door that night, unwilling to go to bed lest he Here's-Johnny’d his way in. I nodded off into nightmares of an inverted Athens full of bad jazz and decaf coffee. Imani kissed me in exactly zero dreams that night.
Somewhere around 4 a.m., the light flicked on under Imani’s door.
* * *
Worry kept me awake most of the night, so I overslept and missed class entirely. When I finally woke, Imani was doing watercolors at the table in the kitchen nook, painting right on the back of my Intermediate Medical Terminology syllabus. She hung her finished art on a string that ran the length of the apartment. The papers had gone all wobbly from the damp. I couldn't make heads or tails of them. None actually pictured anything but water-stained blankness.
I leaned over her shoulder, puzzling over the wet, colorless swirls. "Is this a Bob Ross thing? Wet-on-wet?"
Imani scratched her scalp. Dried brine powdered her nails and sprinkled onto the invisible landscape. "Watercolors. Minus the colors." She dipped her paintbrush into an open Mason jar of sandy water and held the brush to her lips for a moment, fixing to lick it. She just froze like that, considering it like triple chocolate birthday cake.
"Shit, Imani. Please tell me that's not the Pacific." I flicked on my phone and checked for news, but nobody had reported the surf's return.
She painted trembling ocean swirls on the syllabus. "I meant to free it, but couldn't stop thinking about it. Didn't sleep last night. Just cradled it to my chest, wondering how it would taste, all cold and briny and sunshine-kissed."
I swiped the Mason jar lid from the counter and screwed the Pacific Ocean closed again. "Alright, Imani. This isn't going to work. We don't sit around all day painting with other people's oceans." Imani growled at me—actually growled like a hound dog, so I bopped her on the nose with a rolled-up syllabus. "Quit that. You've been hexed." I told her all about California's visit, about the gift of yearning, and especially about how I'd yelled him off our doorstep.
Imani whistled low and clapped me on the shoulder. "You're getting Loudly in your old age, Quietly."
"You're a bad influence. So, thoughts on anti-hexing you?"
Imani yawned so hard her jaw popped. "I'm thinking we didn't sleep last night and we need coffee before battle-planning."
"Downtown then?"
She was already lacing up her boots. "Nothing better to flight the blergs."
Imani yawned too much on the walk over, that stupid glass jar cradled to her breast. I hoped Downtown's hum and buzz would jog us awake. Broad Street is like Mister Roger's Neighborhood if every third building were a coffee shop, and every fourth a bar.
I dragged Imani straight to Jittery Joe's for a strong-brewed Wake n' Bake with a splash of almond milk and settled her on a barstool facing the street.
"Now. Let's talk about our battle plan." I unfolded a cardboard coffee sleeve and clicked open my pen. "You know any counter-curses? Antidotes? Arcane glacier shit?"
Imani drank down her coffee all thirsty-like, heedless of its heat. "They shouldn't've been able to find me this far away. What assholes."
"They shouldn't've been able to curse you at all. We're under the protection of the University," I said. First rule of Athens: you don't mess with its students. The University goes back far enough to have its own kind of protective magic. "I say we appeal to them first. They're responsible for us."
She popped the lid off her Wake n’ Bake and upturned the cup to get the last few drops. I passed her my nearly untouched coffee, and she gulped it down too. She licked her lips and clattered restless fingernails against the Mason jar.
"Hot damn. You were running on empty."
"I don't trust the University. They work for the Oconee River, and we all know where that leads," Imani muttered.
I quirked an eyebrow. "To the Atlantic?"
Her eyes caught fire inside. "Exactly."
"Imani? That was sarcasm."
Imani cut her eyes at me. "The Oconee's a tattletale. I'm not brave enough to see what my home ocean might do if it caught me with the Pacific on my breath. It can't possibly be anything good or right or safe."
"How about just giving California the ocean back?"
Her eyes wandered back to the jar on the table. "I know I should. I tried last night, and…well, I couldn't."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
Imani swirled the jar gently between her fingers. Where it caught the light, ocean waves danced on the coffee shop wall. "I asked it to go home, but it knew I wasn't being sincere. I have no power unless I approach the magic with my heart in my hands and my spirit boiling over. I…I think I'm in love with the Pacific, Quietly."
If I didn't already know Imani's story about the family glacier, I probably would've laughed in her face. But I could see how a part-glacier woman cursed with yearning might feel something like love for an ocean. How something in her nature would look into the waves and find the shape of a soulmate. It gave me a sick squirmy feeling in the pit of my stomach I couldn't name. I suddenly wished she'd never set foot in California.
I stacked our empty cups together. "You're going to have to let it go, Imani. The Pacific don't belong to you. It definitely don't belong in Athens."
"There's another problem. Like I said, I tried to undo the spell last night. I went down into the Under-Ath." Her voice got teeny-tiny. I had to lean in to hear her, forehead to forehead so our hair made a ropey cave. "I found something down there. Something ugly and dangerous. This city's bones are steeped in death, Quietly. It dragged its skirts through blood, then dumped the evidence in the Under-Ath so nobody would have to think about it."
I held my breath. She'd rattled me. "What did you see?"
Imani shook her head. Her dreads knocked soft against my cheeks. "It tried to keep me and shelve me with the rest of its curios, but I got away."
"But not the Pacific." Underneath the fear, I felt a bit annoyed. Everyone kept making things needlessly complex. That's where lies and deceit always lead, I suppose.
"Technically, it's still there. They can't control the Pacific, not without the Pacific's say-so." But there was doubt in her voice.
"If most of the Pacific is stuck in the Under-Ath and refusing to leave, how are we supposed to appease California?"
She rested her chin on the Mason jar and shook her head, knocking loose a brine shower. The salt had crawled a third of the way down her scalp. "I was thinking I could just drink it all down. Maybe that'll break the spell."
"People die from drinking salt water," I pointed out. "Your cells will shrink and your blood vessels will narrow and your heart won't be able to pump your blood fast enough to bail out all that salt in time."
"It can't be that bad," said Imani. "Not any worse than this. Can't seem to quench this thirst, Quietly. Not even with a Wake 'n Bake."
"We haven't tried Terrapin yet," I pointed out. Athens beer could wash away a lot of hurts.
"You're not listening."
"Am too. You're not yourself. It's just this curse."
Imani stared at me—through me—into that secret stash of wisdom she almost never shared. "He called it a gift. I bet that's the loophole, the reason he slipped through the University's protection. He can't curse us. That would just rebound. It's got to be something he would wish on himself." Bright, heavy tea
rs crowded her eyes until a few escaped, trailing brine in their wake. "God. He must miss his ocean something powerful."
"Well, I'm not ready to give up," I said.
But I wasn't so sure anymore.
* * *
I was throwing away our empty cups when the bell jangled over the front door and a woman in damp red flannel almost bowled me down. She wore a sock printed with Big Foots on her right hand and threw the other arm around my shoulders like a sloppy drunk.
"Sorry, buddy. Didn't see you. Hey, question. Seen any oceans around lately?" she asked.
I wiggled out from her armpit. Her mildewy flannel sleeve dragged against my cheek like an unwanted kiss. Weed and stale coffee smell smeared my Nickel Creek T-shirt.
"Who the hell are you?" I demanded.
Imani sat bolt upright, rabbit-eyed and alert. She slithered from her seat with the jar and ninja'ed along the wall toward the exit behind me.
"I'm Oregon." Her voice sounded like young, proud mountains full of wolves. I hated her instantly.
"Great. We have your ocean right here." On an impulse, I spun around to take the jar from Imani, but it was like depriving a lifelong smoker of their last nicotine patch. Imani held the jar like a football and bodychecked me with her hip. I bear-hugged her, reaching toward the jar, but her arms were longer. After an awkward scuffle, Imani broke away and charged outside and down the street. I followed after, Oregon tailing us.
Oregon shouted something at us. Turned out her voice really was full of wolves. A whole pack tumbled from her mouth onto the sidewalk and howled. Huge fir trees broke through the pavement and crashed through parked cars. The whole street sloped up, up, and up to a convex horizon, and a deep volcanic growl rumbled from its apex.
"Hold up," said Oregon, her socked hand resting on the biggest wolf. "You're not leaving with that ocean."
"We're trying give it back," I said. "California just made things worse. We need more time." All around us, firs towered higher and shattered holes in the sidewalks and buildings. The townies wouldn't stand for that. If it went on too long, it could mean war.
"You've had plenty of time already. More warning than you gave us." Warlike ferns curled around my feet and ripped at my ankles. I ground them down with my heels.
At the Georgia Theater, a street musician opened his guitar case and strummed a chord. The air thrummed with Athens-ness, jazz and blues and 90's grunge, the city asserting its name. A strong wind shook the towering firs. I tap-danced between the sudden pine cone hail. The wolves stalked forward, leisurely and deliberate.
Imani stood stock-still, that jar locked against her chest. "You're yearning for it too." Secret deep ocean creatures crawled behind her pupils. "Tell me: if you love it, why did you hurt it so bad?"
"We never hurt our ocean." Oregon sounded a little defensive. "We loved it."
Imani cradled the jar like a sick child. "Yes, you did. It told me everything."
The holes in the sidewalk snicked shut, snapping the firs at their roots. The trunks crashed sidelong into the beautiful brownstone storefronts, shattering glass and scattering amethysts on the street. The wolves bunched up and whimpered, their ears and tails flattened out.
"That was a long time ago," said Oregon. The broken glass pushed back, forcing out the trunks and patching itself together again.
"Give it up," I said. "You can't beat us here." Athens loved its own, if you found a way of belonging.
The firs zipped back into Oregon’s pockets one by one. She took a deep, endless breath. All those wolves howled up inside herlungs again. "Let me tell you something about the Pacific. Fill your lungs with it just once, and all your responsibilities will dissolve, and you'll waltz drunken circles with the surf in your arms. Try this on for size: the gift of abandon."
I didn’t know what to expect from a curse like that, but it doubled Imani over like a stomach punch. The jar tumbled from her hands and rolled into the gutter. I swiped the jar before Oregon got any ideas, but she'd disappeared, leaving only the Big Foot sock behind.
I helped Imani up by her elbow. "You okay?"
She looked lopsided, like when you're drunk and even your standstill sways a little. "I don't know. I feel sort of...good?"
Imani took a woozy step. She shuffled along the gutter like a tightrope walker, gradually widening the steps, a gorgeous little shimmy in her hips.
I stopped to collect Oregon's sock. Imani took a bigger step and spun on her heel.
It was a waltz, sloppy and precarious, but true to music only Imani heard. One-two-three, one-two-three, heel turn, big step, about face, around and around.
Imani waltzed sandy steps on the sidewalk all the way to our apartment at Steeplechase. I couldn't get her to talk to me. Maybe she couldn't hear me over the music in her head. At home she shut herself in her room and turned up the radio full blast. Happy music, manic rave music. The walls thrummed and the floorboards shook beneath her stamping feet, the sound of a woman dancing herself to death.
* * *
I tried pounding on the door, but Imani wouldn't open it, no matter how much I begged and threatened. I ran out to Avid Bookshop for a whole stack of books on curses, and spent the evening alone reading them. Foot-track magic and stable witches, evil eyes and tombs and sports teams. Nothing to act against this Pacific hex, not that I could find.
I had another sleepless night, and not just because the pounding backbeat shook our shared bedroom wall. I could sleep through any sticky hot Georgia night—the sort where your armpits soaked the bed sheets and a heroic fan pushed the listless air in circles around your feet. But a cold front blew through Steeplechase that night, an ocean wind sucking up all human moisture and carrying it out to sea.
I got out of bed at 4 a.m. and found Imani slumped in the living room corner, her legs still kicking beneath her. I tried to put her to bed, but even lying down, her feet danced on air. I pulled the blanket and sheet up, kissed her forehead, and prayed she'd catch a few winks.
Unsettled, I went for a stroll, rounding Steeplechase to where the Oconee Greenway lapped against our back door, near the crumbling steeple where R.E.M. practiced before they got famous. Say what you will about the Oconee River: it has none of the Pacific's martial nature. The Oconee rolls soft as a guest too polite to take the last cornbread square. Even its name dissembles. Oconee: The land beside the water. Oconee River: The water beside the land beside the water. Something Biblical about that, like a powerful woman named for a man. Adam’s daughters. Lot's wife. Oconee, Oconee.
"Morning, Oconee."
It muttered back to me beneath the drooping myrtle branches. Quietly, quietly.
I held up the Big Foot sock. "They keep hexing Imani. Can't you do anything about it?" But the Oconee just burbled away in the half-dawn. I was about to chuck the sock in, give the river a taste of any lingering magic, when someone spoke behind me.
"Hold up. You using that?"
A man had crept up from the R.E.M. Steeple's long black shadow, a smelly wet man with too much beard and no umbrella, and the windblown hair of hardcore cyclists and men's deodorant models. He wore a Birkenstock on his left foot and a Big Foot sock on the right that exactly matched the one I'd been about to hurl into the Oconee.
I fought the urge to scream forever, then scream some more, then transform into an ever-screaming roadside attraction.
The State of Washington had found me.
I threw the sock at him. It slapped wetly against his chest. "This stops now. Y'all need to pack up and go back where you came from, else I'm gonna march back into my apartment and pour that ocean down the drain."
He half-flinched, half-sneered, like when you're about to deliver a zinger but instead swallow a mosquito.
"I don't want to hear another fucking word. What's your deal, anyway? Gods? Ghosts? Only dead things have ghosts. Last I checked, you're just missing the ocean you use for your toilet bowl."
Washington picked up the sock. "Call us Hypotheticals. We exist when there's a jo
b to do." He hopped on one foot and slid the sock over his Birkenstock. "We're almost done, though."
"I don't want to hear it. Y'all are killing her. She hasn't slept. She's in there right now, dancing herself to death." I hocked and made sure it included lots of snot. "Gift of abandon, my ass."
"I'm sorry, but I've got a job to finish. I exist, after all." He sounded full of genuine regret, or else my bullshit meter was broke. Then he started pedaling on air. A cycle ghosted in: first the spokes, then the handlebars, then the cherry-red frame. "Let me tell you something about the Pacific. One taste, and you'll lie down by its shore and dream forever of the most carefree time in your life. I leave your thief the gift of peace." Now he was pedaling so fast it was just lunging and retreating Big Foots, and the bike began to rise.
The sweet Oconee finally lost its temper and attacked the high bank, gobbling down the earth where Washington had stood seconds before. The Hypothetical rang a little copper bell and flew into the westward shadows. Far east, sunrise's pink ribbon pushed at the horizon.
I bolted back to the apartment, kicking myself for leaving. The radio had stopped.
"Imani?" I knocked softly on her bedroom door, afraid to wake her if she'd dozed off. She didn't answer. I knocked again, harder.
I gave it to the count of ten, then cracked the door. An Imani-shaped lump bunched up the blankets.
I needed to see her breath rise and fall just once before I could let out the one I was holding. I approached her bed by inches. The jar spooned against her side like an elderly cat. I lost all pretense and shook her arm.
Her shoulder crumbled beneath my touch. I pulled the blanket back. No Imani. Just the pile of salt that was her corpse.
I didn't notice until later—after the police, the questions, the sobbing calls to my mom—that the jar on the floor was bone dry and empty. Not even a grain of sand stuck to its threads.
* * *
Part 2: Oconee
Every River Runs to Salt Page 2
