by Lydia Millet
“… thinking,” finished Max.
“Basically.”
“OK, so let’s just say I believe Jax can—well, that Jax has some way of knowing what people are thinking, sometimes. Let’s just say, hypothetically, I may have suspected something like that once or twice. Still: this was a turtle. And a big mofo, too.”
“I noticed.”
“So, you’re trying to tell me he was reading the turtle’s mind? My little brother was hanging out doing some kind of ESP action on a reptile. That’s what you want me to believe.”
“I don’t want you to believe anything,” whispered Cara fiercely. “But it’d be nice if you could be more open-minded, I guess.”
“One man’s open-minded is another man’s crazy as a bedbug,” said Max.
Cara shook her head and held up her phone, erasing old texts for something to do. It was no use talking to people who didn’t want to hear.
After a few minutes Max relented.
“Hey, I know something was really going on back there,” he said awkwardly. “It’s just hard to…”
“Suspend disbelief,” said Cara.
He nodded.
“And what about this—what did you call him? Foreign man?—”
“Pouring man,” said Cara.
“—who you said could get into Jax’s head? What was that all about?”
She hesitated, wondering how much to tell him. In the front seat, Jax and her dad were talking about “carbon storage” and “echinoderms”—nothing she really understood. She loved Jax and she loved her dad, but sometimes she felt like their smartclub only had room for two members. In a way she had more in common with Max, who was at least down to earth. Unlike Jax or her dad, both she and Max would rather go for a walk on the beach or to a party than, say, find a nice empty room and get cozy with a copy of The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire or Relativity: The Special and the General Theory.
She might as well give it a shot. Even if he didn’t believe her about the Pouring Man, what did she have to lose? This whole summer, when she needed him most, he’d barely been able to spare her the time of day.
So it couldn’t get much worse than it already was.
“You’re not going to believe me if I tell you,” she said.
“Yeah,” allowed Max, “you’re probably right. But tell me anyway.”
So she did.
She and Jax didn’t have any time alone during the afternoon, since her dad was taking the day to spend “quality time” with his younger son; then, right after dinner, Hayley showed up with a cake her mother had baked for them. Hayley’s mother was divorced and clearly believed that that was what was happening in Cara’s family, too.
It was annoying to Cara that Hayley’s mom thought she knew more about Cara’s own family than they did. But at least there was an upside: homemade desserts, once every week since June.
So they all hung out on the porch, Cara sitting with Hayley on the swing, the others in lawn chairs and on the front steps, eating their pieces of cake as dark descended. They talked about normal stuff—the guys fighting at the skatepark, school starting up again.
The guys went inside one by one as they finished their cake, first her dad, then Max, and finally Jax, till she and Hayley were just going back and forth slowly, listening to the swing creak. Cara figured she was stuck there, for a few minutes at least—she needed to debrief Jax, but she couldn’t just dump Hayley. She thought about telling her friend about the Pouring Man, the turtle, all of it, but she couldn’t decide.
She wanted to confide in her; on the other hand, she didn’t want to scare her. Ever since her mom and dad got divorced and her dad moved to Idaho or somewhere, Hayley got scared by strange men. So did her mom, come to think of it. Cara wasn’t sure exactly why—maybe something about the divorce itself, which had been pretty mean—but it probably wasn’t the time to delve into the subject.
And she hadn’t believed Cara about the driftwood, anyway.
After Hayley left, she climbed the stairs quickly, impatient to ask Jax what was up with the turtle. But when she knocked on his door there was no answer. She pushed open the door and saw he was fast asleep: his moon light shone down from the wall, and the stuffed giraffe lay in the crook of one arm. He was so exhausted he hadn’t even managed to change into the dreaded pajamas.
She thought about waking him up, but he looked so wiped out she couldn’t bring herself to.
Alone in her own bedroom, she took the small white box from her bag, the box she’d found in her mother’s office, and unrolled the yellowing scroll.
The night of fires beneath the sea
Among the bones of the Whydahlee
Three must visit the old selkie:
Interpreter, arbiter, and visionary.
Only then may the bonds come undone,
The fourth secure’d of fear’s venom;
The man who walks in water gone,
A path laid out for the absent one.
It sounded like some kind of prophesy, she thought. Did it have something to do with the turtle, with the driftwood message?
Was it their mother talking to them?
It wasn’t her mother’s handwriting, though, and she didn’t think her mother wrote poems; her mother was a scientist. Plus the paper looked old.
Then again, obviously, it had been in her mother’s office….
The man who walks in water. The Pouring Man. It had to be!
And this had to be meant for them.
She would show it to Jax first thing in the morning.
And Max. What about him? She wasn’t sure what he was thinking. She had told him everything; he had listened, but, though he hadn’t made fun of her openly, he made no sign of buying into what she was saying, either. When she was done he had nodded without commenting, turned away from her, and looked out at the other cars passing them.
“ ‘Three must visit the old selkie, interpreter, arbiter and visionary,’ ” she read aloud, softly.
Just then something hit the glass of her window, which was half-open. She almost jumped out of her skin. Slowly, and wishing she wasn’t alone, she got up. She walked over to where the curtains were billowing inward and then, after a long moment of held breath, jerked them apart.
She couldn’t see anything, not even the trees outside, because her eyes were adjusted to the bright, artificial lighting of her room. There was no noise from anywhere, though, and she was still curious, so she decided to dig her pen-sized flashlight out of her desk.
There were a few beads of moisture on the glass where the object had hit, and through the mesh of the screen below she could see a small dark pile of something, lying on the porch roof just beneath her windowsill. Dead leaves, she thought, maybe—but why had they hit the window? There was no wind.
She raised the screen to see them better—she was nervous but felt like she needed to know. She leaned over with the penlight’s beam sharply focused.
It was a cluster of dark-brown packets that looked like seaweed: shiny, black rectangles with thorny-looking ends. She had found pouches like these on the beach many times and knew what they were: skate egg cases that people sometimes called “mermaid’s purses.” Skates were like rays, her mother had taught her—carnivorous rays that slithered over the ocean floor.
So these were just skate eggs, right? A frequent find for beachcombers?
Though you didn’t usually encounter them on the roof. At night. Outside your bedroom window.
Skates didn’t fly, after all.
She reached out to push them away, then jerked her hand back. She remembered what Jax had said: the Pouring Man controlled water, and you had to make sure you didn’t invite him in.
She stuck her head and shoulders out over the window ledge, her elbows on the shingles of the porch roof, and held the penlight over the mass of eggs. Steadily, steadily. Before she even touched them to push them away she should make sure they were what they seemed to be.
For a long moment she held the
spot of the penlight in one place, shining into the brown translucence of an egg pouch, and noticed nothing unusual.
Then she saw the squirming.
Inside the pouch, small things squirmed and pulsed. Their movement was rapid … as if they were about to burst out.
And whatever was inside them, she didn’t think it wasn’t baby skates. Unless skates had claws.
In a shudder of revulsion she stretched out her penlight and pushed the egg pouches with it, once, then again. She couldn’t touch it with her own fingers, but she knew she had to get it away. Get rid of it.
She stretched farther and farther onto the roof. The egg pouches didn’t roll down by themselves—the grade of the roof wasn’t steep enough—so she had to keep pushing and prodding them toward the edge. Finally her whole body was outside her bedroom window, with her feet hooked around the inside ledge of the sill, and she was quickly prodding the cluster farther and farther toward the edge. It seemed to be moving more frantically now, like the eggs would hatch any second. She shivered in disgust as she flicked it away from her.
One last push—stretching, stretching, almost letting go with her feet—and the brown mass protruded over the gutter, caught a bit on the gutter’s outer lip, and finally tumbled off the edge.
She stayed there for a minute, slowing her breathing. Then she let the penlight roll out of her grasp. She didn’t want it in her room either, not after it had touched that.
She heard a clink as it rolled off the shingles and into the gutter.
Once she was back inside she closed her window and pulled the curtains closed again. Climbed into her bed and pulled the coverlet all the way up to her chin.
Her room door was open, and it creaked as it opened wider. She gasped and sat bolt upright in her bed.
But it was only Rufus.
“I’m so glad you’re here,” she told him.
Four
She and Max came out of their rooms into the upstairs hall at exactly the same time in the morning. It was early; she was surprised to see him. Usually he liked to hole up in his room till 11 on weekend mornings, headphones securely engaged.
“What can I say,” said Max, and grinned. “Curiosity and felines.”
They stood at Jax’s door and Cara knocked. When Jax didn’t open it they went in. A window was open, as usual, curtains fluttering in the breeze, but Jax was nowhere to be seen.
“Wait,” said Max. “There’s something else missing.”
Jax’s terrarium was gone, and so were his two saltwater tanks. In fact, his whole room appeared to be wildlife-free.
“No way,” said Cara.
They went down the stairs together; Max peeled off for the front yard while she went through the kitchen to the back. Past the clothesline, where the towel from the Pouring Man’s puddle still hung, through the pitch pines and bear oak, down onto the marshy shoreline. Past the patch of grass beneath her room where the skate eggs must have fallen—the eggs that were not skates but something else instead.
But there was nothing there.
The tide was low.
And there was Jax, looking absurd in nothing but big rubber boots and baggy blue swim trunks, his bare stomach and ribs smeared with dirt. He stood at the water’s edge, and a few feet behind him in the reedy mud were his tanks, tipped over and empty.
She wondered if it was dangerous, so near the water. But then, Jax had said the Pouring Man moved best at night, and it was daytime now.
“What’s going on?” asked Cara.
“Just releasing them,” he said. “They’re animals, you know. Wild animals don’t enjoy captivity.”
“Uh-huh,” said Max, coming up behind Cara. “So that’s what the turtle did? Sang you the theme song from Born Free?”
That was a famous but boring old movie their mother made them watch, about training a tame lion to go back in the wild again. Totally seventies, but Jax loved it.
“No, the turtle, as you call her,” said Jax with some dignity, “was far less juvenile than you are.”
“Whoa-ho,” said Max. “Testy.”
“Really, Jax,” said Cara. “We’re dying to know, here. Did she—communicate something?”
Jax looked at Max, and then back at her.
“I told him,” she said.
“She said we have to go underwater,” said Jax after a few seconds, and sloshed through the shallows to pick up a plastic cup. He poured it out gently, and Cara thought she saw minnows glitter in the falling stream. “She said we have to watch the sea, and when the sea—lights up at night, I guess it was?—we have to go in. And if everything goes right, a friend of hers will help us.”
“Help us what,” said Max flatly.
“Help us to get Mom back.”
Cara was still a moment, her flip-slops sinking into the mud. Then she pulled up her feet with a sucking sound.
“The night of fires beneath the sea,” she murmured.
“Yes,” said Jax, looking at her sharply. “That’s what she said! How did you know?”
“I found a message in Mom’s office. It reads like a clue. Either that or a prediction or something.”
“And how are we supposed to go, uh, underwater? Last I checked, you and Cara didn’t know scuba,” said Max, who did.
“So maybe you need to teach us.”
“Get out,” said Max. “Seriously, get out. You’re too young, and I’m not even fully certified myself. Remember?”
For a second the three of them stood there, in the mud and the water, an awkward triangle.
“Let’s cross that bridge later,” said Cara. “OK?”
“Look,” said Max. “I’ll keep my doubts to myself on most of this, but as far as going scuba diving with maybe a few days’ prep from someone who’s not even certified, it would be irresponsible. I can’t stand by and watch my baby brother get an embolism because of a bad tip a, like, zoo animal gave him through mental telepathy.”
“She’s not a zoo animal,” retorted Jax. “She’s a wild leatherback, Dermochelys coriacea, the largest of all turtles and the only living species in her genus. They’re critically endangered, which means one of her is worth roughly 300,000 of you.”
“Hey, thanks a lot for the show of support,” said Max.
“Plus, she was caught in a fishing net and almost died and they nursed her back to health,” said Jax, stiff.
“But Jax,” said Cara, “you’ve never been able to read animals. You don’t go around talking to pets or anything. So how did you do it?”
“I don’t know, but there was something different about her,” said Jax, softening slightly. “Dermochelys is one aspect of her, but not all aspects. That’s all I get right now.”
“So you’re not gonna be having deep talks with Rufus, then,” said Max.
“This was an individual with a special capacity,” said Jax.
“Phew, that’s a relief,” said Max.
“But there are more of them.”
“More talking turtles?” asked Max.
“More like her, whatever she is. I’ll know them when I see them.”
I’ll know them when I see them, thought Cara. See. See. Vision. Visionary. Interpreter, arbiter and visionary. She’d have to look up the other words from the message; “interpreter” was easy, but “arbiter” she didn’t know. Or “selkie.”
Faintly they heard the telltale bang of the screen door. Probably their dad stepping out onto the porch, stretching and bending down for the Sunday paper.
“Here, little dude,” said Max. “Let me help you with these,” and he picked up Jax’s terrarium to carry it back into the house.
They met in Max’s bedroom next, and he turned on his usual loud music—this time to disguise the conversation. It was the Ramones, something violent about beating up rats with a baseball bat.
Cara told them both about the skate eggs, which made Max shrug and Jax look perplexed, though definitely not as alarmed as she had been.
“I guess you had to be there,” s
he ended up saying, when neither of them had much of a response. “So here’s the message.” And she unfurled the small scroll and read it out loud.
They were silent for a while after she stopped.
“Well, that’s clear as mud,” said Max.
Jax cocked his head.
“So first off,” said Max, “it sounds like we have to find out when the seas are going to light up. Which—I mean, who the hell knows how we do that?”
“We have to wait and see,” said Jax. “Watch and wait. Wait and see.”
“Second, where is this meeting actually supposed to be? The poem, or whatever it is, said ‘sea.’ Which covers, oh, about two-thirds of the Earth’s surface last time I counted. So that doesn’t really, uh, pinpoint a location,” said Max.
“She told me where to look,” said Jax.
“She?” asked Cara.
“The turtle. She said there’s a finger that points to it.”
“A finger that points to it,” repeated Max. “Uh-huh.”
“That’s what she said. We have to find the finger and look where it’s pointing,” said Jax. “And that’s where we watch for the fires.”
“Man, hope it’s not the middle one,” said Max.
“How droll,” said Jax. “Quite humorous.”
“Whatever, you two go ahead. Find the finger,” said Max. “But then there’s still a problem. I mean, even if we figure out those two deals, there’s still the question of what we’re supposed to do. Once we get underwater. I mean I have no clue what any of that gibberish is supposed to mean.”
“Three must visit the old selkie …,” mused Cara. “I think the three clearly means us. And I just looked up ‘selkie’ in dad’s big dictionary, and it’s supposed to be some kind of mythic creature that turns from a seal into a woman or something. So maybe the turtle’s friend is a seal?”