by Lydia Millet
“Jax,” she whispered when Max stepped back into the kitchen for a second to glug down some water. “You can ping me, during this, OK? But only till the minute it’s over. If you need to.”
“OK,” whispered Jax solemnly. “Thanks.”
“Each of us holds their talisman,” said Max, back again. “In the right hand and tied with a white string around the right wrist. Check?”
“Check,” whispered Cara.
She had one of her mother’s lipsticks, Max had a small jeweled comb, and Jax had a bracelet with their mother’s name spelled out on it, from when she was younger.
“Check,” said Max.
“So after we draw the lines and sprinkle the herbs, we take up our positions. At the door and corners. And we wait there for nine minutes with our eyes closed, then open them and wait for another three. Closed for nine, open for three, got it? Nine and three are significant numbers in the charm, for some reason. And no talking during any of this. Silence is as important to the ritual as any words would be. Got that? A single word could wreck it.”
“We got it, J,” said Max.
“Watches all say 11:57:24?”
“Yes,” said Cara.
She didn’t have a digital watch. She thought they were hideous and always checked the time on her cell, but she’d borrowed an old one of her dad’s.
“Here, too,” said Max.
“How did they time this whole ritual thing before there were watches?” wondered Cara.
“Probably counting, and I bet it took a lot of practice and discipline,” said Jax. “So we have it easy. And Max, your watch is set so you can punch in the alarm for nine minutes, right? So we know when to open our eyes?”
“Done deal.”
“At that point, when the whole twelve minutes are up, the warding charm is finished. The protection part of the rite. The rest is to make her welcome, or something. So we walk from our stations down to the water again, along those same lines of power where the salt is. And we all meet at the point where the salt lines converge. Right down there at the shore. We kneel and dip our foreheads in the water. We touch our right hands to our heart, with the talismans in them. And we say her name. Can you guys remember all that?”
“We’ll manage,” said Max.
“Then it’s back to the house, but this time face away from the sea. Stand still. Heads bowed. Don’t move. Just wait. If we’ve done it right, after a while we’ll get a sign.”
“Oh,” said Cara, “and we can’t forget to put this near the waterline.”
She’d brought one of her mother’s light, cotton sundresses, flung over a shoulder, because the selkie had said: her clothes. The instructions had said to place her clothes near the water and hold the talismans.
“OK,” said Jax.
“We all have our salt,” said Cara.
“We have to start walking and sprinkling the salt exactly at the stroke of midnight, remember,” said Jax.
“On my mark,” said Max. “I’ll say go.”
The moon was still hidden, so the only lights they had to walk by were the lights of their headlamps. With all the things they had to have in their hands for the ritual, there was no way they could also carry flashlights. Which made the headlamps necessary. Max had said that wearing his made him feel like a coal miner. Or a spelunker, Jax had added, and then had to explain to them that that meant explorer of caves.
Cara looked down and checked: salt and herbs in her left hand, lipstick in her right palm and tied around that same wrist with string. She still had to hold it, since there was no surefire way to secure the shiny metal cylinder by tying it.
“Go,” hissed Max, and Cara pushed the back door open. They went through single-file, shifted their salt shakers into the hands holding the talismans while their left hands held the herb bowls, and started walking and sprinkling the salt on the ground.
As they had planned, each of them struck out in a precise direction—Cara straight down toward the water, Max to the right corner of the house, Jax to the left.
Cara bent her head and aimed her headlamp at her feet, because if she tripped on the dark grass the salt or the herbs could go flying—one misstep could ruin the whole ceremony, Jax had warned. She held her breath. Her fingers shook as she tipped the salt shaker back and forth. The trees loomed up in front of her, and she was making her way through them—walking as straight as she could, slow and deliberate so as not to drop anything.… Slowly the waterline drew near.
A few feet away from it she bent and let the sundress fall into a heap, then kept walking. Just as she began sinking into the mud, the water lapping at her toes, she stopped and let the last of her salt drift down into the mud.
“Oh no!” came Jax’s voice plaintively from close by, somewhere in the marshy area before the trees started up. “I’m out of salt! And I’m not down at the water yet! It must have come out of my shaker too fast!”
It’s my fault, thought Cara. They hadn’t had three salt shakers in the house, so for one of them she’d had to use a cinnamon container, and she recalled, now, how large the holes had been in the plastic lid for the cinnamon. She’d made a note to warn the others, and then, when they were distributing the different containers, she’d completely forgotten to mention it.
I’m sorry, it’s my fault, she thought again—more loudly, if that was possible. She tried to send the thought in Jax’s direction, so he didn’t feel like it was him who’d messed up.
“Keep going anyway,” came Max’s confident voice from her other side. “Just keep going. That’ll be a gap in the line of defense, but we can work around it. We’ll have to.”
She saw Jax come down to the water, stuffing the empty shaker into his pocket.
Then they were all side by side at the waterline, at the convergence. They stood there awkwardly for a moment—Cara felt foolish; it was hard to believe anything real would come of this—then turned and began the walk back up, curving apart again as the salt lines separated. This time they were dropping herbs out of the bowls, pinch by pinch, which they lifted with their right thumb and forefinger. Cara retraced her steps back up to the house.
In a few seconds they were through the trees again and flattening their backs against the building’s back wall, standing at their stations. Cara’s station was the back door, where they’d all started out, and as she stood there with her eyes closed, everything went awfully silent—not even, she thought, the sound of a cricket. She stood in the blackness of her closed eyelids, feeling dizzy. Seeing the world kept you stable, she thought.
Then she heard the low growl of a dog.
It was Rufus—up front still, because the growl was very faint. In her whole life she’d never heard Rufus growl.
It must mean he wasn’t himself again. Yet.
But she kept her eyes closed. She couldn’t open them—it would ruin the ceremony. They had to be closed for the whole nine minutes, and she had to stand stock-still for those nine minutes too. No movement was allowed.
Fuzzy sparks pricked the inside of her eyelids—no problem, she told herself, that’s just electrical impulses, isn’t it? She tried to think what Jax would say: the science of it. It’s what always happens when you keep your eyes closed for a long time without sleeping. There’s no perfect black; there have to be interruptions in the blackness. So you imagine the sparks are pictures of things, images, while really it’s neurons firing or whatever—the energy of the brain.
But then a picture was forming, a detailed picture with millions of tiny parts … impossible, yet crystal-clear. Like HD. She saw the front of the house; the light on the front porch must be on, because it was bright enough to see every speck of dust, every hair—she saw the peeling paint on the rail. She could tell it was night, though, from the way dark invaded from the corners….
Rufus was there, colored blood-red, his wet fur still dripping. He had sharp teeth and black eyes—the Pouring Man using the body of Rufus, using Rufus’s poor, faithful old dog face, tail, dog legs.
The not-Rufus was worrying the leash, biting it where it was lashed to the white porch rails with their peeling, faded paint. The sharp teeth made a sawing sound on the nylon strap: saw. Saw. Saw.
She saw the not-dog’s feet, with nails that were long and black and sharp. Not his real nails at all—these were claws like talons, scraping at the wood of the porch.
And then it happened. The leash broke—just as she heard the electronic beep of Max’s watch alarm. And her eyes snapped open.
She realized she was gripping the lipstick so hard it was hurting her fingers.
Three more minutes till the warding charm was finished….he might be coming around the corner right now. His teeth, his needle-sharp teeth—not like her poor, sweet old Rufus at all. And they wouldn’t be able to see him in the dark … she turned so that her headlamp swept the right-hand corner of the house, where Max stood. He must have turned to her at the same time, though, because she was blinded by the light from his headlamp and had to turn away. Then she looked left, to where Jax stood.
She thought: Did you see it, too? Did you see the leash break?
Jax reached up and clicked off his headlamp. She saw the beam wink off. Then he turned to her and shook his head.
No. She was the only one who’d seen it.
Then Max’s watch alarm beeped again.
“Man!” said Max. “We can talk now, right, J? Was that a walk in the park, or what?”
“Be careful,” she said to Max. “I think it’s gotten loose! The dog-thing. And Jax and I are protected from him, I guess?—more than you, anyway, so watch out. He can still get at you. Because you’re not—”
And that was when the not-dog came walking around the corner of the house. Not running; just walking.
Their headlamps illuminated him.
He was walking slowly, placidly.
And smiling as no dog ever should.
Showing long, needle-like teeth.
“He can’t get through the salt line,” said Jax in a rush. “So let’s just keep going. Down to the water. We still have to do the welcoming part of the charm, or she won’t be able to come home.”
They started walking, turning every so often to see what the not-dog was doing. He kept walking parallel to them, down toward the water, outside the farthest salt line. He was on Max’s side, not Jax’s, at least, which meant he’d have to go around to get in where the gap was.
It’ll be up to us to stop him, thought Jax at Cara as they walked. They weren’t allowed to run—there was a measured pace to everything, a kind of dignity that had to be observed. Even if his arm weren’t broken, Max couldn’t. He’s too vulnerable. So if he goes around—if he tries to get in—we have to make a wall. You and me.
Cara thought Yes. OK.
Max had already taken enough of a beating.
“Don’t let him distract us from the ritual,” called Max. “It’s what he wants. Even I can see that, and that’s without any ESP. At least, that I know of.”
“Be careful, Max,” said Jax. “OK? Be really careful.”
Here they were, in the marsh flat again, the mud beneath their feet. Reeds tickled her shins.
“On our knees,” said Max as they came together. “Foreheads in the water. And her name.”
Cara felt her knees sinking into the mud, and out there somewhere she heard the not-dog splashing in the bay. Maybe he was already going around, trying to get to them. The top of her face was wet as she bent over, her hair dripping into her eyes. She squeezed the lipstick tight and held it to her chest, where she thought her heart was—in the middle and kind of to the left.
“Lily,” said Max. At the same time Jax said “Mother” and Cara said “Mom” and thought: Come home.
“Here he is,” said Jax, and they looked up from their kneeling positions to see the not-dog swimming in front of them. Swimming across the water a few feet out, in line with the shore … toward the place, on the other side of Jax, where there was a hole in the salt line. And no protection.
She felt the coldness in her again, not his deadly cold but the coldness of being afraid, and having to prepare. Still she braced herself, and she knew Jax was doing the same. He was getting ready.
They rose, backing away toward the salt-line gap, keeping their eyes and their headlamps on the not-dog, who was still paddling past them … keeping their eyes on the water.
What would they do? How could they keep him off Max, out of the safe place they’d made for their mother?
She didn’t know. She felt the confusion of panic and reached out with her mind to Jax—
But then, behind the not-dog, something rose out of the waves. It was dark and light, both black and white and impossibly huge. She’d never seen anything that big rise out of the water—how it could even be here, in these muddy shallows, was a mystery …
It was an orca. A killer whale. Its teeth shone white in the light of their lamps as its great head reared out of the water of the bay. It rose above the not-dog, and the not-dog didn’t even have time to bark.
“No!” Cara heard herself scream—because inside the not-dog was Rufus—it was Rufus, whom they had all loved for as long as she could remember—
The orca went higher and higher, an arc of water following it, a screen of water splashing out into the air—
And Max was screaming, too, and Jax—
But it was over in a second.
The not-dog was in the orca’s teeth, and the orca sank back and was submerged again. There was not even a ripple where the orca had been.
Rufus was gone.
No one said anything for a while. They were done, she guessed—nothing left but to walk back up to the house. He was gone, anyway. And there was not a thing they could do about it.
Stunned, hanging their heads, they walked, defeated, back up through the reeds, through the trees, across the back lawn.
“Was that a—?” asked Max.
“Orcinus orca,” said Jax. “Killer whale, or more rarely blackfish. Sometimes also called the seawolf.”
“Do we even have those around here?”
“Not in three feet of water,” said Jax quietly.
They took up their positions, their faces to the wall of the house. Cara felt tears streaming down her cheeks as she stood there. It was her fault. All of this. Her poor, dear dog.
The stupid cinnamon shaker. It was a tiny detail—a tiny, minuscule thing. The size of the holes in the shaker had gotten Rufus killed.
Her fault.
“No, honey,” said someone behind her. “It’s not your fault at all.”
She knew the voice, of course.
But she didn’t believe it. She was almost afraid to turn.
She did, finally. Slowly. Still clutching the lipstick.
And so did Jax, and Max. Cara was vaguely aware of them, off to the sides along the house’s back wall.…
The spot of Cara’s headlamp trembled and then stood still. There she was. Their mother.
The same as ever, though maybe more tired-looking.
Her dark hair was stuck to the sides of her head, soaking wet and trailed back over her shoulders; she was barefoot and wore only the sundress Cara had brought.
She blinked in the glare and raised a hand to shade her eyes from the brightness of their headlamps.
Then they were running and piling onto her, their arms around her. Yelling, practically.
“Shh,” she said, though maybe she was tearing up a little too, Cara thought, under the wide smile. “You’ll wake up your father!”
“Who cares?” crowed Max.
“The thing is”—and their mother spoke softly, her arms still around them—“I’m afraid we’ll have to let him sleep, this time.”
They stepped back, looking at her—at least Cara and Max did. Jax was still clinging, his arms around her waist. She kept one arm around him, too.
They all took their headlamps off; Max reached up and hung his on a tree branch. It lit the yard around them.
&
nbsp; “What do you mean?”
“I can’t stay, darlings,” she said, almost wincing. It was as if it hurt her just to say it.
“You can’t what?”
Max took another step back.
“I know, Max,” she said, nodding. “I know. It seems so wrong. To me, too.”
“Tell us what’s going on,” said Cara.
“I can’t tell you all of it. Not yet. But this is something we’re all a part of, something we all have to do. It’s what I told you when I came in the night, Cara.”
“And what was that,” said Max, almost coldly.
“A war,” said their mother simply.
“A war with—a war with guns and bombs?” asked Cara.
“It may not look like that kind of war. Not at first. But it may become that kind of war, if we don’t win quickly enough. It’s why we have to fight it. And I’m going to need all of you.”
“Then why not Dad?” said Max. “He thinks you left him!”
He shook his head, kicking the ground at his feet.
“Max,” said their mother. “Your father is a grown man. He’ll be OK. It’s you three I’m worried about right now.”
“Well, I’m worried about him,” said Max stubbornly.
“What’s happening now dates from long, long before I met your father,” she said. “This is a new battle in a very old conflict. And I’m afraid we just can’t tell him everything we might like to, Max. There are things going on that are beyond the reaches of what he knows, what he accepts to be the world …”
She paused for a second, then went on.
“Wild happenings,” she said.
A chill wind rushed through the pines around them, a sweeping wind that moved the branches roughly for a few moments, dropping needles and cones on the ground, and then settled down again abruptly.
“There are events taking place that would test anyone’s threshold. Events that honestly …”
“What?” prompted Cara.
“… that would simply be too much for some people. For their minds to deal with.”