The Fires Beneath the Sea ebook

by Lydia Millet

  “You’re saying he couldn’t deal? That he’d have some kind of breakdown,” said Max flatly.

  “The truth is, for all your father’s strengths—and they are many—he’s not ready for this.”

  “He’s not ready,” said Max, “but we are?”

  “You’re different,” said their mother. “You’re meant to be a part of it. In every life, Max, there’s a moment of testing. One moment where things turn. And this is yours. You have to believe, as your sister and brother did. You have to make that leap of faith. They made it already, but you still have to. This is a fight for all of us. And believe me, I wouldn’t be doing it if I didn’t have to.”

  “But what are we supposed to say to him?” asked Cara. “Max is right. We’re not the only ones who miss you. He’s really lonely. This is so hard for him, Mom.”

  “I know, sweetheart,” said their mother in a voice full of regret. “But you’ve already seen the danger I put you in, haven’t you? You, the people I love most in the world. You’ve seen the kind of—elements that are after me. They’d be after him, too, if he knew. Just like they’ve been after you. And believe it or not, he’s actually more vulnerable than you are. Because he’s not a child anymore, he lacks some of your advantages.”

  She detached Jax gently from her side and took his hand, then turned and walked over to where a couple of rusting lawn chairs were fallen over. She flipped one upright and sat down on the edge of it, leaning forward. Jax hovered beside her, still clutching her fingers.

  “I’m sure,” she went on, “that you don’t want him exposed to that any more than I do. He doesn’t have your resilience, you know. Adults, after all, are more … brittle. In some ways we’re harder, and that makes us easier to break.”

  It occurred to Cara how gracious and elegant she looked, even sitting on a broken chair in her wet hair and bare feet and simple sundress—like a queen.

  “You can tell him I spoke to you, if you have to,” she said, and sighed. “Tell him I’m—tell him that one day I’ll come back. That I want to now, but I have a duty. Ask him if he remembers where we first met. Those are my people. Tell him there’s a crisis in the world, a crisis that’s all around us but whose roots are deeply hidden. But I’m close to those roots, and I have to do what I can. Can you repeat a phrase, Jax?”

  “Of course I can, Mom.”

  “Then tell him this. It’s something you already know, something you’ve seen this week and are beginning to understand, but he doesn’t know. Few adults do. It’s this: Die Tiere sind nicht, was sie scheinen.”

  “OK.”

  “And to you three, I promise: when it’s over—when it’s really over—then I can come home for good.”

  “You haven’t explained anything,” said Max. “You’re speaking in code.”

  “The Pouring Man,” put in Cara. “He got Rufus killed! I mean, who is he? Really? And why is—was—he after you?”

  “He was a servant,” said their mother. “A servant of the Cold One, a servant who is not alive. An elemental in the water army. In this war, the enemy has his forces arrayed that way—those who operate through water. Those who operate through earth. Those who use air, those who use fire … and there are others, too. There are other soldiers, other servants. He wasn’t unique. But because of your courage, he’s gone now. And I’m so … so very sorry about poor old Rufus.”

  They were silent. Cara felt the push of a little anger at her mother, anger that what she was doing—all of this, even if it wasn’t exactly her fault—had hurt Rufus.

  Had killed him.

  “He was a good dog,” said Jax quietly.

  For a moment Cara wanted to do nothing but listen to the rhythmic lap of the tide.

  “What was that—was that an orca?” she asked finally. “Why are we seeing all these—I mean, orcas and Pacific sea otters and creatures that shouldn’t be here? To say nothing of selkies, which aren’t even supposed to be real. I mean, why was a sea turtle talking to Jax?”

  “Friends,” said her mother, and smiled. “Friends have joined the battle. There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy….”

  “Hamlet,” said Max, half-grudgingly.

  “And those—those pirates? That were ghosts? What was their connection?” pressed Cara.

  “They were just captive souls. Some of the souls the Cold One was imprisoning, through one of his servants, so that he could use them. Against us.”

  “But—I mean, why did it have to be so hard? So—I mean, so mysterious and all that?” asked Cara.

  “You had to kept in a state of not knowing until just before we made contact,” said their mother. “It’s pretty much what Jax intuited: as soon as you knew where I was, he would read it in you, and he could get to me. So I had to find a roundabout way of getting to you.”

  “And what have you—what were you doing all this time?” asked Max.

  “I’ve been hiding from the Cold One and his servants—hiding while I do my work. Where I could safely hide, nearby but unseen. I had to find places where the Cold One couldn’t come after me easily—places where people couldn’t know my whereabouts, you see? So that the Cold One couldn’t find me through them. And now that you’ve taken care of—what did you call him? The Pouring Man?—by making him weak and drawing him to where my friends could come to my defense, I can come out of hiding. Be free. I mean, I can’t go to Washington to testify. I can’t be that public. But I can at least move around now. I can travel.”

  “What about the data? Your data set that was stolen?” asked Jax.

  “That was him,” she said. “His human allies, anyway. I don’t know yet who, exactly. He has tentacles everywhere. The ocean, you see, is a big part of what we’re fighting over … and I’ve had this—this obligation since before you were born, any of you. It’s my—call it a duty to my own family, my own parents and the ones that came before them. I’ve been running away from it for years. Because I wanted to be here with you and put all of that behind me. But now the scales have tipped, my dears. And I’m needed.”

  “But your duty is here, too,” said Cara desperately. “With us. Isn’t it?”

  “Of course it is,” said their mother. “But you have to remember: I’m doing this for you.”

  They heard something call out in the night air—a bird, Cara wondered? But it was a loud call, a loud, strange call. There was a grandeur to it, a magnitude.

  Their mother rose.

  “I have to go,” she said. “You bought me some time. But before long there’s going to be someone else after me. Just remember: I’m closer than you think. I’m keeping an eye on you. Max, I saw when you broke up that fight in the park … and, of course, I was with you in the car. I had to stop him from hurting you.”

  Max shook his head.

  “How could you be—?”

  “And Jax, I was with you at camp. For many days. And I saw you with the leatherback, Ananda. You may need to go to her again.”

  Jax nodded.

  “Cara, I was with you when you climbed onto the roof to push off the skate eggs—which you were right to do, of course. They were his. Not part of him, exactly, but from his world—creatures he sent through water to get to you. Probably he had some other ally bring them up from the sea and drop them there—maybe a gull he turned, I was guessing, since they were on the roof.”

  “Did you—was that you who talked to me through the otter?”

  “You could say that,” said her mother.

  “But how?”

  “I can’t answer that for you yet. I will say this: you know how Jax has … some unusual talents?”

  She turned and smiled at Jax, hugged him against her side.

  “Well. I have some of those, too.”

  “ESP?” asked Max, the eternal skeptic.

  “Something like that … listen. I’ll be in touch as soon as I can—or one of our friends will. And I’m sorry you have to be so strong, at your age. Most people do
n’t. But you do. You have to keep your eyes and your minds wide open.”

  Max still looked, Cara thought, like he was angry.

  “Come here, Max,” said her mother, and opened her arms.

  Max walked to her, but he looked resentful. He was resisting her.

  She put her arms around him and whispered something in his ear, something Cara and Jax couldn’t hear.

  When he pulled back, his face was white, as though he’d had a shock.

  And then it resolved.

  He nodded and stepped back.

  “I have to go, darlings,” she said, and turned to Cara.

  Cara put her arms around her and hugged her hard. There were tears in her eyes again, she realized, but she wasn’t quite as embarrassed as she usually would be.

  “At least tell me this one thing—was that you too? With the driftwood?”

  “Yes. It was me,” whispered her mother.

  “Then where were you—where were you hidden?”

  “Why, in the sea, of course,” whispered her mother. “Now you’ve freed me. Now I can move through the air, too.” And kissed her on the top of her head.

  “I love you, Mom,” whispered Cara.

  “I love you too,” said her mother.

  “We—we really miss you.”

  “And I miss you. But it’s not forever. Just … till we meet again.”

  She was walking away through the trees, down toward the water. The three of them followed her, watching. Something kept them from speaking, kept their eyes glued to her back.

  Where are you going, thought Cara. And then, Who are you really?

  Ahead of their mother was only the water. Cara half expected a ghost ship to sail in and take her away.

  Instead something swooped down from the sky—a huge shadow in the dark, a silhouette over the barely visible glitter of the bay. It had a strange, jerky way of flying; she couldn’t tell right away what kind of a machine it was. As it drew near, it stirred up the air beneath it so that the reeds bowed low, making a thick, rustling sound that reminded Cara of a helicopter landing. Her mother’s hair blew up around her.

  It wasn’t a machine at all. It was alive.

  It alighted somewhere nearby in the trees, which groaned under the massive weight.

  “My ride is here,” said her mother, and turned to gather them in. Cara didn’t want to let go.

  “What the hell is that?” asked Max, amazed.

  “Another friend,” said her mother. “Mine and yours too. Our friends are everywhere.”

  “And our enemies?” asked Cara.

  Their mother smiled sadly. “You’ll know when I need you. Until then, listen and learn. And remember this before all else: you may sometimes feel alone, but you are not. You are not alone.”

  “Mom,” said Jax suddenly. “Why can’t we—why can’t I go with you?”

  “Not now, Jackson,” she said kindly.

  Then the enormous, flapping beast descended from the trees onto the reedy mudflats and was hunched over in front of them, its wings stretched out to the sides, its head lowered. Cara couldn’t see well anymore—they’d left the headlamps hanging from branches in the backyard—and though she squinted, she couldn’t make it out exactly. She couldn’t see the head or beak from where she stood, and she thought maybe it wasn’t a living thing at all but some kind of an elaborate machine. No bird could possibly be so big.

  Her mother stepped onto its back. She took hold of something that almost looked like a pair of reins.

  “Stay safe. Remember how much I love you,” she said. “Never doubt that.”

  The dark beast beat its wings and rose up into the sky, their mother standing on it in her bare feet, her hair streaming behind her and the thin sundress flapping. They raised their hands to wave—they couldn’t help it, Cara thought, even if the hands would be invisible in the dark.

  As the flying thing went up higher, Cara thought she saw her mother sit down, the way you’d ride on a horse, but it all happened too fast for her to be sure.

  Soon both of them, their mother and whatever she was riding on, were lost in the dark above—a blot against the field of stars.

  And then nothing at all.

  The chirping of crickets grew up around them; there was the lapping of the tide. Cara felt the day-to-day world coming back.

  She realized she was standing in cool, wet mud and didn’t like how it felt; her clothes were clammy and dirty; and the tube of her mother’s old lipstick, now warmed by her skin, was still clutched tight in her right hand.

  “Jax,” said Max, presently. They made their way back up to the house, subdued. “You’ve gotta know. You always do. All she said was friend. But seriously. Talking turtles, mythic women that are half-seal, and now—? What the hell was that thing?”

  “I can’t be sure,” said Jax. His voice sounded small. “But it looked an awful lot like a pterosaur.”

  The next morning Cara made toast, put it on a tray with a glass of orange juice, and carried it out to her dad. He’d been working away in his study since before any of them could drag themselves out of bed, but these days he often forgot to eat breakfast.

  They had decided she should be the one to talk to him—that she should just say she’d had a conversation with their mother. If Cara said she alone had talked to their mother, Max had reasoned, their dad wouldn’t feel as singled out.

  Also, someone was going to have to tell their dad about Rufus. Say Rufus had run away, or something.… Their dad had loved Rufus. She could barely stand to think about it.

  “’Morning, Dad,” she said, peeking around the door jamb.

  He smiled at her from behind his big desk. He had his chair pushed back, balanced on its two back legs with the front two legs in the air. There was a thick paperback book propped open on his lap, and his sock-clad feet were crossed atop one of the desk’s precarious piles of papers, which looked like the Leaning Tower of Pisa.

  “Good morning,” he said.

  She pushed the door open with her elbow, since she had the breakfast tray in her hands. The curtains had been pulled wide open and light streamed in from the sky; she could see the high, clear blue, the fleecy clouds, and the sparkle of the water out the window behind him. The room seemed kind of golden, and her dad actually looked all right—better than he had the day before, jammed miserably into the red sports car with not enough room for his guilt over Max.

  “I made you some toast,” she said. “With the butter all melted and lots of raspberry jam. Your favorite, right?”

  “Very thoughtful of you, my dear,” he said, and smiled at her.

  She went up to the desk and set the plate down.

  “I can make you coffee, too, if you want,” she added.

  “Well, this is the VIP treatment,” he said. “What did I do to deserve it?”

  “Listen,” she said, and perched opposite him on the arm of one of the big chairs. “It’s a kind of small celebration.”

  “Oh? What are we celebrating, then?” He picked up a piece of toast, biting in.

  “Dad. Do you trust me?”

  “Of course I do,” he said, chewing.

  “You know how, back in the early part of the summer, from time to time—even though she never picked up—I would, you know, try Mom’s cell,” she said. It was true. “Remember?”

  “I do. Jax and Max, too. And eventually we decided you kids should stop it, that it was getting you down. Hearing her talk on the voice mail and never reaching her.”

  “But so, I tried again, just, kind of, for something to do. You know, like randomly, because I was bummed out or whatever. Yesterday night.”

  “Mmm,” said her dad, and nodded slowly, cocking his head to one side to keep listening. She thought he was trying not to look judgmental.

  “And the thing is…” A white lie, she thought. For his own good. “She picked up.”

  Her dad stopped mid-chew, slowly setting his half-eaten toast down on the desk. Lifting his feet carefully off his
desk, setting them on the floor, and sitting forward. The front legs of the chair made a cracking sound as they hit the floor. As though in a daze, he brushed his hands together, maybe to clear them of a fine dusting of crumbs.

  “She picked up,” he repeated, dully.

  “She really misses you,” Cara put in quickly.

  He was staring down at his hands, spaced out, now, on the desk in front of him as though bracing him against it.

  “Cara,” he said. “This isn’t something to kid about.”

  “Dad. Look at me,” she said. She realized she was twisting her good-luck ring, the nazar. “Do I look like I’m joking? I wouldn’t do that to you. Or myself, either. I’m not making it up. I’m not inventing or joking or fantasizing or anything like that. I talked to her. You need to believe me.”

  He nodded slowly, gazing at her face. She saw how isolated he felt—as though the ground, all of a sudden, wasn’t so steady beneath him. And then he faded from view and she saw something more—two children, walking along the seacliffs together, where the wild roses grew. Their clothes were kind of retro—it had happened long ago, she knew. In the seventies, maybe. Then she recognized them: her parents. Their faces were so young. No lines on them or anything, clear skin and bright, perfect eyes.

  They stopped at the edge of the cliff and looked out at the ocean together, smiling and holding hands.

  “I know she promised once, on the cliffs, that she would never leave you,” she said softly as her dad came back into focus.

  That was what they’d been saying, though she’d seen it rather than heard their words. It was almost shocking to see him again the way he looked now—old and complicated. And far more resigned than he’d looked then. Kids’ faces, she realized, had so much less in them than adult ones. Sure they were beautiful, but they were kind of blank, too.

  It was the first time she’d seen something in the course of normal life, she realized. The first time a vision had come to her where it felt like her own.