“I thought Edie’s mother was.”
“Yes, but she can’t come. Too much danger of infection. Everyone knows what you did, taking care of Elladaire and curing her, so they’re planning the meal for you.”
He shifted from foot to foot in embarrassment. Piet didn’t blow his own horn; he didn’t want to hear it tooted at a small town gathering, either. “I’ll eat anything.”
“It’s not about the food. It’s about how they’re cooking it in advance, then keeping it warm at the firehouse on electric hot plates they’re borrowing from caterers in Amagansett. No candles, no open grills. No using the gas stoves or ovens.”
Susan, who appeared to have moved back in with me, uninvited as usual, added her two cents: “We’re going with clam chowder, cold fried chicken, raw clams on the half shell, cold crab cakes, lots of salads and ice cream and brownie sundaes for dessert. The only thing needing cooking there is the corn on the cob. We’ll manage with electric heating coils. No problemo. There’ll be a cash bar, lots of door prizes, a fifty-fifty raffle, and dancing later. It’ll be great. Save me a dance.”
No one said no to Susan.
Piet agreed to stay, but he couldn’t just sit around waiting. He joined in the search for Roy and went on every fire call between Montauk and Southampton. The other fire departments were thrilled to help test out his new chemical extinguisher. They all wanted to order cases of the stuff as soon as it hit the market, it worked so well. In between, he put out a lot of those deck chimineas, a couple of romantically lit fireplace settings, every charcoal briquette in his drive-by vicinity. He did more to help people quit smoking than all the government ad campaigns combined. Susan’s presence kept us from acting on impulse, which, I suspected, was her intention.
I wanted to leave the Harbor, too. I had deadlines, friends in the city, dry cleaning waiting to be picked up, a jade plant, and a notice from my dentist that I was due for a cleaning. Okay, nothing was crucial, but the east side apartment was home. Paumanok Harbor was a summer place, and summer was over. Mostly, I was getting too little work done on my new book, too much time spent thinking about sex and men and sexy men. And bugs, of course.
I decided to get back to the fire wizard story and leave the one about the sea god for my next project. Maybe by then I’d figure out if the mythic tale I’d made up to explain M’ma was true or merely my imagination. I’d ask M’ma if he knew which, when he woke up.
Which was another reason I had to stay. No one was throwing me a party, or even happy to see me remain in town, but I had to be here. I couldn’t leave M’ma and the Lucifers. Everyone else felt like Piet: they cared more about getting rid of the otherworld creatures than they cared about their welfare. I heard whispers about explosives, napalm, and bulldozers.
No way, I shouted back to anyone who’d listen. These were sentient, sensitive beings, I told every psychic I knew. They were intelligent and loving and beautiful. Killing them could bring down the wrath of far more dangerous beings. And they’d be gone soon, I swore, and hoped it was so. The nights were getting cooler, the police force was stretched too thin, hurricanes spawned in the tropics, and outsiders were bound to question the story about the seals.
The local espers accepted my arguments, then they appointed me the expert on the unmentionable in the wetlands.
Should they dig out the channel? Should they erect an awning to keep the sun off? What about food and water? How soon would the blasted bugs be gone?
I went to ask.
A committee came with me when I visited M’ma. They said it was too dangerous for me on my own. I believed they wanted to see him for themselves.
They’d be disappointed, if past experience meant anything. So far no one but me and Piet, slightly, had seen the glorious colors of the lightning bugs or felt their mantle of peace and goodwill. Matt described M’ma as a lump of grayish decaying flesh, but he didn’t have any special powers. Piet, though, who was pure magic himself, saw the same thing. Nobody on the visiting committee was a Visualizer. Only I was, which did not make me feel special, only more responsible.
We walked a recently cleared path from the nearest parking spot to a gate in the hastily erected fence that kept M’ma’s region private. Charlie, the Town Hall attorney, manned the gate along with Vinnie the barber. Only people on their lists could enter the proscribed area, which aggravated me. If I was in charge, why hadn’t anyone consulted me about who could bother M’ma? He wasn’t a damned sideshow freak, or a science experiment like Martin believed.
I demanded to see the lists and wanted to know who wrote them without asking me, but Vinnie waved a hand in a circle around his head, and then I remembered: he could detect auras of paranormals. No ordinary citizen could get past him. Charlie pointed to his heart, and I recalled that he could sense evil intentions. I wish airport security had a thousand Charlies, instead of a thousand rules and regulations. M’ma was safe under their watch.
Everyone with me passed their tests.
I had Lou from DUE (the ominous old guy who had a sometime thing going with my grandmother. Talk about unmentionable!)
Two water wizards.
Three telepaths.
Four healers.
Five truth-seers.
And a partridge in a pear tree.
Well, maybe the partridge was an exaggeration, but someone brought kelp and baitfish in case M’ma was hungry, and someone else carried in an olive branch, a Russian olive that grew wild around here, in case M’ma recognized the symbol.
He didn’t talk, not to me, not to the telepaths. Then again, I didn’t hear anything from them, either. Maybe they chatted among themselves, but I had no way of knowing.
The healers had no idea how he had survived this long, how he could improve, or what could hurry the process.
The water dowsers didn’t think they could make the ditch flow again, and the human lie detectors now believed what I’d said. Lou just shook his head.
“That’s no whale or dolphin.”
“No seal either.”
“No fish.”
“No insect.”
“No nothing anyone’s ever seen.”
The truth people agreed.
I watched their expressions and saw repulsion, curiosity, fear, and pity. None of the serenity and peacefulness M’ma and the beetles usually exuded. They saw a huge expanse of bloated, dead flesh and misshapen appendages, with eyes, ears, and mouth, if such existed, buried beneath the mud. I saw M’ma’s brilliance shining through more cleared patches. In my head I saw what he could be.
They saw a problem.
I saw a miracle.
We all had so many questions, so few answers. Even the beetles seemed to have gone into hiding rather than communicate with the specialists or me. I wanted them to show their nonthreatening nature, if not one of their artistic flight patterns, but none replied to my mental callings. I wondered if they expired when the new batch hatched, their job of propagating the next generation completed. We had no way of knowing, because no one was talking, out loud or across minds.
Discouraged, the Paumanok Harbor group started back to the gate. I stayed behind a minute for a last try to make contact. “I know you are resting,” I said, and pictured a slumbering giant. “And that’s fine. It’s a big step you and the young ones are taking.” I visualized a tadpole turning into a frog, a butterfly emerging from a chrysalis. Then I tried to send my curiosity, my need to know.
I got nothing back, so I gave up, too. I just wasn’t good at that. I could draw it, but without eyes, how could M’ma see?
Before I joined the others, though, I made a quick circle around M’ma’s bulk, for a fast estimate. Many less maggots worked their way down to the new shape beneath the decay. Where did they go? Maybe they went somewhere to make a cocoon, if that’s what they did. Grubs couldn’t fly, so they had to be near. I searched, trying to get an idea of the progress. I was careful where I walked, but I couldn’t find anything that could house an infant firefly. I knew s
ome beetles spent their entire lives underground so maybe the larvae burrowed alongside M’ma to complete their growth and transformation. But I didn’t see any holes in the soft dirt, either.
What I saw, in my head, was a picture of a rainbow-colored seahorse.
“A pretty picture, that’s what you send me when I need to know how to help you? I need more.”
This time I saw a crocodile, or maybe an alligator. I never could remember which was which. This one gleamed lavender.
“A seahorse and a crocodile? That’s supposed to make sense to me? You’re as bad as my father.”
Father, yes.
Oh, boy. I waited for more explanation but none came, so I left.
Lou waited at the gate. “Any progress?”
“Nothing that’s any help in getting him out of here.”
“Keep trying.”
I heard the unspoken “or else” and shivered.
I checked in with my father, in case he had better advice, or if he’d dreamed about seahorses or alligators. He had a stiff neck, maybe a lawsuit. His lady friend had a sore knee and three frantic, overprotective daughters. My mother was a pain in the butt, as usual.
In other words, no help at all.
“Seahorses and purple crocodiles?” Piet swore. “What’s next with you, fiddler crabs playing ‘The Flight of the Bumblebee’? This is real, not some kiddie story.”
I knew how real it was without his frustration bubbling over on me. I might invent a million plot lines, draw a million pictures, but I could not hurry M’ma along, or understand him better.
“Come with me and see if you can do any better,” I snapped. Things were not going well in the personal relationship department, either. Kiddie story? Our partnership took another turn for the worse when he refused to come visit the salt marsh with me the next day.
He didn’t want to see the ugly sight, he said, not when he could be putting out fires, rescuing people, saving property. Important stuff.
As if what I did was less valuable.
So I asked Matt to go with me.
I had to argue with Charlie at the gate, but he let the veterinarian through. Matt mightn’t have any supernatural powers, but he did not have any malice in him either.
He listened to what could possibly be heart sounds again. “It’s stronger, whatever it is.”
“Do you feel anything?”
“Damp.” The weather had turned raw and dank, the mud where he knelt sopping through his pant legs.
“No, I mean do you feel anything inside?”
“Hungry?”
I handed him one of the apples I’d brought along. “Not a physical sensation. More an emotion.”
He smiled at me. “Does that include attraction?”
Hmm. “I mean do you sense any calm, restfulness, welcome?”
“Here? In a swampy place with a dying beast? Not likely. Is that what you feel toward this poor animal?”
“Not recently. Sometimes, when the fireflies are up.” They had not been around for three days. I still couldn’t find a dead one or anything like a birthing nest for lightning bugs. I wasn’t getting any vibes from M’ma either. I hadn’t really expected Matt to, although I’d hoped his affinity for dogs and cats might help.
He couldn’t see the brilliant colors or the graceful shape coming clearer every day. Matt still thought the beached creature was a dolphin or a small whale. He thought he spotted a blowhole, but no eyes or mouth.
I knew M’ma’s eyes were shut. I knew they’d be azure blue and emerald green and gold, all at once. That’s how I’d drawn them.
“It’s a wonder this thing is still alive. I still think someone ought to consider putting it down. I am upset that the marine rescue people haven’t come, or the Humane Society.”
Lou and his agents had called them off.
Matt had no malice, but empathy gone awry could be equally as dangerous. He didn’t understand, and I couldn’t explain. I turned him back toward the path, away from M’ma. “Killing him is not an option. But tell me, do you know of any connection between seahorses and crocodiles?”
“Is this a riddle? I’ve never really studied either one. They’re not related, scientifically.”
“There has to be some common thread.”
He mightn’t have magic, but he found it. Seahorse fathers kept their babies safe in a pouch. Crocodiles were thought to carry their infants in their mouths to protect them from predators, like other crocodiles.
I rushed back and knelt by what I took to be M’ma’s head. “Is that it? You’ve got the babies in your mouth? That’s where they’ve gone?”
I felt a smile, inside out. Soon.
So I hugged Matt.
He didn’t understand that any more than he understood about M’ma. I didn’t care. “He’s almost ready.”
Which meant I couldn’t bring Matt back here again. I could not chance him seeing something so far beyond belief that he’d be a threat to all of Paumanok Harbor. Telling him that hurt his feelings, and mine.
We stopped at the gate. Charlie looked relieved I was leaving with the nonsensitive. “He won’t be coming back,” I told him and Vinnie, so Matt got the message.
“But you have no marine scientist here.”
“No. We don’t need one.”
“This is wrong! Who will care for it?”
“Could you?” I hated to hurt him worse, but there was nothing any of us could do to help M’ma.
“At least I’d make an effort to see about getting it back into the water.”
I wasn’t sure M’ma swam. “We’ll have help when the time comes.”
He looked back at the lawyer and the barber, and then at me, a writer and illustrator. “I see.”
CHAPTER 35
MY DRAWINGS LOOKED LIKE SHIT. My words sounded like they’d stepped in it. Sadness could do that to a writer. I missed the joy I usually felt in creating something.
My partner acted distant, as if the lack of sex meant a loss of friendship and goodwill, which was plain wrong and beneath his intellect, if not mine. We both knew he’d be gone at the end of the week, so neither of us was pushing for anything but to see Paumanok Harbor in the rearview mirror. I missed his solid strength and quiet confidence.
Matt turned unapproachable. He’d been scorned by his friends and neighbors, shut out again by the town he called home. His neighbors trusted him with their pets, not with their secrets. Now his snippy receptionist said he was in surgery; he’d call back. He never did. I missed his calm acceptance and steadfast decency.
I did not miss my cousin Susan’s snide remarks about my love life, or lack of it. How many unsuitable men could I fall for, she wanted to know. I wanted to know if she’d been sent by my mother. Why was it that Susan could sleep with half the men on Long Island, but I was supposed to be looking for that happily ever after with a man of magic? I wasn’t that much older than she was.
We stopped talking.
My two closest companions seemed to be a cranky Pomeranian and a sleeping leviathan. Little Red would be cranky tomorrow. Heaven only knew what M’ma would be when Rip Van Whalish finally decided to wake up: insect, sea creature, merman, or god? Maybe all four.
I took Little Red with me the next morning. He latched onto my ankle whenever I tried to leave the house, and peed on my shoes when I got home if I didn’t take him. And I needed the company, too. He’d be safe from fireflies because most had disappeared.
Someone new was at the gate today, a friend of Lou’s, it turned out, but not half as surly or intimidating. I did not know his talent, but he looked formidable with tattoos, muscles, and dreadlocks. Either he was a mind reader of some sort, or he’d been given an actual list this time. He gave Little Red an uncertain look, but he instantly opened the gate for me.
I carried the dog most of the way, then spread a thick blanket on the ground near M’ma. We sat, Little Red didn’t growl, M’ma didn’t send any messages. I felt better about things, though. Maybe M’ma sent his par
ticular warmth my way, or maybe my spirits rose to see the otherworlder looking better and brighter. I still couldn’t figure out if the appendages stuck in the mud were arms and legs, fins or wings, but I knew he’d be beautiful.
We stayed for a couple of hours, simply keeping each other company. That felt right also, as if none of us had a better place to be or any urgent tasks like putting out fires or transmuting into gods or writing books. I wasn’t afraid out here, alone with an alien being and the ticks in the grass. I wasn’t lonely or depressed or feeling inadequate to meet the town’s expectations.
Even Little Red relaxed and went to sleep in my lap until I rustled the bag of potato chips I’d brought. Then dark clouds covering the sun and sky meant it was time to go. I might be braver than ever before, but those black clouds meant thunder and lightning. “I won’t be back tomorrow,” I told M’ma. “There’s a big party.” I made mental pictures of people gathered together, eating, laughing, dancing. “I have to help set up. It would have been nice if your friends could put on a fireworks display, but I guess they’re all too busy. I’ll come back the next day to see how you’re doing. Should I bring anything?” The idea of bringing fried chicken and a beer out to this lump of decay was ludicrous, but I still had manners.
I got no response until I picked up the blanket and the dog.
Careful. Hurry. Soon.
“Careful of the storm, or some other danger? Come back soon, or you’ll be leaving soon?”
Careful. Hurry. Soon.
“Yeah, I got it.”
I ran home before it rained.
The storm raged all night. I huddled under the covers, feigning a headache. I didn’t want Piet or Susan to see how unnerved I was, not when I was supposed to be in charge of countering an alien invasion. Some heroine I was, clutching my dog every time thunder boomed.
The storm had blown out—or been blown out by the weather wizards—the next morning, the day of the benefit for Mary Brown. All that remained of the gale were some fallen branches, a couple of puddles, and some high clouds that looked like quotation marks around a lovely mid-September day.
Fire Works in the Hamptons : A Willow Tate Novel (9781101547649) Page 25