The Fires Beneath the Sea ebook - Lydia Millet (primary phonics .txt) 📗

of Eastham after they crossed Route 6, calling back and forth.

“So—I don’t get it,” said Cara. “If she could tell you where to find the finger, why couldn’t she just tell you where in the ocean we’re supposed to look? Isn’t it, like, adding an extra step? I hate when they do that in stories.”

“She just didn’t trust me to know what she was talking about,” said Jax. “It was easier for her to tell me where the finger was because it’s on land. Because I know this place. But I don’t know the ocean and it’s so huge and she couldn’t give me a picture of the location because it’s just under waves that all look the same. A needle-in-a-haystack-type thing.”

They rode up a street that climbed a hill past an old fort and locked their bikes on to a rack in a small parking lot. From up here, on top of the aptly named Fort Hill, they could see a sweeping vista below—the grassy marsh with its blue channels cutting through it, the lagoon, and a long, thin barrier island that protected the beach. The ocean looked very blue beneath the green fields of the headland.

Near where they left their bikes, a trail led along the shoreline, past meadows of wildflowers (and poison ivy; you always had to watch out for that). It wended its way through a swamp full of red maples, where sometimes Cara had seen tiny voles and shrews peeking out of holes in the ground.

Jax led her along the swamp trail, through the trees, and then over some raised wooden walkways where the mud turned to water.

“Here?” she asked.

Jax jumped off the walkway and into the muddy water.

“Are you kidding?” asked Cara. “I’m wearing my favorite sandals!”

“Shoulda worn boots, like me,” said Jax.

She stood there shaking her head in disbelief. She really didn’t want to go with him. The water was dark brown and stagnant looking, about a foot deep over a sludgy bottom.

After a long hesitation, reluctantly, she decided to keep her sandals on—who knew what she might have to step on?—and ducked under the wooden rail, splashing in after him. She felt the cold mud overflow the edges of her shoes and enfold her toes.

“Gross, Jax,” she moaned, complaining.

“It’s just mud,” said Jax, ahead of her.

The water came up higher on him, she realized, but he didn’t seem to care. He parted tree branches—it was some kind of thicket, growing right in the water—and they sprang back into her face as she went after him. Plus there were mosquitoes, which were already biting her arms and legs. She slapped at them and shook her head, exasperated.

Jax, of course, was immune to mosquitoes. Or at least, immune to the itching. He never seemed to notice when they bit him.

“You’re not even supposed to go off the walkways,” she yelled. “If the Park Service sees us, we’ll be in trouble.”

But Jax was paying no attention.

“It’s over here, I think.” And he pushed through some wet undergrowth into a shallow hole shaped like a grave and surrounded by twigs and moldy, dead leaves. The hole was lined in what looked like white, chalky pebbles.

“This is a shell midden,” said Jax authoritatively.

“A shell what?”

“Midden. It’s the remains of human settlement. There are a bunch of them around here, and they can be hundreds of years old, even thousands. This one looks like it’s never been excavated; maybe it’s even undiscovered. At least, by archaeologists.”

“I don’t get it, why’s there a pile of shells?” she asked impatiently.

“They’re mollusk shells, mostly,” said Jax. “See? Oysters, mussels … it was probably someone’s kitchen midden, and these could be what was left over from their meals. Like a trash pile, more or less.”

“So we’re supposed to what—go through someone’s ancient garbage? To find a finger?”

Jax climbed over the snarl of vegetation and knelt down beside the white depression, his knees on a rotting log.

“Help me,” he said.

She sighed, and then she knelt down too.

Combing through the old shells was hard; they were crumbly, and in some places the midden was like a pile of chalk dust. Her fingers turned white with the powder, and when she turned to look at Jax she saw he’d touched his face and left ghostly fingerprints on it.

“Start in this quadrant,” said Jax after a minute, pointing to one of the corners. “Move along this way, then begin again here. See? Methodical. That’s the key.”

“Methodical,” she repeated, nodding. “Wow, Jax. This is so fun!”

He kept raking his fingers through the old shells, and after a minute she felt sheepish: he was more patient than she was, and she was supposed to be the mature one. Not sarcastic.

“You’re doing a good job, though,” she said softly.

He flashed her a quick smile.

It was when Jax smiled that you could tell he was a kid; when he was serious he might as well be a senior citizen.

“Cara! Look!”

It was a row of long, thin shells, splayed out beside each other like—

No. It was a skeleton hand.

“Oh my God,” she said. It seemed unreal. She realized she was sweaty and dizzy and let her head fall back so she could stare at the sky. She saw mostly branches.

“Don’t worry—Cara! It’s not a person, OK? It’s not a dead person.”

“Not a person?”

She felt dazed.

“Rare to find human remains in a shell midden,” said Jax. “No, it looks like a human hand with fingers, but in fact it’s a seal flipper. See? Claws.”

“Oh,” said Cara, letting out her breath.

“It’s what she meant,” nodded Jax. “Yep. This is it.”

“They ate seals? The ancient people?”

“Maybe they were using the blubber for oil. Who knows? Point is, I need to do some mapping.”

He pulled out his phone.

“I can pinpoint this using GPS, then use the compass to map a vector from here. It’ll give us a general area in the water, at least.”

“But which seal finger is it? Look, they’re pointing kind of different places. Aren’t they?”

“Only one is complete,” said Jax. “I’ll use