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

She watched as he knelt down, punching buttons, taking photos with his phone’s camera function.

“Do you need my help for this part?” she asked.

“No, take a break,” said Jax. “It’s cool.”

She stood looking through the trees, letting her eyes rest on the water, where insects walked, seeing the movement of tadpoles or minnows now and then. She zoned out. And then, a few minutes later, he was done and packing his equipment back into the knapsack.

“So?” asked Cara. “What did it say?”

“Thing is, I couldn’t get quite as precise as I wanted to,” said Jax. “My guess would be just offshore at either Nauset or Marconi. But I’m not sure.”

“Let’s get out of here, then,” said Cara. “I’m wet, muddy and covered in mosquito bites.”

On their way out, for icing on the cake, she slipped in the water and fell backward, soaking her shorts right through to her underwear. It felt grainy and slimy and made her itch even more than the bugs had. Slogging onward in her wet clothes and clammy sandals—ahead of Jax now in her eagerness to get home and change—she passed under the trees and out into the meadow again, and looked down to see a snake slither right by her foot. She jumped back.

“There are no venomous snakes on the Cape,” said Jax. “That was probably a black racer.”

“It just startled me,” she said, annoyed but resigned. “I’m not afraid of snakes, anyhow.”

“I know you’re not,” said Jax.

“So those middens are—archaeologists come and study them?” she asked.

Jax nodded.

“And that was probably someone’s kitchen a long time ago?”

“Not exactly,” said Jax. “But close enough. It could have belonged to the Wampanoag, for instance. They lived here for centuries before white people came.”

“So now it’s ruined, probably. I mean history-wise, we wrecked it. No one will be able to study it now.”

“Cara,” Jax said gently, “we were the ones who were meant to find it. Think of it that way.”

“And the Indians, I mean what if it was sacred to them?”

“It was their garbage dump, Cara.”

“Still …”

“This isn’t just about finding Mom, you know. I mean, obviously.”

She stopped walking and looked back at him, startled.

“No?”

“It’s bigger than that,” said Jax. “Far bigger. You can feel it. I know you can.”

She considered for a moment. There was the mysterious and the unexplained—the water falling and falling off the Pouring Man, coming from some unending, invisible source … the ancient turtle hovering just to talk to them, a stream of air rippling and twisting between it and Jax.

Even the skate eggs. Pulsing with some malevolent life.

A secret world hidden in the world they’d always known. A secret all around them.

Yes, she could believe there was something going on.

She could.

But what she wanted was just to find her mother.

“Why us, Jax?” she asked after a while. “I mean, I can see why you would be part of … you’re one of a kind. But Max and I—I mean—I’m just an average kid.”

Jax reached forward and grabbed her hand.

“Not true,” he said.

With his hand in her own she felt better, less like an unpaid assistant to a Great Genius. And for once their two hands, both caked in white, were equally grubby.

There was just enough room on the dirt path for them to walk abreast. Butterflies flitted over the meadow and a mouse darted over the path in front of them. She saw a red-winged blackbird rise out of the tall reeds, and as the two of them cut through the meadow a breeze swept through and swayed all the grass in one direction, with a sound like a long, gentle hush.

They went home, showered (at least Cara did; you never knew with Jax), and changed into dry clothes. Then they each wolfed down a couple of sandwiches, standing up at the kitchen counter. While she was eating, it struck Cara that she’d hardly thought of her mother all day.

Right away she felt guilty, as though she’d betrayed her, as though her mother was being forgotten, and the sandwich turned dry in her mouth.

She wouldn’t want me to think of her all the time, she told herself to make herself feel less guilty. She’d say it wasn’t healthy.

She closed her eyes and pictured her mother smiling as she said that, smiling wryly and shaking her head. It made her feel better, but only a bit.

A few minutes later they got on their bikes again and rode out to meet Max at a mini-golf course where one of his friends had a job. Because Cory worked there they could always play for free, and this way they wouldn’t have to worry about their dad hearing them talk about their plans.

When they went in Max was behind the counter helping Cory with customers, which in practice meant handing out scorecards and stubs of pencils and eating stale popcorn from the machine.

He threw back a last handful of popcorn, grabbed three clubs and three different-colored balls, and walked them out onto the first hole, where he put down his ball and teed off into a miniature windmill.

“So? What’d you find out?” asked Jax.

“No luck yet with the Whydahlee,” said Max. “I did some research on fires in the ocean, though. It could be volcanoes, for one. Like submarine volcanoes, right? That’s fire under the ocean. Right?”

“Magma, technically,” said Jax.

“Problem is, there aren’t that many active ones near here. The nearest might be too far for us to get to.”

“Like where?” asked Cara.

“Um, the Caribbean,” said Max.

“Big help,” said Jax.

“Yeah, so I figured that’s probably not it,” said Max. “So then I figured maybe it’s something that hasn’t happened yet, you know? Like say a tanker has an oil spill or something, and that catches fire.”

“But that wouldn’t be under the sea,” objected Jax. “It would be on top of it. On the surface.”

“True, my man,” Max conceded. “I also thought, maybe it’s the mid-Atlantic ridge, you know? I guess lava comes up there, from the rift or whatever. But that’s