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

“The Pouring Man?” Cara asked.

“His name is fear,” came her mother’s voice softly.

“What does he want with you?” asked Cara.

“He’s one of the soldiers of the Cold One,” murmured her mother. “The Cold One’s army of dead soldiers…”

“His dead what—? What do you mean?”

“Long, long story,” said her mother, and she seemed to be fading. Her voice came like a wave now, or the wind, with a kind of whisper. “But you are needed, Cara. All three of you are. In the struggle against them. And he doesn’t want us to be together for the struggle, because we’re weaker if he can keep us apart. He wants to keep you away from me, and keep you away from the others, too.”

“The other who?”

“Others like me,” said her mother and swirled in midair, getting blurry. For a second Cara thought she was floating on her back. Her voice was getting almost too thin and soft to hear. “Others among the guardians.”

“Why can’t you just tell us what to do, then?” Cara cried out, impatient.

“The more you know, the more easily he can know too,” said her mother, but now she was almost gone, getting smaller and farther away. She was receding. But Cara didn’t want her to.

“Don’t go,” said Cara. “It’s too hard! I can’t find you!”

“You will,” said her mother. “You’ll see. Because it’s you, Cara. You are the visionary.”

And Cara sat bolt upright in the dark.

She was breathing hard. She tried to calm herself, counting to ten until her breath came more evenly.

“Hayley?” she asked finally.

No answer. Hayley wasn’t in the tent at all.

She must have needed to go to the bathroom, Cara thought—there were bathrooms at the edge of the parking lot, along with the outdoor showers.

And Cara hadn’t told her about the danger. Cara hadn’t told her anything, and now she might be out there with him.

Rain was still pattering down on the tent; she would wait another minute or two and then go find her friend. The dream had seemed so real, except for the way her mother hung suspended in front of her .… But how could she be the visionary? Jax was the one who seemed to know everything, who had special powers….

She heard a hand on the door flap, scrabbling at it—trying to open the zipper in the dark. Hayley, come back. It was a relief. She groped for the lantern to help unzip the flap, and after a minute had the light switched on, illuminating Hayley’s fingers.

“Here,” she said. “That better?”

But Hayley’s fingers couldn’t get it to work—it was a sticky zipper—so Cara reached out and undid it herself.

“There, I got it finally,” she said. “Come in!”

Hayley kneeled and came through—the top of her head first, with its straggly part and light-blond hair. When she was all the way in, past Cara and settling down to sit on her own sleeping bag, she raised her face.

And Cara saw there was water running off her. Out of her wide-open eyes. Down her cheeks and her neck. Pouring.

And at the same time she thought: I asked her to come in.

Cara screamed. She couldn’t help it.

Before she even registered what she was doing she had thrown herself past not-Hayley, out the unzipped door flap, and was sprinting in a blind terror for the parking lot—toward wherever there might be light, the signs of civilization.

She ran pell-mell toward the parking lot and the cement-block restroom building, her feet slipping and sliding on the muddy trail, bumping into wet branches and slick grass as she went—

A light went on in the dark. It was the light outside the women’s room, on the wall of the building. It must have been triggered by motion, must go on whenever someone came near … and then she was inside the women’s room, which she’d never thought she’d be so glad to get to.

Something had stung her cheek, and she put her fingers up reflexively. They came away with blood on them. A cut from a pine branch, probably.

The bathroom was the same as ever. Fluorescent tubes overhead shone down on sinks and toilet stalls and the grubby gray tile floor.

And in front of the blurry mirrors stood Hayley.

Again.

Cara felt another scream rising but stifled it, stumbling back with her hands out, grasping for the walls and the door; at the same time, Hayley turned and gaped at her. She looked pretty much like she always did—no water pouring, none at all. Her face was dry and familiar. She was chewing her usual strawberry-flavored gum, which Cara could smell, and wore too much blue eyeliner.

It was light in here, after all. Light and dry.

“Is it you?” blurted Cara. “Hayley! Is it you?”

“Um,” said Hayley, “who else would it be? What is up with you? What happened to your face, girl?”

“He made himself look just like you,” said Cara, breathing raggedly, shaking her head.

She leaned over, bracing her hands on her thighs while she caught her breath. She couldn’t believe it. It was impossible. Water was one thing, but this?

Then she remembered something Jax had told her: something like eighty percent of the human body was water.

Was that how he managed it? Being the master of water?

And she had invited him in. She’d said Come in, believing it was Hayley. He had tricked her.

Would he follow them here?

She turned around and looked closely at the door, trying to find a lock. Hayley was saying something, but Cara was too frantic to pay attention to her. The lock wasn’t the right kind, though—the door could only be locked from the outside, for one thing, and to do that you would need a key. So she backed up against it, just in case. Trying to hold it closed with her weight.

“Cara! He who?” repeated Hayley.

Of course. Hayley thought they were doing a science project, and now Cara had blown it. But who cared about the details—he was close. He could get them any minute. It was still raining.

“We can’t go back to