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

been close to anything so other. Next to the selkie, even the ghosts of long-dead pirates seemed almost normal. The selkie was not of this world, she knew—it was from myth; it was like meeting a dragon.

If myth were true, she thought—if all of it were true!

Jax’s forehead was against the selkie’s as though they were head-butting. Then he pulled away, bowing solemnly. And before Cara knew it the selkie was gone again, swooshed off into the darkness underneath the waving kelp.

Jax was pinging her.

She wants to give me the key, but she can’t.

Why not? thought Cara.

Because he’s coming now.

The water around them seemed suddenly colder.

Of course he was coming.

So? she thought at Jax, insistently. Can’t she just give it to us and then we can go? Get out of here and away from him?

We have to make ourselves safe first. We have to stand up to him. If we can, he won’t be able to get into our heads anymore. He won’t have access to our minds. Then she can tell us what we need to know.

Stand up to him? How?

I’m not sure. But maybe the ghosts can help us.

The ghosts? The ghosts of pirates? We have to get help from them?

Behind him, in the gloom, the flickering forms of the ghosts shifted and weaved, faintly menacing but suspended.

She felt a tug of despair. Jax looked so small in front of her, so slight and babyish, his blond hair waving in the water, his small body, in the overlarge wet suit, dwarfed by the tank gear and the weight belt.

Here they were in this alien greenness, this universe unknown to them. No Max, no Dad, no anyone—

No one else even knew where they were. No one knew they were here in the deep, here in the ocean where even grown people drowned.

She’d never felt so alone.

The cold and the Pouring Man, making his way toward them. When they were down here, surrounded by water—breathing his element. At their very weakest.

And all these ghosts at his command. These ghosts who had been cruel while they lived, and probably could be cruel now.

It was frustrating. It seemed practically impossible, to push out fear.

And if she and Jax lost, if they lost….

But Jax? What happens if we lose?

Don’t think about that, he told her steadily. He’s coming now. And we can’t run. We can’t move. We have to stand up to him, whether the ghosts fight for him or for us. Just don’t give in to fear.

I need to know, Jax. Now it’s your turn to tell me everything. What happens if we lose?

There was a silence between them, a blankness. And then:

It’s simple: if we lose, then we’re his, thought Jax heavily. We’re pressed into service. We join him.

She shivered despite herself. Slowly she raised her hands in front of her, her fingers whiter than paper, wrinkled as an old, old lady’s. Behind the white hands, the dark ghosts in their slow and shifting field.

They anchored themselves next to the rope, directly under the buoy again. She didn’t know why, except that it seemed, in a way, closest to home—closest to the only thing that was familiar: the kayak their dad had built.

And she grabbed one of Jax’s hands. If she could keep hold of his hand, she was thinking, that would help, anyway. His fingers were pruney like her own. She held them tightly.

And when he raised the other hand and pointed, her heart leaped into her throat.

Across the sand, from out of the gloom where the brightness barely reached, the Pouring Man was walking toward them. Just walking, impossibly, on the bottom of the ocean. His clothing floated around him, but it seemed to be rags, black rags, and nothing else about him floated at all. Not even his hair. It was still plastered down over his forehead, as though it was soaked in a way that not even the ocean tides could touch.

His feet hit on the sandy bottom, placed one in front of the other, deliberately and surely, and the sand rose around him in soundless dusty clouds.

He smiled, she saw, but it was not a smile you wanted to see. Not at all.

As he got closer and closer, walking ploddingly with a slow-motion gait, the smile exposed his teeth. His upper lip was pulled back in a snarl.

Still he came, and she knew she was squeezing Jax’s hand so hard she might be hurting it, but she couldn’t help herself.

He walked right through the ghosts, when he was close enough—walked through them like they were nothing at all, and they scattered at his approach, shifted away from him, slinking and cowering as though, at any moment, he might hit them.

His teeth were sharp, she saw when he was only a few feet away. She was mostly looking down across the sand, trying to contain her dread by looking at the ground instead of up at him. She couldn’t close her eyes, she knew—that would not be facing him, as she must—but she didn’t have to stare right at him, did she?

She did. She did, for all of them.

She forced herself to look up again. The colorless eyes. The teeth that came to points. The blue, rubbery lips.

I know you, she thought. You’re the dead soldier. Your name is fear. My mother told me about you.

And he nodded. Unhurried, the way all things seemed to happen here. He moved his head up and then down with a kind of condescension, as though she was a stupid child and he was humoring her.

Your name is fear, she thought. I am afraid of you. 

No! thought Jax. No!

But she shook her head. You can’t beat fear if you don’t admit to it. So I admit it. But I won’t run. You won’t get me.

His smile seemed to waver a bit, but then strengthened again. He was near them, maybe six feet away, maybe five … four … three….

Behind him the ghosts pulled in and rose up, a