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

should revert. I hope. But for sure we can’t go near him, at least until then.”

“Whew,” said Max. “So that was the guy I saw? He can do that? Horrorshow.”

They sat down on the bottom stairs of the staircase, all three of them in a row. Cara thought the sound of the sprinkler had stopped, but she wasn’t sure. They could hear a faint but steady scratching at the door. She wondered if any of the neighbors had come outside, had watched the blood-red water shoot up into the sky and rain down on their house in a torrent.

They’d get some weird looks tomorrow if the neighbors had noticed. That was for sure.

“Wait him out,” said Jax. “It’s all we can do.”

“But what about the warding charm?” asked Cara. “What if it’s not dry outside by then?”

“We’re lucky on that one,” said Jax. “Except for the Rufus factor, that is. The path of the ritual is from the back of the house, the basement door, right down to the water. The front yard’s not part of it.”

“But he could attack, couldn’t he?” said Max. “If he still has … that … inside him.”

“Probably someone should leash him,” said Cara. “We should tie him up. Shouldn’t we? I mean it’s not only us—he could hurt someone else, with the Pouring Man telling him what to do. And then poor old Roof would be blamed. And none of this is his fault.”

“But it’s too dangerous,” said Jax.

“I’ll do it,” said Max.

“With a broken arm? Great idea,” said Cara.

“I’ll do it,” Max insisted. “I can still use my fingers a bit. It’s not like the hand is completely useless. Enough to snap the leash anyway.”

Before they could stop him, Max had grabbed the leash from its coat hook and was outside. The door closed behind him.

“That’s just great,” said Jax. “What if the man gets in him, too? Then what? Because he wasn’t with us last night, he isn’t as safe as we are. He’s got no protection.”

“You have to tell him that,” said Cara. “We do.”

They expected sounds of growling and biting outside, but none came. Cara felt nervous. It was too quiet.

“I have to see,” she said, and opened the door a crack to peer out.

At the end of the porch Max was lying facedown, turned away. Rufus was leashed to the rail—but he was also hunched over Max, gnawing.

Gnawing.

“Max!” she cried, and without another thought she jumped out and was on him. The dog was growling and snapping, but she didn’t care—she dove past him, grabbed Max and dragged him, and then he rolled over and was crawling, too, and they were at the door and the dog was biting at their shoes, had one of Cara’s shoes off and pulled it right off her foot so that her sock-foot dragged across the porch slats. … She felt the dog’s wet mouth on her ankle and a pang of fear, but then Jax was there and they were in.

Jax slammed the door closed again.

Breathing hard, she grabbed Max’s shoulder.

“Max! Where’d he bite you?” she asked.

Max rubbed his eyes and then raised his broken arm weakly. Halfway between the elbow and the wrist the cast was almost gnawed through, with a gouge in it that was nothing but a pulpy, dirty mass of plaster and gauze.

There was something on it that looked like blood, red smudges and smears, but she realized it wasn’t Max’s blood. It was the red water soaking Rufus’s fur.

The not-dog’s teeth hadn’t reached Max’s skin.

They lay there, recovering.

“Children?” called Lolly. “What’s all the ruckus about? Are you playing too rough out there?”

Rolled eyes.

“Just—uh, just playing normal!” called Jax. “Sorry! We’ll try to be quieter.”

They waited for a second, making sure she wasn’t coming out into the hallway.

“Thanks, Car,” got out Max finally. “He faked me out. He let me clip him, and then he knocked me down. I held him off with the cast, but—”

“How does it feel?” asked Jax.

“It’s OK, I think. A little sore. I’ll have to get it fixed—”

“Max, listen,” said Cara. “You can’t take on the Pouring Man. What we did last night? It gave us some protection from him. Facing him down, I mean. But you don’t have that protection. So you have to be really careful of him.”

“Promise, Max?” asked Jax. “Let us take the risks.”

Max just groaned, a groan of frustration. Or annoyance.

Then he said, “I totally remembered, by the way.”

“Remembered what?” asked Cara.

“What the witches said. We had to memorize it. ‘Eye of newt and toe of frog, wool of bat and tongue of dog. Adder’s fork, and blind-worm’s sting, lizard’s leg and howlet’s wing.’ ”

“What’s a howlet?” asked Cara.

“No idea.”

“Probably an archaic form of owl,” said Jax. “Luckily, we don’t have to dissect anything for this particular charm.”

“Thank the lord for small mercies,” said Max.

Ten

“There isn’t any incantation,” whispered Jax. “Nothing for us to say but Mom’s name. There is something I have to think—that is, hold in my mind, is what the selkie said—at a certain point while we’re casting the herbs on the ground. Part of a rune poem in an ancient language. Something about the North Star. I think it means, more or less, ‘The star keeps faith with us, never failing, always on its course through the mists of the night.’ ”

“Uh, right,” said Max.

“Say it how it really sounds,” said Cara, curious.

“Tir biþ tacna sum, healdeð trywa wel wiþ æþelingas; a biþ on færylde ofer nihta genipu, næfre swiceþ,” recited Jax.

It sounded very strange—as though Jax was speaking in tongues, which Cara had seen once in a horror movie Max forced them to watch that involved snake-handling.

“So, nothing to, like, chant?” asked Max. “No toil and trouble?”

“You’re off the hook,” said Jax.

The three of them were huddled just inside the back door that led outside from the kitchen, down a narrow gravel path through their small backyard and beneath the pitch pines to the