Fathom (8 page)

The woman in Arahab’s arms sighs, and the last small vapors from her lungs are expelled from her nose. There is nothing left in
her of the air-breathing, two-footed girl who ran along the beach. There is nothing left of the human she was born as.

Her transformation is ready to begin.

“I carried him down with me again, so that he could recover and later, perhaps, try again. I would consider a new strategy; I would conceive a new plan.

“But he had failed me, and there
was
a price to pay. As he was quick to note, I had promised him a legend if he would attempt the quest, and I had not rested my oath upon his success. And my word does not bend. So I granted him the gift.

“His name has passed into legend, now. His name will go down farther into history and into myth, as I swore. But that myth was not written by his peers, or by his family. It was not created by his friends. It was made by liars and enemies, and it became a story for lighthearted bedtime sharing between children. It became a fairy tale, written by idiots and told by fiends.

“I removed from the face of the earth every trace that he’d ever lived. There remains neither note nor relic to confirm he ever breathed before I claimed him.

“So he can have his legend, and my word has not been bent. But it is not the legend he would have chosen for himself. And, I think, it gives him great grief. His enemies insult him with their fondness, and with their familiarity. But there is always a price for failure.

“This is not to say that I hate my wicked little son, far from it. I love him, as I love you—and I have loved him longer. And this, my daughter, is where you join the story.”

If the woman hears her, she cannot signal it. If the woman cares, she is beyond the ability to demonstrate it. She sleeps, and listens.

“I have realized my mistake. It was not that I chose the wrong mortal, for I did not. It was not that I charted the wrong course, for the course was sound. It was not that my timing was false, for to creatures like the Leviathan and me, time as you feel it is meaningless. It was that the task I assigned was too much for one man. One man can do only so much against the forces I sent him to meet. Mere legend and mere lore cannot move him to the ends of the earth, and deeper and farther than that. Mere myth is not enough to push a man into darkness and beyond it.

“And so, I give him a new goal. I give him a new prize, and a new direction. I will send him again to that place where the bottom of the ocean is close enough to the surface that a man might touch it. But I cannot ask him to do this alone.

“And so, now I give him a
woman.
And another chance to take the
Arcángel
down to the bottom of the earth, where my father might hear my son if he carries a newer, more powerful call.”

The woman in Arahab’s arms does not open her eyes or signal that she’s seen, or heard. She does not move, or gasp, or agree, or dissent. She does not acknowledge hearing any of this, though she’ll remember all of it later.

The Cocoon

T
he tide receded and sunlight seared Nia’s eyes. It must have been morning.

Footsteps crunched in the sand. Nia, lying on her back, tried to turn her head to see who was coming, but her neck was terribly stiff.

In the distance, the waves chased each other back and forth across the sand, and seagulls argued over edible creatures the tide had stranded on shore. Up on the dunes behind her, the grasses whispered in the Gulf breeze.

The footsteps crashed closer. People were coming.

She wasn’t sure how she’d made it onto the beach.

“What’s that?” someone wondered aloud.

“It looks like a girl. Maybe we found one of them?”

“No. Wait.”

The two men stood over her and stared down in disbelief.

Help me,
she whispered.
Something’s wrong. I can’t move my . . . anything.

“Damn, Rick.”

“Where’d that come from?”

“Maybe it was on a ship. Maybe we should bring the sheriff.”

Nia would’ve jumped, if she could’ve moved.
Help me,
she tried again to cry.

One of the men flicked his finger against her arm. She felt the sting of the tiny blow, but his knuckle thumped solidly; it did not snap the flesh. She struggled to move, and to ask questions. The man had said, “Maybe we found one of them.” Her cousin must still be missing.

“What do we do with it?”

“I don’t know. Go ask Missus Marjorie. It’s her property. Or it’s
on
her property, anyway.”

Nia listened to their retreating footsteps. She was lying on her back, staring at the clouds.
Come back,
she prayed, because she could not speak.
I think you’re looking for me. I’m right here. Oh God. Oh God.
Panic surged through her limbs, but no fear, no anger, no amount of willpower could make them move.

A small crab scuttled across her toes and into a nearby tide pool. Its claws made a quick clicking noise when they moved across her. It wasn’t the right and soft sound of crustacean meeting skin.

She struggled for memories, but retrieved only blurry glimpses of the night before. There were bright eyes underwater, and wet darkness. There was blood. Someone had a knife.

Help me, come back. Get the sheriff, please. I have to tell him something. Please come back, I think I’m still bleeding. Go get my aunt Marjorie. Does she know yet? I have to tell her I’m sorry
.

The men returned, and with them walked an extra set of gritting footsteps.

“You found it here, like this?” Marjorie asked, peering down into Nia’s line of sight.

“Is it yours?”

“Mine?” She shook her head. “No, I’ve never seen anything like it.”

One of the men screwed up his face and applied a battered straw hat to his balding head. “It don’t belong to nobody, but it’s on your land, ma’am. What do you want we should do with it? We can’t leave it out on the beach.”

“Why not? What harm does it do?”

No one answered her, but Nia could almost hear the stares.

Marjorie sighed. “If you really want to move it, you can put it in the courtyard up behind the house.”

The man in the straw hat reached his arms around Nia’s waist and gave a mighty heave. His friend did likewise, grabbing hold of her thigh and calf in an ungraceful fashion. They hoisted her up and lurched unevenly across the sand, dropping her on the ground, then yanking her back into the air.

Nia hated them both—their groping hands and sweaty bodies. The grass on the dune tickled at her back as they pulled her across it and down into the yard, where they gave up on carrying her and concentrated on dragging her.

They made a final rally and jacked her into a seated position.

A pair of painted Mexican tiles cracked where they sat her down.

“Where do we put it?”

“That spot where the wall dips out. We can sit it on the shelf.”

She smelled blood. Even though she wasn’t breathing and could not gasp, she knew its odor, and it triggered more moments from the night she’d been there last; the fractured memories flashed through her head and burned themselves out like embers.

There was Bernice, sitting on the edge of the fountain. Her dress was sprayed with gore. There was a red tablecloth; she wore it like a gown. Silver glinted in the starlight, and there was shattered china.

It was an awkward process, but with many rough curses the men propped her into the cubbyhole. They stood back and surveyed their work. They shook hands. They smiled and joked about a job well done.

And they left.

From her new vantage point, Nia could peruse the whole scene, not that there was much of a scene left to peruse. Someone had scoured the place good; a passerby would never know that anything unusual had happened there, unless he looked very closely—as Nia had time to do.

Someone with nothing better to do would see the dark stains on the grass, stains that could easily be mistaken for shadows. Someone might notice the stray silver fork lying in a corner by the mosaic bench.

Later, someone might check his shoes and find a slim shard of glass wedged in the sole.

This happened,
Nia swore to herself.

The fountain had been shut off, so no water spurted artfully over the small ceramic fish. The table where all the anniversary party goodies once were stashed had been taken away. Plywood boards were nailed across every opening in the house, even the second-story windows.

What was that name again?

She very strongly suspected that she was losing her mind.

The first few months, she talked to herself incessantly and nonsensically. About anything. About nothing. She repeated history lessons learned years before and recited snippets of poetry and songs she’d picked up here, there, anywhere. There was one phrase in particular that stuck, and repeated, and wore a groove in her memory.

One impulse from a vernal wood may teach you more of man, of moral evil, and of good than all the sages can.
And oh, how she hated that damned vernal wood.

The courtyard couldn’t keep it at bay. No one mowed the yard, and the grass grew tall, tangled, and nasty. Raccoons and possums prowled at night; cicadas shrieked. Once, Nia thought she saw a great cat—a huge beige panther that moved through the grass more quietly than an owl sweeping through the air.

Our Father,
she tried to pray, but eventually she could not remember the rest of the words. So she told herself stories instead.

I was born in the middle of the night. A thunderstorm—or it might have been a hurricane—was tearing through the Gulf and smashing into Tallahassee, where I was busy being born.

Windows broke, wind blew through the halls, and my mother was lying in a cast-iron bathtub screaming at Aunt Marjorie, who was telling her to push.

Later that night, the clouds lifted and they wrapped me in a cotton blanket, and my aunt Marjorie, she held me close in what had once been my grandparents’ living room, and they stared at the sky, watching the stars fall.