The Fires Beneath the Sea ebook (19 page)

But how to forgive them?
How?

And then she saw the pirates when they were kids. She saw, in one long rush like a deep fast-forward, a movie that sped through her in swift flashes of perception, the ugly history of their lives. She saw how they were born and how they were hurt, the dingy spaces they barely lived in, the cruel figures that inhabited those small and stinking rooms. She saw how meanness made them feel alone, how the whole world turned into their enemy slowly because they made the wrong choices. And finally that left them here, the unloved and unloving, the criminals that hovered here as ghosts.

They’d lost themselves, she thought. They’d lost their own souls, if that was what you called it—those pieces of themselves that felt pity for other people. The pieces that could love, the pieces that were kind. 

They weren’t strong enough, and they were weak when they were hurt, and they couldn’t say no to any of it.

That’s what it is, she realized. You have to be strong enough to say no.

The viciousness came from being weak.

The scene flashed away for a second, and instead of it there was the face of the Pouring Man. Frowning.

Was that the pressure of Jax’s hand? Maybe. It made her feel better.

You are losing
, she told the Pouring Man, and as she thought it she felt an enormous grief flow through her for all the people who never had a chance to be happy, to be who they wanted to be, to live in the world without being made of pain. The grief was almost an ache, so powerful, so glittering and moving like a clean, fast river, that it made her forget to be scared.

I can see past what you want me to see
, she thought.
I can see what people want to be.

The river kept flowing through her, and then the Pouring Man was a few feet away. He had receded a bit. His frown was angry now, his teeth bared as though he was going to leap forward and tear open her throat.

No
, she said, and felt sensation slowly creep back into her arms and legs like the tingle after your foot fell asleep. That
was
Jax, holding her hand—she was sure of it.

A kid would turn away, she thought. A kid who was too weak to stand up to the bad guys. And some people stayed kids forever, even though they grew old. They grew old but they never grew up. They never got stronger at all.

I
want
to turn away, she thought. Who wouldn’t?

But I won’t.

This isn’t your world
, she told the Pouring Man. She felt as though she was speaking clearly through the thickness of the salt, through the liquid, the words flowing out of her mind with the force of objects.
It isn’t his world
, she thought to the ghosts, who streamed from him now, streamed from his shoulders and his hands and arms like dark flags into the water, shapeless, flapping things.
It doesn’t have to be.

And then she was back. Her body was hers again; he had withdrawn his sourness from her flesh and blood in a shocking split-second, leaving her warm and full of energy. She was here in the water, only a couple of miles from her home, holding Jax’s hand.

And the ghosts were on the Pouring Man. They were clawing and shredding at him, his arms, his shoulders, his face and his head. They had their hook hands into his black rags, their knives and swords shoved into him, all over him from every possible angle. They mobbed him.

The ghosts were on her side.

We’ve won their loyalty
, thought Jax to her.
You did it. They can’t kill him, though, because he’s not alive. All they can do is stop him for a while.

In no time the Pouring Man seemed to be falling apart. He was peeling, splitting down the middle.

As they watched he was
rended
—that was the word that came to her. He was ripped into parts as though his body was soft—stringy in the middle, stringy as the sides of him split off and dark fragments floated in disarray. There was no blood, nothing like that, because, she guessed, he didn’t have any; and as he split and drifted, the ghosts shrank back into the shadows.

She turned and looked at Jax, and she thought he was smiling, or would have been if the regulator wasn’t blocking his mouth. But then his expression changed, and she looked where he was looking.

Because the dark fragments that had been the Pouring Man were drifting together again, piece by piece. They made two columns in the water, two small columns; they were turning into something. Not into him, but into two people. They gathered and became more solid and more colorful. They shaped into figures of children—children wearing scuba gear. Children with masks on, and oxygen tanks on their backs. One with long hair, the other shorter and blond.

Her and Jax, in fact.

She was looking at two kids who might as well be their own reflections. Like a mirror image.

Except for their eerie smiles. The other children didn’t have to close their mouths around the regulators to breathe. They simply smiled, with water flowing through them. And Cara recognized those smiles, because they weren’t the smiles of kids.

The smiles were his.

She looked at Jax, trembling. He pointed upward, and in that same moment the copies began to rise. They didn’t swim, didn’t even move their arms: their arms, like the Pouring Man’s before them, hung at their sides, motionless. Despite this they rose through the water.

Jax let go of her hand and fumbled to unclip his weight belt. Then she was grabbing at her own, letting it drop onto the sand beside the rope, and she felt herself turn buoyant again. He was pulling up through the water, and she was beside him, kicking her fins .… It was a race, clearly; she didn’t have to be Jax to know that. They had to beat the copies to the top.

Those versions of themselves were not them. They were him.

And they could hurt Hayley.

Gasping, she and Jax broke the surface.

And there was Hayley, sitting in the kayak, looking shockingly normal—part of the world of makeup and clothes and TV, the regular, mundane world.

Her face was lit up by one of the flashlights; apparently she hadn’t wanted to sit alone in the dark.

The boat was rocking a bit but not close to flipping.

“I can’t believe it!” she said. “Wow, what a relief. I was about to call 911!”

But then, behind her on the other side of the boat, in the dark, another Jax and Cara broke the surface too. Hayley jumped in her seat and turned around, shining her flashlight down at them and giving a short shriek.

All of them pulled out their mouthpieces hastily, all four of them struggled to raise their masks onto their head so they could talk to Hayley. All four of them had bruise-like creases on their cheeks where the masks had bitten in.

“They’re not us,” Cara told her, her lips numb with cold.

“They’re
him
,” said Jax. “Don’t believe them.”

“No,” said the fake Jax, talking just like the real one. “
We’re
real. Those are the copies. Please, Hayley. Believe us.”

“Please, Hayley,” begged the fake Cara. “It’s me!”

It was amazing how much she looked like her—even her voice, the way she ran her hand over her wet hair.

“You have to choose,” said the fake Jax. “You have to choose between us. Choose the real ones. Choose us!”

The real Jax bobbed up and down in the water, splashing. “Hayley! Be careful! If you choose wrong they’ll hurt you—”

“So choose right!” said the fake Cara. “Choose me!”

“Follow your instincts, Hayley,” said Jax, shaking his head. “Don’t second-guess yourself. You know the real us, I know you do.”

Treading water, Cara gazed up at her friend, who was casting the beam of the flashlight back and forth between the two sets of them.

“What is this,” said Hayley, sounding angry. “What’s happening?”

“
You
are the arbiter,” said the real Jax. “Not Max. It’s you who’s supposed to be the impartial judge. But you have to choose the version of us that’s real, Hayley. That’s real and wants to be good.”

“I’m sorry for bringing you here,” said Cara. “I am … but the bad one could say that too, the copy of me. But she couldn’t know what’s on your mother’s shelf of statues, could she? She could never know that. Could she?”

“Careful,” warned Jax. “If I know, the fake me could know, too. Because he can read me.”

“I know what’s beside the girl with the white goose,” said Cara. “Do you?”

The real Jax shook his head.

“Hayley,” urged Cara. “It’s the gnome thing with the cone-shaped hat. And the basket of mushrooms. Could the copy know that?”

“Don’t ask me,” said Hayley.

Behind her, the false Cara smiled. “I know that too. She said it first, that’s all. And I know more important things, also,” she said. “I know how you feel about
Max
.”

Cara groaned and looked over at Jax.

“No! Don’t choose them! They’re going to hurt you!”

Hayley was casting the flashlight back and forth between them. Cara couldn’t see her face behind the brightness of the beam and felt panicked suddenly. It was too much to ask of Hayley, too much to ask of anyone.

“OK,” said Hayley, and swung her light from one pair of them to the other. “I pick. It’s
you
.”

Who? Cara squinted up until the light was out of her eyes again. She saw Hayley looking down—at
her
.

The real her and the real Jax.

Cara let out a sigh of relief—and as she did so her friend swung the beam around again, till it pointed at the copies.

They were melting, their faces losing definition like wax statues under a flame. They flowed onto the top of the water, spreading like oil, and dispersed.

In a few seconds there was no trace at all.

There was a brief pause, full of the sound of her and Jax breathing.

“Nice,” said Jax, when he had caught his breath.

“How did you know?” asked Cara.

“I didn’t,” said Hayley, and raised her shoulders in a quick shrug. “You guys just seemed more desperate … plus, I admit. I didn’t think you’d throw the Max thing in my face.”

“Does this mean he’s gone?” Cara asked her brother.

“For now,” he said.

Her heart sank. When would they beat him so he didn’t come back at all?

“Listen,” said Jax, and put his mask back on. “Our work’s not quite done yet. Almost, but not quite. Hold on, OK, Hayley? Just a few more minutes. Dive down along the rope, Cara, and put your weights back on.”

“We’ll be back,” said Cara, and slid in her regulator.

“No!” said Hayley. “Are you kidding? Don’t you dare—”

But they had to, and following her little brother, Cara sank underneath the waves again.

They were going down, down, down—pushing without the dive weights took far more effort—and Cara saw that the glow was starting to diminish. Whether the plankton were leaving or winking out she didn’t know; there was still some brightness in the water, but it was definitely less.

As they neared the bottom she felt something fly past her—a flash of bubbles, glinting in the dimness.

On the soft sand of the bottom, Jax handed her her weight belt again. She clipped it around her waist and then thought, trying to pull at him:
Jax. What was that? Moving past us?

He shook his head.

As they made their way toward where they’d met the selkie, Cara looked down and around at the wreck fragments poking out of the ground. It was harder to see now, with the light fading, and she had to concentrate hard to make out shapes through the growing gloom.

Where were the ghosts?

And then she saw—in the darkness beyond, she could detect their shapes, their eyes and their lips and thin hands. But then the shapes were changing. The outlines flickered and when they reappeared were different. The bodies turned sparkling, becoming less dark—they were all shining now, twinkling and glistening and fading.

What is it? What are they?
she thought at Jax.

They’re like dolphins
, said Jax’s clear head-voice.
But not exactly. I think it’s—yeah. They’re dolphins now, but they’re also still ghosts. Ghosts that can leave this place, finally.

And the translucent dolphins were churning the water, and then they leapt in a great, joyful rush, spinning past her and Jax and leaving streams of silver bubbles in their wake—passing them both in a kind of quick caress, a series of grateful nods good-bye.

Cara thought: So now they’re free.

She watched as the wake of their bubbles vanished into the dim distance, and behind them the water settled into quietude once again.

After a long moment she felt a presence behind her, and she and Jax rotated slowly, swishing their swim-fins. The selkie was hovering, her dark eyes like pools you could fall into and never come out of.