The Fires Beneath the Sea ebook by Lydia Millet (best beach reads .TXT) 📕

and the Pussy-cat went to sea in a beautiful pea-green boat … They danced by the light of the moon, the moon, they danced by the light of the moon.

They were nearing the glow on the waves now, and it began to look like something unearthly—not the reflection of lights from boats or shore on the waves, nor the shine of starlight, that much she was sure of.

“Can anyone see the buoy?” asked Jax, who was farthest forward.

“Not yet,” said Cara.

“Here,” said Hayley, and snapped on one of the flashlights. Ahead of them her beam jumped on the water, but revealed nothing. “Oh well.”

On and on, and briefly Cara turned and gazed back at the shore behind them, which looked almost as dark as the water, as far as she could see. A ways to the north there was one point of light, which she thought was maybe a restaurant called the Beachcomber—it was the only business on the beach side that she knew, up at Cahoon Hollow. It was built right over the water, a tourist trap, as her dad called it, and was always crowded in the high season. As far as she knew, it was the closest thing that would be lit up at night north of here … and then she heard a gasp: Hayley. She turned back around in time to see, gleaming ahead of them, an ocean that looked turquoise.

It was lit up like an aquarium. She couldn’t tell whether the thrill she felt was one of excitement or plain fear.

She felt herself break out in a sweat—or maybe she just noticed that she was already sweating beneath the oversized wetsuit, which was awful to paddle in.

“That’s it, Jax,” she said.

“Has to be,” he agreed.

“We’re going to have to do it without Max.”

They gazed at each other, not quite believing it.

“The buoy is yellow,” she said after a minute. That was the way she had seen it. “Let’s look for it.”

“We need to tie the boat to the buoy,” added Jax. “And Hayley, you’ll be the lookout. Then, if we need you, we can pull on the anchor line and you can come in.”

“Lookout? Alone?”

“Look,” said Jax. “We don’t know what we’re doing. We may need someone out of the water, someone who could help if something happened to us. Because this—this is his domain.”

There was a silence as Hayley waved her flashlight around; but it was swallowed up in the glow from the waves, no use at all.

“There,” said Hayley, and pointed.

Sure enough, a yellow buoy floated a few feet away.

“I’ll tie it,” said Jax, and before they knew it he was doing an odd slither off the boat and into the water. The kayak rocked but didn’t flip. Jax half groaned, half screeched. “Cold! It’s so, so cold!”

“I can’t believe you’re doing this,” said Hayley. “And I don’t get it—how deep down is the wreck, anyway?”

“It’s not supposed to be too deep,” said Cara.

“Very shallow. About thirty feet,” sputtered Jax from the water, working to attach the boat to the buoy. She could see his legs moving beneath the glowing water to keep him afloat, vague silhouettes. The kayak bobbed away from him for an instant, pulling the rope taut, and Cara steered them back with her paddle.

“There,” he said, and then tied on another rope—a guide rope that was going down with them into the depths. He scrabbled with a hand in the front hatch of the kayak and brought out a donut-shaped weight, which he fixed to the end of the rope before he dropped it into the water.

“How’d you learn to tie all those knots?” asked Cara, surprised.

“We had a thing on knots at camp,” said Jax, and then glugged some water by mistake and spat it out as he clung to the side. “They did a Boy Scout deal. So Hayley? We’re going to need a signal, in case of emergency.”

“How will you signal?”

“Three tugs in a row. And you can do it, too—tug on the rope if you need to,” he told Hayley. “Three sharp tugs in a row if you want us to come up. If there’s danger up here, danger to you, anything. I don’t think you can pull us up—it would capsize this thing. So if we signal, all it means is you should get out of here.”

“And you can paddle back in to shore if we’re not back in what—Jax?”

“It should be about two hours, since it’s so shallow here. I mean, I think we have about two hours’ worth of air. Cara, I’m going to need you to put my dive weights on me. After that I’ll sink down. The belt’s in the bottom there. So—let’s do the masks first, OK? And then hand me my weights and I’ll just drop…”

“Masks on,” said Cara, and handed his over the side.

They adjusted the masks over their eyes and noses.

“Wait,” said Cara, and propped hers up on her forehead. She felt suddenly panicky. “Jax. We don’t have a clue what we’re doing! We don’t even know why we’re going down there!”

“She needs us,” said Jax, sounding pinched and nasal through the thick, cloudy plastic. “You know that, Car. That’s why we’re going.”

Cara stared at him, but his eyes were invisible through the mask, in the dark. He stuck his regulator into his mouth and flicked on his headlamp.

Finally she took a deep breath, flicked on her own light, and put in her own mouthpiece.

“Good luck, guys,” said Hayley. “Don’t die on me.”

Cara clicked her own weight belt on and handed Jax his, and as he grabbed them and sank, she reached up out and touched the back of Hayley’s hand. Then she slid backward out of the kayak—as close to the backward roll Max had taught her as she could come without a normal diving boat.

Cold, cold, cold. Even with the wet suit on.

She got her bearings for a second, breathing the way Max had taught her, only through the mouth. Now I’m a