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

“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.

But instead of giving them something—instead of handing over the key—she laid one of her flippers where Cara thought her heart might be. She bowed her head to both of them. And then, in a whirl of water, she too was gone.

Nine

When they got back to shore they were too tired to take the boat home with them, so instead of hitching it back onto the bike they hid it in the undergrowth to pick up later, along with the scuba gear and the snarled-up, peeled-off wetsuits. They were too tired to do almost anything but pull their sandy clothes on and start pedaling home; the sounds of dawn rose around them, birdsong and faint car noises, and light streaked through the sky, pink and yellow.

“So,” said Hayley. “When do I, like, get the skinny on what happened back there?”

“There were—there were these ghosts underwater,” said Cara wearily.

“Say what?”

“Dead,” said Cara. “These ghosts that used to be the crew of the Whydah. Like, pirates.”

“Cara had a faceoff with the Pouring Man,” said Jax. “That was when he split into two and shifted his shape….”

“We had to win over the ghosts to our side,” said Cara. “They were—Jax says they were the ghosts of the pirates from that ship. The pirates of the Whydah.”

Hayley just looked at them over her handlebars, her mouth open.

“He tried to scare us. He’s all about fear,” said Cara, but it sounded stupid, and she lapsed into an exhausted silence.

She wanted to ask Jax what had happened, why, after all that, the selkie hadn’t given them the key. At the same time, she