The Valley and the Flood by Rebecca Mahoney (i wanna iguana read aloud TXT) 📕

“The tides,” she says. “The death of our sun. The questionable quality of the avocados in the Jacobs Street Market. Take your pick.”

“Cassie,” I say. She still doesn’t look at me. “You never told me what happens at the end of your prophecy.”

“The future is a variable, Rose,” she says to her feet. “It can change. It changes all the time, without our knowing. When a prophecy doesn’t come to pass, it doesn’t mean the prophet was wrong. It just means we as a species took an unexpected turn somewhere.”

Her voice shrinks. “Sometimes it doesn’t matter how many turns you take. Sometimes a thousand different things could change, and every single one of them leads you to the same place. And if we don’t stop that flood from coming—there’s only one way this is going to end.”

I reach for her arm—not sure what I’m going to do with it, exactly. She sidesteps me and starts to walk.

“Let’s go,” she says to the hallway.

“Cassie—” I try again, but she keeps at that same clipped pace. And without conscious thought, I remember something she said yesterday, halfway down those basement stairs at Lotus Valley Elementary.

This isn’t how I die.

But I don’t just remember it. Someone whispers it in the dark behind me, too.

The skin on the back of my neck prickles, and I take a breath. “Something you’d like to say?” I ask.

Behind me, I hear the silver sound of jingling keys and a cleared throat. Then the voice.

“Need a ride?”

The air thickens as I spin around. The world behind me is no longer the darkened movie theater but a porch decked out with tea lights, a warm, bright island in a sea of trees. And at the top, grinning down at me, Nick Lansbury tugs at his key chain like a baited hook.

And that ever-present distant roar—it’s gotten louder.

I understand panic now. I understand it well enough that it doesn’t carry me away like it used to. This isn’t Nick. Nick has never in his life been so still. The Nick at the top of the stairs regards me in that same placid, watchful way as Gaby did last night.

“Okay . . .” I run out of breath halfway through the word. I take in a gulp of cool, damp air. It’s misting rain, here in the memory. I can see droplets of it clinging to Nick’s hair. “You want me to learn your language? Then I’ll guess. Are you trying to tell me that she’s right?”

Without blinking, the Flood nods.

One step forward for our communication, I guess.

I glance behind us, into the endless stretch of Sutton Avenue. I know I’m not really here. I catch those little differences from reality: the bare grass, devoid of trees, and the starless sky. But if not for the click of Cassie’s heels still echoing from the present, I might’ve forgotten where I was.

“Do you know what she means,” I say, “when she says you’re going to do something terrible?”

Another nod is my answer. This isn’t Nick. But I shiver. This might be as close as I ever get to an admission of guilt from him.

“I don’t know what you want,” I breathe. “But if you’re still trying to tell me, maybe you think I can give it to you. I’ll keep trying to understand. So just—don’t stop talking.”

The road doesn’t disappear when I turn. But I follow the sound of Cassie’s footsteps until it does.

Sixteen THE INTERMISSION

“IT’S BEEN YEARS. Many of your lifetimes, I’d say.”

The figures overhead, perched on the library roof at the southwestern point of town, look about fifteen feet tall in the light of the sun. But it’s hard to say. They’re only visible from a certain angle, and it’s impossible, somehow, to look at them directly.

But however hard they are to look at, they’re strangely easy to talk to.

“We are surprised,” another says. “We knew your flood to be a gentle soul. We heard rumors over time of a change. But we did not give them much weight.”

“Perhaps you might ask one of your own kind,” another chimes in politely. “They went to live among you. You’ve seen much more of them than we, surely.”

Cassie clears her throat. She’s not quite hiding behind me, but she’s close. “Humans don’t all know one another.”

I scribble Live among us? in my running list of notes, right below their collective happiest memory: a lengthy, lurid description of an ant climbing a cactus.

“Thank you,” I say. “That helps.”

“We wish you peace, child,” one says softly. The hairs at the back of my neck prickle.

“You might tell your kind to visit more often,” another says. “It’s become quiet, this place.”

“You kidnapped fifteen people from this spot in the seventies alone,” Felix says.

There’s a pause. Then, in a perfect imitation of Cassie, the sound of a throat clearing. “Our thoughts on humanity have evolved.”

“Oh,” Felix says faintly. “Neat.”

—

“HOW DID YOU not see this?”

“I’m not a gumball machine!” Cassie says hotly. “You don’t put in a quarter and get a—Rose!”

I barely start to peer around the doorframe before Cassie yanks me back. Seconds later, a casserole dish sails out of the house and shatters onto the front walkway. Casserole included.

“Mrs. Graham?” Alex, huddled at the other side of the front door next to Felix, somehow manages politeness and urgency as the same time.

“Get her off my property, Harper!” Mrs. Graham howls back. “Or I’ll call the law!”

There’s a pause. I think Mrs. Graham realizes, at the same time we do, that we’re technically the law.

And make no mistake, Mayor Williams chirps on the blaring TV. We must find common ground.

“You first,” I mutter.

Mrs. Graham recovers first. “I’m counting to five!”

“Mrs. Graham,” Alex starts, “if this isn’t a good time—”

A mermaid lamp sails through the door, shattering just past the Pyrex-and-noodle carnage by the steps. Felix, lips pursed, nods.

“Let’s just run,” he says. By the time it’s fully out of his mouth, he’s already moving.

“Felix!” Alex hisses, with