Fathom (41 page)

Bernice shifted and hugged her legs. “And what about
me
?”

At first no one answered, but Mossfeaster shrugged and said, “Eventually, she’ll catch you and kill you. There’s too much water in this world for you to hide forever. Do understand, little shark: You may travel with us if it suits you to have company while you repair yourself. But we are not your guardians, and we will not protect you. You have chosen your own path. Now she’s going to chase you down it, and you will run that way alone.”

East, into the Center

I
n the center of the peninsula, the land was not so easily cooled by the wind that blows across the ocean. The air was thicker and warmer, and in the afternoons when the thunderstorms wandered through, it was much wetter. There was no salty breeze to dry the dampness out, so it hung close to the ground and scarcely stirred.

East, and away from the water, the rain forest foliage thinned, and there were fewer trees. The landscape stretched into patchy places where the low spots became swampy, and the higher spots grew short, scraggly trees and tall, whip-sharp grasses.

Where it wasn’t white and brown, the world was a blackened green.

Nia had never been so far away from the water. She’d never seen the peculiar stretches of Florida that look like picture books of Africa. It was strange to her, the way it was dry except for the oil-dark puddles that stretched for acres, but felt so heavily wet to breathe. Even with the windows down, there wasn’t enough motion in the air to take away the worst of it.

The ambulance looked and felt like an oven, and every half hour Mossfeaster would swear that they had almost arrived.

When the vehicle overheated outside of Lake Wales, the passengers all unloaded themselves and set to walking.

Even Bernice, with her battered head and mutilated hand, could move again. She walked slowly and uncomfortably, but the few hours between the shore and the state’s interior had given her time to rest and heal.

Nia watched her cousin struggle to put one crooked foot in front of the other. It was difficult to match the sight with what she knew of the girl a few years ago. The broken, hobbling woman who shambled as if she were a thousand years old . . . she couldn’t be the swift and wicked thing who casually murdered and dressed like a photo in a catalog.

Maybe she’ll always be like this,
Nia thought.
Healing but never healed, that’s what Arahab said. Or maybe that means something other than the obvious.

She made a point of walking alongside Bernice, keeping the slower pace while Mossfeaster and Sam pushed on ahead. The sun didn’t so much shine down as press down, shoving against them with fiery hands that made them drag—except for Mossfeaster. He seemed to enjoy the warmth even as it dried him out. With every step, he’d shed another dusty puff of dehydrated leaves and dirt.

“You don’t have to keep me company,” Bernice said to Nia without looking at her. “I’m slow, but you don’t need me anymore, right? That’s what your big freaky friend said.”

“That was the gist of it. You made your own bed, and now you’ve got to sleep in it. That’s how Grandma used to put it.”

“Grandma. I guess you lived there with her? With them? Before you came down to the island, I mean.”

Nia nodded.

“Have you been back there? Since . . . since everything?”

“No.” Nia thought of telling her everything—how she’d been awake and alive again for only a few short days, how she’d been trapped at that house on the beach in the interim. It was that same damn house, the one she’d visited out of boredom, curiosity, and familial politeness, to which she’d been anchored by death and magic. But she stifled the impulse. She knew Bernice well enough, knew better than to tell her anything at all that she might use later.

But Bernice pressed, trying to squeeze out more. “Why not? I thought you liked them.”

“And you didn’t?”

“I barely knew them,” she said.

Nia almost argued, but then realized that Bernice might be telling the truth, just this once. “I guess you moved to New York when you were pretty small. Do you even remember Grandma?”

“I remember that there
was
a Grandma. I have this idea of her, like she was a big woman who wore men’s clothes that didn’t fit her too good. I think of her wearing overalls like a farmer, and having her hair held up in a scarf like the one you were wearing.”

Nia mumbled, “She
did
work on a farm. And it was her farm, too, after Grandpa died.”

“So they might still be there, right? Up in Tallahassee? Isn’t that where you came from? There might still be a farm there, with Grandma and your mom, and maybe my mother, too.” Her voice sounded funny, or maybe it was just the condition of her mouth.

Nia didn’t like where this conversation was going, so she wasn’t sure how to answer. It gave her a pang that tasted like sorrow and
terror when she thought about Bernice showing up at the orchard. It made her throat clench to imagine how that might go. So she lied with caution. “I heard that your mom was going back to New York. If you’d look around, you’ll see—times aren’t real good. I don’t know if they’ve kept the farm or not. Lots of farms are going bust, and if Grandma couldn’t keep hers, I don’t know where else they’d go.”

“So you didn’t go looking for them?”

“No,” Nia said. She did not add that she’d not had time. “Things are different now. What would I say to them, anyway? It’s been years since we’ve been gone. They probably think we’re dead, and it would only confuse them and maybe hurt their feelings if they found out different.”

“Why would it hurt them? Maybe they’d be happy to hear we’re all right.”

“Happy? Only if you could make up some story they’d believe. And it’d have to be pretty crazy, but pretty believable—if you wanted them to think you’d been alive for years, but you never let them know you were safe. I can’t tell them I’m all right, because then they’ll wonder why I didn’t say something sooner, and I’m not—” She glanced sideways at Bernice, who was watching her closely through that matted hair. “—I’m not as good at lying as you are.”

“Thanks,” she said.

“You’re welcome, I guess.” She wanted to stop talking, but she couldn’t. She hadn’t had anyone to talk to in so long, except for Mossfeaster and Sam. “So, tell me, would you? And I know there’s no way I can believe you, but I want to hear you make something up anyhow. Why did you do it?”

“Why’d I do what?”

“Any of it? What’s wrong with you, Neecy?”

Bernice grimaced. “Don’t call me that. That’s what Daddy
called me, before he died.” She took her time working up an answer, but the words she picked weren’t very complicated. “You ask that question like you figure there’s no real answer. And maybe there isn’t. What do you want me to say? You want me to make up some big defense? I don’t owe you that. I don’t owe you anything. I saved the goddamned world today, and I don’t have to tell you a thing. I’ve always got my reasons, how about that? You and me are different, that’s all.”

“It’s not just me,” Nia protested. “You’re different from a lot of people.”

“Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe I’m just lucky or something.”

“Maybe you’re just crazy.”

Bernice’s face twisted, unable to decide on a frown or a smirk. She settled on a smirk. “Anything’s possible, isn’t it? I wouldn’t have said that once, but now? Anything’s possible. Hey, wow. Would you look at
that
?”

“What?”

“That.” Bernice pointed west. And there, rising above the rest of the landscape, appeared a tall, thin streak against the sky. They must have been a few miles away yet, but there it was: a pink, fleshy colored needle standing alone on a hill.

“That,” Mossfeaster said over his shoulder, “is the tower. And that is where we’re going, in case anyone was concerned about getting lost. If we get separated, now you know where to meet.”

Bernice stopped and cocked her head to the right. A tattered curl dipped away, and Nia could see that she had two eyes again; the one that had been crushed back into her sinuses had filled out, and although it was red and watery, it was blinking and aware. “That’s it? A tower? That’s how you’re going to get that thing away from Arahab?”

Mossfeaster kept walking, and everyone else did, too, so Bernice resumed her shamble and caught up quickly.

Nia wasn’t sure how she felt about Bernice’s speedy hobble. Her performance was improving faster than her appearance, and it worried Nia. This was just one more way for Bernice to lie, if she wanted sympathy or if she wished to feign weakness.

The creature at the lead faltered, and then tipped its head toward a pair of dirt ruts that might have served as a road. “But we’re going to detour, slightly. For safety’s sake.”

Bernice rubbed at the side of her head and asked, “For whose safety? Mine?”

“For everyone’s. I don’t know how fast your Mother moves through groundwater, but if she wants to lash out, she’ll try it from the lake nearby. I prepared this place years ago, back before either of you became what you are now,” Mossfeaster told them. “I should warn you that it’s haunted, but the haunting is benign and barely even interesting. Edward loved the place so much, he chose to remain. He says he likes the bells.”

“Is this even a road?” Sam kicked his soft leather shoe into the sand. “It looks more like a trail.”

“Be quiet, all of you, if all you can do is argue and complain. We’re nearly finished, and then you can scatter, or stay, or do anything you like.”

“But this tower, you said it’s safe from Arahab?” Bernice had fixated on that implication and was clinging to it.

“Yes. I chose the location because it would repel her. It is perfect in its design. It is as if the world-makers agreed, ‘There ought to be a place where she cannot go.’ And I found it, and I found a man who could reinforce it. And now it is a great fortress.”

Mossfeaster shifted its shoulders and changed its direction. “Follow me,” it said. “This other path is an old military trail, and it will take us quite close to where we wish to be. The tower is only part of the fortification.”

“You’re telling her too much,” Nia said too loudly. “Don’t you
understand? You can’t trust her with these things—you can’t trust her with
anything.
”

“What do you care?” Mossfeaster asked. It leaned its astonishing bulk forward and across a tangled stash of grass and low-growing bushes. “You’re stronger than she is by far. There’s no treachery she can wrangle against you, and yet you behave as if she holds you at knifepoint.”

Even Sam objected to that statement. “No treachery? You obviously don’t understand people very well.”

“I’ve been watching your kind since before you could carve your names into rocks, and if there’s one thing I have learned, it’s this: You don’t know yourselves at all. You’re an oblivious bunch, deluding yourselves from insecurity, or love, or anger. Afraid of your own strength, and afraid of your own weaknesses, too. It’s a wonder you’ve managed to survive for as long as you have.”

“At least we’re not obtuse,” Sam grumbled.

While the rest of them bickered, Nia was observing Bernice and feeling uneasy. It wasn’t her cousin, this time; it was something else—some strange quiet that filled the place. There was a sense of effort and pressure, as if they were walking uphill.

And then, there were no more birds.

Nia stopped, and Bernice went only another step or two before she followed suit. “What are you doing?” she asked, but Nia waved her quiet.

“Something’s wrong,” she whispered.

The thick but scraggly grass around them did not rustle at the edges of the rough road, and the ordinary sounds of rodents had vanished into a distressingly obvious silence. The air around them was heavy, but it was always heavy. And now there was nothing flying through it, nothing singing or calling from it. There was nothing but the tyrannical humidity and an overwhelming sense of foreboding.

But it wasn’t until she saw the snakes and turtles charging across their path that Nia noticed the swampy patch of earth out in the middle of an otherwise bleak and featureless field. It wasn’t a lake, and it could scarcely be described as a pond. It was only a spot where the ground was soggy enough to shine with a thin coating of stagnant damp.

Everything that prefers to swim but sometimes crawls was fleeing the water, running from the disturbance that bubbled at its center.

Mossfeaster froze, and then whirled around to face the rest of them. When it spoke, it was so quiet that they barely heard its words, even though they stood mere feet away.

“It isn’t enough water,” it assured them. “Even if she’s found us, there’s little she can do to us.”

Bernice was rallying a good panic. “We’ve got to run. We’ve got to run!” she squeaked.

Nia grabbed her by the arm and pulled her close to keep her from bolting. “You heard the big dirt monster. We’re out of reach.”

But the wet patch was swelling and rising. It was bubbling as if it were oil, coming up out of the ground black and viscous. The boundaries where water and swamp grass met became more distinct as a nebulous shape struggled out from the center.