Chapter 29 Sinkhole
SINKHOLE
Seattle still stands, I’m happy to report, even if Medusa is gone, reduced to a pile of rubble that caved in on itself, destabilizing the buildings next to it, which also fell in turn.
We made our way out of the tunnel before we could be trapped by the landslide, blinking in the penetrating daylight, clinging to each other for support, his neck a ring of bruises, my face a field of scratches, our frail bodies in shock from all we witnessed, from being swallowed and then spewed out from the belly of the whale.
But alive—desperately, inconceivably, wondrously alive.
That was six weeks ago.
Experts are calling it a sinkhole, a geological bombshell that nobody saw coming and everyone is lucky didn’t get any bigger than it did.
They’re not wrong, of course. But they’re so, so far from right.
Storms and floods have rampaged along the Washington and Oregon coastline ever since, downing power lines and flooding whole towns, overturning boats and leveling homes.
They bring renewed cries and reports of climate change, causing humanity to turn its gaze back to the terrible power that formed it, the Fathom leaving a trail of destruction in her wake, making sure her wrath is remembered for centuries to come so that no one dares attempt to hold her again.
But she could have done worse. So much worse.
Sadly, the property at Solidago was ravaged in one these very storms. The winds roared and the waters rose, I’m told.
The bluffs toppled in great chunks into the sea.
The house was flooded and torn apart, old trees uprooted to crash in on it.
Nary a stick was left standing. Even my grandmother’s legendary fireplace mantel was demolished this time, the pieces of marble hungrily carried to the ocean by intruding waves.
Mira drove out to inspect the damage for me, said the field of goldenrod had at last been drowned.
Mr. Colby has taken it much better than Mr. Lampitt would have—all his fine efforts to see my grandfather’s vision restored brought to ruin by wind and rain.
He did try, half-heartedly and unsuccessfully, to convince me to rebuild.
But surveyors declared the site unsuitable.
The erosion is too deep, the ground too uneven.
What was, they insist, can never be again.
The property, it seems, is no longer fit for human habitation.
There are plans to turn it into a nature preserve instead, which will come with a handy tax write-off according to my new finance lawyer, who, alongside my new estate planner and Mr. Colby, insists that Macallister’s will is not nearly as unalterable as was first presented.
Mira will manage the preserve for me, making sure nature is allowed to take its course.
It will be a very low-impact, hands-off kind of job, but still important.
She’ll be more than adequately compensated.
Far more. It will afford her a very nice life in Bandon with every comfort, where she can be near her boys, now grown, one with a boy of his own.
For myself, I have no desire to return to either my old home or my old job.
That life is at last behind me. I’m starting a foundation in Dara’s name.
We’ll raise money to help families in need, whether it’s property or repairs, legal assistance, or medication and surgery that’s warranted.
I don’t really discriminate. There will be enough to go around because I’m already our largest donor.
I spend many days helping Levi in the store and taking his grandfather fresh bagels and cups of Seattle’s finest coffee at the rest home.
He seems happy enough to see that Levi is no longer alone, and always pats my hand before I leave, calls me mamele as he insists that I come back tomorrow so he can finally teach me how to make his Passover brisket, though he never does. Levi says it’s the thought that counts.
It’s on one of these days, when I’m busily helping Levi shelve some new releases the store just got in, that the doorbell jingles.
I can feel her enter the room before I see her, a sticky sort of presence that beckons like an itch.
I turn to see Cadence on the front rug, rain dripping from her now dark hair, a slicker fisted at her chest. She doesn’t smile until I do, and then her face breaks open with a toothy grin, her eyes crinkling with emotion.
I take her raincoat and lay it across the end of the counter, leading her to the rare editions room where we can speak privately. She looks around a moment before turning to me.
I shake my head. “I didn’t know if I’d ever see you again.”
Her smile is soft this time, brief. “I only just got back to town, but I sensed you here the second I crossed the county line.”
“You don’t have to worry anymore,” I tell her. “Twig and Rock, Arla, they didn’t—”
“I know,” she tells me. “My abilities have dulled some since it happened, but I couldn’t feel them anymore. I knew they were gone.”
“You saw the news then?” I ask her now. “You know she’s been set free.”
She nods. “When the storms came, I figured she was making her way to the South Pacific.”
I’m glad to see Cadence, though a little uneasy still after all that’s passed.
She takes a breath. “I’m not staying, just so you know. I came back to take care of some things, and then I’m moving to Kansas City. Somewhere away from the coast.”
I lean against the table behind me. “Can’t say that I blame you.”
“I wanted to come by, though, to let you know I was okay.” She glances around the room, sensing something, and her eyes grow round and luminous.
I see her hands knot themselves into familiar fists.
Trailing off, she walks over to the back wall, where a glass-topped case sits on a middle shelf, locked. Her eyes gaze down at it.
I move to join her, peering through the glass. I usually avoid this particular relic, letting my eyes glaze over as if it isn’t even there. Inside, a worn wrap of dark leather can be seen, pages bound within, the top tucked in a bit like an envelope. Rudzitin’s journal.
“You kept it,” she whispers.
I thought Arla had taken it when she took Levi, that it was lost in the wreckage at Medusa, but he’d actually left it at his house that day before going to check on his grandfather. I’d nearly forgotten about it until we came across it later. “This seemed like the safest place,” I tell her.
“And the key?” she asks, curious.
“It’s gone. Disappeared with everything else into the sinkhole.”
“Good,” she says. “That’s good.” She turns back to the case with the journal. “It reeks of blood.” She reaches down and lifts the paper tag that dangles from the empty lock. NOT FOR SALE, it reads in elegant script.
That seems to appease her, though her fingers tremble ever so slightly when she drops it again. She takes a breath, then seems to square her shoulders and shake the memories off. “Well, I should be going.” She turns for the door.
I follow her out into the bookstore, to the front. “Don’t be a stranger,” I tell her as she prepares to leave.
“I think I will,” she says. “It’s better that way for us both. But I wish you nothing but the best, Jude. Thank you for doing what the rest of us couldn’t.”
I nod and watch her go, the swish of her legs so fast she’s practically running out of the store.
Levi meets my eyes from where he stands behind the register, ringing someone up, and a silent understanding passes between us.
The nightmare is over. But for me, the dreams have only just begun.
I still see the Fathom when I close my eyes at night, still feel her mysterious presence when a dark cloud passes overhead or a black cat shoots across my path.
Still feel her essence in the heat of a fire or the crash of a storm over the sea, the chill of a starless night.
I know she is only one of many, a multitude she’d claimed, and I believe her.
So would Anneli. Because there are more things in this world than we can name.
Strange things. Dark things. Wondrous, magical things.
But I’ve no interest in caging them. Unlike Arla and Rudzitin, I’ve learned my lesson twice over.
And I think my mother was right all along.
There is something inside me. Maybe it’s a touch of God, like she said.
Or a touch of hell, as Rudzitin believed.
Maybe it’s just the fire, the burning all women share, that dragon of feeling and power and passion coiled around our hearts that gives rise to our deepest desires and our darkest fears, that holds the seeds to both our making and our undoing.
But like the Fathom herself, it comes from the deep, from a place that can never be fully known.
Maybe it takes a fool to trust it.
But it takes an even bigger one to ignore it.