4.

She and Max came out of their rooms into the upstairs hall at exactly the same time in the morning. It was early; she was surprised to see him. Usually he liked to hole up in his room till 11 on weekend mornings, headphones securely engaged.

“What can I say,” said Max, and grinned. “Curiosity and felines.”

They stood at Jax’s door and Cara knocked. When Jax didn’t open it they went in. A window was open, as usual, curtains fluttering in the breeze, but Jax was nowhere to be seen.

“Wait,” said Max. “There’s something else missing.”

Jax’s terrarium was gone, and so were his two saltwater tanks. In fact, his whole room appeared to be wildlife-free.

“No way,” said Cara.

They went down the stairs together; Max peeled off for the front yard while she went through the kitchen to the back. Past the clothesline, where the towel from the pouring man’s puddle still hung, through the pitch pines and bear oak, down onto the marshy shoreline. Past the patch of grass beneath her room where the skate eggs must have fallen—the eggs that were not skates but something else instead.

But there was nothing there.

The tide was low.

And there was Jax, looking absurd in nothing but big rubber boots and baggy blue swim trunks, his bare stomach and ribs smeared with dirt. He stood at the water’s edge, and a few feet behind him in the reedy mud were his tanks, tipped over and empty.

She wondered if it was dangerous, so near the water. But then, Jax had said the pouring man moved best at night, and it was daytime now.

“What’s going on?” asked Cara.

“Just re-releasing them,” he said. “They’re animals, you know. Wild animals don’t enjoy captivity.”

“Uh huh,” said Max, coming up behind Cara. “So that’s what the turtle did? Sang you the theme song from Born Free?”

That was a famous but boring old movie their mother made them watch, about training a tame lion to go back in the wild again. Totally seventies, but Jax loved it.

“No, the turtle, as you call her,” said Jax with some dignity, “was far less juvenile than you are.”

“Whoa-ho,” said Max. “Testy.”

“Really, Jax,” said Cara. “We’re dying to know, here. Did she—communicate something?”

Jax looked at Max, and then back at her.

“I told him,” she said.

“She said we have to go underwater,” said Jax after a few seconds, and sloshed through the shallows to pick up a plastic cup. He poured it out gently, and Cara thought she saw minnows glitter in the falling stream. “She said we have to watch the sea, and when the sea—lights up at night, I guess it was?—we have to go in. And if everything goes right a friend of hers will help us.”

“Help us what,” said Max flatly.

“Help us to get Mom back.”

Cara was still a moment, her flip-slops sinking into the mud. Then she pulled up her feet with a sucking sound.

“The night of fires beneath the sea,” she murmured.

“Yes,” said Jax, looking at her sharply. “That’s what she said! How did you know?”

“I found a message in Mom’s office. It reads like a clue. Either that or a prediction or something.”

“And how are we supposed to go, uh, underwater? Last I checked, you and Cara didn’t know scuba,” said Max, who did.

“So maybe you need to teach us.”

“Get out,” said Max. “Seriously, get out. You’re too young, and I’m not even fully certified myself. Remember?”

For a second the three of them stood there, in the mud and the water, an awkward triangle.

“Let’s cross that bridge later,” said Cara. “OK?”

“Look,” said Max. “I’ll keep my doubts to myself on most of this, but as far as going scuba diving with maybe a few days’ prep from someone who’s not even certified, it would be irresponsible. I can’t stand by and watch my baby brother get an embolism because of a bad tip a, like, zoo animal gave him through mental telepathy.”

“She’s not a zoo animal,” retorted Jax. “She’s a wild leatherback, Dermochelys coriacea, the largest of all turtles and the only living species in her genus. They’re critically endangered, which means one of her is worth roughly 300,000 of you.”

“Hey, thanks a lot for the show of support,” said Max.

“Plus, she was caught in a fishing net and almost died and they nursed her back to health,” said Jax, stiff.

“But Jax,” said Cara, “you’ve never been able to read animals. You don’t go around talking to pets or anything. So how did you do it?”

“I don’t know, but there was something different about her,” said Jax, softening slightly. “Dermochelys is one aspect of her, but not all aspects. That’s all I get right now.”

“So you’re not gonna be having deep talks with Rufus, then,” said Max.

“This was an individual with a special capacity,” said Jax.

“Phew, that’s a relief,” said Max.

“But there are more of them.”

“More talking turtles?” asked Max.

“More like her, whatever she is. I’ll know them when I see them.”

I’ll know them when I see them, thought Cara. See. See. Vision. Visionary. Interpreter, arbiter and visionary. She’d have to look up the other words from the message; “interpreter” was easy, but “arbiter” she didn’t know. Or “selkie.”

Faintly they heard the telltale bang of the screen door. Probably their dad stepping out onto the porch, stretching and bending down for the Sunday paper.

“Here, little dude,” said Max. “Let me help you with these,” and he picked up Jax’s terrarium to carry it back into the house.

Ω

They met in Max’s bedroom next, and he turned on his usual loud music—this time to disguise the conversation. It was the Ramones, something violent about beating up rats with a baseball bat.

Cara told them both about the skate eggs, which made Max shrug and Jax look perplexed, though definitely not as alarmed as she had been.

“I guess you had to be there,” she ended up saying, when neither of them had much of a response. “So here’s the message,” and she unfurled the small scroll and read it out loud.

They were silent for a while after she stopped.

“Well, that’s clear as mud,” said Max.

Jax cocked his head.

“So first off,” said Max, “it sounds like we have to find out when the seas are going to light up. Which—I mean, who the hell knows how we do that?”

“We have to wait and see,” said Jax. “Watch and wait. Wait and see.”

“Second, where is this meeting actually supposed to be? The poem, or whatever it is, said ‘sea.’ Which covers, oh, about two-thirds of the Earth’s surface last time I counted. So that doesn’t really, uh, pinpoint a location,” said Max.

“She told me where to look,” said Jax.

“She?” asked Cara.

“The turtle. She said there’s a finger that points to it.”

“A finger that points to it,” repeated Max. “Uh huh.”

“That’s what she said. We have to find the finger and look where it’s pointing,” said Jax.

“And that’s where we watch for the fires.”

“Man, hope it’s not the middle one,” said Max.

“How droll,” said Jax. “Quite humorous.”

“Whatever, you two go ahead. Find the finger,” said Max. “But then there’s still a problem. I mean, even if we figure out those two deals, there’s still the question of what we’re supposed to do. Once we get underwater. I mean I have no clue what any of that gibberish is supposed to mean.”

“Three must visit the old selkie…” mused Cara. “I think the three clearly means us. And I just looked up ‘selkie’ in dad’s big dictionary, and it’s supposed to be some kind of mythic creature that turns from a seal into a woman, or something. So maybe the turtle’s friend is a seal?”

“And who are the Whydahlee?” asked Jax. “And their bones…is it like an Indian burial ground?”

“Who knows,” said Max, making a face. “Not exactly ol’ Bill Shakespeare, is it.”

“Why don’t you take that one,” said Cara. “For now, Jax and I will try to find out where in the sea we’re looking. And you try to find out who Whydah Lee is, where she’s buried or whatever. OK?”

“And how should I do that? Ask around?”

“Like, you could start by just googling Whydah Lee or something.”

“True,” said Max. “When in doubt, google.”

“We’ll leave the underwater fires till later,” said Cara. “That one does seem kind of vague.”

Ω

She and Jax set off on their bikes by mid-morning, knapsacks on their back holding bottles filled with melting ice cubes and a couple of chocolate bars they’d picked up at a gas station convenience store. They headed for a spot in the next village along, called Eastham, inside the National Seashore. Jax said he thought they would find the finger there.

They coasted along the curving, tree-shaded streets of Eastham after they crossed Route 6, calling back and forth.

“So—I don’t get it,” asked Cara. “If she could tell you where to find the finger, why couldn’t she just tell you where in the ocean we’re supposed to look? Isn’t it, like, adding an extra step? I hate when they do that in stories.”

“She just didn’t trust me to know what she was talking about,” said Jax. “It was easier for her to tell me where the finger was because it’s on land. Because I know this place. But I don’t know the ocean and it’s so huge and she couldn’t give me a picture of the location because it’s just under waves that all look the same. A needle in a haystack, type thing.”

They rode up a street that climbed a hill past an old fort and locked their bikes onto a rack in a small parking lot. From up here, on top of the aptly named Fort Hill, they could see a sweeping vista below—the grassy marsh with its blue channels cutting through it, the lagoon, and a long, thin barrier island that protected the beach. The ocean looked very blue beneath the green fields of the headland.

Near where they left their bikes, a trail led along the shoreline, past meadows of wildflowers (and poison ivy; you always had to watch out for that). It wended its way through a swamp full of red maples, where sometimes Cara had seen tiny voles and shrews peeking out of holes in the ground.

Jax led her along the swamp trail, through the trees, and then over some raised wooden walkways where the mud turned to water.

“Here?” she asked.

Jax jumped off the walkway and into the muddy water.

“Are you kidding?” asked Cara. “I’m wearing my favorite sandals!”

“Shoulda worn boots, like me,” said Jax.

She stood there shaking her head in disbelief. She really didn’t want to go with him. The water was dark brown and stagnant looking, about a foot deep over a sludgy bottom.

After a long hesitation, reluctantly, she decided to keep her sandals on—who knew what she might have to step on?—and ducked under the wooden rail, splashing in after him. She felt the cold mud overflow the edges of her shoes and enfold her toes.

“Gross, Jax,” she moaned, complaining.

“It’s just mud,” said Jax, ahead of her.

The water came up higher on him, she realized, but he didn’t seem to care. He parted tree branches—it was some kind of thicket, growing right in the water—and they sprang back into her face as she went after him. Plus there were mosquitoes, which were already biting her arms and legs. She slapped at them and shook her head, exasperated.

Jax, of course, was immune to mosquitoes. Or at least, immune to the itching. He never seemed to notice when they bit him.

“You’re not even supposed to go off the walkways,” she yelled. “If the Park Service sees us we’ll be in trouble.”

But Jax was paying no attention.

“It’s over here, I think,” and he pushed through some wet undergrowth into a shallow hole shaped like a grave and surrounded by twigs and moldy, dead leaves. The hole was lined in what looked like white, chalky pebbles.

“This is a shell midden,” said Jax authoritatively.

“A shell what?”

“Midden. It’s the remains of human settlement. There are a bunch of them around here and they can be hundreds of years old, even thousands. This one looks like it’s never been excavated; maybe it’s even undiscovered. At least, by archaeologists.”

“I don’t get it, why’s there a pile of shells?” she asked impatiently.

“They’re mollusk shells, mostly,” said Jax. “See? Oysters, mussels…it was probably someone’s kitchen midden, and these could be what was left over from their meals. Like a trash pile, more or less.”

“So we’re supposed to what—go through someone’s ancient garbage? To find a finger?”

Jax climbed over the snarl of vegetation and knelt down beside the white depression, his knees on a rotting log.

“Help me,” he said.

She sighed, and then she knelt down too.

Combing through the old shells was hard; they were crumbly, and in some places the midden was like a pile of chalk dust. Her fingers turned white with the powder, and when she turned to look at Jax she saw he’d touched his face and left ghostly fingerprints on it.

“Start in this quadrant,” said Jax after a minute, pointing to one of the corners. “Move along this way, then begin again here. See? Methodical. That’s the key.”

“Methodical,” she repeated, nodding. “Wow, Jax. This is so fun!”

He kept raking his fingers through the old shells, and after a minute she felt sheepish: he was more patient than she was, and she was supposed to be the mature one. Not sarcastic.

“You’re doing a good job, though,” she said softly.

He flashed her a quick smile.

It was when Jax smiled that you could tell he was a kid; when he was serious he might as well be a senior citizen.

“Cara! Look!”

It was a row of long, thin shells, splayed out beside each other like—

No. It was a skeleton hand.

“Oh my God,” she said. It seemed unreal. She realized she was sweaty and dizzy and let her head fall back so she could stare at the sky. She saw mostly branches.

“Don’t worry—Cara! It’s not a person, OK? It’s not a dead person.”

“Not a person?”

She felt dazed.

“Rare to find human remains in a shell midden,” said Jax. “No, it looks like a human hand with fingers but in fact it’s a seal flipper. See? Claws.”

“Oh,” said Cara, letting out her breath.

“It’s what she meant,” nodded Jax. “Yep. This is it.”

“They ate seals? The ancient people?”

“Maybe they were using the blubber for oil. Who knows? Point is, I need to do some mapping.”

He pulled out his phone.

“I can pinpoint this using GPS, then use the compass to map a vector from here. It’ll give us a general area in the water, at least.”

“But which seal finger is it? Look, they’re pointing kind of different places. Aren’t they?”

“Only one is complete,” said Jax. “I’ll use that one.”

She watched as he knelt down, punching buttons, taking photos with his palm’s camera function.

“Do you need my help for this part?” she asked.

“No, take a break,” said Jax. “It’s cool.”

She stood looking through the trees, letting her eyes rest on the water, where insects walked, seeing the movement of tadpoles or minnows now and then. She zoned out. And then, a few minutes later, he was done and packing his equipment back into the knapsack.

“So?” asked Cara. “What did it say?”

“Thing is, I couldn’t get quite as precise as I wanted to,” said Jax. “My guess would be, just offshore at either Nauset or Marconi. But I’m not sure.”

“Let’s get out of here, then,” said Cara. “I’m wet, muddy and covered in mosquito bites.”

On their way out, for icing on the cake, she slipped in the water and fell backward, soaking her shorts right through to her underwear. It felt grainy and slimy and made her itch even more than the bugs had. Slogging onward in her wet clothes and clammy sandals—ahead of Jax now in her eagerness to get home and change—she passed under the trees and out into the meadow again, and looked down to see a snake slither right by her foot. She jumped back.

“There are no venomous snakes on the Cape,” said Jax. “That was probably a black racer.”

“It just startled me,” she said, annoyed but resigned. “I’m not afraid of snakes, anyhow.”

“I know you’re not,” said Jax.

“So those middens are—archaeologists come and study them?” she asked.

Jax nodded.

“And that was probably someone’s kitchen a long time ago?”

“Not exactly,” said Jax. “But close enough. It could have belonged to the Wampanoag, for instance. They lived here for centuries before white people came.”

“So now it’s ruined, probably. I mean history-wise, we wrecked it. No one will be able to study it now.”

“Cara,” Jax said gently, “we were the ones who were meant to find it. Think of it that way.”

“And the Indians, I mean what if it was sacred to them?”

“It was their garbage dump, Cara.”

“Still….”

“This isn’t just about finding Mom, you know. I mean, obviously.”

She stopped walking and looked back at him, startled.

“No?”

“It’s bigger than that,” said Jax. “Far bigger. You can feel it. I know you can.”

She considered for a moment. There was the mysterious and the unexplained—the water falling and falling off the pouring man, coming from some unending, invisible source…the ancient turtle hovering just to talk to them, a stream of air rippling and twisting between it and Jax.

Even the skate eggs. Pulsing with some malevolent life.

A secret world hidden in the world they’d always known. A secret all around them.

Yes, she could believe there was something going on.

She could.

But what she wanted was just to find her mother.

“Why us, Jax?” she asked after a while. “I mean I can see why you would be part of…you’re one of a kind. But Max and I—I mean—I’m just an average kid.”

Jax reached forward and grabbed her hand.

“Not true,” he said.

With his hand in her own she felt better, less like an unpaid assistant to a Great Genius. And for once their two hands, both caked in white, were equally grubby.

There was just enough room on the dirt path for them to walk abreast. Butterflies flitted over the meadow and a mouse darted over the path in front of them. She saw a red-winged blackbird rise out of the tall reeds, and as the two of them cut through the meadow a breeze swept through and swayed all the grass in one direction, with a sound like a long, gentle hush.

Ω

They went home, showered (at least Cara did; you never knew with Jax), and changed into dry clothes. Then they each wolfed down a couple of sandwiches standing up at the kitchen counter. While she was eating it struck Cara that she’d hardly thought of her mother all day.

Right away she felt guilty, as though she’d betrayed her, as though her mother was being forgotten, and the sandwich turned dry in her mouth.

She wouldn’t want me to think of her all the time, she told herself to make herself feel less guilty. She’d say it wasn’t healthy.

She closed her eyes and pictured her mother smiling as she said that, smiling wryly and shaking her head. It made her feel better, but only a bit.