“You have your own vodka?” Mardi and I exclaimed at the same time.
“Only in Australia and Asia at this point. But we sold a hundred thousand bottles last year, and we’re getting ready to move into Europe and the US. It’s called Fe, after the atomic symbol for iron. That’s okay,” she said to Ivan, who’d appeared in the room with the keys to the rented car. “I’ve called a cab. You stay here and look after the girls.” She kissed us both and swooshed out the door.
Ivan stared glumly after her for a moment, then shook his head and turned to us brightly.
“So what’re we starting the day with? Mojitos or margaritas?”
“Mojitos!” Mardi and I said without looking at each other.
“One pitcher of mojitos coming right up,” Ivan said. “Go get your sun on, and I’ll be out in two shakes of a fish’s tail.”
We’ve been to the tropics before—Dad’s a big fan of Turks and Caicos, and took us there every January for four years in a row when we were in grade school, and we’ve also been to Anguilla and Cozumel and the Canary Islands—but every time I go to one of these fabulous beautiful places, I ask myself why I don’t live there year-round. But I know the answer: it’s because I’d never do anything again. I’d just camp out in a lounge chair and have cute cabana boys bring me cold drinks all day long, basking in the sun (I’m a goddess, remember—no need to worry about skin cancer) and getting up once an hour or so to take a dip in the water. If there is a heaven, I can’t imagine it looking like anything other than a Caribbean beach. And if that’s not what it looks like, well, maybe I’ll take Mum up on that whole Mimir revolt-against-the-gods thing after all.
“This is heaven, isn’t it?” Mardi said to me at one point.
“Oh, my gods, that’s eerie. I was thinking exactly the same thing. I want to die right here,” I said. I couldn’t really be that mad at Mardi for long. And I believed her that nothing had happened between her and Rocky. Of course nothing had happened. No matter what, we’re sisters.
“Geez, morbid much?” Mardi laughed. “But I wasn’t just talking about the beach. I was talking about being here with you. With you and . . . Mum.”
“Really?” I said. “You’re coming around to her?”
“How can I resist? She’s been nothing but fabulous.”
“Oh, I’m so glad! I knew you’d change your mind!”
Mardi took another sip of her mojito. “I’m not saying I’m ready to move in yet, but she’s definitely winning me over. But really, I’m much more happy hanging out with you.”
For six days, we’d hung out, taking all our meals together, shopping and watching tennis together, even sleeping in the same room like we had when we were little girls. But even though everything had seemed peaceful on the surface, underneath I had been seething with jealousy. No matter how much fun we were having, I couldn’t get over the idea that she’d betrayed me with Rocky. And even though I believed her, I couldn’t shake the thought. I still didn’t want to shatter the peace, especially since it involved Mum, and so I kept on biting my tongue.
But suddenly, I realized that I didn’t want to fight about it. Chances are something like this would happen again—and again and again—over the course of the hundreds or thousands of years that Mardi and I would be alive. If we got in a fight over every single boy or every single betrayal, whether real or accidental or purely imagined, we’d be fighting to the end of time.
I turned to her on her lounge chair. She was looking at me nervously, and I knew she’d been picking up on my mood.
“I’m happy we’re hanging out too,” I said, reaching out for her hand and giving it a squeeze.
We sat there like that for one more moment, and then Mardi grabbed her glass and drained it.
“Okay, enough schmaltz. Let’s go swim!”
24
LEFT SHARK, RIGHT WHALE
Mardi-Overbrook-Journal.docx
I can’t tell you how happy I was as Molly and I leapt off our lounge chairs and ran across the sparkling white sands toward the softly rolling blue water. I mean, I knew that at some point we were going to have to have it out about Rocky, but now I knew that we’d get through it one way or another. Sparks would fly, favorite items of clothing might mysteriously disappear, hair might even get pulled, but we’d survive this and get back on track.
We ran all the way to the water and splashed in without slowing. The Caribbean is amazing—warm but not balmy, so you don’t have to take that minute or two to adjust before you dive in. We ran in until we were up to our waists and then dove straight in. The water was so clear that you saw every grain of sand on the bottom, every little brightly colored fish that flitted by. We swam and splashed each other and dove down to the bottom, pretending we were looking for pearls or gold doubloons from long-ago Spanish galleons, and generally behaved like seven-year-olds, for a good twenty minutes. When we were finally sated, we were a couple hundred feet offshore, where the water was still only eight or twelve feet deep, lazily treading water. And then I had to go and ruin it.
“It’s true,” I said.
Molly had been staring at the beach, and she used her hands to turn her body toward mine, rather than just look over at me.
“What is?” The look on her face was totally calm and trusting, and I could hear my brain scream, Don’t do it! But I had to come clean. She was my sister.
“I liked Rocky.”
Molly’s face didn’t change, didn’t seem to move, but it hardened somehow, and I could’ve sworn the water got five degrees colder.
“I know,” she said finally.
“I know you know. But I still had to tell you.”
“How could you?” she asked, and what made her question so hard was that it wasn’t angry. It was hurt, and I knew I’d put that hurt there.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I was just so confused after Trent dumped me, and there was the whole Mum situation, and you weren’t responding to my texts, and—and he was just there. It was like he was as close to you as I was going to get. Like if I couldn’t hang out with you, I could hang out with him.”
“Okay, ew,” Molly said, and I was relieved that she could make a little joke.
“I know! Although on some level, it didn’t feel like it had anything to do with poor Rocky at all. It didn’t matter what he looked like or said. It just mattered that he had this connection to you. I didn’t mean to. I would never hurt you. I just needed to flirt with someone. He likes you.”
“If he liked me so much, why was he spending all his time with you?” Molly said coldly.
“Maybe because I didn’t give him a choice.”
“What do you mean?” Molly said, looking at me sharply. “Did you use magic?”
“I mean, not consciously. But our powers are really acting up lately. Maybe I did something without realizing it.”
“No offense, sis, but that sounds like a bit of a cop-out.”
“I know it does, and I don’t mean to duck responsibility. What I did was totally wrong. But as I float here in this beautiful, seventy-five-degree water and look back at it, it doesn’t seem like it had anything to do with me. It was like something was acting through me. Making me do something I wouldn’t normally do.”
“What, like magic? You think someone didn’t just hex our phones? They hexed you too?”
“Honestly, no. It feels . . . bigger than that. Deeper. I’m wondering if it has something to do with the Reawakening. If it’s not just our powers that are being affected. If our emotions are being changed too.”
“The divine version of adolescence?”
“I guess so.”
Molly was silent for a long time.
“I dunno, Mardi,” she said eventually. “Part of me thinks you’re just trying to get a pass for a low blow. But part of me knows what you’re describing. This feeling of not being a hundred percent
in control of what I do or say or even feel. Something weird is going on inside us right now. And who knows, maybe that did cause you to do what you did with Rocky. But, well, you did, and now things can never be the same between him and me again. Whatever Rocky and I might’ve had, it’s gone now. And at least part of the blame for that is on you.”
“Molly, come on. You know I’d never do anything to hurt you.”
“But you did, Mardi. You hurt me. A lot.”
Her voice was so quiet. So reasonable. She could have been explaining the rules of a card game to Jo. It terrified me.
“Molly, please. Don’t be like this. Yell at me, trash my car, tell Dad to ground me for the next hundred years. But don’t shut me out like this.”
“I’m not shutting you out. I’m just not . . .” She paused, searching for a word. “I’m just not ready to trust you. I still love you, but I’m not sure I can ever trust you again. I know nothing happened, but liking the same guy as me still feels like a betrayal.”
“Molly!” I said. “No!”
“The nice thing is, we’re immortal,” Molly said in a sad voice. “We’ve got eternity to figure it out. But I guess the bad thing is that if we don’t work through it, we’ve got a really long time to feel awkward around each other.”
She turned then and started swimming toward the shore.
“Mooi!” I called, using her Norse name. “Please don’t leave it like that.”
I wanted to swim after her, but I knew I couldn’t. That if I did, it would just make it worse.
“Mooi!”
Something brushed against me then. At first, I thought I kicked myself with my own leg, but even before that thought was over, I felt a long scraping sensation and realized that whatever it was, it was way bigger than my own leg. And then I was being smacked aside by something that hit me like a baseball bat, sending me flying out of the water. But as I was soaring over the waves, I saw a dark shape beneath and a dark fin that was at least as tall as me piercing the water. The fin angled away from me then, and I saw the long black back and the gleaming white belly, the unmistakable markings of a killer whale.
“Whale!” I screamed just before I splashed beneath the surface.
• • •
As the water closed over me, I struggled to keep my body turned toward the whale. I wasn’t sure how one fought off a killer whale attack, but I figured I had a better chance if I at least saw it coming. It was swimming at an angle away from me, and I saw the length of its body, from its rounded snout to its thick body with its wide pectoral fins spinning like a propeller to the muscular action of its fluke, which pumped through the water heavily. Within seconds, it had disappeared in the depths, and for a moment, I allowed myself to think that it was leaving. Then a dark shadow reappeared and grew quickly larger as the whale sped back for round two.
I kicked myself to the surface to grab some air, and for the brief second I was above water, I whipped my head in Molly’s direction and called out to her. I was back under the water so quickly, however, that I couldn’t tell if she heard.
Then the cool blue water closed around my ears, and I turned my attention back to the whale. I was trying to think of some magic that I could use to fight it, but before I could even gather my thoughts, it was on me. I couldn’t believe how big it was. I’d always imagined killer whales to be only a little bigger than dolphins, but this monster’s body was as tall as I was, and its gaping jaws looked like they could swallow a Saint Bernard whole. I paddled helplessly as it raced in my direction. At the last second, it turned on its side but continued heading straight for me. I started to ask myself why, but then it hit me: as big as it was, I was still too tall to fit in its mouth. It had to come at me sideways to take a chunk out of me. But if it could turn sideways, so could I.
I beat the water furiously to spin my body. The whale lunged for me, its jaws aimed squarely for my midsection. It turned, but I was able to grab its snout and turn with it, and then the whale’s own momentum carried it past me. I rolled along the length of its body, one of its flukes smashing against one of my ankles as I propelled myself toward the surface to grab another breath of air.
As the whale sped past me, I thought I had time for a quick breather. Its body was too big for it to simply whirl around like a seal. But I didn’t think about the tail. My head was just breaking the surface when I felt a push from beneath me. The next thing I knew I was flying through the air again. The whale had literally picked me up and thrown me with its massive flukes—in the same direction it was swimming! It was actually throwing me in front of its mouth!
“Molly!” I screamed. “Molly, help!” I was so disoriented I couldn’t tell which way to look.
Then I was under again. I whirled around. The whale was right there, turning to take a bite out of me. I didn’t even have time to spin. I just stuck out my hands and pushed at the big snout to keep my body out of the gaping mouth. I expected to roll along the side again, but this time, the whale was perfectly centered, and I felt myself being driven backward through the water as the whale swam. The pressure of the water against my back was so great that it took all my strength to keep from buckling and slipping into its mouth.
For the first time, I glimpsed the creature’s eyes. I stared at it, and it stared back with pure hatred. If there’d been any doubt that this was a magic attack, that look completely erased it. This wasn’t a wild animal hunting. It was here to kill me. Which meant one of two things: either it had been hexed to come after me, or it wasn’t actually a killer whale at all, but some kind of shape-shifter that had taken this form. If that was the case, it was probably the same creature that had attacked Dad’s plane.
The whale held my gaze for a moment, then suddenly its snout jerked downward to the sandy bottom of the sea. I knew what it was doing immediately: it was going to pin me to the ground. If it couldn’t squirm around until it managed to get its jaws around me, it would just pin me underwater until I drowned. But it was moving so fast I couldn’t see how to get out of its way without getting one of my legs snapped. And so, helplessly, I let myself be pushed toward the ground. As a goddess, I knew I could hold my breath two or three times longer than a mortal, but that was it. I just prayed something would happen before I ran out of air.
As if reading my thoughts, a pale form appeared in my peripheral vision. I looked over: it was Molly! She must have heard my call!
She swam up to the whale broadside, one hand curled into a fist. Before I knew what was happening, she struck it in the only vulnerable place on its body: the eye that was staring at me so malevolently.
It wasn’t a hard blow, but a whale’s eye is every bit as tender as a person’s. And just like a person, it jerked away from the assault. The twist of its neck was enough to dislodge me, and I rolled safely out of the way. The whale arced off in the opposite direction. It smacked at me with its tail again, but this time I was ready, and all it did was push me a few feet closer to the surface.
I kicked upward to where Molly was already treading water and through to the surface.
“You came back!”
“No time!” Molly said grimly. “That thing’s going to be on us again in seconds.”
I nodded. “Let’s link arms. If we can make ourselves too big for its mouth, it can’t get us.”
“Got it,” Molly said. We grabbed each other’s arms and dove under.
Just in time: the whale was barreling straight for us. Molly’s elbow was crooked tightly around mine, and I could feel her legs swirling through the water. The sight of our conjoined bodies obviously confused the whale because it slowed down. I thought it might swim past us, when suddenly it rolled in for a bite. But we were too wide for its mouth, and with our two free arms and four legs, we managed to kick ourselves out of the way. The whale shot past us, and we kicked ourselves toward the surface.
“Start for the shore,” Molly said as soon as
we were in the air. “No way we can dodge this thing forever. But if we get into shallow-enough water, it won’t be able to follow.”
“Good plan!” I said, mostly because I wanted to be encouraging. The shore was still hundreds of feet away. It seemed to me that we’d be exhausted long before we managed to reach it.
“Back under,” Molly said then, nodding toward the dark fin that was knifing our way. “Here it comes again.”
We dove under and faced off another charge. The whale tried spinning this time and slapping us with its tail. But as agile as it was, it was still so large that it couldn’t move in for the kill fast enough. It was able to send us rolling through the water, but by the time it had managed to turn around and charge us again, we’d regained control and were able to kick and push ourselves out of its mouth, then kick up to the surface again and snatch a breath.
Over and over again, it charged us. Over and over again, we managed to elude its grasping mouth. I kept thinking someone would see us, but that’s the one drawback to a private beach: no gawkers or paparazzi, but no one to rescue you when a magical orca comes after you. The only person at the bungalow was Ivan, but he was apparently busy inside.
But with each attack, we managed to swim a few feet closer to the shore. I could feel my arms and legs tiring and could hear in Molly’s ragged breaths that she was exhausted too, but if we could just keep this up for a while longer, we’d be out of the whale’s reach. The water was only eight feet or so deep where we were. It wouldn’t be long now until we could get to safety.
But as soon as I realized this, the whale did too, because it suddenly changed tactics. Before, it had been swimming out to the deeper water to turn around and charge us, essentially driving us toward the shore. But after its next attack, it swam toward the shallow water instead. When it turned around, its entire back rose out of the water, and its tail churned up clouds of sand. And then, when it came for us again, it swam slowly instead of charging. It didn’t ram into us but managed to lodge its snout between our arms. Suddenly, its tail started churning: it was driving us back out to sea!