One thing that had been bothering me was something Maris had said. Actually … lots of things Maris had said, but one thing in particular, so I broke the silence and asked him.
“So are you going to tell me what Maris meant by ‘three green stones’?”
Calder pressed his lips together and downshifted as we entered the next town.
“It’s just another story, something our mother used to tell us when she put us to bed. I told you that Maighdean Mara had three daughters. Well, she became paranoid that others of her kind would move west to take over her domain. You know, interfere with her hunting rights. So she decided to give each of her daughters a gift that—should they ever get separated from her—they could show her when they returned, and she would recognize them as her own.
“She gave Odahingum an iron chariot to travel the lake and survey the boundaries of their kingdom. She gave Namid a necklace that she wore above her heart to collect and store the histories of our people, and to her youngest, Sheshebens, she gave a small, copper-handled dagger with the words Safe Passage Home written on it.”
“Okaaay,” I said. “What about the stones?”
Calder looked at me sideways and rolled his eyes at my impatience. “Then, one November, the lake was threatened by a sea monster.”
“Are you freakin’ kidding me?”
“It had already wiped out every living thing east of the Pictured Rocks, down to the smallest fish. To keep it from crossing into their territory, the three sisters stirred up a terrible storm.
“They shook and split the trees. They made waves leap thirty feet into the sky. The great monster was thwarted, but Sheshebens was also lost. Her sisters found her dagger settled in the sand beneath the battle waves.
“They held out hope that she’d return someday, so the two remaining sisters buried her dagger under three green stones on the bank below the falls.”
“And Maris thinks that dagger is still there?” I asked.
“She thinks if I can find it, it’s all the proof we need that the legend is real. And if Maighdean Mara is real, I’ll need the dagger if she’s going to recognize me as one of her own. It’s my ticket to getting close to her without getting killed in the process.”
Less than two hours later, we pulled off Highway 61 and into a wayside rest stop. The area was dense with white and Norway pine. The smell of tree sap drifted through my open window. I got out and slammed the door behind me. Bees buzzed in the lilac and honeysuckle planted alongside the parking lot, but the air was full of a much bigger sound. In fact, it reverberated as if a freight train were rushing by, or a low-flying airplane. In my mind’s eye, I could picture the black river churning on the rocks, recklessly rushing for the precipice before becoming Copper Falls. If Maighdean Mara didn’t kill us, it would only be because we were already cut to ribbons.
I looked up at Calder, questioning.
“We’re not going to swim over the falls, Lily. Unless, of course, you have a death wish.” He looked down at me. “Don’t answer that.”
“I guess I assumed that was the only way down.”
“If Maighdean Mara exists, all the stories say she lives behind the falls. Not at the top and not in the falling. Besides, check out all the cars. Tourists aren’t really big on witnessing double suicides.”
“Just the sadistic ones,” I said.
“I’m going in from underneath,” he said, “and we’re hiking down.”
Calder took my hand and pulled me toward a brown state park sign that marked a break in the trees and a path that wove down a steep cliff toward the water. Cuts had been made in the side of the hill that were supposed to be steps, but there had been so much erosion over the spring, they were little more than places to catch some traction. I used saplings and pine branches to hold myself from skidding all the way to the bottom.
The sunlit entrance to the path vanished behind me, and the shadow of the woods grew deeper. I stopped midway down and picked up a half-empty pack of cigarettes some careless hiker had dropped. The topsoil slipped below my feet and I stopped again, my ears picking up a high-pitched click. A stick snapping underfoot? I searched the woods but could see no one. Still, the back of my neck prickled. I could swear someone was watching. I started to ask, “Calder, do you—?” but he’d already reached the bottom.
I sidestepped the rest of the way, catching my feet on lichen-covered stones. By the time I reached the rocky shore, my hands were covered in pine sap and embedded with grit and silt. But I couldn’t be bothered to scrub them in the lake.
The scene blew my mind. Above us, the black river hovered at the crest before plunging fearfully to the jagged rocks below. The copper-colored water rolled and thrashed. Enraged, it roared and twisted through the gorge, transforming into a silvery spray that vaporized on the air. At our feet, the water seethed as if it were boiling.
“Makes the hike down look like a wise choice, doesn’t it?” Calder yelled as he crouched at the water’s edge, turning over large, round stones and digging underneath. I watched impatiently as Calder proceeded to excavate the dark rich earth, coating his bare arms.
I would have helped, but I didn’t know what I was looking for. After a while, I sat down on a rock. Minutes turned into an hour of rock turning and muck burrowing. Calder moved several yards away from me, raking through a layer of small stones with his fingers. Then he stopped.
He looked back at me, then at the ground. I watched as he dug his hand into the soft sand and turned over a large stone heavily coated in black silt, but I thought I saw a green glint in the filtered sunlight. He thrust both arms down into the muck, elbow deep. “Holy … I can’t believe it.”
“What is it?”
“No way.” His fingers scraped at the ground, digging a hole in the saturated earth that kept collapsing in on itself, but he kept digging, finally exposing a long handle, decorated with agates and a thick copper wire wound into complicated spirals and coils.
He tugged, huffing with exertion, the ground sucking back, until he fell backward and, like the boy King Arthur, held up his prize: at the end of the copper handle was a twelve-inch dagger engraved with ancient runes.
“Are you kidding me?” I yelled, barely able to hear my own voice.
“I can’t believe it,” he said again, turning the dagger over and over in his hands. “Geez, it’s got a vibration to it. Like it’s humming.” Then he made a swiping motion, as if he were plunging the dagger into someone’s heart.
“Oh, no, no, no. You said it was our ticket in. Please tell me you’re not going to try and kill her.” I couldn’t imagine how, even armed, we stood a chance. “Is that possible? How do you kill a spirit?”
“You’re right. It’s only supposed to be used to identify myself, but if it doesn’t work, or if Maighdean Mara’s too far gone to care … Well, if I can’t reason with her, I’ll do what I have to do to stop her.” Then, seeing my expression, he said, “Don’t worry, Lily. I know what I’m doing.”
Trouble was, I’d been able to read Calder’s face since the first time I met him. He might have been giving me his best reassuring smile, but I could see the lie beneath. Three days ago he hadn’t believed in this so-called Maighdean Mara. Obviously, this encounter wasn’t something he’d ever practiced.
His smile faltered, and he crouched down to rinse the grit from the handle. The copper glistened in the sun.
“So how do we get behind the falls?” I asked.
“I told you. There is no ‘we’ in this. You’re staying onshore. If I’m not back in an hour, I need you to tell Maris what happened. It’ll be up to her if Maighdean Mara can be stopped.”
Calder stripped off his T-shirt, kissed me, and holstered the dagger through one of his belt loops. He ran into the lake and made a shallow dive. I gasped as the last ripples disappeared, terrified that I’d seen him for the last time.
Without a second thought, I peeled off my sweatshirt and ran in after him. Jagged rocks cut my feet. Stones turned under my weig
ht, and I wavered like a tightrope walker before diving in. Calder must have sensed me in the water. As soon as I was swimming, he closed the space between us.
“No, Lily,” he said, his eyes like cold fire.
“You need my help,” I said.
He shook his head, sending water droplets flying off his chin. “I won’t let you go into the falls. It’s too dangerous.” I started to protest, but he stopped me, saying, “If I let you help with the first part, will you promise to do what I say after that?”
“That depends.”
“Lily, please …,” he said, his exasperation clear.
“What do you need me to do?”
He sighed. “Your hearing has been awfully good lately.”
I pushed my hair off my face. “What am I supposed to listen for?”
“I want you to shut your eyes and listen,” he yelled in my ear. “If you keep them open, your sense of sight will dominate, and you won’t be able to hear what I need you to hear.”
“If you think I’m going to be able to hear her over this—”
“Not Maighdean Mara. I need you to listen for the gap. Mother always talked about a gap of sound. A gasp of air, I think. I need to hit that gap to get behind the falls”
My eyes drifted up the nearly two-hundred-foot fall. All I could hear was a constant, roaring growl. It drowned out the higher pitched spray and muted the gulls circling overhead. If Calder thought I could hear anything more, he was overestimating my senses.
“I don’t understand,” I said.
“Lily, close your eyes, please.”
He pulled me against his chest and supported me so I wouldn’t have to tread water. I wrapped my arms around his neck and kissed him. He hadn’t transformed. I could feel his legs against mine. The blade hung heavily against his hip. If he was going in without me, if this was, perhaps, our last kiss, I wanted to make it worth it. He must have felt the urgency, too, because he kissed me back, more fiercely than ever before.
When he let me go, I took a deep breath and tried not to be afraid.
“Be still, Lily. Can you hear it? I can’t.”
“I don’t hear anything,” I said, which was a lie. I could hear the raging growl of the falls. I could hear my heart beat in my ears. I could hear his breath, raspy in his throat. I could feel someone staring at me. I searched the shoreline, then turned around to see the lake behind us. Nothing. No one.
“Listen,” Calder begged. “Try hard.” He turned me around so he was behind me, his warm hands encircling my waist, and I was facing the falls. I wanted to hear what he thought was there, and at the same time, so desperately did not. It was all so jumbled in my mind. If I could hear a space of silence amid the roar, it would bring me one step closer to believing. But if Maighdean Mara was real, that meant facing a monster. On the other hand, if there was no gap in the watery curtain, if there was no Maighdean Mara, the monster I needed to face was more terrifying to imagine. The ancient mermaid might kill my body, but knowing my father was a murderer would kill my soul. My heart crumpled in on itself, and I nearly sobbed at the thought.
But then I heard it.
Like a hiccup.
As if Copper Falls was catching its breath, before crying aloud itself. The sound—or rather the absence of sound—was gone before my mind registered it, but I knew it as certainly as if it had lasted a full second.
My body must have reacted, because Calder asked, “Did you hear it?” His voice was both amazed and terrified.
I didn’t answer him, listening for it again. I counted in my head so I could pace it. One Mississippi. Two Mississippi.… I got to twelve, and this time tried to determine its exact location. But it was too quick.
I counted to twelve again. The third time, I picked up the source, low and to the left, behind an enormous black boulder.
I raised one shaking hand and pointed.
“You’re sure?” he asked, and I nodded.
“Make sure,” he said. “I’ve got one shot at this.”
I could see what he meant. Anything that got caught in the turbulence would be battered and beaten against the razor-sharp rocks, and the gap was so quick—a fraction of a second—there was no room for error. “How do you get in?” I asked.
“I need to make a beeline for the gap. If I hit it at the right moment, I should get sucked in behind the falls.”
“And if you don’t hit it?”
“Seriously, Lily, you should go.”
“I’m not going to leave you.”
“You think it’s by that boulder?” He didn’t look convinced. “I’ll have to be quick.”
“Positive,” I said.
His breath came out slowly against the back of my neck. “Good girl.” He took off his watch and handed it to me. “Take this and go back to shore. Give me an hour. If I’m not back by then, well …”
I strapped on the watch and Calder left me, diving down deep. I watched for some sign of him—a splash, a flash of arm, but I heard the gasp of air and never saw him again.
Panicked, I counted in my head and timed my dive, swimming as fast as I could for the boulder, praying I could hit the spot right as my internal timer hit the twelve-second mark.
It couldn’t have been more than twenty feet deep here—nothing compared to the depths we’d dived to before—but the velocity of the falls churned the lake into a watery nightmare. It pounded at my temples and bellowed in my ears. The currents pulled me toward the boulder’s center, tossing and pinning me down.
The force of the falls pressed me to the rocky lake bottom. My fingertips met the boulder. Twelve, I thought. I waited for that infinitesimal vacuum of sound and air. When I heard the gasp, the falls parted and sucked me through.
31
LAIR AND LIAR
I was inside the cave behind the falls. I whispered Calder’s name, but only the walls whispered back. Dank and rough, as if carved by a giant pickax, the rock walls seeped to the point of dripping in the small puddles around my feet. The aroma of rotted fish coated my mouth and a coppery tang settled behind my teeth. Pinprick beams of light crisscrossed through the cavern where moles had burrowed through the surrounding ground, finding weak spots in the rock. Their toothpick bones crunched under my bare feet.
I waited for my eyes to adjust to the darkness, but there was nothing to see. Whispering Calder’s name again, I felt him reach for my hand and pull me to his side. He shook his head in apparent exasperation, but he didn’t scold me. He couldn’t have believed I would let him go in alone.
Neither of us dared to speak too loudly or too much. This was hallowed ground. Had any human being come so far before? As far as I could tell, there were no large bones on the floor.
“We should have brought her an offering,” whispered Calder. “How stupid can I get? I guess I never really thought …”
“Wait, I have this,” I said, digging in my pocket. “It’s not much, but it is tobacco.” I handed him the pack of cigarettes I’d found on the hillside, and he sniffed at it before slipping the four remaining cigarettes into his hand. He tore off the filters and peeled the wet paper.
“Follow me,” he said, and we crept deeper into the cave, my hands on his back. He stopped, reacting to something I couldn’t see. He ground the wet tobacco between his palms and sifted it in a line across the stone floor.
“What do we do now?” I asked.
“We wait.”
“How long?”
“Not long. If she’s here, she already knows we’ve come.”
We slid down the wall to wait. Calder rolled the dagger’s handle around in his hands. The only sounds were the constant dripping and the muted roar of the falls above us, like traffic on a distant highway.
Calder grabbed my wrist and took back his watch. He hit a button and illuminated our faces. “Forgot this had a light,” he said. “Sorry, that would have been helpful before.”
Only then did I see the worry on his face. I almost wished he’d turn off the light. Calder bent his
head and whispered something in an unfamiliar language, repeatedly. Although I couldn’t understand him, I was certain he was practicing for the confrontation.
After what felt like a very short time, he stopped whispering and checked his watch. “It’s already been an hour,” he said. He held his wrist up and aimed the light around the cavern. The carpet of bones reflected back the light. Below them were thousands of small, green-patinaed discs. Calder reached forward and raked his hand through some of them. He crawled away, scattering the bones as he moved.
“What are you doing?”
“There’s nothing here,” he said.
“What are you looking for?”
“Your soggy cigarettes are the only offering here. There’s nothing else. No new copper, no tobacco, no wild rice …”
“I don’t know about the copper, but wouldn’t tobacco and rice have rotted over time? You don’t really expect that to still be here?”
“That’s my point. It’s been a long time since anyone has made any offering. Anything dropped over the falls would have been sucked inside like we were. There’s nothing here.”
“So what does that mean?”
“Maris was right. We’re not the only ones who forgot about Maighdean Mara. Her human followers have forgotten her, too. She’s been neglected for a very long time. No wonder she’s gone off to fend for herself.”
“If she’s not here, how do we find her?” I asked.
“We’re going to need more help.”
Later that night, after Calder had left to look for Dad, I sat on the porch roof, utterly defeated. In all of Calder’s years in the lake, he’d never seen sign of Maighdean Mara. In all the searching Calder and Dad had done for Maris and Pavati, they’d never seen any evidence of her. In all my experimentation, I’d never once heard the voice of a monster in the channel. What chance did we really have of finding her? And if we did find her, what chance did we have of stopping her?
Doubt weighed heavily on my thoughts. We stood a much better chance of stopping the killings if Dad was behind them. But I couldn’t go there. Try as I might, it was impossible to imagine him that way—snatching Scotty so quickly no one else noticed. Bringing him down so deep, the surface was undisturbed.