The image breaks apart, a disturbance under the water rippling up, and my eyes claw their way back up to Arla’s gaze. I know now where she’s been getting her information, even if I don’t understand how it works.
She moves around the well and takes my hand, pulling me close to her side, surprisingly strong. My fingers ache in hers, but she doesn’t seem to notice how hard she’s squeezing. Together, we peer down a third time. “Qum!”she commands the water.
Darkness fills the well like smoke, hypnotic whorls of velvety night seeping up from the bottom, emanating from the water itself, opaque as squid ink, sucking at my eyes until I am peering into a blackness so dense I can scarcely recall the existence of light. It is a place, an experience, adeathI know firsthand. Suddenly, the smoke parts, drifting to the edges, and the water pulses black and easy until a ripple crests across it, circling out like the years of a tree, followed by another and another and another.
I tug against Arla’s hand, but she won’t let go, and I can’t tear my eyes away even as the water grows more volatile, rocking in large waves that slap the sides of the well and break open in a frenzy of bubbles.
My other arm goes to Arla’s hand, attempting to claw her off me, but she is clamped down, a mollusk that must be pried open, and her face has taken on a prideful, manic gleam. Even as I struggle, I cannot look away, knowing that something in that water is hurtling toward us from the depths. And I must know; I must see.
There is a heavy splintering sound that echoes up from the well, and it sets my insides quivering, legs barely able to stand. A fin splits the surface and arcs back under, blue like the dorsal of a legendary marlin but spiked with the menacing black spines of an overgrown sea urchin. It goes on and on, longer than any fish I’veever seen, and I watch rapt as each segment passes, a mixture of horror and awe filling me.
Beneath it, I can make out the pocked and mottled flesh of an eel, currents of electricity igniting along its surface, charging the water until it froths. Finally, it disappears, and the water goes slack, only to be ruffled again as the long, dark hair of a woman emerges, swathing across the surface—the locks of a siren Rapunzel.
My mind works quickly to piece these impossibilities together, but before it can, one tentacle rises from the water followed by three more. Dark and oily like the feathers of a crow they come, lined with slurping white suckers as if they are scenting the air. They reach toward me, grasping, and for a mad second I want to reach back. Until they fall against the water with a slap, spraying our faces in dirty droplets, and break apart into dozens of silvery-scaled fish. A school of herring stirs the water to a boil in their panic, skipping the surface and flashing like aluminum in the sun, causing me to blink rapidly against the assault of shadow and light before they eventually sink out of sight one by one.
We wait, holding our breath for several long seconds before the water stills, whatever lurks within it receding from view, darkness spreading over the surface, hiding even our reflections.
Arla’s grip on me relaxes and I jump back. I want to press myself into the bricks that surround us for support, but don’t dare.
She lifts her fingers to her face and gently dabs at the drops of water, awe mixing with something far less innocent. “Now… Yousee.”
The light overhead burns into me, the painted letters singeing my retinas in white-hot fire. I suddenly can’t bear to look at them. “What was that thing?” I ask Arla, my mind reeling. Fish, woman, cephalopod, mermaid…monster.
“That is the Fathom, Jude.” Her eyes shine with fervor as she starts toward me. “That is our source. That is ourgod.”
I shake my head. The impossibility of it firmly burrowed there,Anneli’s deer-headed shadow more real, more plausible than I first dared to dream.
“The night of the Great Seattle Fire there was another man. Not a carpenter or a painter but a Latvian immigrant, an autodidact and a polyglot with a zeal for ancient civilizations, dead languages, and Solomonic demonology. A man who had been planning and building and plotting for this day, the perfect opportunity to trap what he, andonlyhe, recognized to be the source of the floods that plagued his less-than-fair city. And so he did. But not before it unleashed a vengeance so fraught it took most of Seattle with it. I believe you know a bit about what that feels like,” she said, seizing me by both arms.
I break free of her, twisting away, and back around the well. “How do you know this?”
Arla shrugs. “He left his journal behind, in this very room in fact. A detailed, calculated account of what he knew and what he intended to do about it. What drew him here, the plans, the research and construction, the moment of capture and everything that came after. This was his great white whale, his Moby Dick, harpooned with words instead of weapons, bound and bewitched. And now it’s mine.”
“What are you saying?”
“I’m saying that Edward Rudzitin caged a dragon, kitten. And that dragon is here. That dragon is now. And she belongs tome.” Her face is sharper than I remember, hungrier. It bores into mine from across the room, cheekbones like knives, chin wicked as a thorn.
Rudzitin’s Pit Show… Oracle of the Pacific.The poster simmers in the background of my mind, a vital piece of this intricate puzzle I’m still placing.
“Dragon?” My brain seizes on this, adds it to the list, but still I can’t make heads or tails of it. “Or demon?”
She smiles. “Some men might call her a demon, but those men are blind and stupid. The Fathom is not a thing you can easily name,” she says, her voice rolling at the edges as if she is willingherself to soften it. “Frankly, I don’t give a good goddamnwhatshe is. She is old—likely older than this world. And she has power.”
My head aches with everything it’s trying to process, unable to comprehend what she’s saying. “You say ‘power,’” I tell her, “but you mean magic, don’t you? She hasmagic. Like ours.”
Slowly, fragments are beginning to slot themselves into some kind of traceable order. Arla’s information, her ability to siphon our magic, her power over us comes from this room, thisbeingcaged within it. The club above, her little circle—everything has been built on this foundation. The journal Rudzitin left behind is an instruction manual in summoning.
“Sheisthe magic, Jude. Yours. Mine.” She stands before me, calmer but still buzzing with energy, like a prophet with a message she can’t unload fast enough. “And I hold her in the palm of my hands, just like I hold you.”
I rub my face. I need time, space to think. I need answers. There has to be a way to understand what I’ve witnessed, to lay the pieces out and see where they line up and come together to form a complete picture—Rudzitin, this well, Brennan’s fears, Anneli’s paintings, Arla, the others, and me. “How did you find this?” I ask, recalling Brennan’s story about her water-dowsing days.
Her face seems to narrow, eyes slanting, caught off guard. “I didn’t,” she says, moving past me. “She found me. Shecalledme, and when she did, I came. The rest, she told me herself.” She lowers the lid, carefully turning each dogbolt to hold it in place.
“It speaks to you?” I ask, still trying to pluck facts from a chamber of myths.
“In a way,” she says. “With pictures like you saw on the water. With dreams. Sometimes with a feeling.” I watch her step away from the well and walk to the door. “She can speak to you too,” she says, glancing back at me. “If you’re good.”
I am beginning to see behind the curtain, the way Arla manipulates the others, dangles possibilities before them but holds the cards carefully against her own breast.If I’m good, indeed.
