I bite my lip, considering. Then, try again. “There was a locked room.”
“Underground?”
“Yes.” I reach out and squeeze his hand. “In the basement. And in the room was a locked well.”
He looks confused. “Why would a well be locked?”
“Because of what’s inside,” I manage. The words seem to slip around the image in my mind, sliding off it the way oil skims water. I wonder if it’s the binding spell, if it addles the brain orbefuddles the tongue. Arla said she’d only translated a portion. Brennan seemed equally unable to speak of it.
“Judeth.” Levi’s concern is growing with every passing second. “What did you see in the well?”
My eyes stare at the cover of the Egyptian book, unable to meet his. “I’m not supposed to tell.” I don’t even know if I know. Demon? Dragon? Oracle? Mermaid? Anneli’s run-in on the glacier trumps them all.
He takes my chin in hand, turning it toward him. “Listen to me. Nothing you can say is going to scare me off. Do you understand? I’ve seen a thing or two in this business, and I’m here for you. But if you don’t tell me, we have no trust. And without trust, there’s nous. I know this is new, but I promise you that whatever happened, I can take it. What I can’t take is lies and withholding, not again.”
Nodding, I take a breath, start over. “There’s water in the well. And in the water…something lives.”
It’s clear this wasn’t what he was expecting. His eyes round and his jaw slackens. “An animal?”
I want to laugh. I want to cry. Hard as I try, the words won’t stick. “Not like any you’ve seen before.”
Frustration edges in. He tries to hide it. “Then whatisit like?”
My eyes bulge. Everything and nothing. A beast. A being. “A monster.”
I watch this word wash over him, expecting disbelief or disdain, maybe even humor. But he doesn’t display any of those. Instead, he is quiet, thoughtful.
“But it isn’t a monster,” I continue. Because I know that word doesn’t do the Fathom justice. I know, like Anneli with her shadow, that the Fathom’s more than that. “At least, that’s notallit is.”
“Tell me more,” he says. “What is it, then?”
I cast around, flailing, Anneli’s pale, glimmering eyes and the Fathom’s dark, watery pit encircling me. I see the spines, the mottled skin, the school of fish. I see the poster in the tunnel, a mermaid on a rock, her tail multiplied many times, her eyes brightand horns curved in contradiction. I see the shadow as Anneli described it, flowing over the mountain, full of wind and fury. And I see the painting, Thalassa bold on the water, a sea at her command. Then I see the encrusted mantel at Solidago, and above it, the portrait of a woman who even in death infatuated one of the world’s most powerful men.
At last, the word I’ve been needing, searching for, but resisting at the same time, materializes on my tongue. I speak it so he can hear. I tell him the truth.
“A goddess.”
21CONFESSION
I’ve lost him. His eyes have glazed over, his lips parting as he drifted away from me and this conversation. He leans back in his chair, distancing himself further. I can’t really blame him. What man would hear such talk and take me seriously? “Levi?” I question, leaning forward, trying to close the gap. “Did you hear me?”
He blinks, refocusing. “Yes, sorry.”
“I know it’s a lot to swallow,” I tell him. “You have no reason to believe me. You probably think I’m on drugs or something.”
He shakes his head. “No. You’re far too coherent to be high. Of that, I’m sure.”
I laugh, and he does, too, the absurdity striking us both. “So, youdobelieve me?”
He’s quiet for a breath before he says, “I told you my mother died, but I didn’t tell you how. She had a very aggressive form of brain cancer. She’d been withdrawing over the year leading up to her diagnosis, was overly tired and anxious. We thought she was struggling with depression and migraines. By the time they found the tumor, it was stage four. They said we’d be lucky if she survived another year. We got ten months.”
My heart breaks for the boy whose final memories with his mother are marred by withdrawal and confusion, grief and fear. “Oh, Levi…”
His mouth draws tight and flat. “In the last few weeks of her life, she began seeing things. A woman, she said, who kept visiting her. The doctors claimed they were hallucinations resulting from the tumor. The nurses said this kind of thing was common in a patient’s final days. We didn’t know what to think. My dad mostly ignored her, but I couldn’t shut her out. I listened when she told me about these visits, when she described the ‘dark woman’ who hovered over her bed, who filled her with peace and seemed to block out the artificial lights and noises of the room, who sat beside her through the long, disorienting nights. I saw how these visits had a positive impact on her. I believed her when she told me the woman was God.”
I gasp quietly and place a hand to my chest.
He looks at me with sad eyes. “I’ve never told anyone before. To this day, I don’t know what my mother saw. If it was a hallucination, a visit from a deceased loved one, an angel or the divine itself. My dad refused to talk about it. My grandfather threw himself into trying to produce a miracle before her death, to spare my father the grief of losing a wife as he himself had known. It’s how we got into the antiquities market—he was looking for solutions. He would tell me tales of people who had been cured of everything from polio to infertility by stepping into a pool of water, or touching the feet of a statue, or speaking a magic word. He sourced a scarf blessed by a Buddhist monk for my mother that had supposedly sent another woman’s lung cancer into remission.”
