Page 158

The skid trail was a trough of compacted ground under the salal, invisible until you were standing on it. We went single file, our headlamps like glowing orbs hovering and descending. The brush closed over us, the sword ferns feathering our waists, the salal snatching at our bags. The fog moved through the wind-bent spruce in slow ropes.

The ocean’s distant rumble became a crash and a hush, and I could feel it in my boots before I could see it, the faint shudder in the ground each time it came in, like the earth had a pulse and we were walking right up to it.

“These ferns want me dead,” Callie said, swatting an enormous frond out of her face.

“That’s how we know we’re on the right trail,” I said.

At last, the brush opened and the world fell away. Far below, the surf unrolled onto the long black crescent of sand, driftwood scattered pale at the tide line like the bones of a mythical beast.

To the south, the cliff shouldered out and hid the cave. To the north, the headland rose and jutted from the sand, and behind it, faint as a bruise, a dim light smudged the fog.

“The gully’s two hundred yards south,” I said. “Along the edge. Watch your feet.”

The ravine cut deep into the bluff, shale and roots and wet black earth descending at a sharp angle.

“Seriously?” Callie said behind me.

“It’s the only way down,” I said over my shoulder.

“I’ll go first,” Priya breathed.

“I’ll go second,” I said. “Then Callie, then Jess.”

“Okay,” they both whispered.

“Jess, wait near the top until Priya reaches the sand, and then pass the bowl down,” I said, handing her the tote bag with the bowl wrapped in cloth inside it.

We scrambled down sideways, crouched low, facing the hillside with our hands full of root and rock. We slipped and crawled across the shale that shifted under our weight. Below me, Priya descended in small terrifying increments, saying “okay, okay,” under her breath, when nothing felt particularly okay.

Jess, behind Callie, was now just a shadow in the near-dark.

When Priya hit the sand, we started passing the bags and the bowl down, four filthy women handling it with the care of a bomb squad.

The last pitch was the worst, almost vertical, the creek tumbling loud beside us in the dark. My headlamp found the rope knotted to the trunk of an alder. We climbed down one by one, the bowl airborne for one long beat as it passed between us and nearly fell to the ground.

We landed on stones, then shuffled onto sand. The creek fanned out ahead of us in thin silver threads to cross the black sand and vanish into the surf.

I made the mistake of looking up and saw how the ravine climbed into the fog and the dark, and I realized the return route would be the same, but without the light and the time, and without gravity on our side.

We headed for the cave, the fog rolling off the water to blur the path across the sand. Our boots were already soaking, and now the waves lapped at our feet, cold and frothy. The sea stacks rose from the surf in the haze, craggy and behemoth.

Our headlamps guided us to the mouth of the cave, where we slipped on our robes and stood in the fog like nuns in some medieval dream.

Chapter Thirty-Nine

Ten feet into the cave, Priya stopped.

“No,” she said.

“There’s nothing in there but dead crabs and algae,” I said. I took a deep breath and told everyone else to do the same. It was just as dark and cavernous and stinking as before, but with three other headlamps glowing around me, my body didn’t flinch at every rock or tangle of algae at my feet.

“It stinks so bad,” Callie muttered, the cave walls making her voice sound low and hollow. “Like the ocean’s unwashed feet.”

“Don’t make me vomit,” Priya said, stumbling over a rock.

We passed the bend, into the belly, where we’d be hidden, even from a flashlight at the entrance.

“Okay,” I said, sliding the backpack off my shoulders.