Anne Brown - Promise Bound

Her thoughts were a whisper, as if she had no idea of the chaos that was happening around us. “What did you do to me?”

“I saved you,” I gasped. “It was my turn.”

Lily released me and smiled for just a second when I lifted my head. But then something else caught her attention, reminding her of where we were.

Maris and Pavati circled each other, their tails lashing back and forth.

“What are they saying?” I asked. “What are they fighting over?”

“Danny,” she said.

My relief at my mother’s safety outweighed any concern I had for Daniel Catron. He, at least, had chosen his fate. My mom hadn’t chosen danger. I’d put her in that position. “Then my mom’s still safe in the boat.”

Lily turned to me in horror when she realized whom her prey had been.

Before I could confirm the question in her eyes, we both turned in panic at the coppery smell of blood in the water.

“Danny!” Lily cried as Daniel’s body went limp and slowly sank deeper, his arms raising to his sides and then up over his head.

Pavati chased after him, a streak of blue, then there was a loud crack and a burning smell in the water.

“Oh, man,” I whispered.

“Danny,” Lily whispered, as he raced away with Pavati, hand in hand, matching blue tails bending and arcing through the water, a trail of silver bubbles in their wake.

Maris, in her fury, charged the boat again. She would pacify herself with a victim, any victim, one way or another.

Lily screamed, “Help!”

“What do you need?” I asked.

“Not you,” she said. “Nadia. She owes me.”

I would have protested, but before I could speak, Lily gripped the pendant in her fist and closed her eyes.

“I did my part,” she said, but she wasn’t talking to me. “Maris is not keeping her promise to you. If you want your family—what’s left of it—to be together, you need to step in. You still have time. You still have time.” Lily was practically chanting now. “There’s still time to intervene.”

I reached out for her. She must have been delirious if she thought Nadia was going to come to anyone’s rescue. My fingers, however, were not met by her hand. Instead, they found an electricity surrounding Lily like a force field. It pulsed from the pendant like a heartbeat, throbbing, then pounding, then beating with a deafening noise. I covered my ears and closed my eyes as we all rose to the surface.

LILY

It started with a trembling. A thin layer of silver water vibrated on the surface of the dark lake like rain on a snare drum. Taut. Tense. Bouncing. A tremor of electricity raced through my veins, and instinctively I surfaced to search the sky. Storm clouds tumbled over one another like wrestling children, but no sign of lightning, no sound of thunder. Oh, God, what had I done now?

I dropped my gaze just in time to see a stampede of droplets skitter across the surface like tiny beads of mercury, rolling, then racing, all bound for one central point. Maris retreated a few strokes and stared. I could hear Calder breathing heavily behind me, and my mouth fell open.

“Lily, do you know what you’re doing?” he asked.

Of course not. When did I ever? I’d always gone with my gut and things rarely turned out the way I planned. Still, it was the only way I knew how to do anything.

At the point where the beads of water joined, they leapt from the lake like rain in reverse, then a small fountain shot upward, collapsed, then shot higher. A geyser in Lake Superior. I was hyperaware of everything around me.

Gabby screamed and scuttled backward, falling onto the floor of the boat. Mrs. Boyd held Adrian with one arm and wrapped the other protectively around Sophie, who declined the comfort and went to stand at the rail. Maris cowered behind me and Calder.

We were all pinned in place—spellbound—by what took shape in the geyser: a head, a slender neck, beautiful shoulders, and the suggestion of arms. The geyser collapsed, followed by a terrifying hush, then shot up again in a roaring rush of sound, towering over us by twenty feet, this time holding its form.

“Holy hell,” Calder mumbled.

“Nadia,” I said.

Then came the voice. It was just as in my dreams, but deeper and farther away, as if she were speaking through a tunnel, or from a grave.

“You’re not all here,” she said, her voice tumbling. “Where’s Pavati? And Tallulah?”

Calder grabbed my hand and pulled me behind him as if he’d forgotten I was the one who’d summoned her. What would we say? How could I explain all that had happened?

“It’s my fault,” Maris said.

“Maris?” Nadia asked.

“I failed you.”

“Who called me?” Nadia asked.

A small whimper escaped my lips, and Nadia spotted the pendant around my neck.

“My daughter,” Dad said, swimming up behind me. I could sense his irritation at having found me missing from my room. “Your granddaughter.”

Nadia’s face softened at the first sight of her grown son—if softening was possible in the watery mask—and I swear I could see the love there. She rushed at my dad, making a giant wave and engulfing him in an embrace that took him under.

The lake fell quiet. Then Dad resurfaced behind Maris, his face shocked but exuberant, as the geyser shot up again.

“You came home,” she said to my dad. Then she looked at me and Calder. “Did you find the Thin Woman? McElroy?”

“I did,” Calder said, gesturing at the boat.

The pillar of water twisted like a cyclone and found Mrs. Boyd, who still held Adrian tight. She stood alongside Sophie and Gabby at the rail. Her mouth hung open in awe.

Nadia twisted again, finding me. “You did well.”

I beamed with pride, and Maris let out a howl of betrayal. She flung herself from the water, arching into a back dive that marked her angry retreat.

Calder lunged and grabbed her arm, catching her. He yanked her to his side and forcibly turned her chin to face Nadia. “Oh, no you don’t,” Calder said through gritted teeth. “Stand and face the music, Maris.”

“There is no music to face, sweetheart,” Nadia said to Maris, but based on the beautiful sound of her watery voice, that matter was up for debate.

The pillar that was Nadia curved and bent toward her oldest daughter. “Don’t be ashamed, Maris. It was wrong of me to put so much responsibility on one so young.”

Maris couldn’t look at her mother. She closed her eyes and, still held tightly in Calder’s hands, wrenched her head back and forth.

“I’m better off on my own,” Maris spit through a locked jaw. She clawed at Calder’s hands, trying to pull herself free. “I don’t want to be a family with the likes of these. How do you expect me to look at them and not remember how they hurt you?”

“I’m not asking you to forget,” Nadia said. “I’m asking you to forgive. To forgive them, to forgive me, and to forgive yourself.”

Maris shrieked and sent a shock wave of pain through the water. Calder’s hands flew back. I heard myself yell “No!” And with a flash of white light, Maris made her escape.

CALDER

Nadia melted away into the lake, finally laid to rest, her promise to Mrs. Boyd fulfilled. Lily held the pendant in her fingers, looking at it anew. “She’s gone,” she said, but she didn’t have to tell me. I could feel her go. We could all sense Nadia’s relief. The lake stilled to a glassy calm, warmer than it had been all season.

As soon as the water went quiet, Jason raced back home to tend to Mrs. H. He had revived her, just as I had done for the kayaker, but there had never been a proper reinvigoration. None of us knew whether the shock that had killed her would also change the course of the disease. I had my doubts, but only time would tell.