“But—I mean, why did it have to be so hard? So—I mean, so mysterious and all that?” asked Cara.
“You had to kept in a state of not knowing until just before we made contact,” said their mother. “It’s pretty much what Jax intuited: as soon as you knew where I was, he would read it in you, and he could get to me. So I had to find a roundabout way of getting to you.”
“And what have you—what were you doing all this time?” asked Max.
“I’ve been hiding from the Cold One and his servants—hiding while I do my work. Where I could safely hide, nearby but unseen. I had to find places where the Cold One couldn’t come after me easily—places where people couldn’t know my whereabouts, you see? So that the Cold One couldn’t find me through them. And now that you’ve taken care of—what did you call him? The Pouring Man?—by making him weak and drawing him to where my friends could come to my defense, I can come out of hiding. Be free. I mean, I can’t go to Washington to testify. I can’t be that public. But I can at least move around now. I can travel.”
“What about the data? Your data set that was stolen?” asked Jax.
“That was him,” she said. “His human allies, anyway. I don’t know yet who, exactly. He has tentacles everywhere. The ocean, you see, is a big part of what we’re fighting over … and I’ve had this—this obligation since before you were born, any of you. It’s my—call it a duty to my own family, my own parents and the ones that came before them. I’ve been running away from it for years. Because I wanted to be here with you and put all of that behind me. But now the scales have tipped, my dears. And I’m needed.”
“But your duty is here, too,” said Cara desperately. “With us. Isn’t it?”
“Of course it is,” said their mother. “But you have to remember: I’m doing this for you.”
They heard something call out in the night air—a bird, Cara wondered? But it was a loud call, a loud, strange call. There was a grandeur to it, a magnitude.
Their mother rose.
“I have to go,” she said. “You bought me some time. But before long there’s going to be someone else after me. Just remember: I’m closer than you think. I’m keeping an eye on you. Max, I saw when you broke up that fight in the park … and, of course, I was with you in the car. I had to stop him from hurting you.”
Max shook his head.
“How could you be—?”
“And Jax, I was with you at camp. For many days. And I saw you with the leatherback, Ananda. You may need to go to her again.”
Jax nodded.
“Cara, I was with you when you climbed onto the roof to push off the skate eggs—which you were right to do, of course. They were his. Not part of him, exactly, but from his world—creatures he sent through water to get to you. Probably he had some other ally bring them up from the sea and drop them there—maybe a gull he turned, I was guessing, since they were on the roof.”
“Did you—was that you who talked to me through the otter?”
“You could say that,” said her mother.
“But how?”
“I can’t answer that for you yet. I will say this: you know how Jax has … some unusual talents?”
She turned and smiled at Jax, hugged him against her side.
“Well. I have some of those, too.”
“ESP?” asked Max, the eternal skeptic.
“Something like that … listen. I’ll be in touch as soon as I can—or one of our friends will. And I’m sorry you have to be so strong, at your age. Most people don’t. But you do. You have to keep your eyes and your minds wide open.”
Max still looked, Cara thought, like he was angry.
“Come here, Max,” said her mother, and opened her arms.
Max walked to her, but he looked resentful. He was resisting her.
She put her arms around him and whispered something in his ear, something Cara and Jax couldn’t hear.
When he pulled back, his face was white, as though he’d had a shock.
And then it resolved.
He nodded and stepped back.
“I have to go, darlings,” she said, and turned to Cara.
Cara put her arms around her and hugged her hard. There were tears in her eyes again, she realized, but she wasn’t quite as embarrassed as she usually would be.
“At least tell me this one thing—was that you too? With the driftwood?”
“Yes. It was me,” whispered her mother.
“Then where were you—where were you hidden?”
“Why, in the sea, of course,” whispered her mother. “Now you’ve freed me. Now I can move through the air, too.” And kissed her on the top of her head.
“I love you, Mom,” whispered Cara.
“I love you too,” said her mother.
“We—we really miss you.”
“And I miss you. But it’s not forever. Just … till we meet again.”
She was walking away through the trees, down toward the water. The three of them followed her, watching. Something kept them from speaking, kept their eyes glued to her back.
Where are you going, thought Cara. And then, Who are you really?
Ahead of their mother was only the water. Cara half expected a ghost ship to sail in and take her away.
Instead something swooped down from the sky—a huge shadow in the dark, a silhouette over the barely visible glitter of the bay. It had a strange, jerky way of flying; she couldn’t tell right away what kind of a machine it was. As it drew near, it stirred up the air beneath it so that the reeds bowed low, making a thick, rustling sound that reminded Cara of a helicopter landing. Her mother’s hair blew up around her.
It wasn’t a machine at all. It was alive.
It alighted somewhere nearby in the trees, which groaned under the massive weight.
“My ride is here,” said her mother, and
