Editor’s note: You’ll find the beginning of this 15-part mystery at mercurynews.com.
CHAPTER FIVE: The Sea Witch
The Bay Area’s greatest detective had deposited one half of a pair of magic earrings into the boxy and fashionable bag of a visitor from another world, the unflappable Lois. The earrings were, by long association, linked — even between branches of reality.
Could Annabel Scheme reconnect them?
“I never figured that part out,” she admitted. Scheme kept a stockpile of plans half-figured-out. So far, it seemed to have served her well. “That’s why we need Carlotta. She’s my witch friend.”
We tore across the Richmond Bridge in Scheme’s electric pickup. I saw San Quentin College jutting out into the bay. Was there a San Quentin in Lois’ world? Or was it something else? Was there a Golden Gate Bridge? Surely, there had to be a Golden Gate Bridge.
Scheme zoomed across Sir Francis Drake to Nicasio Valley Road. The jagged reservoir seemed to float, the clouds nearly kissing their reflections in the water. She curled back down to Point Reyes Station, then continued up the shore. A colony of gulls swirled above Tomales Bay.
At a bleak curve in the road, Scheme brought the pickup to a bumping halt. There, on a forlorn cliff, a small house stood facing the ocean. Maybe it was a house; maybe it was a collection of driftwood that had been blown together, to be disassembled by another gust.
“She’s a sea witch,” Scheme clarified. “Very into transience. Awful infinitude. That sort of thing.”
There was a note tacked to the door that announced LOW TIDE! in neat capitals. “Oh, good,” Scheme said. “This will be fun.”
I followed her down a rickety staircase that clung unconvincingly to the cliffside and brought us to a thin, rocky beach, where a figure was leaping merrily in the surf.
“Ahoy, Carlotta,” Scheme called.
“Look at this HAUL!” the figure cried back. “Seaweed for DAYS!”
Carlotta looked, to my untrained eye, less like a sea witch and more like the captain of a fishing boat. She sported tall galoshes below sturdy work pants and a T-shirt emblazoned with the logo of Point Reyes Books.
Scheme explained our predicament while Carlotta, wielding a pair of pruning snips, accumulated black-green seaweed in a mesh net.
When Scheme was finished, Carlotta stood, regarded us both flatly, and tossed her pruning snips to me. I caught them, barely, while the witch produced another pair from her pants and passed them over to Scheme. “My aid has a price, and that price is five pounds of kombu. See you up above.”
Scheme and I harvested seaweed, collecting it in the net Carlotta had left behind, while the sun cruised down toward the edge of the world. First, my feet were soaking. Then, my ankles. The tide was surging in.
“We’ll call that done,” Scheme said. We scrambled up the steps, the ocean seeming to sigh with disappointment.
Carlotta awaited us inside her driftwood cabin, which felt much sturdier inside than out. Scheme exchanged our probably-not-five-pounds of seaweed for two mugs of tea, which smelled slightly psychoactive.
“I’ve been thinking about your crystal earrings,” Carlotta said, “and the other world. Kelp crisp?”
She offered a plate of snack crackers.
“You can’t follow that woman,” Carlotta said. “Maybe with science, but not with magic. But you can use the crystals to… peek. It will have to be through a dream.”
I took another cracker.
“You’ll never know for sure if it was real,” Carlotta said. “You certainly won’t be able to convince anyone else. But, believe me when I tell you: It will be real.”
“Fair enough,” said Scheme. “We’ll try.”
We?
“It’s safer if two go together,” Carlotta said. “A thread of connection in the dream. I’ll keep watch on this side.”
“Besides, Will,” Scheme said, “aren’t you curious?”
Carlotta lit a bundle of pine needles that released a pale pungent smoke. She poured a line of salt across the cabin’s threshold. She fished pillows and pallets from a heavy trunk and prepared a rough bed for each of us. Finally, she fashioned a little boat from the seaweed we’d just harvested, and into the boat, she placed Scheme’s remaining earring. “Your vessel,” she declared, positioning it on the floor between us.
“I’ll wake you up in an hour,” Carlotta said. “But you should know that the subjective time could be longer. That’s how it is with dreams. It could feel like a whole day. Even a week. But not a year.” She fussed with the smoking pine needles. “Probably.”
Scheme laid herself down on the floor, crossing her hands over her chest like a mummy. “Carlotta,” she said quietly. “The woman, Lois … she said that in her world, they didn’t fill the bay.”
“How wise,” the sea witch murmured. “I’m sure they made other mistakes, though.”
Outside, the sun had sunk below the horizon, and the only light came from the little lantern set up in Carlotta’s kitchen nook. The sound of the waves was suddenly very loud; a formless, enveloping wash. Yes: I could fall asleep to this.
As Carlotta had instructed, I fixed my mind on the crystal earring. Or, I tried. I couldn’t keep my thoughts from the feeling of the tide rising around my feet, my ankles. Awful infinitude. The wind picked up, a whistle rising into a howl, but the cabin did not shake, and drowsily I realized it was built more solidly than my apartment in Oakland, more solidly than Scheme’s office in Rotten City, more solidly than the Golden Gate Bridge. This little cabin would never fall.
And then, I was asleep and vividly dreaming. From a great height, I looked out across a bay unpaved, a dark oval ringed by light, protected as surely as a witch’s circle. And then I saw what they were building.
And in my dream, I screamed.
Tomorrow, Part 6: The Machine
