One Salt Sea: An October Daye Novel

“I’m not going to make you break your word to a rock, Danny.”


“Oh, good,” he said, relieved. “I didn’t think you would. Anyway, second one remembered water, third one remembered bein’ pulled out of the ground.”

“Great,” I said, heart sinking. The first two rocks were useful. The third . . . how many rocks came out of the ground? All of them, that’s how many. “This is very helpful, Danny.”

“No, no, you don’t get it! It remembers bein’ pulled out of the ground, but it wasn’t bottom-down, like in a trail or something!” Danny raised his voice in his excitement, words booming into the cabin. I winced, holding the phone away from my ear. “She pried it out of a wall, a mud wall. Like you get where a trail’s been cut, you know?”

“So she picked up one rock at the entrance, one rock from a stream, and one rock from the side of a trail?” I brought the phone back to my ear. “Did you get anything else?”

“Not really,” said Danny. “Rocks aren’t so good with time, and everything else they had to say was about how much they don’t like the shape stuff’s been in since the big shake.”

“The big shake?” I asked blankly. “What the hell are they talking about?”

“The earthquake in nineteen-oh-six,” said the Luidaeg. She leaned forward, close enough to the phone for Danny to hear her when she asked, “Did the rocks say they cried when the towers fell?”

“What—” I began.

Danny’s answer cut me off: “Yeah, they did. You know what that means? Who is this, anyway?”

“It’s a pleasure to finally get the chance to speak with you, Mr. McReady. You can call me the Luidaeg.”

Silence fell on Danny’s end of the line. Looking amused, the Luidaeg sank back into her seat. Finally, Danny asked, “Toby? Was that really the sea witch just there? On the phone? Talking to me?”

“Yeah, Danny, it was. She’s not wearing a seat belt, either.” I shot a sharp look at her reflection in the rearview mirror. She looked quietly amused. “Call if you get anything else out of those rocks, okay? We’re almost to Muir Woods. I’m going to need both hands if we don’t want to drive off the edge of a cliff.”

“Open roads, and I’ll call.”

“Good. Hug the Barghests for me.” I couldn’t thank him, and so I just hung up, handing the phone to Connor as I turned my focus back to the road. The closer we got to Muir Woods, the less developed the land around us became. Housing developments and strip malls had already given way to half-hidden private driveways and tiny general stores with rickety wooden porches. The smell of the redwoods was seeping in through the vents, filling the entire car with the living green memory of something older and cleaner than the modern human world.

The lack of human development also meant a lack of concern among the local wildlife. Wild turkeys casually strutted along beside the road, their scrawny brown chests fluffed out like little avian gangsters. We startled a pair of deer as we came around a blind curve in the road, and I hit the brakes just in time to keep from getting Bambi paté all over the windshield.

“Whoa,” said Quentin.

“My thoughts exactly.” I glanced over my shoulder. “Everyone all right back there?”

The Luidaeg, who was still not wearing a seat belt, didn’t look like our sudden stop had perturbed her in the least. “Fine,” she said. “Keep driving.”

I kept driving, more slowly now that we were on the treacherous roads marking the final approach to Muir Woods.

The Muir Woods National Monument was established to protect one of the last old-growth redwood forests in the state of California. It’s kept open to the public, as much to remind them why the forest is important as for any other reason. “These used to be everywhere in California,” said Connor suddenly. “Just about this whole part of the state was redwoods.”

“So why’d they cut them down?” asked Quentin.

“I don’t know.”

“Because they could,” said the Luidaeg. “Parking lot’s just ahead, Toby.”