And so, heedless of the sun and the heat, the three of them go down to the shore. They have dug for worms in the earth and put them in a bucket which they keep in the shade of a tall hazel bush. Motionless and silent—Louie has forbidden them from speaking, so as not to scare the fish away, and, in the beginning, they manage not to—they wait, casting their lines again when they think they can detect the movement of a fish here or there. The first hour they don’t catch anything, and nearly give up—it’s the fault of the heat, which rouses those damn flies and puts the fish to sleep. Exasperated, Noah changes his worms every ten minutes: They don’t like those ones. The fish start biting at around noon, at the same time as the wind rises. Perrine pulls in a bass, or at least that’s what they suppose it is, because it could be some other species the sea has brought up from the depths. Louie removes the hook and pounds the creature’s head on a stone to kill it. Perrine proudly holds her fish at arm’s length before putting it in the basket. It’s a nice one, isn’t it?
They catch a second, then a third, then they have four.
“We’ll eat them tonight!” exclaims Noah.
Perrine scratches her ear, puzzled: she doesn’t know how to cook them. The scales vaguely remind her of the hen they tried to pluck—pray the scales will come off easily, or that they can leave them on. She doesn’t want to have to cut the fish up.
Or maybe they should skewer them, on the barbecue?
The waves lap at the shore, the sky has turned gray again. They observe the clouds. Initially they pay no attention, just enjoying the refreshing cooler air; then the wind begins to swirl around them.
“There’s going to be a storm,” murmurs Louie.
The others nod, to them this is obvious: in the three weeks since the tidal wave engulfed the earth, there has been one storm after another. And it’s not that Louie has noticed anything in particular about the vibrations in the air or the way the wind is turning: he has said this instinctively, because the sea is getting choppy and the blazing sun has misted over, he says it and maybe there won’t be any storm at all, he simply says it because there could be. But Perrine looks at him as if it were certain.
“A real storm?”
So he nods his head to seem important, his expression solemn.
“I think so.”
She is worried.
“Should we stop?”
But Noah wants to go on, the wind in their sweat-sticky hair calms them. Louie studies the horizon. Five more minutes. Then we go back. He is giving them a wide margin: Noah is always clumsy at putting away his fishing rod, the line gets tangled, he jabs himself with the hook. A few months ago he got it lodged in his cheek. He has had a clear little mark under his eye since that day, a scar that won’t go away, where the skin grew back thinner—the little boy was damned lucky, half an inch higher and he would have lost his eye.
And they’ll have to carry the basket with their heavy catch, Louie doesn’t want to run, to be heading back through gusts of wind and rain that wrench the door from their hands. He says it again, sniffing the air. Five minutes. Noah lets out a cry: the line has gone taut. The last one! cries Louie, hurrying over. He brings the fishing net closer while Noah gives some slack, tightens, lets go. Perrine exclaims, watches the sky, then the fish, the sky again, she moves further back on the shore while the horizon fills with black clouds, she blinks suddenly, a raindrop.
“It’s raining!”
Noah pulls on his rod—I’m almost there! says Louie, kneeling by the water’s edge, his net outstretched, and behind them the sea has suddenly risen, like a dragon curling under the waves to toss them skyward, along with the wind, slapping and blowing; Perrine is afraid. The time it takes for her to look again and the heavens are upon them, a cloudbank so low that she thinks it will swallow them up, black monsters with gaping mouths, half concealing the breakers the sea is bowling impatiently toward the shore.
“Let’s go, let’s go!”
But the boys don’t hear her, all attention focused on the fish, which is struggling as they drag it slowly toward them, and that is why she is the only one who sees it, little Perrine, the wave forming out there on the ocean, a wall of water, distant at first, then too near, a thundering sound, Perrine screams in vain, runs back—while Louie senses his sister’s movement on one side, hurrying away, and he stands straight, heart pounding, to see what it is she is fleeing from, then a rush all through his body, danger, danger.
“Noah!”
He grabs his brother, tearing away the fishing rod. He leaps away with a roar.
“Perrine, go to the house! The house!”
At the same moment he stumbles, and Noah falls between his legs, The fish! The line, the rod: everything has been sucked into the sea. But that isn’t what Louie is looking at, his eyes open wide.
It’s the wave.
The same one.
No, not the same one.
Not as high, not as strong.
But the fear is the same. The same as on the evening of the great tidal wave. Again Louie sees the water rising dozens of feet above him—how he ran to reach the house, to slam the door behind him. Again he sees Madie’s astonished gaze as he clung to her, he sees his own hands, trembling as he tried to explain, and couldn’t find the words.
All of that in a few fractions of a second.
And in that moment he knows that he and Noah won’t have time, the sea will be upon them before they can get away. He flings himself to the ground behind the hazel bush, dragging Noah down with him. He puts his arms around each side of the bush, grabs his brother’s arms. His voice, hoarse and trembling: We don’t let go of each other. Even if you die, you hold onto me. You hear me?
The wave crushes them. Louie counted as he watched it coming—four, five seconds later. He would have liked to be sure Perrine reached the house, to hear the door slamming behind her, hear her steps vanishing into the shelter of the thick walls. But he couldn’t. First of all, because he didn’t have time; and then because he was incapable of turning away from that wall of gray water bearing down on them, hypnotized by the way it was moving, spouting and swelling, a living thing, of that he is certain, howling, creating the deep trough to take them out into the core of its power; Louie has rolled Noah’s sleeves in his hands to grip them tighter.
When the wave flattens them, the impact is so powerful that Louie cannot be sure he has not opened his hands. For several seconds he stops breathing, his belly crushed by the blow. Immediately afterwards, he can feel the water receding, tugging at his body, his torso, his legs, clashing with the hazel bush over them, pulling them out of joint in a rage, maybe he and Noah have already been separated, he doesn’t know, he can’t see, there is only this terrible painful shaking in his shoulders and arms that makes him hope they are still clinging on and that the bush will withstand the surge. He doesn’t feel the blood on his face, doesn’t hear Noah calling him, he is blinded, one by one his fingers are pulled back by the prodigious force of the sea, the little boy cries his name, Louie, Louie! as the waves turn him on his side like a wisp of straw, twisting his arms, smashing his back against the hazel bush, no, Louie hears none of that, his eyes are closed, his voice is reciting his fierce determination to survive and his refusal to be carried away, this voice that no one can hear, saying, No, no, no.
The wave recedes, a few seconds have gone by, ten, fifteen at most—an eternity. It will come back. The wind announces it and precedes it, this wave or the next one, already rumbling in the distance, forming and dissolving, building up anger to return to the shore, to grab hold of anything running, living, and to drag it down to the bottom of the sea, Louie knows he must be quick. Coughing and gasping, he tries to catch his breath, to turn his head toward the sea, which has taken possession of the land, a liquid force incorporating everything, pulling him back again, toward the ocean, toward the vastness and the void, he throws up, he is filled with water, too light, too weak, around him there is nothing left but the roaring of the waves, the whistling of the wind, and the shouts inside his head.