Inside, the air is clogged with the smell of damp earth and must, a combination that forces its way up Jacob’s nose, into his mouth, down his throat. It’s like trying to breathe through dirt. His body responds with a fit of coughing and sneezing. His eyes, his nose, stream; his chest convulses. Dimly, he can hear the other men hacking and wheezing. After what feels like hours, his lungs succeed in clearing enough of what’s invaded them for Jacob to breathe. They aren’t easy breaths he takes in, but for the moment, they’re sweet as honey. He wipes his eyes clear, and the cause of the air’s thickness is revealed. The walls, ceiling, floor, all of the room he’s entered is dark, furred with dense, black mold. It’s impossible to tell where the windows are. The room is full of gray, diffuse light. Mold envelopes what must have been a steamer trunk. It joins a trio of chairs along the opposite wall. It transforms a small table into an enormous toadstool. The only thing in the room clear of mold is the woman standing in the middle of it, at the center of a large puddle of dark water.
Jacob knows he shouldn’t look at the woman, at Helen. But she’s been on the lips of everyone in the camp for the last several days, first for her death, then for her return from it, and then for her assorted activities after that. More people claim to have seen her than is likely possible. Their reports have assembled a hodgepodge monster in Jacob’s imagination, a hunchback whose right arm is the tentacle of a cuttlefish, whose skirts rustle and shift in odd ways, whose shadow doesn’t stay in place, but ranges around her like a dog on a long leash. It would be remarkable if he didn’t lift his eyes to her.
What he sees might be considered a lesson in the difference between rumor and reality. Helen’s right arm hangs at her side, no sea-beast’s limb, the odd dips and bulges in its pale skin mementos of the beatings inflicted on it by Italo’s hammer and Regina’s frying pan. Her dress is like a drape thrown over a pile of rocks, but that’s due to the injuries that took her from this life. As for her shadow, though it’s difficult to see in the gloom, Jacob’s reasonably sure it isn’t moving. What catches his attention is the fact that the woman is soaked, from head to foot, as if she’d been doused with a barrel of water the second before Rainer stepped through the front door. Her hair, her dress, are sopping. Her skin shines. It almost looks as if the water is flowing out of Helen, but that’s probably a trick of the light. The rumors are correct in one detail, the woman’s eyes, which are dull gold, the pupils black holes. Should those eyes turn in his direction, Jacob is ready to drop his gaze, but Helen is fixed on the man standing closest to her, Rainer.
There’s something about his posture, a certain formality, that calls to mind the professor in front of a lecture hall, the lawyer in front a witness, the priest in front of the altar. Rainer’s work clothes, his rough shirt and trousers, laden with the dust of his day’s labors, seem almost comically inappropriate. He should be wearing a suit, or the robes of a scholar or clergyman. The dead woman opens her mouth, and what sounds to Jacob for all the world like a low, throaty chuckle emerges. Jacob shifts from foot to foot. The laugh continues, spools out of the dead woman like thread snarling off a loom. It’s almost tangible. Jacob can practically feel it winding around him. There’s something inside it, a message for him and him alone. The message is extremely important. It concerns Lottie, Lottie and him. If he concentrates harder, lets the laughter tighten its coils about him, he’s sure he’ll be able to hear what it’s trying to say to him.
“Silence,” Rainer says.
The laugh stops. Helen frowns. Jacob shakes his head, as do the rest of the men.
“Who is your master?” Rainer says.
Helen answers in a voice like rocks cutting the surface of a stream. Jacob feels his bowels shudder. The others step back. She says, “His name is not for you.”
“Who is your master?” Rainer says.
“Ask Wilhelm Vanderwort,” Helen says.
That name sends a jolt through Rainer. He starts to speak, stops, and says a third time, “Who is your master?”
“The Fisherman,” Helen says.
Rainer nods. “Why has he come here?”
“To fish,” Helen says, her mouth twisting in a sly smile.
“Why is he fishing here?”
“The water runs deep.”
“For what does he cast his line?”
“No thing.”
There’s a pause, then Rainer says, “Not whom, surely?”
“Surely,” Helen says.
“Who?” Rainer says.
“You are not fit to hear the name,” Helen says.
“Who?”
“You could not stand the sound of it.”
“Who?” Rainer says again. Jacob has the sense of a ritual being observed in the exchanges between Rainer and Helen. She is under no obligation to answer his question’s first asking, or its second, but if he persists, she is obligated, he’s not sure how, to surrender the information he demands. Rainer is on the verge of delivering his request a fourth time when Helen utters a word that Jacob has never heard before. It might be “Apep,” but she says it too quickly for him to be sure.
Rainer appears to recognize the name. He says, “Nonsense. He would not dare.”
“You have asked,” Helen says, “and I have answered. Would you prefer another name? Tiamat? Jormungand? Leviathan?”
“The truth!” Rainer shouts. “The Compacts—”
“I heed the Compacts,” Helen says. “Do not blame me for what you cannot accept.”
“He does not have the power,” Rainer says.
Helen shrugs. “That is his concern.”
“The consequence—”
“Does not matter to me.”
“How much work is left him?”
“Not much.”
“He has woven the ropes?”
“From the hairs of ten thousand dead men.”
“He has forged the hooks?”
“From the swords of a hundred dead kings.”
“He has set the lines?”
“Why do you continue with these questions?”
“Has he set the lines?”
“If you run home, you will have time to kiss your wife farewell.”
“Has he set the lines?”
“The near ones,” Helen says.
Rainer turns to the others, something like relief written on his face. He says, “We must leave, now.”
“What about her?” Italo asks.
Without looking at Helen, Rainer motions with his left hand, what might be a throwaway gesture except that his fingers bend, rise and fall as if he were playing a complicated tune on a trumpet. Helen’s form dims, then dissolves in a fall of water whose slap on the floor makes the men shout and jump back. For an instant, Jacob sees her shadow still in place, twisting like a thing in agony. He can hear a scream coming from somewhere, and it’s as if it’s that sound that carries him through the front door. Outside, he’s a little surprised to discover that the scream isn’t his, it’s Andrea’s. The man stands with his hands at his side, his eyes bulging, his mouth in an O from which a shrill noise rises into the evening air. Jacob thinks he should go to Andrea, try to calm him, but he’s too busy inhaling huge gasps of that same air into his lungs. It’s as if a boulder has been rolled off his chest. He sways, half-staggers as the oxygen washes through him. Never has it occurred to Jacob that breathing might be such a pleasurable, such a satisfying act. It’s left to Rainer to take Andrea by the shoulders and say something to him that calms his screaming.