It’s Andrea who answers Rainer’s suggestion, crossing himself and speaking rapidly in Latin. Italo follows suit, and together they run through what seems like a Sunday service’s worth of prayers. Jacob keeps his head bowed for the duration. Needless to say, he keeps his eyes from Angelo’s face, not to mention the wound that insults the base of his neck. He focuses on Angelo’s boots, which are the same, worn variety the rest of them are wearing. They’re coated with the red dirt and dust of wherever this is Rainer’s led them. The left foot sticks straight up; the right leans against it. When Angelo tugged these boots on this morning, tightened and tied the laces, he had no inkling they would be his funeral wear. This strikes Jacob as painfully sad.
Once Andrea and Italo have said “Amen,” and crossed themselves again, Rainer unclasps his hands and turns to the hill they descended on their way here. Italo says, “Wait.”
“What is it?” Rainer says.
“We aren’t done burying him,” Italo says.
“I have made a marker,” Rainer says. “Prayers have been offered.”
“He can’t be left like this,” Andrea says. “He needs a grave.”
“How are we going to dig one?” Rainer says.
“The stones, then,” Andrea says, pointing to the beach. “We can pile stones over him.”
Rainer shakes his head. “I am sorry, but there isn’t time.”
“Why not?” Andrea says. “We don’t need that long.”
“I would guess that, while we speak, the Fisherman is drawing his strength back to himself. This means that we do not have very much time before the passage that took us here collapses.”
“I thought this Fisherman was dead,” Italo says, and the crease in his brow makes Jacob uneasy.
Rainer ignores it. “Who told you that?” he says.
“My eyes,” Italo says. “I watched the man dragged into the water by one of his ropes.”
“And you think that that is enough to kill the one who did all this?” Rainer flings his arm to take in the broad tree stumps, the heaps of rope, the slaughtered cattle, the monster in the ocean. Jacob recalls his aerial vision, and the nervousness Italo’s glower provoked uncoils into fear deep and profound. What has led them to believe the figure who caught and was on his way to bending the power in front of them to his will could be slain by the likes of them, a threadbare professor and a handful of stoneworkers? Jacob’s fear swiftly verges on panic, and it may be that Rainer notices this, or that he reads a similar change on Italo and Andrea’s features. He says, “Make no mistake: we have won a great victory, here. We have removed the threat to our families. We have disrupted the Fisherman’s plans. And we have caught the Fisherman, himself, trapped him using his own tools. If we are lucky, then the great beast he is bound to will break free and swim into the ocean, taking him with it. If we are not so lucky, then he will find his way free before that. Even if such is the case, though, it will be the work of decades for him to escape the prison we have locked him into.”
Anything else Rainer wants to say is interrupted by a succession of crashes. “The ocean,” Italo says, but the rest of them are already turning toward it. For the second time since he arrived here, Jacob watches the vast arc of flesh offshore move. But where its previous movement was the tensing and relaxing of a creature shifting into a more comfortable position, this is something different. The beast — Jacob can’t help continuing to think of it as the island — is swaying, the right side leaning closer as the left side leans away, then the left side leaning closer as the right side leans away. The motion disrupts the surrounding waves — the crashes that drew the men’s attention. Still swaying, the creature raises itself, the dull, scaled mass of it growing from large hill to small mountain, from small mountain to bigger mountain. Jacob’s mouth drops open — he can’t help it — as yet more of the thing emerges from the ocean, bigger mountain growing to Alpine peak, water pouring off it in great rivers, Danubes and Hudsons falling down its side. The dark ocean seethes around it, thrashes against it.
Beyond terrified, beyond awestruck, Jacob is blank, his mind wiped clean by the enormity eclipsing the sky in front of him. When a pair of hands grabs his shoulders, spins him around, and pushes him in the direction of the hill backing the shore, his feet shuffle forward out of simple muscle memory. Not until he catches sight of Andrea sprinting ahead of him, and Italo running to catch up to him, does Jacob start to move his legs in earnest. Rainer is beside him, and despite the pale light washing his face, Jacob can sense the concern on the older man’s features. His recognition of Rainer’s emotion spurs him to pick up his pace, close the distance to Andrea and Italo. By the time he reaches the foot of the hill, Jacob is running all-out, his arms hammering, his legs pistoning. He powers up the slope, the muscles in his thighs, his calves protesting almost immediately. A quick check over his shoulder shows Rainer behind him, the vast bulk of the great beast continuing to rise in the distance. Ignoring his burning legs, his heaving lungs, Jacob maintains his pace. Around him, the strange trees peculiar to this place thicken on the hillside. His breathing thunders in his ears. Darkness crowds the edges of his vision, until he’s watching Andrea and Italo crest the hill through a long, black tunnel. Something presses on the small of his back — Rainer’s hand, urging him forward. In no time at all, it seems, Jacob’s legs have become blocks of concrete, which grow heavier with each step he takes. He’s still carrying his axe, hasn’t lost hold of it this entire time. He might as well be hefting an oak. He would drop it, gladly, but his fingers have forgotten how to release it.
Once Jacob tops the hill, it takes him half a dozen strides to realize what he’s done. He doesn’t stop so much as slow, his legs momentarily unable to cease their motion. Like a runner who’s completed the race of his life — which, in a sense, he has — Jacob walks in a circle, knuckles on his hips, head tilted back, eyes closed, mouth inhaling bucketfuls of air. Somewhere close, he hears Rainer’s labored breathing. He should open his eyes, but Jacob can think of nothing he’s less inclined to. He’s gone straight through exhaustion to nausea, to this side of shuddering collapse. Weights fall on his shoulders. He opens his eyes to Rainer, grabbing him and bringing him to a halt. Jacob’s already shaking his head, refusing Rainer’s insistence that they must keep moving. He has nothing left. Jacob waves Rainer away, points him up the track they made on their way here, which Andrea and Italo have located and are on the way along.
If Jacob expects an argument from Rainer, he’s disappointed. Having said what he had to say, the older man moves past Jacob, after Andrea and Italo. As he goes, however, he says, “And what about Lottie?”
Jacob’s head jerks back as if he’s been slapped. That name is maybe the one word capable of slicing through the torpor that’s snared him. Questions crowd Jacob’s tongue: Why did Rainer mention Lottie? Does this mean he no longer objects to Jacob’s attention to her? How is that possible, since not only is Jacob still Austrian, but his hands are wet with another man’s blood? Unsure what’s going to emerge, he opens his mouth — but Rainer has set off after Andrea and Italo at a brisk pace. Perhaps Jacob spends a moment debating whether he can summon the strength to carry him to the door of the Dort house, but the argument is pro forma, its outcome already clear. For what he’s reasonably sure is the promise implicit in Rainer’s question, Jacob will find his way out of this place.