On the day the doctors released him, Robert was loaded into an unmarked county car and driven downtown to appear before a grand jury. After spending two days answering questions he was finally acquitted of murder and released from jail. Then the press swarmed in, and Robert and his family packed in the middle of the night and left for the coast.
CHAPTER 66
Some days were still harder than others, but they seemed to be growing fewer with every passing week. Although the wounds on his body had mostly healed, the scars were like fading roadmaps of where he’d been, and sometimes if Robert happened to stare at them too long in the shower or when he dressed he would be seized by a profound anxiety. Sometimes the fear his family might be in danger was so real that he would search frantically in the cabin or out onto the beach for his wife and son and he would only calm down once he’d made certain they hadn’t been stolen from him again.
But he was getting better. He was certain now the storm had gone back out to sea and died like it should have the first time, after he and Will had rescued Robert’s father in Mexico…
He hadn’t tried using any of his powers again and he didn’t even care if he still had them. Nothing could change the profound understanding he now had of the world, and yet it seemed like he’d had glimpses of it throughout his life—brief partings of the fabric separating a reality he had grown cynical of, to a recasting of that same reality in a light that renewed his sense of wonder and awe.
The first had been going off to college. Later it was having Peggy and Connor come into his life. And now it was the sea where he felt it the strongest, far away from any red mountains…
CHAPTER 67
Back when he lay in the ice shrine receiving the secret knowledge from an unsympathetic ghost named Charlie Maynard, he’d gone far back into the chain of power, hundreds of years before Oman’s great grandfather was even born. It wasn’t like a simple filmstrip playing in Robert’s head but more lifelike in its holographic completeness, for it included all of his senses as well. He could spend as long as he wished in each place he visited, even several lifetimes trying to learn all he could about what had been imparted to him against his will. Yet after all his careful searching for a way in which he could rid himself of it he still found nothing that could help him.
He learned how the power had always resided in the island where Maynard learned the ancient craft, even before the tribe he’d lived with for many years first wrecked upon its shore. In fact it went back to the days before the molten crust of the earth began to cool, to the time when creatures fell from the sky in a meteor-sized ball of flame and how they’d melted into the liquid rock that would one day form an island…
Who they were, he did not know. But the consensus amongst all the shamans who’d traveled this far was that they were powerful spirits of energy. Shiva-like in their ability to create and destroy, they were neither good nor evil, but the essence of nature so concentrated it had drawn together a body, then later a single body divided into many bodies—like a rose with a billion fine petals, each one formed against the other, and meant to one day scatter on solar winds. This rose had traveled a long way through the void to find earth, and the question as to whether it been released from the hand or talon of some cosmic being would remain unanswered. Had it been a gift or a curse to humanity all depended on how the power was used.
The original tribe that washed ashore found the island bountiful in food and fresh water, and it was several generations later before the hidden power of the island had seeped fully into their bloodstreams. By this time their community had grown into the size of a small village. Some members who possessed the power began to use it toward darker ends, especially when warding off outsiders or committing acts of revenge against their own.
Problems arose when frightened tribes from other islands began to grow concerned about the threat of their neighbor. Stories spread quickly, mostly wildly exaggerated, and they had the effect of raising the overall panic to hit a boiling point. In a preemptive effort to protect themselves from what they considered to be an impending danger, many banded together and went to kill the entire tribe, sparing no one, and within a month’s time, the island appeared to be wiped clean of the hated “devil people.”
Unknown to their enemies, however, many of the so-called “devil people” managed to escape the island on the night the slaughter began. But they couldn’t leave in their longboats, for their attackers had already split them apart with axes. Driven instead by faith in their holy man’s promises, they gave themselves up willingly to the sea. Under a moonless night they’d walked together in one arm-linked mass beneath the crashing waves—a reef of humanity, at first drowning before realizing later they weren’t truly dead, waiting until memories faded throughout the chain of islands before some were able to rise from the surf and return once again to their land.
And that’s where the sea came in. Why Robert’s connection to it had greatly deepened. This was also behind the reason why he and his family had been renting a cabin for several weeks with no end in sight.
CHAPTER 68
They were sitting on the beach one evening when Peggy had first brought up the idea. Connor and Nugget were playing down by the water’s edge as the sun was setting behind a cottony bank of clouds. The air was chilly and smelled faintly of wood smoke and brine.
“We’ll stay as long as you want,” Peggy had told him. “Even if it means we enroll Connor for school down here this fall.”
“And what do I do about the shop?”
“You could drive into town a couple of days a week and check on things.”
“It wouldn’t be enough. There’s too much to keep track of...”
Peggy had put her arm around him and pulled him close beneath the blanket they’d wrapped themselves in.
“Just listen to me. While you were in the hospital, Will asked if I thought you might be interested in taking on a business partner.”
Robert stared at her, surprised.
“Will’s not interested in the shop. That must have been the morphine talking.”
“He’s serious, Robert. He’s come into a little money. He says he has a few ideas that could bring the place more business.”
“It’s not doing that bad…”
Peggy frowned. “But you know it could be better. Sure it pays the bills, but it won’t let you get away from it much.”
“But it’s where I’ve spent most of my life. I don’t know what I’d do if I wasn’t needed there all the time.”
“Your family needs you too. And you should be reaching out for your dreams again instead of feeling guilty about it.”
Robert thought about what she’d said. She was making sense. Even if it made him feel uneasy.
“Then I wonder why he didn’t say anything before about this?”
“I guess he was nervous about it.”
“Will? Nervous?”
Robert couldn’t deny the fact he already liked the idea. He’d known for a long time he needed someone else around to attract more customers, and Will had the magnetic quality that Robert desperately lacked. If he could free up some of his time, perhaps Robert could start reading more, maybe think about finishing his degree or take up painting...
Now that’s a wild idea to think about…
In his heart he didn’t know if or when he’d ever want to live in the city again. He didn’t want to stop listening to the voices he heard in the waves. Maybe some day he’d understand them. But he knew it would take patience and lots of time…