Previous part of Troubled Waters.

***

Part Seven: Sunday, July 9, afternoon

The best thing one can do when it's raining is let it rain.

—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

xxxxx

His patience was minimal at the best of times, and mid-drenching, it was non-existent. There were several large black umbrellas in attendance at the marina, but not enough to go around. Dean huddled in on himself, shoulders hunched and head bowed, but his windbreaker was sopping wet, and he could feel rain trickling down his spine. He shifted his weight from foot to foot and kept asking if anybody had seen his brother. He received shrugs in answer; in the chaos of organizing the search, the Queen of England could have walked by and no one would have noticed. And these people were supposed to be observant? thought Dean.

There had been some coming and going of cars; searching now were the county police, the state police, the Coast Guard, and a contingent from the Naval air station a few miles away. Dean saw a black Suburban pull up; he watched as it expelled a couple of sheriff's deputies, and he shuffled over, unwilling to walk any faster in his wet jeans.

"Afternoon, officers," he greeted. "I'm Dean Fogerty, with the Mounties, been liaising with Sheriff Douglas on a case about a missing girl—Celia Edwards?—from Vancouver, BC. Down here with my partner, Sam; don't suppose you've run into him lately?" he asked casually. A shrug. "Can't reach him on his cell phone."

One of the deputies cocked his head to the side. He had put a clear plastic cover on his wide-brimmed hat that Dean knew was government issue, but still managed to look more ridiculous than the plastic bags that old ladies wore over their hairdos in the rain. "Sure, I spoke with him, oh, before lunch," and Dean's stomach chose that moment to remind him that he hadn't eaten anything since breakfast. He tried to ignore it. "Seems to me he joined Douglas on the Coast Guard cutter."

"Really." Dean paused. "Do you know when they'll be back?"

"Not a clue. But if you need to reach him, whyn't you go to the harbormaster's office; think they've got a communications centre set up there."

Dean thanked him, and trudged through the downpour—had he really wanted it to rain? He must have been out of his mind with the heat—towards the small building. Inside, he found a couple of people from each government agency involved, and radios and cell phones in quantity.

Dean gave his standard spiel—RCMP, missing girl, cross-border investigation. "So, uh, do you know which boat the sheriff's on? 'Cause my br—partner's probably on it."

They didn't know where Douglas was, exactly; Dean wondered, if they couldn't keep tabs on the sheriff, how were they going to find a missing fishing boat? Radio calls went out, and shortly, Sam was located.

xxxxx

In the summers, when Jasper Kelman was not in San Diego and his family went to visit his grandparents in Washington State, he explored the whole coast. The rules, of course, about not leaving the compound applied solely to the ordinary members, not to respected leaders such as his parents. He spent little time on the beach; the ocean was not a novelty to him as it was to the holidaying children at the state park. He scorned their wonder: it was only the ocean. Just a lot of salty water. It was there. That was what it did.

Instead, he scouted what was inland of the high-tide line. The low sand dunes, the rocky bluffs, the dense forest. He had no brothers or sisters, had no one to play with—no, he did not play; at the compound, the children did not commit acts as pedestrian as playing—so, he explored, and for companions he had only the squirrels and stellar's jays and shadows.

He climbed trees and dug out rotten logs and cached treasures inside. An eagle's feather, a rodent's skull, flat, smooth stones.

His favorite tree overlooked what the state park signs called the desert. He knew it was not desert because they had desert in California, and there it was arid and stark and the ground was hard. The tree reminded him sometimes of a bowl of spaghetti. Sometimes the tree reminded him of a sponge. A block of wood, with holes drilled haphazardly, like Swiss cheese but with less cheese. And sometimes it reminded him of an octopus.

He was drawn to this tree. He had first laid eyes on it when he was four years old, and his grandfather had taken him by the hand, telling him he had a surprise for him. He was carried, eyes shut, the last hundred yards to the tree, before being set down on a branch four feet off the ground.

He had been too young to climb, but had known already that the tree was luring him. That the tree was seeking him out, and him alone.

As time passed, he only felt the attraction strengthen. Every two or three years, his family would make the trek northward to Whidbey Island, and the tree mesmerized him. As a teenager, he climbed to the very top of the tree, a flat network of limbs, a canopy over the soft sand and shed needles below. The view was incredible—beautiful sunsets over the Pacific Ocean, Destruction Island and its lighthouse several miles out to sea, a sailboat, the silhouette of an oil tanker on the horizon. The round head of a harbor seal, or an otter.

He did not know why the tree enthralled him so. Seduced him, he thought when he was seventeen, and resolved to figure out why.

He researched fastidiously, if infrequently—somehow, the fir slipped his mind entirely when he was in San Diego, surfacing only when he was crossed the forty-eighth parallel—and slowly he pieced together the story, finishing as he sat in the Oak Harbor public library in 1997. At dinner that night, at his grandparents' home, he was told that they were moving to Yuma, where it was reliably warm and dry, and so he could move into the house, if he wanted. Afterwards, he walked along the shoreline to the Douglas fir.

As he stood near its base, branches snaking out around and above him, he knew that he was right. That he had figured out the story. Though he was only twenty-three, he was mature enough to know that acting rashly with this new power would not end well. He needed time to plan. He could not utilize his knowledge tomorrow, or the next day. It would require extensive planning and research to exploit the force embodied in the tree, but he was confident in his abilities. He would bide his time.

xxxxx

A sudden rapping at the glass window behind him made Sam jump; he reluctantly turned from the vision in the sea to the pilothouse. The sheriff was motioning for him to go inside. With a last glance at the waves—the face, that of a young woman, was lying just below the surface—he stumbled into the dry.

Douglas pointed him towards the radio, and he was handed a headset that looked sturdier than those worn by astronauts during re-entry. He put it on, tugging it over his ears and adjusting the mouthpiece. The foam sphere over the microphone was large enough to obstruct his vision.

He heard static, and then a faraway voice calling his name. He said, "Hello? Yes?"

And then he heard, "Sammy?"

"Dean!" he said incredulously. Could it possibly be his brother?

"Yeah, it's me." The quality of the connection made Dean's voice sound like it was coming from the dark side of the moon. Astronaut headset, indeed. "Answer your phone once in a while, okay?"

"It didn't ring," protested Sam, pulling the cell out of his pocket. Two missed calls. "Oh. Well, I didn't hear it. It's loud out here."

"You coming back to shore any time soon?"

"Uh, I don't know. Listen, um, there's something I have to tell you. Can I call you on the phone?"

"Let me call you," said Dean, neatly avoiding the issue of his own cell phone's deficiency.

"Sure."

Dean left the building and found a pay phone near some vending machines. Famished, he bought a bag of Nibs for a dollar fifty-five; what a rip, he thought, and called his brother.

"So, don't think any of the women got into the cult, at least of their own accord. Don't know what happened to them though; but they were all engaged. Isn't that strange?"

"Dean, in the waves out here? I saw… I saw a face."

Dean paused. "A face?" he asked. When in doubt, repeat the last thing the other person said.

"Yeah. Of a young woman. With raven black hair."

"Ooookay," said Dean slowly. "And it's not any of the missing people?"

"No. It… there was no body, just the face."

"What do we do now?" A beat. "Did you tell anyone?"

"What, are you crazy? No, I didn't mention anything. I'm on the deck right now, freezing to death, and everybody else's inside, staying warm and dry."

"Was there anything else? A young woman, black hair, anything more specific? Like, maybe a bullet hole in her forehead? Or a distinguishing scar on one cheek, so I can track her down?"

"No, Dean, and there wasn't any skywriting, either. Although… she looked maybe Indian. Like, Native American. Maybe there's a legend? About a girl, and the water?"

"I'll see what I can do. And, set your phone to vibrate, okay?"

xxxxx

They had heard this before, but that was no reason not to tell them again. Jasper Kelman stood at his place at the head of the table and orated. "The Indian maiden's beau, you'll recall, was heartbroken. His future wife had fallen under the spell of the man from the sea. She visited from the depths every year for four years… and then she never returned again. And so, grief-stricken, he killed himself. Hanged himself. His spirit still yearns for her return." He waited a beat for it to sink in. "Rise," he announced. "A moment of silence, please, in honor of his spirit. In respect to his spirit who, like us, was overlooked, ignored. Who was cast aside. But we are taking up the battle! Our quest, our desire, our aspiration—this, the moral imperative—our righteous crusade—to show that I will be victorious. I will be triumphant." Jasper Kelman surveyed the twenty-eight attentive faces, saw them on their feet, remembered why. "A moment of silence," he repeated, and they bowed their heads.

xxxxx

Libraries weren't really Dean's speed, and anyway, it was still Sunday (though it felt like he'd been awake for days) and the library was closed. At the harbor, small groups of officers and search and rescue people huddled under hastily-erected tents and sipped coffee. Everyone was antsy, desperate to help but stuck on shore and unable to do anything productive. They shifted their weight from foot to foot and repeated the same conversations: I hope they find them; I wish there was something I could do; any news? Dean moseyed, or tried to, anyway, in his sopping wet clothes, over towards one of the older officers. The older you were, the more stories you had to tell.

Taking pains to be casual, Dean inquired, "So, do many boats go down in the Pass?"

He got a sharp look for his trouble; he'd broken the cardinal rule of rescues, and that was to mention failure while there was still hope. Dean cleared his throat. "I mean, like, historically."

"Historically?"

"Yeah. Like, are there any… can you tell me… you know, like…" Any minute you can jump in, man, thought Dean. Cut me a little slack, huh? "Like legends." He out-and-out said it.

"Legends?"

This is ridiculous, thought Dean. Nobody was this curt. Or at least, not to Dean. He'd never managed to produce such a small reaction in anybody in his life. "Never mind," he sighed, and grit his teeth. "Nothing like helping a fellow officer," he muttered under his breath. He was ten feet away before the man spoke.

"Hey."

Dean turned, raised his eyebrows in silent question.

"You're an officer?"

Dean nodded. "RCMP."

The man shook his head in apology and held out his hand, which Dean took. "Didn't realize. Thought you were one of them." He jerked his head towards the people gathered around the edges of the yellow police tape that attempted to keep the crowds at bay. "A thrill-seeker." The man looked Dean up and down. "You don't look like an officer."

Dean gave a tight smile. "It's a good thing, I think."

The man gestured ambiguously and introduced himself as Tom Silversmith. "So you're interested in the local lore."

Dean shrugged, self-deprecating. "Yeah, well, it's something to pass the time, you know?"

"I do crossword puzzles, myself," said Tom, rubbing at the grey stubble on his chin. Absently, Dean noted that it was the same color as the sky. What hair there was on his head was lighter, nearly white, although the man was probably only in his late fifties. He was comfortably overweight, not potbellied, but stocky. His tan uniform had probably been crisp when he'd dressed this morning, but the rain had been hard on it, and it was wrinkled like he'd slept in it.

"There is a story," Tom admitted grudgingly, and there was a long pause before he went on. "Samish Indian legend. The women once gathered shellfish along the shores of Deception Pass. Then one day, a particularly beautiful young maiden dropped a clam she'd collected back into the sea, and she reached into the water to catch it. It kept getting farther away, and she kept going in deeper to get. She was waist-deep when something grabbed her arm, and she screamed."

"Anybody would," said Dean, wondering if there were male sirens.

The corners of Tom's mouth turned up slightly and momentarily. "It gets better. A voice told her not to be afraid, that he only wanted to see her beauty. She was released and she went home. The next day, the same thing happened. She was lured into the sea, and the man would grip her hand and say he loved her." He stopped speaking. Dean waited. Tom seemed unused to forming this many words at once. Time passed, and he cleared his throat and continued. "He told her about the world under the sea, a stunning village where he lived. The sea plants and fish, beautiful colors and shapes that were far more amazing than anything on land. Eventually, the man came out of the sea and asked the girl's father if he could marry her."

"The lack of gills never came into it?"

Tom's face was expressionless as he stared at Dean. "Don't believe so. The girl's father said no, and the young man said that he would curse the sea so that the shellfish would disappear, leaving the girl's people hungry. The father still said no, and the fish vanished. Then the rivers ran dry and there was nothing to drink, either."

"Hard decision to make, huh," commented Dean. "Good of one or the good of many?"

Tom did not appear interested in philosophizing. "You telling this story or am I?"

"Pretty sure it's you." It was out of his mouth before he'd thought about it, and Dean wasn't sure that Tom would continue. But he did.

"Eventually, the father caved and sent the girl to live in the sea, provided that she came out once a year to visit. The young sea-man agreed, and they were married. The fish returned and the rivers flowed, and each year, the girl came to visit. As time passed, she seemed to like it less on land. Barnacles grew on her skin. After four years, her father said that she didn't need to come visit if she didn't want to. She never returned, but her husband made sure that the Indian people always had fish to eat and water to drink."

That was interesting and all, thought Dean, but it wasn't the fishing that was down the tubes.

"And the Indian people used to say that when they paddled through the Pass, if they thought of the maiden, they had no trouble paddling their canoes through the currents. If they didn't, they would get caught in the whirlpools and drown."

Dean nodded thoughtfully. That was a little better.

"They used to say that, sometimes, they could see the young woman wading in the water behind them, keeping watch."

"Thanks," Dean said, "very much. That...was great." He made a show of glancing at his watch. "Sorry, but I have to make a call. Gotta run."

At the pay phone, Dean realized he was running low on change. After this call, he would have seventeen cents left. He'd have to go get some coins from their stash in the Impala; they collected quarters like they were going out of style, for the constant stream of Laundromats.

Blessedly, Sam answered. "Dean?" His voice was timid.

"You okay?"

"Hope so—it's just really windy and wavy and, well, I'm trying not to get seasick."

"Windy? Really?"

"Believe it or not."

"Huh. Still calm here. Though raining like you would not believe. Anyway, I found this legend…"

When Dean had finished recounting the story, both brothers were silent.

"So it was this girl you saw," said Dean finally. "We can't go dig up her grave and burn her bones or anything. Got any ideas for how to get rid of her?"

"Why would she be taking girls randomly from the island? The fishing boat, I get. What's happened that's caused her to begin going ashore?"

"The first one went missing January of last year. Now, seems to me that was just after Jasper Kelman's little nut show got started, am I right?"

"Think so."

"So, the Indian girl gets upset, for some reason, and starts kidnapping young women. All engaged, like she was when she went to live on the ocean floor." A beat. "Do you think the arbutus tree thing could explain it?"

Sam pondered it as he gazed at the whirlpooling sea, hoping for another glimpse of the girl. "Probably. And… the cows? How do they fit in? What do you think they did with the bodies? We only found blood by the fire pit."

"Maybe they ate them. Barbequed."

Sam paused. "It's possible," he said. "But, unless they have a bunch of deep freezes in the basement…"

"Well, I can head over to the grounds and maybe do a binding ritual, something like that. After I head to Pass Island and… do you think I could burn the tree in this weather?" Dean seemed honestly curious.

"I think you better not," said Sam hastily. "It's park land and there's lots of trees around; the fire could spread. And, besides, it's right alongside a busy state highway. You wouldn't exactly be inconspicuous as you wandered around with all the tools of arson on your person."

Dean was silent. "Wonder if I could somehow draw the girl's presence. Then destroy her."

"Dean, she only goes for girls who are going to get married."

"You fulfill half the requirement."

"Dean!"

Dean cleared his throat and stopped joking. "What about that other tree? The twisted one, by Cranberry Lake?"

"What is it with these people and trees?" Sam asked rhetorically. He grabbed onto the deck rail as the boat began a wide 180-degree turn. It was running a search pattern east-west through the length of the channel. The rain and wind had not let up, in fact were growing worse.

"Okay. I'll go dig up some rituals and we'll go from there. You, uh, hang tight, okay?"

xxxxx

In the motel room, cell phone charging on the nightstand, Dean scoured his father's journal for the magic words. Latin words that would mysteriously vanquish the girl's spirit, that would send her back into the depths of the sea (or hell, or wherever she belonged) and would neutralize, as it were, the arbutus and the fir and the fire circle in the clearing.

He gathered his supplies: the journal, with a few important pages dog-eared; salt; holy water; some small pouches that smelled like potpourri that Missouri Mosely had prepared and that he'd been saving for something tricky. He packed everything into a clear plastic bag he'd found under the liner in the bathroom's garbage can, and then put the filled bag, and a spare, into a duffle. Two of the three battery bars on the phone were showing, and Dean figured it would have to do. He got into the Impala and headed north on the 20.

The downpour was so intense that, even with the wipers on high, Dean could barely see out the windshield. He had no choice but to drive painfully slowly, stuck behind a long line of cars with out-of-state, and out-of-country, license plates. Tourists. They had all the time in the world. Dean, on the other hand, did not.

It was three o'clock before Dean was standing beside the arbutus, which appeared entirely unassuming. Uncharacteristically self-conscious, because none of the other steady stream of cars were stopping at the viewpoint in the fog and the wind—yes, the wind—and the rain, Dean rummaged through his bag and pulled out a cardboard box of rock salt. Keeping his back to the highway, half-hidden by shrubs and young firs, he sprinkled it liberally around the base of the tree, putting an extra layer on the disturbed earth where the wooden box had been buried. Then he opened a bottle of holy water and poured it down the tree's trunk from eye level, to cleanse the scars from the peeling bark.

With a glance at the road, he moved through the shrubbery to the far side of the tree, further obscuring himself from passing cars. Also, he told himself, so that he would be at least slightly protected from the elements, to avoid getting the journal wet. He carefully extracted it from the duffle, opening it to the right page and inserting it into the extra plastic bag. He held the waterproof package in both hands, gave the tree a solemn look, and began to sound out the Latin.

***

Part Eight: Sunday, July 9, evening

No one but Night, with tears on her dark face,
Watches beside me in this windy place.
—Edna St. Vincent Millay

xxxxx

Dean was accustomed to a spirit making its presence known about halfway through a rite, if not before. The temperature would drop, there would be a localized wind, and the spirit would often materialize and fight back.

Here, there was a steady wind, but it had been blowing when he'd arrived. It was cool but, again, it hadn't got cooler since he'd begun reading. Come to think of it, there'd been no bubbling or hissing when he'd doused the tree in holy water. Either the spirit was too strong for the binding ritual, or it wasn't there at all.

There was no way to tell, so Dean buried three of Missouri's sachets around the tree's base and left.

He hadn't driven thirty seconds before his phone rang and he heard Sam's frantic voice through static. "Why haven't you finished yet? What have you been doing!"

"I, uh, exorcised the arbutus?" tried Dean.

"It's a gale out here, Dean! A hurricane! Or a typhoon, I guess, in the Pacific." The connection was choppy, like maybe the typhoon had damaged the cell phone tower on Goose Rock.

Dean came to the traffic signal at the entrance to the Deception Pass campground and turned right. He pulled over and got out of the car. It was calm, though still raining.

"It was windy on Pass Island, but it isn't here on Whidbey," he reported. Sam made an unusual noise. "You okay?"

"Yeah," came the faint reply. "It was a particularly big wave—trying not to lose my lunch."

"You ate lunch?" said Dean indignantly, remembering the Nibs.

"No, guess I mean breakfast. Dean, hurry up and get rid of this thing, okay?"

"Huh, and I was planning on driving around, seeing the sights."

"Just do it, okay?"

xxxxx

Sam had returned to the pilothouse, where he'd stripped off the yellow survival suit that reminded him of Big Bird, and had donned warm, wool socks from a supply cabinet. A grey woolen afghan was wrapped around his shoulders. He sipped hot coffee from a travel mug he held in both hands away from his body, because the boat's movements were jarring enough that coffee was escaping now and then through the tiny hole in the lid.

The heat was turned on, steaming up the windows, which wasn't a problem—the view was grey, either way. "Gets much worse, we'll have to turn back," shouted the captain from his seat at a desk where he was studying charts of the strait. Nobody was standing; if they had to move around, they exercised the three-point rule: at least three of their four appendages had to be secure at any one moment.

Sam was relieved. He'd been flung around by poltergeists more times than he could count, but being in a tossed-around boat was another thing entirely. His stomach might never be the same again, he thought ruefully.

He'd made his last phone call to Dean from inside, because the captain had decreed that if anybody went outside, they would be required to wear a harness that tethered them to the ship, in case they fell overboard.

There had been no news—no sign of the fishing boat's three occupants nor of the vessel itself. Sam was exhausted, and he had accomplished nothing all day.

xxxxx

When Dean got to the octopus tree—because that's what it looked like, he decided—he ran through the same procedure as he had on Pass Island. Salt, holy water, Latin. This time, not a sentence into the ritual, he heard a whooshing sound over the pounding surf and the driving rain, and he was nearly knocked off his feet by a gust of wind. It swirled, picking up rain-wet sand and flinging it about. Tree boughs swayed dangerously near Dean, and he clutched his father's journal in one hand and his duffle bag in the other. The wind blew, and he plunked himself down the ground and tried to read again.

He heard a snapping sound, and turned in time to see a large tree limb flying directly at his face.

xxxxx

It was only late afternoon, hours before the sun was scheduled to set, but it seemed like night already. Sam had pretty much gone out of his mind: he'd studied every chart in the boat, he'd read every notice posted on the walls, he'd watched the depth sounder for a while, he'd stared at the storm, he'd tried to draw the sheriff into a conversation. For all intents and purposes, it was dusk, and the ship still ran its search pattern. He pulled out his cell phone to call Dean, for a progress report. Dean would be annoyed that he was checking up on him (again), but Sam needed a connection to the outside world, needed a lifeline to some place where the ground was steady and people actually spoke.

The phone rang and rang. Sam assumed that Dean was mid-ritual, too busy to answer the phone, and left a message. "Hey, Dean. It's me. How are things going? We're still out here, patrolling, at, um, four forty-six. So, uh, give me a call, will you? Bye."

He would have paced back and forth, but the waves prevented that. At least he wasn't overly seasick, because there was nothing in his stomach anymore, except for too many cups of coffee sloshing back and forth. However, his stomach was pretty close to devouring itself, desperate for nourishment.

He managed to wait until five before trying Dean again.

xxxxx

He was really uncomfortable. How he'd managed to fall asleep in this lumpy bed, he'd never know. And—was the roof leaking in!

And he opened his eyes and, in the darkness, made out trees above him. Oh, right. Interrupted in the octopus tree exorcism. He reached a hand up to his forehead; it came away wet, which wasn't surprising. Everything was wet.

He forced himself to sit up, and squinted at the palm of his hand: it was dark with blood. He sighed and explored the gash above his right eye. It was oozing; he'd been out long enough for it to begin coagulating. The side of his face and his hair were sticky, though, so clearly it had bled a lot. Terrific.

His two bags, the duffle and the clear plastic, were around here somewhere. He felt around in the sand for them, encountered broken branches that had fallen in the wind. Which was gone, he realized belatedly. And then he felt something soft and furry. He recoiled instinctively, repositioned himself so that it was in front of him. He strained to hear it move or breathe, but the crashing waves drowned out anything as subtle as breath.

He had a lighter in the bag, wherever it was. Once he found it, he would be able identify the smallish lump in the sand properly. In the meantime, he grabbed a stick and cautiously extended it. There was no reaction. He poked the mass, and still nothing. Confused, he kept a sharp eye on it as he continued feeling for his bags.

He retrieved them—they were probably twenty feet further into the forest than where he'd awoken—and pulled out the lighter. He flicked it, and amidst the shadows, he recognized the lump.

It was a dead squirrel.

Kind of odd, he thought, but it must have been hit by a flying branch, or fallen out of a tree, and died, although it wasn't visibly injured.

His phone rang as he was walking through the sand back to the paved path by Cranberry Lake. "Sam?"

"Hey!" said Sam enthusiastically. "How're you?"

"Ah, well, I'm minus a few pints of blood, but otherwise I'm fine. Got interrupted during the ritual…" he said, and explained. He concluded by saying, "So I think I'm going to have to wait until you get off that damned boat so we can do this together."

"Tell me about it," muttered Sam. "I have never been so frustrated in my life. And hungry, and frustrated. Did I mention I was frustrated?"

Dean laughed. "Well, I'm going to head back to the motel, have a hot shower, grab some dinner."

He saw a couple of people with a dog on a leash in the parking lot. Presumably they were out for a walk, were the kind of people who were addicted to violent weather, but now they were bent over, examining the dog.

"Don't rub it in," grumbled Sam. "I'll call you when we head back to Oak Harbor, okay?"

The dog seemed to be disagreeing with the idea of a walk. It was lying down, stubbornly refusing to rise to its feet. It awkwardly resisted the tugging of the man on the leash, and the frantic arm motions of the woman.

"Let me call you back," said Dean, and hung up.

"What? Dean?" said Sam, but the line was dead.

xxxxx

There was a shout, and instantly everyone in the cabin of the Coast Guard ship snapped into action. "What… what is it?" asked Sam.

"Picked something up on the radar," said the helmsman tersely, spinning the wheel aggressively clockwise. The ship responded a second or two later, keeling hard to port, and Sam clutched at a handrail to keep from stumbling. The pilothouse was suddenly crowded, people rushing back and forth, checking instruments and speaking into radios and cell phones. There were garbled shouts, two degrees north and current of seven knots and Sam pressed himself into a corner, trying to stay out of the way. Two of the crewmen donned survival suits, and Sam put his on, too.

On the deck, it seemed almost calm relative to the flurry of activity inside. "Should be at ten o'clock," said one of the men to Sam, and he nodded, though he didn't know what he was looking for.

And then, out of the gloom there was a darker shape, the outline of a fishing boat with outriggers raised.

xxxxx

In the Deception Pass parking lot, Dean strode quickly towards the couple and the dog, a German shepherd. He saw that the dog wasn't just refusing to move, it was unable to move. It was entirely limp, although apparently not dead. Yet.

"Is your dog all right?" asked Dean.

"No, I don't think so," said the man, who was wearing a yellow Gore-tex jacket. He was wearing glasses, too, covered in rain drops. He crouched beside the animal, glanced up at Dean, and his attention was diverted. "Are you all right?" he exclaimed.

Dean reached a hand up to his temple, cautiously explored the new scab. "Walked into a tree—got dark so quickly. I'm fine. But your dog?" None-too-subtly changing the subject.

"She just suddenly stopped walking, lay down, and she won't move. It's so strange. She loves walks," said the woman, her voice rising, vaguely hysterical. The hood of her blue raincoat had been blown off her head and her hair was stringy in the heavy rain.

"Bizarre," said Dean. "Uh, is there anything I can do?"

"Is she breathing?" said the man, touching the dog's tan chest. "She's not breathing!" he cried, voice rising an octave.

"Do something!" pleaded his wife, as both the man and Dean knelt impotently by. "What about CPR!"

The man sighed and sat back on his haunches. After a moment, he stood and hugged his wife to his chest. "I'm afraid Candy's dead, honey. So bizarre," he echoed Dean.

Dean tried to decide what to do. If it had been a person, he'd have called nine-one-one. But it was a dog, and there was nothing he could do, but it still seemed callous to say, Gotta run, got things to do and places to see. Later.

He cleared his throat. "I'm sorry. Is there anything I can do?" he repeated.

"I think we'll be okay," said the man, glancing down at his wife, who had begun to cry.

"All right, then." Dean nodded in farewell and hurried towards the Impala. On his way, he stumbled over a couple of dead sea gulls, lying on the pavement. As near as he could tell, they were unharmed, except for being dead. When he got inside the car, out of the rain, he started the engine and turned on the heat before calling his brother.

***

Part Nine: Sunday, July 9, night

It always rains on tents. Rainstorms will travel thousands of miles, against prevailing winds, for the opportunity to rain on a tent.

—Dave Barry

xxxxx

"Animals are dying around here, Sam," Dean said without preamble.

"What?"

"A squirrel, a dog, some birds. Dropping dead entirely out of the blue. For no obvious reason."

"That's weird," commented Sam.

"That's helpful."

Sam didn't bother responding, was already beyond that. Quietly, "Dean, another one of the plagues was the death of livestock."

"A squirrel counts as livestock? Guess they're taking the definition a bit loosely." A snort. "At any rate, I'll head over to the fire pit; maybe they're performing another little ceremony."

"We found the fishing boat," said Sam abruptly.

"You did? That's great!"

"There's no one aboard. No sign of struggle."

"A ghost ship," pronounced Dean.

"That's what they're saying."

xxxxx

Dean saw the thin light from the hurricane lanterns through the trees. He stood in the forest, watching, thirty feet from the clearing around the fire pit, which was as near as he dared get when there were a dozen cult members out there. He'd missed the ceremony, had arrived in time to see its aftermath.

The fire was burning itself out, helped along by the deluge. Half a carcass of a cow was being methodically hacked into pieces by someone who knew what he was doing—a butcher in another life? Cow parts were loaded into a wheelbarrow and several loads were carted off in the direction of the house. Steak for dinner, and Dean's stomach growled. Then some cow parts—bones, mostly—were buried in a trench around the fire. Unusual, reflected Dean. More wheelbarrowfuls were dumped in the sea.

When there was nothing left of the fire but coals, a fireplace poker was used to extract sooty, scorched cloth from the pit.

These people are crazy, thought Dean, and not for the first time. Several people left the area, returning to the house, and Dean began circumnavigating the clearing, leaving a trail of salt behind him. The spirit would be trapped in the protective circle. He supposed that this was why he'd been unsuccessful in banishing the spirit from the arbutus—it was otherwise occupied here at the fire. However, having exorcised the tree, the spirit would be unable to hide out on Pass Island. He half-wondered if there was anything special about the arbutus, or if it had been made special by the cult's choosing.

When he got to the gap in the trees on the ocean side of the clearing, he extended his circle out into the wet sand of the desert. He would be exposed for a few seconds, but it was a risk he was willing to take. The noise of his running would be drowned out by the ocean, and the cult people were pretty intent on their work. He was quick and went unnoticed, although he saw more dead gulls and a rat sprawled on the sand.

He heard a cawing behind him, and turned in time to see a crow flying north over the cult's property, towards the state park. It seemed to be coming in for a landing, which was a perfectly normal behavior for a bird, except that, about twenty feet off the ground, it suddenly nose-dived into the beach.

Dean stared at his completed salt circle—he'd used up ten pounds of salt once destined for a pickling plant—in dismay. He hadn't broken the spell. He pulled out his dad's journal, hurriedly ran through the ritual—if he did it once more tonight, he'd have it memorized—and waited to see what effect it would have. It might not do anything, he admitted. The spirit could be over at the octopus tree and there was nothing he could do about that until Sam was off the boat. Whatever had possessed him to get on the damned thing in the first place?

There weren't many birds about, either because of the rain or because they were dead. Then Dean saw a small V of Canada geese fly in from the sea, and could only watch in horror as they passed over the beach and, one by one, plummeted to the parking lot.

He had to do something. There were probably a thousand people in the campground. Prior to the thunderstorm, it had been a beautiful, hot weekend in July, and the campsite was full. Probably crawling with dogs; maybe they'd succumbed already. And if animals were dying, would the curse start affecting babies and small children?

But how to evacuate? Dean knew. He'd done it before. He dialed nine-one-one. "Forest fire near Cranberry Lake! Caused by a lightning strike! Fire!" he shouted, and the panic was only half-fake.

The park rangers were mobilized immediately, and by the time Dean got up to the first campsites, shouting, "Forest fire! Forest fire! Evacuate immediately!" there were pick-up trucks driven by rangers guiding people away. He saw big blue tarps hurriedly erected that afternoon and lit by Coleman lanterns and shaky flashlights and the flickering of a few campfires, which belonged to the true outdoorsmen, those who could light a fire in the rain. A ranger pulled a shovel from his pick-up and piled dirt over the flames.

"Leave everything!" they were told through a squawky megaphone. "Share rides, we don't want to clog up the highway with vehicles!"

There was some hysteria, because there was always some hysteria, but the entire campground was evacuated within twenty minutes.

Dean, with six passengers (a mom and dad, two small kids, and an elderly couple), drove out to the highway and headed south, towards the Naval air station where the campers were directed to assemble.

At the base, Dean heard about some dead dogs and one cat, heard campers compare stories and listened as they speculated that the pets had been aware of the forest fire before the people were, had sensed it, and had somehow expired from the fumes that nobody noticed. Like canaries in a coal mine. Others nodded, and said that they were feeling ill, strong pounding headache, upset stomach, like they'd been poisoned by carbon monoxide. The power of suggestion.

He endured medical attention: "Really, all I need is a cloth to wipe the blood off; no stitches are necessary; see, it's already scabbed over."

They didn't want to let him leave. They were trying to do a head count, compare the numbers with those registered at the campsite, and though they'd never reconcile the two figures, losing a person wouldn't help. It was only by waving his RCMP badge (quickly, lest the sergeant actually see it) and by mentioning his ongoing investigation with Sheriff Douglas that Dean convinced the soldier to let him go.

And then he was troubled with the question of where to go. Oak Harbor? The octopus tree by Cranberry Lake? Pass Island? There was something to be said for impetuousness, but now and then, a person needed to stop and think.

The arbutus and the cow sacrifices were the work of the cult. They were hailing some sort of spirit and, apparently, causing the plagues. And power outages, but in the midst of an electrical storm, who could tell? The octopus tree… By virtue of geography, it seemed to be linked to the cult. But he'd been unable to complete the exorcism there, whereas with the cultic possessions, he'd completed the exorcisms, just without any measurable success.

So, to sum up, he knew more than he'd known that morning, and it didn't make a bean of difference.

And he remembered the wind. The wind that was unrelated to the cult, but had returned around the octopus tree. It had to be related to the missing girls, because it was windy where Sam was, by the face of the Native American girl.

And he was back to square one, because how do you kill off an Indian legend?

xxxxx

Jasper Kelman was celebrating the success of his plague. He'd never proclaimed anything but unshakeable faith aloud, but he was nonetheless amazed by what he had caused to occur. When he saw his followers' wonder at the plagues, at the success of their rites, he was sure that—though they would never admit it—they had been as skeptical as he. This victory would undoubtedly elevate his position; in fact, he hoped that this unspeakable behavior had been corrected for good. This was a sign for his followers—something to inspire a bit of faith in himself.

xxxxx

"Stick a fork in me, I'm done." Sam threw open the passenger door of the Impala and collapsed into the front seat. The Coast Guard vessel had finally returned to port and Dean was just picking up his brother in Oak Harbor. Sam pulled the door shut, slumped against the window and closed his eyes.

"Except we're not," replied Dean. "It won't be long before they discover it was a false alarm, that there's no fire, and they let everyone go back. We've gotta do this now. We'll head over to the beach and do the ritual by the tree and get out of this town."

"But, Dean, before—" Sam had straightened up, turned towards his brother and, distracted, stopped short. He reached a hand towards Dean's right eye, hovered a few inches from the neat row of butterfly bandages. Instinctively, Dean looked up and to the right, craning to see where Sam was pointing. "That's the cut from the tree branch? When you mentioned it on the phone, it sounded like you were maimed." There was silence while Sam waited for a response, but Dean had nothing to say. "Well, anyway, before we exorcise the tree, we need to figure out why it's so critical to this. Why it's stealing away engaged women. Why—"

"Who cares about cause and effect? The whole chicken and the egg thing. What's it matter? Why don't we just go kill it?" Whatever patience Dean possessed was long gone today. He turned the key in the ignition, flipped on the lights and the wipers, revved the engine. Squinted into the darkness, turned the wipers on as high as they would go. "It's raining harder out there. Just what we need."

Sam decided on changing the subject. Sometimes it wasn't worth it to argue with Dean. "Bet the salt didn't work because it's immune."

"Immune?" Dean glanced over.

"Yeah. It's a beach. Salt air, salt water. It's used to it."

"Okay." Dean paused. With exaggerated patience, he said, "So what do you suggest instead?"

Sam gave him a sharp look but didn't pursue it. "Maybe we just carve symbols into its trunk. Bind the spirit."

"And the next person who climbs it, what, gets thrown off by a sudden strong wind?"

Sam smiled without humor. "And that is why we need the cause, Dean. Can't get rid of the effect if you don't know the cause."

Dean, temporarily stymied, took a moment to reply. "You won't let me burn it, will you."

"Dean, there'll be fire fighters crawling all over that place now. I'm thinking a bonfire is not the best idea."

"What other options are there? In similar situations, we've… burnt down the tree."

"Yeah, well." Sam brainstormed. "A tree is going to get possessed because something's buried by it? Like the arbutus. Or because… one of its branches was used for some sort of evil purpose. Maybe." He snorted in disgust.

And suddenly it hit Dean. "Sam, you nearly had it when you mentioned symbols. It's a Native American legend, right? And they used to make crest poles. You know, totems." A shrug. "It was more common up north, in Alaska, but I think they did it around here a bit, too. Mostly out of cedar, but occasionally out of other things, too. Maybe there's stuff carved into the tree, hundreds of years old, from the time that the girl went off to live in the sea. Totem poles tell stories, or list lineage. Probably the carvings are grown over, covered by new bark or something, but I bet that's what it is."

Sam was staring. He was pretty sure he'd never seen a totem pole before in his life, and here was Dean talking of them like he'd grown up with them. Sometimes his brother astounded him. "Sounds logical," he said finally, somehow unable to make a more encouraging comment. He cleared his throat. "So we… add our own symbols to counteract the Indian ones. Straightforward enough."

Grimly, Dean said, "Except, of course, the tree's not exactly going to stand still and let us."

The hilarity of that comment hit Sam like a truck and he burst into gales of laughter.

"Sam? You okay?"

Sam nodded, bent over in the seat, clutching his stomach. "Trees are usually noted for their ability to stay rooted in one place," he choked out, and the mirth was catching and Dean was chuckling, too.

xxxxx

They'd sharpened their knives, still in the harbor parking lot, and determined which symbols were the simplest to draw. They'd get those ones onto the tree first, then, its power diminished, they'd attempt the more elaborate ones. "It'd be easier if we could just draw them on," lamented Dean, air-carving a sigil with a six-inch hunting knife.

"Hey, watch it with that thing. And what would we draw with? Hard to write with a pen on the bark of a Douglas fir."

"Spray paint."

"Dean! We're not going to vandalize that tree!"

"You don't count this—" Dean gestured with the blade "—as vandalism?"

"Nobody'll notice cuts in the bark. But graffiti? It's a state park!"

He shook his head in disbelief. "Shades of grey, indeed," he observed, and Sam wondered what the hell that meant. But Dean went on before he could pursue it. "All right, all right, we'll just use the knives. So, are we ready?"

"We're ready."

***

Part Ten: Monday, July 10, early morning

For all at last returns to the sea—to Oceanus, the ocean river, like the everflowing stream of time, the beginning and the end.

—Rachel Carson

xxxxx

Of course Dean couldn't drive into the campground, because they'd reported a forest fire and so the road was closed miles from the turnoff. They nodded at the deputy stationed at the roadblock, listened dutifully to his directions to the two ferries off the island, "Although you probably won't get to the terminal before the last sailing", and turned around in a squeal of tires, Dean swearing under his breath. He parked around a corner, on the side of the road, and the Winchesters zipped up their coats and pulled on their hoods and grabbed their bag and began hiking through the woods.

They followed the road, but stayed on the edge of the forest because they never knew when they would run into somebody fighting the fire. Or, rather, looking for the fire.

It was far beyond midnight before they got to the driveway to the Kelman house, and they decided they'd cut through the property to get to the octopus tree. Shorter than circling around Cranberry Lake.

The forest was unnaturally quiet. No hooting of owls, no fluttering of bats, no scampering of raccoons. Just the steady drumbeat of the rain, and the waves smashing on the shore. Sam supposed it would be attributed to the fire, although the lack of a fire would be hard to explain. Sometimes he wondered how people persisted in refusing to believe in the supernatural.

They were soaked through, with rain and sweat, by the time they came to the tree. It appeared entirely benign, but Dean shone his flashlight on the broken branch—four inches in diameter—that had knocked him out. Sam set his jaw and didn't comment.

They started by delineating the tree's perimeter with dribbles of holy water. Otherwise, they hadn't developed a clearly defined strategy, but they'd prepared their dad's journal; it was opened to the right page and sealed in a plastic bag, and tucked underneath a hefty stone so when the wind inevitably came, it wouldn't be blown away. They figured they'd start carving into the fir, see what transpired.

Sam took stock of a thick branch at chest level, and determinedly cut a cross into the thick and ripply bark. Nothing happened, and he shrugged at Dean, who had apparently aimed for the tree's trunk and become perplexed, because the tree didn't have a trunk as such. The thick base barely protruded from the ground before splitting into several huge branches which grew in all directions, none of which was up.

Sam cut into another branch, and still the tree was quiet. He and Dean steadily worked for a few minutes, cutting crosses and pentagrams and other simple shapes into the bark. Finally Dean stood back and surveyed the tree.

"Why don't you try the ritual," he suggested.

Sam picked up the journal and began to recite. A third of the way through, the wind picked up and temperature dropped. He stopped reading, glanced up.

"Got way farther along than me," said Dean, and returned to gouging symbols into the tree. Flashlight in one hand, blade in the other.

Sam's cry was sharp. "Dean!"

Dean whirled in time to see a branch flying towards him of its own accord, and he ducked and the branch slammed into a limb behind him. There were splintering sounds, and the broken bough slid to the ground. "I knew there was a reason I kept you around."

Sam cleared his throat and returned to reading, one eye darting about for wayward limbs. There was a loud cracking sound, and both Winchesters froze, glancing about furiously for the source of the noise. "Timber!" Sam heard Dean hiss, and he hurried out of the way as a nearby cedar fell with incredible speed, more than that precipitated by gravitational acceleration, towards the spot where he had lately been standing.

They regrouped outside the hallowed circle, and decided to mark sigils on a few neighboring trees before returning to the octopus tree.

Sam began reading again, and was thumped in the ribs by a large branch with enough force to knock him to the ground, the journal and flashlight both flying out of his grasp. The scene was lit by lightning, and in the flashes, Sam saw the journal land several yards away. Dimly, he heard Dean call his name as he spit sand from his mouth and crawled towards the plastic-wrapped book. A limb bent unnaturally and swept the book farther away, and Sam chased it, on all fours, across the desert.

Dean shouted curses in Latin, dumped a bottle of holy water over the branches in the tree's centre, resulting in a satisfactory hisssss and cloud of steam, and saw that he'd distracted the spirit enough that Sam had been able to collect the journal.

Sam sat on his knees, hunched over the book in the sand, watched in awe as the tree flung itself to and fro. Watched the branches twist and flex in a deadly dance, watched Dean firmly tuck a thick bough under one arm as he wielded his knife in the other. His flashlight had long been abandoned. It was a scene out of Harry Potter, thought Sam, the Whomping Willow, except that Harry and Ron had had the protection of the Weasleys' car. He and Dean were at the mercy of the elements. That was in The Chamber of—

Not now, he counselled himself, and returned to his reading, the lightning strikes frequent enough that he left his flashlight where it had fallen. He finished the passage, and hesitantly approached the tree.

There was a constant stiff breeze now, but it didn't rise or fall. The tree boughs shook, but with less intensity than before. Shrugging, Dean began an intricate sigil, and apparently the crosses and Latin had sufficiently diminished the spirit's power that it caused nothing worse than the flickering of the flashlights lying on the ground. With trepidation, Sam climbed high into the tree, added a few carvings to the uppermost branches, where they were less likely to be noticed or to be worn off by people's shoes as they clambered up into the tree.

Eventually, they stood shoulder to shoulder in the sand, in the flashes of lightning that broke the darkness, in the torrential downpour but in the calm. "Are we done?" asked Sam, tone disbelieving.

"Only time will tell."

xxxxx

Since they were in the area, they supposed they had better do something about the cultic fire pit. "This is getting old," complained Dean as he carved sigils into the trees surrounding the clearing and listened to Sam's Latin.

"Never thought I'd hear you say that," said Sam, interrupting himself.

"The first time or two in a day it's fine. But after that? It's the middle of the night. I'm cold, I'm wet, I'm tired, and I'm hungry. We should get paid time and half for this."

"Dean," said Sam cautiously. "We don't get paid at all."

"That isn't the point," said Dean dismissively.

Sam tried to figure out how to respond. His brother's reasoning sometimes defied him. "We need better benefits, too," he said finally. "The health plan is for crap and the mileage they pay? Is criminal."

Dean nodded approvingly. "That's right. We'll have to bring this up at the next union meeting." And then his poker face broke and he grinned widely. "What are you standing there for, Sammy? Keep on readin'."

Chuckling to himself—his brother was a piece of work—Sam found his place and finished the Latin.

xxxxx

For good measure, they'd buried more of Missouri's pouches in the flowerbeds of the house, and then begun the long hike back to the car.

"To the motel it is," declared Dean. It was a quarter past four in the morning.

"What about Celia?"

Dean paused. "What about Celia?"

"We have to go get her and take her home to Vancouver," said Sam, as if it were obvious.

"No, we don't. We should check that she's okay, that she wants to be there—"

"She doesn't want to be there!"

The depth of feeling in Sam's voice made Dean turn from the wet ribbon of highway and study his profile. Dean pursed his lips. "How do you know? Didja get past the six armed men and visit her when I wasn't looking?"

"Who would want to be there? They call down plagues on the island, do creepy things around a campfire, and aren't allowed to interact with the outside world!"

"She should get the choice," said Dean, staring straight ahead and driving on auto-pilot. "If she wants to be there, she should stay." And he wasn't talking about Celia any more.

"There's a change of heart," muttered Sam under his breath, gaze flickering out the side window.

"Oh yeah? I let you go! I didn't stop you and make you stay!"

Sam clamped his mouth shut on an angry retort and settled for glaring out at the dark night instead. The rainstorm had cleared the air outside, got rid of the perpetual close feeling, but inside the Impala, the tension was thick enough to slice with a knife.

It was an old issue, a thorny one, one that had never been dealt with, not really. One that should have been lost to the sands of time, thought Sam, but somehow never was. When he was sure he could speak without shouting, he said, "Are you glad about that? Proud you didn't stand in my way?"

And Sam had gut-punched him without laying a finger on him. Head swirling, Dean gripped the steering wheel tightly and tried to think coherent thoughts. The Impala was full of loud silence.

Sam didn't know if he'd won or lost, but the Impala turned at the gate into the naval station, and Dean wheedled his way back into the temporary camp that had been established for the evacuees of the alleged fire.

There were cots and blankets set up all over the floor of a large gymnasium. Struck suddenly by sheer exhaustion, he was unable to do anything more but stand and listen as Dean found out where the people from the Kelman property were gathered. He gazed unseeing at the scores of people lying down, some snoring, some whispering, some soothing crying children. Most of the lights were out, but a few fluorescent tubes were lit above the tables that were set up for the soldiers who were keeping watch. There were several coffee urns, thermoses of tea, and ravaged platters of cookies and sandwiches. Garbage cans waiting for more paper plates and plastic cutlery and Styrofoam cups.

"There she is," murmured Dean, and Sam discovered he'd been led down an aisle to one corner of the gym, and they were standing a few feet from Celia. She was lying on her side on the floor in a sleeping bag, eyes shut, her long hair spread over the white pillowcase.

"Celia?" said Sam quietly.

The girl blinked and lifted her head. There were huge, dark circles underneath her eyes, as if this were the first she'd slept in a week. "Yeah?" She didn't recognize them from the day before when they'd accosted her while hanging laundry.

Sam introduced themselves, said that they'd been contacted by her family to find her. "Your mom's very worried," he said. "Um, could we go someplace and talk maybe, so we don't disturb everybody else?" He gestured roundly, encompassing the roomful of humanity.

She hadn't said anything yet, besides the initial yeah?, but she stood up—she was wearing a t-shirt and shorts, street clothes—and padded after them, in bare feet, to the hallway that led to the restrooms, where there was slightly more privacy than in the gym.

She seemed disinclined to speak, which made Sam somehow anxious to fill in the holes in the conversation, of which there were many. He stuttered through an explanation of how Mrs Edwards had got a hold of them—"I believe it was your aunt that our dad helped out once"—and through the visits they'd paid to the families of the other missing women. "Do you know a Gabrielle Whitefeather?" A shake of the head. "Karen Sawatsky? Sadie Washington? Virginia Lawson?" Sam stopped, losing steam. He glanced over at Dean. "All those women, then, are really missing. Because of the legend." It was a question he'd phrased as a statement.

"Must be," agreed Dean.

"Where are they now?" Sam continued.

"What?" asked Celia, and her voice was so unexpected, both brothers stared at her. Remembered she was part of the conversation.

Dean took up the story, explaining that they'd discovered that there were two separate issues. The Indian legend, and the cult. "Your Jasper Kelman caused the lice, the locusts, the frogs. The power outages. On the other hand, the Indian girl caused—"

"What about the blood-dimmed tide?" interrupted Celia. The expression on her face was a combination of indoctrinated arrogance and self-doubting fear.

"Blood-dimmed tide?" repeated Dean, utterly confused.

"That's from the poem," said Sam, pointing a finger in recognition.

"Jasper made that happen," explained Celia.

The Winchesters exchanged baffled looks. "The ocean never turned to blood," said Sam slowly, unsure of what Celia was saying.

"The red tide," said Celia in disgust, rolling her eyes. "Jasper said it was the spirit encouraging us that we were doing the right thing. It was going to be the next plague, but it happened even before we asked."

"Red tide is a natural phenomenon," said Sam. "I think. Right?" He made the mistake of glancing at his brother for confirmation, because Dean only shrugged elaborately. "Yes," he said decisively. "It's algae."

Silence.

"But he said… he said…"

"A useful natural phenomenon, no doubt," said Dean wryly.

There was a longer silence.

"Ah, well," said Dean, and forged ahead with the story. He finished, "So the Indian girl caused the lack of wind and kidnapped the women, and the fishing boat."

"We think that the actions of the cult must have stirred up the girl's spirit," said Sam, "but we're not sure."

Ever so quietly, staring at her bare feet on the grey linoleum floor, Celia said, "In the beginning, when Jasper first got started at the domain, we did the ceremonies at the park, in the sand there, by that tree. Jasper said it was special. It was only when there were more of us, after a few months, that we moved over to the fire pit in that clearing."

Sam heard the we, knew it couldn't possibly include Celia, as she'd been there only a week. Long after they'd removed themselves from the octopus tree's territory.

"What was special about it?" he asked.

"The maiden's boyfriend hanged himself there."

Sam's brow furrowed. "But they lived happily ever after under the sea."

Celia shook her head impatiently. "Not her husband. This boy was before. She was going to marry him, but when she met the man from the sea, she forgot her betrothed. He was devastated, so he killed himself."

Sam and Dean gaped at each other. Were there two spirits, the maiden and the boyfriend? "Must have awoken the maiden when Jasper began summoning the guy," said Dean, and stopped. With a curious look on his face, he asked, "Why was there no resistance at the arbutus when I exorcised it, but there was a hell of a fight at the octopus tree last night?"

"No resistance at the fire pit, either," pointed out Sam. There was a long silence before he said, "I bet Jasper wasn't summoning the boyfriend. Bet it was the girl instead. Unknowingly."

"But—" protested Celia.

"But nothing," said Dean. "It's the only thing that makes sense. Exorcisms? Are powerful things. Violent, destructive acts."

Sam nodded in agreement. "Did you conduct rites any place besides at the fire pit and the arbutus tree?"

"Which arbutus?"

"Which…" began Dean. "There's more than one?"

"There are four."

"Well," said Sam, "We gotta do something about that. And if there's no reaction there, either, to the exorcisms, we'll know it was a pointless exercise, that those arbutuses—arbuti?—were never endowed with any special powers at all. That it was all in Jasper Kelman's head."

"When it's light out," decided Dean, "you have to take us to the other trees. We need to get rid of that girl's spirit."

Bug-eyed, Celia glanced back and forth between the brothers as if she were watching a tennis match. "What…"

"I'll explain," said Sam. "But first, maybe we should go get ourselves a cup of coffee. I think we could all use it."

And half an hour later, they had explained that Jasper Kelman was crazy, that he was out of his league—that probably seven people had died already, because of his negligence—that going home had to be better than this. "Why did you run away in the first place?" asked Sam eventually.

"I didn't run away," defended Celia. "I went traveling."

"You didn't get very far," pointed out Dean. "We're, what, sixty miles from Canada?"

"They were nice to me," said Celia. "I was hitchhiking and they picked me up and gave me supper and everything. And they understood that sometimes you don't know what you want to do with your life, unlike my mother."

Sam recalled Mrs Edwards' lengthy diatribe on her daughter's wandering path. "Maybe they're nice, Celia, but they're also… crazy. You know? They kidnap cows and kill them by the fire. That's not normal behavior."

"The blood connects us to the spirit world, where the maiden's lover is," Celia explained, her empty gaze returning, and she said the words as if by rote.

Sam paused. "But, Celia, remember it wasn't the lover you guys were summoning. That was all in Jasper's head. And his delusions have caused the disappearances of seven people. Five girls like you, and two men. Isn't that scary? Wouldn't you feel safer at home? Even if your mom doesn't understand you?" He felt Dean's gaze rest heavily on him, but refused to look over at his brother.

Celia shrugged ambiguously.

Dean cleared his throat. "Since we exorcised the octopus tree, Jasper's not going to be able to make any more of his little plagues. His power's gone, Celia. And it wasn't his to begin with. He was just awakening the Indian maiden, reviving her. He's nothing on his own, Celia, and—"

She interjected, "Can I go back to bed?"

Thrown, Sam stuttered, "Don't you want to call your mother, at least? Let her know you're okay?" Celia seemed more than unwilling, seemed almost afraid of the idea. "She's not mad," Sam added hastily. "Just really worried."

Celia shook her head. "Jasper doesn't let us use the telephone."

Dean could feel Sam's gaze boring into the side of his head at the definitive proof that there was something screwy with Jasper Kelman and his little band. "You promised," he reminded her, ignoring Sam. "You promised to call every day."

"I'll call after I sleep for a bit," bargained Celia, showing more emotion and original thought than she had the entire conversation.

Sam nodded reluctantly, and they watched her weave her way through the rectangles of sleeping people back to her blankets.

***

Epilogue: Monday, July 10, morning

The family—that dear octopus from whose tentacles we never quite escape, nor, in our inmost hearts, ever quite wish to.

—Dodie Smith

xxxxx

Sam, Dean and Celia stood squinting in the bright morning light, watching the sun rise in the sky and dry the earth. It was eight o'clock, and now that the fire was apparently out—they heard murmurs of Thank God it rained, kept the whole area from going up in flames—they were being allowed to return to the campground and their homes. People were bustling about, gathering up the odds and ends they'd brought with them, talking in clusters, reliving their disaster. None seemed particularly eager to climb into the cars that awaited them; rather, now that they knew that there was no damage, that everything was safe, they were enjoying their refugee status. Giddy with relief.

Celia was on Sam's cell phone with her mother, as she had been for the past forty minutes. Mrs Edwards seemed to be subjecting her to a barrage of questions and not giving her time to answer, judging by Celia's occasional starts of sentences: Well, I— and No, it was— and I didn't—.

They had known the conversation would not be quick. They had settled in to wait, pouring themselves coffee, but the lack of progress in Celia's discussion with her mother was disheartening—Sam was hoping for a clear-cut I'm coming home today—and so they decided to call the sheriff now, instead of driving over to the port later.

Sam called, because he was the sheriff's "new best friend", according to Dean. "I never talked to him!" protested Sam.

"You spent eight hours on a boat with him!"

Sam rolled his eyes, tried to remember why he was objecting, and dialed Douglas. He had managed to get the policeman's card over the course of the previous day, if not draw him into conversation.

Dean listened to Sam's half of the dialogue keenly, although it started off slowly—Sam appeared to be having a hard time reminding Douglas of who he was. And then Sam asked how the search was progressing, and his face paled and he nodded slowly, although Douglas couldn't see him, and he murmured an assent and hung up.

"They found three bodies this morning, so far; they've been searching since the rain stopped and it got light. The bodies are of a man and two women; they don't know anything beyond that, but the bodies were floating on the surface and tangled up in lots and lots of seaweed. Tied up, it looked like." Sam met Dean's eyes and fell silent.

There wasn't much to say.

xxxxx

They were in the Impala, northbound on the I-5, near Burlington. It was forty miles to the Canadian border, where they were scheduled to meet the Edwards family at twelve-thirty. The other three arbutus trees had been dealt with quickly and ably—two on Goose Rock, overlooking both Cornet Bay and the Strait of Juan de Fuca ("Glad we didn't hike up here yesterday, in that oppressive heat," remarked Sam; and Celia gawked at how efficiently the brothers performed the exorcisms—with no opposition from any sort of spirit—and Dean had to restrain himself from saying I told you so) and the last on the Kelman property itself.

The odd agitation that had surrounded Celia since she had decided to return home permeated the air inside the car even though she was asleep in the backseat. Dean had initially tried to dissipate the tension by playing cassette tapes with the volume turned down low, but Celia had asked if he could turn them off entirely—she was trying to sleep. Dean had been so astonished that he hadn't responded, and Sam had to reach over and eject the tape.

"Been awhile since there's been somebody in the car besides us," observed Sam quietly.

"Been awhile since there's been three people in the car," corrected Dean.

Sam didn't answer directly, made a meaningless comment about the casino they were passing on the right.

But it made him think. Drew him back to their early-morning discussion—fight—about whether they should rescue Celia or not. Remembered how shocked he was that Dean had intended to leave her with Jasper Kelman. What had happened to his hero complex?

Sam supposed a lot of it was tied up in the concept of free will. In their line of work, it was hard to believe in fate. If things were meant to be, what was the point of hunting? Why did they even try to eradicate the world of evil?

And then there was also the fact that, sometimes, Dean was completely unpredictable. A small grin stole across Sam's features and he looked out the window. They had reached the border.

He saw an enormous white arch in a grassy field—Peace Arch Park, an International Peace Park, touted the sign—and he saw flowers planted to look like U.S. and Canadian flags, and groups of people picnicking, and others wandering around to pass the time because the line-ups to cross the border in either direction extended as far as the eye could see.

And in the midst of it all, Sam saw a large stately-looking woman in a severe grey pantsuit suddenly dash across the lawn, shouting, "Celia! Celia!" and crush her daughter in her arms. A few other people gathered around—seemed to be the dad, the sister, the boyfriend.

"Guess our work here is done," said Sam.

Dean nodded. "Let's hit the road."

xxxxx

Thinking of me in years past. Revering me in days gone by. Dreaming of me in the sea, speaking of me, relying on me for safe passage.

Laughing at me, now. Telling my story by the fireside, a yarn, a tale.

Here I am, yearning to dance in the surf, whirl in the eddies. Countering the tide.

Forgetting, forgetting for eons, forgetting until just yesterday in time.

Reveling in that remembrance. Offering my help. Reminding: stealing a bride, so much like my once-self.

Overlooking the brides, ignoring the aid, pursuing his own path. Rejecting that which has gone before.

Seeing the tide rush in and out, now and forevermore. Understanding it is not honor and memory I yearn for any longer, but rather the familiarity of home. Of land, the land of my people.

Bound to the tide, now and forever. Loving the sea yet dreaming of shore.

***