defence as well, and she cringed as the massive drops thudded onto their backs. Meanwhile, Professor Sorensen protected Sonja in the same manner. They all crouched together and waited, prayed, not daring to look up. Not until the deluge slackened.
The worst eventually passed as driving winds dispelled the drizzle away to the west, but the thunderous new tide hadn’t even begun to settle. It heaved and sloshed its way up ridges and hillsides, then collapsed back on itself with the added tonnage of accumulated debris—rocks, trees, houses, boats.
Father had to shout to be heard. “Are you hurt, love?” He grabbed Meredith’s shoulders and peered into her gaze.
“N-no. I’m...”
He gave her a quick squeeze, then saw to Sonja. Meredith glanced all around her, trying to remember where she was, what part she’d played in the end of the world. Then she spied the used-to-be valley below, where upturned hulls rocked and glistened in the moonlight on the wild undulating sea. Broken rooftops and loose forests swam about and collided in the frothy cauldron. Waves continued to break ashore where there was no shore—on low mountain passes, against wrecked barns and farmhouses, on the bare crowns of besieged hillocks.
She shrank from her memory of the dark rising surge. Too big, too monstrous to comprehend. Her mind couldn’t think past the cold and the sure-to-be nightmare images and noises of the tidal wave. But why hadn’t it taken her? Sonja? Father? The last thought she’d had before the rain was of the sea swallowing the earth. But it had only swallowed the valley below.
She gasped. Had the walls of the nearest cliff not guided the wave, it would have broken over her as well, over Sonja and Father and the entire Sorensen estate. Washed them away like sheaves of wheat, as it had the village and the fishing fleet below.
God had spared them this night. He had wrought the rock cliffs into their specific shape for this purpose alone—to spare the McEwans. Of that she had no doubt.
Death. So that was what it tasted like.
Dark salt. An ant’s eye view of a mounting ocean.
Men waded out to see the shocking flood. Women screamed and fainted on the lawn which was still awash up to shin-height. A few of them had to be saved from drowning. Sonja had no words to describe the enormity of what had just happened—indeed, what was still happening. The tidal surge had reached as far as she could see into the valley, and even now it lapped over half way up the hillside to their garden.
As the event had unfolded, she’d detached from herself, quite involuntarily, as she always did when unable to deal with something momentous beyond her ken. Mother’s passing. The disappearance of Whitehall and Westminster during Professor Reardon’s accidental time jump of ‘08. The humiliation of three years ago in this very house. Father’s long, perilous absences. Yes, that instinct knew when to take charge, when to let things wash over her.
Wash over...
But poor Merry didn’t seem to have that capacity, never had. All happenings hit her head on, uncushioned, and she was forced to weather them no matter how severe. Did that make her braver? Sonja couldn’t decide as she hooked her arm around her big sister’s waist and helped her up to their guest bedroom.
Aunt Lily hugged them for longer than was necessary and handed them towels, then asked poor Mrs. Sorensen to see them to their room. The latter’s nerves were frayed and she might need these few minutes away from the crowd to collect herself as well.
Merry behaved as if nothing had happened while they dried and changed, the same serene, swan-like movements, only even smoother, even more serene. And she didn’t utter a word. Puffed her cheeks, yes, and gestured whenever Sonja made an empty observation, but for the next quarter hour or so, she was as mute as the Sorensen cousins.
They didn’t change for bed. There was no way Sonja could possibly sleep. They dried off and changed into the handsome eveningwear ensembles they’d reserved for tomorrow night, their last night. Make that tonight—they’d surely be on the first airship home in the morning. All the more reason not to miss a thing.
It wasn’t until they’d reached the main staircase that Merry finally uttered, “Did you see him fall?”
“Who?”
“Did you see him fall—the man from the tree?”
The image flickered in the corner of her eye. Something she’d seen in the periphery of her vision but had not registered at the