Faye Longchamp 01 - Artifacts

pools of abandoned water littering the narrow strait between Joyeuse and the mainland. Looking toward the Last Isles, she saw that the Gulf had pulled away from their shores, much further than at low tide. All the pieces of Last Isle were nearly one again.
    She felt a time echo, as if she remembered standing there before, long ago, watching as the Turkey Foot Hotel rose on Last Isle. That was silly. The outline of Last Isle was barely visible. Nobody could see that degree of detail from here. The chilly sensation of déja vu arose again and she sat down, weak and shaken. The polished pieces of old glass that she’d pulled out of the very storage bench she was perched on—they were the broken lenses of a long-ago pair of opera glasses. On the windowsill sat the pair of binoculars she had left the last time she hid in this tiny room. She lifted them to her eyes and saw, for the first time, the original shape of Last Isle. Projecting from its near shore was a large peninsula, from which three smaller peninsulas jutted into the water, looking for all the world like a turkey foot. She knew where the old hotel had stood. She would bet the farm on it.
    She let the binoculars drop into her lap and studied the scene. There was no mistaking what the decrease in water level meant. The water had to go somewhere. It was gathering offshore, getting ready to roll over the island and wash them all away.
    Faye felt the words. “Joe. The water. My God,” leave her in a single breath, like a prayer.
    She knelt beside Douglass, supporting him with her shoulder and her encircling arm so he could see out the window. He was too hot and his hands were dry. “What’s happening?” he asked, and Faye wasn’t sure whether delirium was speaking or whether he actually saw the landscape below them and wondered what it meant.
    “The hurricane is coming,” Joe said patiently to Douglass, as if it were something he had repeatedly warned him about, because he thought he had.
    Joe, who just that morning had seemed so helpless when faced with jail and civilization and the law, was back in the natural world where his intellectual shortcomings hardly mattered at all. He sat cross-legged atop the trapdoor and opened the leather pouch that always swung from his belt, neatly arranging its contents over the floor like a little boy’s bag of treasures. There were rocks and bits of leather. A skein of twine as fine as dental floss. A pocketknife. A handful of arrowheads, all different sizes.
    “What are we going to do?” Faye whispered, afraid to speak aloud and risk giving away their hiding spot.
    “We will wait for the storm to pass.” It was amazing how quietly Joe could speak without resorting to a whisper. “This house has seen hurricanes before. Maybe it will survive this one.”
    Faye didn’t wail. She didn’t remind Joe that Joyeuse was old now, fragile. Faye herself had wounded her, just days ago. Windowpanes she had broken herself offered their toothy mouths to the storm. There would be water on the heart-pine floors, saturating the antique French wallpaper, dripping off the rosewood treads of the spiral staircase. These things would not be important tonight, when the only important thing in the world would be surviving the storm, but they were important now.
    Could the old house stand the storm? The tabby foundation was solid. She’d found watermarks proving that floodwater had once risen a full story above the ground, completely submerging the aboveground basement, but the foundation had held. If the waves didn’t undermine the basement and the wind didn’t blow the hand-riven wallboards of the upper floors apart, they might survive.
    “What about him?” she hissed pointing through the floor, down to where a predator was waiting.
    “Is he a smart man?”
    “Yes, very.”
    “Then he will think to search the house. We are well hidden here. Perhaps he won’t find us before the storm strikes.”
    “And when the hurricane passes?”
    Joe continued handling his treasures, holding each talisman up to the light. “Perhaps the storm will kill him for us. If he survives, we have an advantage.”
    “What advantage? Wherever he is in this house, he’s still blocking our way out. And he has a gun.”
    “Yes. But he thinks you’re alone.”
    Faye only had one talisman to comfort her. She hugged the journal to her chest.
    Douglass was lying on the floor at her feet, stirring, moaning. If he cried out, they were lost. She laid her