Last night she dreamed of Lola. Fragments of the dream are snatching at her now with teeth and claws. Part of it evades her and she can both see and not see it; but still it leaves the metallic aftertaste of fear.
She sees it again, behind her eyes.
Lola, 10, tearing across an empty beach, her hair a shock of scarlet. Lola, bounding down to an azure sea. White froth on honey coloured sand. The air salt and citrus.
Lola screeching and scissor jumping, her laughter rippling, like the peel of church bells along the shore.
Cassie at a distance, smiling, encouraging. Waving. The love she feels for her daughter so powerful. frightening. Love is an intense heat in her heart, stomach.
Lola smiling back all gappy teeth, dimples and freckles, waving a small tanned arm into the sun:
'MAMA!'
COME INTO THE WATER, MAMA!'
The desire to rush towards her, scoop her protectively up into her arms overwhelming. She tries to rush forwards. but is unable to move. She looks down only to discover her own paralysis. Her legs becoming twisted and useless like tangled branches. Loja shouting again,
'MAMA! 'COME INTO THE WATER MAMA!'
Cassie seeing it. That moment. The danger. Seeing it before it happened. The terror of being unable to move, unable to stop it ...
Frozen on the beach. Stone body, head made of lead. All she can do is watch. A dumb thing. A thing dumb and useless.
Lola playing in the sea, picking up a shell and kicking the small waves, not noticing the water darkening behind her; not noticing the shadow of its girth looming like a catastrophe behind her, its great, unstoppable head rising finally, brutally, like a terrible sun; its slow black, jaws widening to reveal layers upon layers of teeth, dripping with gore; its eyes of black fire opening, burning. Its terrible roar.
Lola turning. Her little red mouth widening into an O. The terror written in her eyes; her scream so pitiful, so useless: a child looking upon death with no understanding. Cassie's own scream shredding her throat, displacing Lola's silent one as the beast sweeps down. Cassie's feet two useless blocks: the urge to charge and rescue, futile. The monster. The monster, throwing its thick, scaly head from side to side; Lola bleeding in its jaws, between the teeth its baring. Cassie watching in the sand, rooted and useless, as the monster finally, cruelly satisfied, lopes away to the blue deep, open darkness of the sea.
She has woken crying inconsolably for the child whose death she no longer had to fear, for she was already dead. Luke, shaping her coffin so lovingly from the last of the wood, and digging, as if he knew not what to do; Luke stopping so often to weep. She watched him from the kitchen window weeping into the coffin, a white, callous sky looking on. Weeping into the grave, the coffin, the grave, too little for the abundant expansiveness of all that she was.