The Emissary Read Free

creatures had died instantly, knowing no pain.
    As he guided the car slowly onto his driveway, he asked himself if Judgment Day had finally arrived, just like the Reverend had warned them—only days before, in congregation. When the automatic door of his garage opened, he pulled the car in, closed the door back down, and went straight inside, through the kitchen. Once in the house, he threw the dead bolt—knowing that whatever had killed those birds wasn’t going to be deterred by locks or closed doors if it wanted in, but somehow it felt like the right thing to do.
    In a quiet little resort town in Maine that same day, Judy Levine prepared a nutritious picnic basket for her and the children, after home-teaching them all morning. Outdoors, the whipping wind snapped with the chilling sting of winter, but she had them bundled up in their down jackets and, besides, the rugged beach and the fresh air beckoned. It was a welcome break having lunch outside, at the water’s edge—no matter how challenging Maine’s winter weather proved to be. Judy always marveled at how invigorating it was to breathe in the crisp sea air and to listen to the roar of waves breaking, mighty and commanding, over the jutting cliffs nearby.
    Situated directly in front of their beachfront property was a rocky cove, which served as a natural barrier to the winter winds that rolled over the coast. She and the children called it their “secret fort.” There, the kids would entertain themselves for hours, making sculptures in the moist sand, and Judy would kick back and relax, watching the blue water crabs climbing sideways, up and around in rocks of the tide pools: one of Mother Nature’s oddities that so enriched the palette of her artistic creation.
    Spending time together out by the water was always a great way to break up the tedium of the day’s lessons, and it was a vital part of her work with the children, teaching them to honor and alwayscelebrate the wonders of Earth’s own garden, while enjoying the magic of play. That day, however, when they stepped out through the backyard gate and approached the shore, she was horrified to discover a strange, silvery patina covering the sand that, on closer inspection, turned out to be an enormous mass of dead fish. Their suffocating bodies littered the entire beachfront, all the way down the coast. She stared in disbelief, gazing as far down the shore as she could, estimating that there were tens of thousands of them, heaped up over each other, their gills expanding and contracting, as they lay dying in the open air.
    Whatever had caused this horrific catastrophe had to have struck so suddenly that it still had not been picked up by the local media. No mention was made of it on the morning news that she and her husband had watched at breakfast, only a few hours earlier. There was no stench of death, that putrid odor of rotting fish, in the wind. No, this was fresh—many of them were still alive, so it had to have only just happened. She was quite possibly the first person to discover the disaster: massive and instantaneous—and probably highly toxic.
    Panicked, she dropped the basket and grabbed her children, almost dragging them back to the house. Pouting and carrying on, they wanted to stay outside, and they couldn’t understand why their mother had done an immediate turnaround. Trying not to frighten them, she rushed the children through the gate and back into the house, closing all the windows and doors, and locking them all inside—until she could find out what dangers lurked outdoors. Who knew what new environmental catastrophe had taken place out off the coast, enough to cause such a massive fish kill? With the way things were going in the world—the poisoning of the skies, the earth, and the sea—she knew anything was possible. She most certainly wasn’t going to let the children or herself get any more exposure to whatever had killed those fish than theyhad already. God only knew what