Carpeting the ocean was a twinkling neon-red migration of krill that covered the surface as far as my eyes could see. Rising beneath them to feed were the planet’s newest denizens of the deep—behemoth squid, each cephalopod three to four hundred feet long. In a choreographed ritual belying both intelligence and grace, the creatures were flashing rainbow-colored patterns of bioluminescence across their acreage of skin—hypnotic patterns of communication that projected across the ocean as they twisted along the surface to feed.

The moon moved beyond its perigee encounter, gravity tugging on me. Elation turned quickly to trepidation as I looked below, realizing that I was descending over the ocean!

I flailed helplessly as I dropped beyond the overlook, until a forty-knot wind blasted me backward at frightening speed, sending me crashing into the surrounding forest.

Unseen branches whipped at my flesh, my limbs catching an entanglement of vines that mercifully slowed my fall until nature embraced me in its hammock, suspended thirty feet off the ground.

Held fast in the warmth of my cocoon, I passed out.

Chapter 18

18

Sometime in the next thirty years, very quietly one day we will cease to be the brightest things on Earth.

—JAMES MCALEAR

The pain woke me.

It was not the deep throb emanating from my shoulders, or the lead-tight ache radiating from every muscle, or even the blistering wounds burning in my feet and fingers. This pain gnawed inside my stomach, demanding water … insisting on food. It was the family dog scratching upon the bedroom door, insisting I get up when all I wanted to do was go back to sleep.

Disoriented, I opened feverish eyes to a predawn grayness. I smelled the forest before I saw it, its damp bark, the heavy scent of peat. For one glorious moment I was back in Virginia on a Cub Scout retreat, the pack still asleep, the campsite heavy in morning dew.

My eyes adjusted, separating the canopy of trees from the haze of clouds. A soft rumble violated the stillness of the forest as the heavens opened, delivering a soothing pitter-patter of raindrops on leaves.

After several minutes, the restrained cadence transcended into a downpour.

A cold steady trickle announced itself on my left shoulder. Craning my neck, I intercepted the stream of water so that it entered the crook of my mouth. I swallowed a dozen times before redirecting the flow over my face.

The fruit was dangling around me like fist-size potato-brown ornaments on a Christmas tree. I struggled to free my right arm from the vines enough to reach it without losing my perch and managed to pluck a cluster of sapodilla from the tree. Greedily, I pulled the gnat-infested skin from the overripe fruit before popping the pale yellow flesh into my mouth.