Jen’s second wave is a thick-necked peak. She barely makes it, rides the elevator down, manages the bottom turn, then goes rocket-woman and zooms up the uprising face as the lip breaks behind her. When she glances back and up, it seems to be snarling.

She works the section back down, sees her exit route as the wave seems to snag on the rocks, climbs fast as she can for the soft spot and launches high for the other side.

She lands with a splat on the heavy black water. It’s like wet asphalt, and she hears the crack of her helmet and the wrench of her neck. Gets tangled in the leash for a moment but struggles out and climbs back onto her board and paddles hard for Casey.

Who makes a perilous pickup look easy, Jen climbing onto the rescue sled, reeling up her board with the leash. She looks down into the hideous Cauldron again—why does it keep me coming back, she thinks—then she feels Thunder’s power as Casey pulls her away.

They join the lineup, from the relative safety of which Jen sees the next set coming in, a dark, horizon-blotting platoon of killers. It’s like they’re looking for her. The ten-minute klaxon warning blasts across the water.

“You don’t have to ride another one, Mom,” says Casey. “You’ll get the women’s wave of the day, for sure. That’s, like, two thousand clams and a cool trophy.”

“I want to win the whole thing, Case.”

Jen hardly recognizes her own voice. It’s not the one she’s been speaking in for all these years, the one driven by fear and hung on regret. Right now, with the almost warm sunlight on her face, she feels that she is a different being. She’s grown. Evolved. Time to move into the world again, she thinks.

Hasn’t felt that way in twenty-five years.

John, that sun feels good, doesn’t it?

“You know what Grandma Eve would say about winning,” says Casey.

“Yeah—it isn’t everything, it’s the only thing!”

“Mom, remember why we do this. Or the Breath of Life, as Brock calls Him.”

“All metaphor, Casey. I want to win. It’s just the way I am.”

“This set is big, Mom. Real big.”

Jen watches Odile Bertran, pitched off her board before she can even stand up. The barrel takes her down and the rescue skis scream into action.

“They’re huge and fast, Mom. I’m going to put you way high up, so you gotta be fast.”

Odile pops up on the edge of the Pit and climbs into her tow partner’s sled just as he guns it away, Odile dragged through the exploding whitewater.

Maya Abeliera holds the tow rope, looks down, and lets the charging wave go past her.

Holly Blair makes the wave and carves an impossible bottom turn, only to be crushed by the suddenly collapsing peak. The wave elevators her back up, high, then slams her down again, her board tombstoning on its leash.

Jet skis throw up wakes and exhaust.

Jen watches the photographers’ boat rollicking just outside the impact zone, and the two helicopters hovering close together, their blades whirling not twenty feet from a breaking fifty-foot face.

Holly pops up in the whitewater, trapped in its churning fury, whirling and flailing, board trailing, snapped in half. It looks to Jen like she’s slugging the water with her fists.

Then, as a voice squawks down, she strokes hard for the red life buoy dangled by the rescue chopper.

“Swim left, Holly! Swim to your left!”

Jen’s third and likely final wave of the contest is her biggest. It’s the cleanup, nothing behind it but a waveless, heaving ocean.

She nods at Casey, whose expression is uncharacteristically puzzled. Feels Thunder’s torque and strength.

Throws the rope and drops onto a galloping, fifty-foot thoroughbred that suddenly raises his great head behind her.

The breeze lifts a white plume but Jen can’t look up or back, only down, half-blinded by the spray, letting her feet obey her eyes, trusting her stung vision to take her where she needs to go.

Too vertical and she’ll unfasten.

Too horizontal and she’ll get pitched.

Two one-way tickets into the impact zone. To the Cauldron, the Pit, or the Boneyard.

She’s all in because there is no choice.

Rarely on a drop, the nose of a surfer’s gun pops off the surface for a split second—a small rise or a hidden dip—and the speeding board takes a gulp of air. At forty miles an hour, the nose rides up, and the body of the board follows, lifting off and away from the wave until the board is vertical. Physics and velocity push the tail out and away, and the surfer comes off the wave and descends—head down, feet above, and arms out—her board behind her like a cross on which she is crucified upside down.

Which is Jen Stonebreaker, an orange-and-black figure falling headfirst into the violent whiteout of the impact zone.

The county helicopter lowers for her, Holly Blair safely aboard and the life buoy still dangling. The rescue skis all go banshee toward Jen, with Casey, Brock, and Mahina out ahead of them already.

The wave drives Jen to the bottom, mashing her against the reef, the tonnage of water holding her down. She clamps her hands over the rocks to keep from being dragged, feels the pull of the leash on her ankle as the wave takes her board toward the surface.

Lifting Jen off the rocks, and into the fury of whitewater.

Rag-dolled and tumbling, eyes closed, she pulls three of her inflation-vest pull tags. Nothing happens. Yanks the fourth, and feels the loop come off in her hand.

Is this my sentence for John?

Her terror peaks and tries to flood out of her, but it can’t get out. She’s got it trapped in there and she feels the nerve-curdling fingers of panic up high in her throat.

She’s got breath left, but can’t believe so much of it is gone after only a few seconds. The cold weight of the water, and ten feet of pressure here near the bottom, are wringing the air right out of her.

And the wave won’t let her go. Like it knows there’s no backup wave behind it. Like it’s going to eat her here and now. Like Jen belongs to it and it alone.

She thinks she’s facing shore. Pulls herself along by the rocks, but the wave lifts her feet and flips her over, then presses down hard again. She’s pinned on her back, eyes open now to the dim underwater twilight of Mavericks, while sharp white flashes shoot through her vision. Her leash goes slack.

She rights herself, the wave shoving her head against a boulder. The rocks around her creak and scrape. She feels the spined urchins and limpets slicing through her hood. Clamps the rocks again, draws her knees to her chest, and pushes off with all her might.

Then the whitewater claims her again, rushing fast.

Toward land, one quarter mile away.

She’s dizzy now from lack of oxygen and near panic. Not sure what’s up or down, really, just clawing her way toward her next breath.

Breaks the surface and swills the miracle of air—which turns out not to be air at all, but a mouthful of brine that scalds her throat and sinuses and lungs.

And turns her world white, as the ocean folds her under, splayed across the reef, faceup again.