As a girl, Blue Water Woman had whiled away many an idle hour at Flathead Lake. She and her friends frolicked in the shallows and swam every chance they got. She often went for long swims away from shore, despite repeated warnings from her parents and others.
Not long ago, when Shakespeare told her about Nate King’s plan to move all of them from the foothills to a valley deep in the mountains, she nearly said she was against the idea. Then her husband mentioned that the valley boasted a lake and they would live along its shore. In a heartbeat she changed her mind. “If you want to do it, we will.”
“Ha, ha! Are you honest?” Shakespeare had asked.
“What do you mean?” Blue Water Woman suspected he was quoting old William S, as Shakespeare called his namesake.
“That if you be honest and fair, your honesty should admit no discourse to your beauty.”
“I am always honest and fair with you. If you want to move, then I want to move. You are my husband and my heart, and I would not live without you.”
Blue Water Woman smiled at the memory. Shakespeare had been touched by her declaration of love, and for a few days had treated her with extra tenderness. He had even forgotten to be grumpy, which, given his usual disposition, was a miracle in and of itself. He was not truly happy unless he was complaining about something or other.
Chuckling, Blue Water Woman bent to the task at hand. She was out behind their cabin on the south shore of the lake, squatting at the water’s edge, wringing out towels and a blanket. It was laundry day, which for her meant carrying whatever needed washing to the lake and giving it a good dunking.
The breeze off the lake was cool, although the day was hot. She raised her head and turned her face so the breeze caught her full-on. A sense of peace and contentment came over her and she closed her eyes.
Blue Water Woman was happy with her life. She had a husband who adored her, a man she loved with all her being, a comfortable cabin in which to live, horses and chickens and even several piglets. She was within short walking distance of her dearest friend, Winona King. Her only other neighbors were Winona’s son, Zach, and Zach’s wife, Lou, who had a cabin on the north shore, and the Nansuseqa family to the east of the lake.
A loud splash ended her reverie. She opened her eyes and spied concentric circles spreading across the surface of the lake a stone’s throw out. She assumed that a fish had surfaced and gone back under, and she started to bend to the towels.
Suddenly Blue Water Woman froze.
Something was floating under the water near the concentric circles. She could not quite make out what it was, but it was big, far bigger than any fish she’d ever seen or heard of. She thought it must be a trick of the sunlight, a shadow of some kind, but when she tilted her head, it did not go away. Whatever it was, it was real.
The warnings of her early years returned to fill her with dread. Annoyed at herself for being so silly, she began to rise, but she stopped when she realized the thing was coming toward her.
Blue Water Woman’s heart beat faster. She remembered the stories vividly, accounts of creatures that dwelled in Flathead Lake and others. Creatures that lived in the depths and only came to the surface on rare occasions. Creatures, her people believed, that were bad medicine. That should be avoided. Creatures that ate people.
In her early years, Blue Water Woman had thought the stories silly. Tales her mother told to keep her from swimming alone. She had ignored the warnings and done as she pleased.
Then came the day her opinion had changed. She had seen fourteen winters. It had been early spring, and her people were camped close to Flathead Lake. A warrior had shot a deer with an arrow. Wounded, frantic to escape, the buck had plunged into the lake and swam to a small island not far from shore, and the warrior hurried to a canoe to go after it.
Blue Water Woman had not seen what happened next. She’d heard about it from her father. He, along with dozens of others, had watched the warrior paddle toward the island. The day had been sunny and clear and the water undisturbed, but midway the canoe unexpectedly shook as if caught in a gust of wind. The warrior had gripped the sides and looked about in consternation.
A few of the Salish said they had seen a dark shape rise out of the deep and strike the bottom of the canoe. But others had seen nothing. Some had shouted for the warrior to forget the buck and come back. But the warrior had gone on paddling.
Everyone had witnessed the consequence: something did rise up out of the lake, something bigger than the canoe, striking it with terrible violence and lifting the front end clear out of the water. The warrior had tried to hold on, but he was pitched into the lake. They had seen him flail his arms. They’d heard him cry out. Then, in the blink of an eye, he was gone.
Women had screamed. Children had run. Men had rushed to canoes to go to the warrior’s aid, but an elder warned them they must not go into the water. The lake creature was angry, the elder had said. They had not offered a sacrifice to it in many moons, and the hunter had paid the price of their folly. That very night they did as they had done in olden times, and a doe was slain and taken out in a canoe and dropped in the water at the spot where the warrior had gone under.
There’d been no more attacks. Winters had gone by. Blue Water Woman had never seen the creature. The memory and the menace had faded from her mind. She grew up, eventually took McNair for her mate, and moved far away.
Then came the move to King Valley.
Now, strange things were beginning to happen. Waves appeared on the lake when there was no wind. The water would roil and churn with no visible cause. They heard loud splashing, but no fish jumped. Nearly all of them glimpsed something out in the water, but none of them could say what it was.
Now this.
Blue Water Woman felt genuine fear as the shape glided slowly toward her. Yet at the same time she was elated that she might at long last see it. Conditions were ideal. It was not raining or misty or foggy, as was often the case when the creature made its presence known.
Then, in a twinkling, the thing was gone. It seemed to sink straight down into the depths and vanish.
Blue Water Woman waited breathlessly for it to reappear. Suddenly a hand fell on her shoulder, and she jumped and spun, her hand dropping to the knife she was never without. “Oh!” she exclaimed in her husband’s tongue. “It is only you.”
Shakespeare McNair grinned. “That is a fine way to greet me. My mistress with a monster is in love,” he quoted. Then he saw her eyes. “What is the matter?”
Blue Water Woman threw her arms around him and held him close. She quaked, although she could not say why. “Oh, Carcajou,” she said, using the name he was known by of old, her special term of endearment for him.
“I repeat,” Shakespeare said, shocked by her reaction. He could count the number of times he had seen his wife like this on one hand and have fingers left over. “What is the matter?”
“I saw it,” Blue Water Woman said.
“Saw what?”
“It.”
Shakespeare gazed out over the placid lake but saw only a few mallards. “The thing?”
Blue Water Woman shuddered again.
“Did you get a good look? What is it?”
“I could not see much,” Blue Water Woman said.
“Yet you are this scared?” Shakespeare had seen his wife stand up to a grizzly without flinching.
“I think it was …” Blue Water Woman caught herself. “No. That is silly. I must be wrong.”
“About what?” Shakespeare prompted.
“I think it knew I was here,” Blue Water Woman said, almost in a whisper. “I think it was looking at me.”
Shakespeare held her and stroked her and glared at the water. He did not like it when the woman he loved was upset. He did not like it at all. “This is a sorry sight,” he quoted.
“I am sorry. I am being childish.”
“It is not you. It is that!” Shakespeare said, with a bob of his snow-colored beard at the blue water. “I
am losing my patience with that thing.”
“There is nothing we can do,” Blue Water Woman said.
“One more incident like this, and I will declare war,” Shakespeare vowed.
“No, you will not. My people say we are to have nothing to do with the water devils, as you would call them. To anger them is to court death.”
“I am too old for fairy tales.”
“Carcajou!” Blue Water Woman drew back and regarded him sternly. “I will thank you not to belittle our beliefs. And I want your word that you will not go out after it.”
“Your wish is my command, my dear.” But Shakespeare’s eyes, fixed on the lake, said different.
Third Incident
Louisa King was giddy with delight. The past few mornings she had woken up feeling queasy. It was a sign, she hoped, that at long last her dream would come true. But she did not say anything to her husband. She wanted to be certain.
On this particular day, Zach had gone off at daybreak with Shakespeare McNair to hunt. They were low on meat, and the valley teemed with deer.
Louisa spent the morning and early afternoon puttering about their cabin. She washed the breakfast dishes. She picked up the clothes Zach had left lying about. She picked up the bullets and patches he left on the table. She put away the whetstone he left on the counter. She cleaned up the feathers he left lying on the bedroom floor.
If Lou had told him once, she had told him a hundred times not to fletch arrows in their bedroom. But did Zach listen? No. Everything she said to him went in one ear and bounced out again.
If there was anything in all creation more aggravating than men, Lou had yet to come across it. Zach was living proof. He had a knack for irritating her in a hundred and one small ways.
Yet for all that, Lou loved him as she had never loved anyone. He was everything to her: her joy, her peace, her very breath. She could no more imagine life without him than she could imagine life without the sun or the moon.
How strange life could be, Lou mused as she strolled from their cabin to the lake and stood idly admiring the blue sheen of its peaceful surface. When she was young, she’d never expected to fall in love, never figured to take a husband, never believed a man could claim her heart. She thought she would somehow be immune to men. So what if women had been falling in love with them since the dawn of time? She was different. She was special. She was unique.
Lou laughed at her folly. Why was it, she wondered, that people denied their own natures? What made them think the passions that governed the rest of the human race did not govern them? Part of it, she supposed, was just plain silliness. It was ridiculous to imagine that with the millions upon millions of people in the world, and the untold millions who had lived before, that anyone, anywhere, ever had a thought that had not been thought or felt a feeling that had not been felt. It had all been done before. Truly, and literally, there was nothing new under the sun.
A commotion in the water intruded on Lou’s pondering. A short way out, small wavelets were rippling the surface, seeming to rise out of nowhere and for no reason.
Lou moved to the water’s edge for a better look. She was aware of the creature that supposedly lived in the lake. The Kings and the McNairs talked about it often enough. But she had never seen it and would dearly love to.
Opinions varied. Her husband and father-in-law leaned toward the notion that it was a great fish. Blue Water Woman thought it might be something out of Flathead legend. Shakespeare McNair, of late, had taken to calling the thing a monster.
If Lou could see it, she could settle the debate once and for all.
With that in mind, Lou hunkered so there was less chance of the thing seeing her. The wavelets were growing. Whatever was making them, she deduced, was rising toward the surface. She grinned, every nerve taut, excited that she would be the one to solve the mystery.
Something appeared deep down, a dark shape that gave no clue to its identity. Lou had been raised in the wild by her father and had hunted all her life, and she was good at judging size at a distance. But in this instance the best she could conclude was that the thing was longer than a horse and as broad as a buffalo. It boggled her that a fish, if that is what it was, could be so huge.
“Keep coming!” Lou whispered excitedly. “I want a peek at your big self.”
But the thing stayed where it was. Several small fish leaped out of the water and swam frantically off, as if in fear of being eaten.
Louisa rose a bit higher for a better look.
Without warning, the thing exploded into motion and shot toward her at frightening speed. Frozen in surprise, Lou did not think to run. She told herself that she was perfectly safe, that she was on land and the creature was a water dweller.
But then the water swelled upward with astonishing rapidity, creating a wave that bore down on Lou with the swiftness of an avalanche. A foot the wave rose, then a foot and a half. Belatedly, Lou started to turn, but she was only halfway around when the wave slammed into her legs. She was bowled over and fell onto her side, the breath whooshing from her lungs. For a harrowing instant she was engulfed in a cold, wet cocoon. Without thinking, she gulped for air and sucked in water. It got into her mouth, into her nose. Gasping, blinking her eyes to clear them, she groped frantically about.
Suddenly Lou’s arms were seized, and she was swung into the air as if she were weightless. Involuntarily, she cried out, then saw who had seized her. “Oh! Thank goodness!”
Zach had her by the right arm, Shakespeare by the left. Shakespeare was staring at the lake, but her husband only had eyes for her.
Unlike his sister, Evelyn, Zach had slightly more of his mother in him than his father. He was big, like Nate, and broad of shoulder, like Nate, and had green eyes, like Nate, but his black hair and swarthy complexion and facial features were inherited from Winona. He wore buckskins, and was a walking armory.
“Are you all right?”
“I’m fine,” Lou said, embarrassed by her lapse and annoyed that she was soaking wet. She shrugged loose of them. “You are back sooner than I expected.”
“Forget that,” Zach said, and motioned at the water. “What in God’s name happened?”
“I saw it,” Shakespeare said.
Zach glanced at him. “What?”
“I saw it!” Shakespeare repeated. “For just a second there, before it dived, I saw the thing that lives in the lake.”
“I saw it, too,” Lou said. “But I can’t tell you what I saw.”
Zach looked her up and down and then at the lake, and scowled. “I would like to see it,” he said, and wagged his rifle. “Up close, so I can kill it.”
“I don’t know as it meant to harm me,” Lou said.
“I don’t care,” Zach said. “Nothing hurts you and lives.”
Louisa tenderly touched his cheek. “My protector. But there is not much we can do. It’s too big to catch and it hardly ever comes to the surface for us to shoot it. I say we leave it be.”
“If a bear broke into our cabin while we were away, I would not let the bear live because it might come back when we were there,” Zach said. “If a mountain lion stalked our horses, I would hunt it down and shoot it before it killed one of them. This is no different.”
“No harm was done,” Lou stressed. Then she remembered her morning sickness and the time an aunt lost a baby early on when she fell from a wagon. Pressing a hand to her belly, Lou said, “At least, I hope no harm was done.”
“What are you—?” Zach began, and gripped her by the shoulders. “Wait! Are you saying what I think you are saying? You are with child?”
“What’s that?” Shakespeare said.
Louisa was disappointed that her surprise might have been spoiled. “I can’t say for sure yet, but some of the signs are there, yes.”
Whooping for joy, Zach swept her into his arms and spun her in a circle. “A son! We might have a son!”
“Or a daughter,” Lou said.
“A boy to teach to ride and shoot
and hunt!” Zach said happily.
“Or a daughter,” Lou said again. It bothered her that whenever the subject of having a baby came up, he always assumed it would be male.
Shakespeare put a hand on her arm. “You better let Winona and my wife have a look at you.”
“I’m fine,” Lou said. “Besides I’m not certain yet. And I would rather not tell anyone until I know for sure.”
“We will keep your secret, but it never hurts to be safe,” Shakespeare cautioned, and bestowed a grim glance on the water. “Which is why I can’t put it off any longer.”
“What are you talking about?” Zach asked.
“That thing,” Shakespeare said with a nod. “Whatever it is we keep glimpsing and hearing. It could have killed Lou just now.”
“You are making more out of it than there was,” Lou assured him.
“I am entitled to my opinion,” Shakespeare replied. “And in my opinion, this has gone on long enough. We must find out what it is. Better yet, we must prevent it from ever harming us.”
“I call that overreacting,” Louisa said.
“I call it prudent,” Shakespeare countered. “What if you are right and you are with child?”
Louisa laughed. “I’m pretty sure Zach is the father and not the thing in the lake.”
“Poke fun if you want,” Shakespeare said. “But if you have a child, he or she will want to play near the water or go for a swim. What happens if the creature does to your offspring what it just did to you?”
“I never thought of that,” Lou admitted, troubled at the prospect.
“That is why you young folks need me and my white hair around,” Shakespeare said. “So you can benefit from my wisdom.” He paused. “I have made up my mind. I am going to find out once and for all what that thing is.”
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