Blue Water Woman shielded her eyes from the glare and peered all about. “Where is he?”
“We will find him,” Nate said, more to boost her spirits than out of an unshakable conviction that they would.
“Were it not for his white hairs, I would do as white women do with their young and put him over my knee and spank him.”
“Spank him anyway,” Nate said. “It would serve him right.”
Blue Water Woman mustered a grin to be polite. “I have never understood that.”
“What?” Nate said, preoccupied with ripples to the northeast he could not account for.
“Hitting a child. My people think it is bad medicine. So do the Shoshones.”
“I know,” Nate said. Shortly after Winona had announced she was pregnant for the first time, they sat down and talked about how they wished they could tell whether the baby was a boy or a girl, and what names they liked, and how they would go about rearing it, no matter which it was. At one point he had joked, “If we have a daughter, you will have to do the spanking. I could spank a boy, but never a girl.”
Winona had asked him what spanking was, and when he explained, she had recoiled in horror, then went on to say that for a Shoshone, the idea was unthinkable. “Hit a child and you wound their heart for life.”
“I turned out all right,” Nate told her. “And my father tarred the dickens out of me at least once a week.”
Appalled, Winona insisted there would be no tarring in the King family. Nate, as he always did, respected her wishes. But there had been times—
“Nate?” Blue Water Woman said. “Do you see them, too?”
Nate nodded. She was referring to the ripples he had noticed. They had grown in number and size. Something under the surface was agitating the water. Something big, by the looks of it.
“Could it be the water devil?”
Nate had been wondering the same thing. He steered the canoe toward them and almost immediately the ripples vanished.
Blue Water Woman sat forward and declared, “It is the water devil!”
Nate was not so sure. It could be anything. Plenty of big, ordinary fish inhabited the lake. He came to the approximate spot and leaned over to probe the depths, but it was like trying to see the bottom of a well.
Blue Water Woman was bent over the other side. “Do you see anything? Anything at all?”
“No.” Nate resumed stroking. The splash of his paddle and the honking of nearby geese nearly drowned out a loud splash. He looked but saw only ripples.
“What was that?”
“A fish,” Nate said. “The kind we like to fry in a pan.”
“I thought I saw a fin,” Blue Water Woman said. “A huge fin,” she emphasized. “It must be the water devil. It has killed my husband, and now it is after us.”
“You are jumping to conclusions,” Nate warned. Which for her was unusual. Out of all of them, she had always been the most level-headed. Even more so than his wife.
“It will return,” Blue Water Woman predicted. “When it does, you will see for yourself.” She put a hand on the pistol at her waist. “For what it has done to my husband, it deserves to die.”
“There you go again,” Nate said. “Sit back, will you?” Her weight was not enough to tip the canoe, but she was leaning much too far out.
“There!” Blue Water Woman exclaimed, jabbing a finger. “I told you!”
All Nate saw were a few small ripples. “That could be a minnow,” he teased her.
“I saw the head. It was peeking at us.”
“Peeking?” Nate repeated, and chuckled.
“That is not the right word?” Blue Water Woman took pride in her mastery of the white tongue. She was not as adept as Winona, but she flattered herself that she spoke it fluently.
Nate went on chuckling. “It fits, I suppose.” But the notion was as silly as a grizzly bear peeking from behind a tree. “Whatever it is, it’s not bothering us.” He rose higher to search directly ahead. “We shouldn’t forget why we are out here.”
“As if I ever could,” Blue Water Woman said somberly. Long ago she had accepted that one day she might lose her husband. He was older, and he insisted on taking risks men his age should not take. But she had never imagined it would end like this. As she had been doing all morning, she reached out with her heart, seeking some sign that he was still alive. Often when he was away from her, she could feel him deep inside, but now she felt only a strange coldness. That, more than anything else, scared her, scared her terribly.
“When we find him we will have a good laugh over all of this,” Nate remarked.
“Have you been drinking?”
Nate snorted. He was not much for hard liquor. Every now and again he treated himself to a little brandy, usually on a winter’s eve in front of the fireplace, but that was the extent of it. “I rarely do and you—”
The canoe gave an abrupt lurch, as if they had collided with a submerged object. Instantly, Nate dipped the paddle in to bring them to a stop, then checked on both sides. “What was that?”
“The water devil.” Blue Water Woman did not look. She drew her pistol and held it in her lap.
Nate continued paddling. They went ten feet without incident—twenty feet—thirty. Some of the tension started to drain from him. Suddenly the canoe gave another lurch. He started to bend over the gunwale. There was a loud bump from below, and the canoe rose out of the water a few inches and settled back again.
“Do you believe me now, Horatio?”
Under less harrowing circumstances Nate would have laughed. She never call him that. Only Shakespeare did. “I believe you.”
Ripples appeared in front of them and moved slowly off to the east.
“Follow it,” Blue Water Woman directed.
“But Shakespeare—”
“If he were alive, I would know.” Blue Water Woman raised her pistol. “Understand this. I intend to kill it. You can help, or I will come back out by myself. Either way, it is going to die.”
Nate did not reply. But she was not thinking straight. Her pistol would have no more effect than a pebble. He stroked harder, regretting that they did not have a harpoon.
“Faster,” Blue Water Woman urged. “Bring us up next to it.”
“What good will that do?” Nate asked. But he did as she wanted. The ripples were moving so slowly that he easily caught up and paced them. “Now what?” he asked, glancing over his shoulder. He thought she would take a shot. But she had something else in mind.
Blue Water Woman set her pistol down and drew her knife. In a swift, fluid movement, she stood, whipped her dress off over her head, dropped it at her feet, and dived over the side.
The Heart of Darkness
Blue Water Woman was a Salish. The whites called them Flatheads. The whites also called the lake at the heart of Salish territory Flathead Lake. To her, growing up, the lake had been as much a part of her life as the grass and the trees and the sky. She could swim by the time she had seen six winters. Thereafter, she spent every free minute she could in or near the water. Her fondness went far beyond that of any other Salish. So much so, that she earned the name Blue Water Woman.
Now she lived up to that name. She cleaved the water with barely a splash and swam with the agility of a seal. Ahead loomed a dark mass. She had been right. It was the water devil, and it was swimming slowly along, as if water devils did not have a care in the world.
Her mouth clamped tight and her lungs filled with air, Blue Water Woman pumped her arms and legs. It did not turn or look back. Either it was unaware she had dived in or it did not regard her as a threat.
Blue Water Woman clutched her knife more firmly. She thought of Shakespeare, the man who meant more to her than the breath she was holding, who meant more to her than anything, and her resolve to kill the beast became an iron rod of vengeance.
She did not care how big the thing was. She did not care that it could kill her with a casual swat of its huge tail. She did not care about anyth
ing except avenging the other half of her heart.
She gained quickly, swimming wide of the tail and then angling toward the great bulk of the body. Inwardly she smiled at the image of plunging her blade in again and again. She was almost close enough, the thing was almost within reach of her knife, when something seized hold of her ankle.
Nate King could not say which had shocked him more: that Blue Water Woman had stripped naked right there in front of him, or that she had thrown herself into the water after the water devil. But he had not lived as long as he had in the wilds by letting shock slow his reflexes. No sooner had the water swallowed her than he was up and stripping off his pistols and possibles bag and powder horn and ammunition pouch. Then he dived in after her.
Nate spotted her right away, swimming with amazing swiftness. He swam after her and discovered that while he had always been accounted a powerful swimmer, she was faster. He was a catfish, she was a bass. He tried to catch her and couldn’t. The realization that if he didn’t, she might die, lent extra energy to his limbs, but she still stayed ahead of him.
The fish filled his vision. This close, there could be no doubt what it was. An enormous fish, the most enormous he’d ever seen, the most enormous he’d ever heard off. No doubt there were bigger fish in the oceans and elsewhere. But in this lake at this moment, this fish was a leviathan.
The thing could slay either of them as easily as they could slay a tiny guppy.
Fear for Blue Water Woman spurred Nate into exerting his all. She swam wide to avoid the tail, and in doing so, enabled him to narrow the gap, enough that by hurtling forward, he was able to grab her right ankle and hold fast.
Blue Water Woman glanced back. The fire of her vengeance became the fire of resentment. She jerked her leg, but Nate would not let go. Twisting, she pushed his arm, but could not move it. She glared at him and saw he was not looking at her but at something behind her. She sensed movement and knew what she would see before she turned.
The fish seemed to fill the lake. It floated an arm’s length away, staring at her, its head in shadow. By some trick of the light she could see its eyes. They gleamed like twin embers, but not with fury, or with hate, or with any emotion as humans understood them. Blue Water Woman looked into those eyes and the emotion she saw, if a fish could be said to have emotion, was sadness, a deep, pervading sorrow such as she had seldom beheld in any person or animal. It stunned her. She did not move as the fish came closer, until it was so near they were practically touching.
Blue Water Woman looked, and she could not stab it. She looked into those eyes and she would never be the same again.
Then it was gone. A flick of its tail and fish dived for the dark depths it called home.
Blue Water Woman shook herself to break the spell. She felt Nate tug on her ankle. He gestured toward the surface and she nodded. Together, they swam up and gulped air.
“Are you all right?” Nate asked.
“I am fine,” Blue Water Woman lied.
Nate swam to their canoe, climbed in, and offered her his hand. “Let me help you up.”
Blue Water Woman started toward him.
“Out for some exercise, are you?”
They turned. Coming toward them, on his knees in the bow of the dugout and paddling with his hands, was a white-haired devil of a different sort, wearing a grin a mile wide.
“Shakespeare!” Nate exploded. “We found you!”
“I would argue that I found you, Horatio, since I saw you first.”
Blue Water Woman squealed in delight and stroked to the dugout. “Carcajou!” she cried. “You are alive!” Pulling herself up, she threw herself into his open arms and clung to him as if to life itself.
“You are getting me wet, woman,” Shakespeare grumbled. “And I was just starting to dry out.”
“I have been in the water,” Blue Water Woman said huskily, her face pressed to his neck.
“In the middle of the lake?”
“I thought you were dead. I was avenging you.”
Shakespeare looked down at her. “Do you always do your avenging in the altogether?”
“You noticed.”
“Men always notice little things like naked women. All a woman has to do is take off her clothes, and she is a regular sensation.”
“I have missed you.” Blue Water Woman kissed him and closed her misting eyes.
“Not so fast, wench. Here I am gone for a while, and I come back to find you cavorting with my best friend.”
“Behave. He saved me from making a mistake.”
“He was a mite slow,” Shakespeare said.
“Not that,” Blue Water Woman responded in mild exasperation. “I was going to stab the water devil.”
Shakespeare gripped her shoulders and pushed her back. “You didn’t! God in heaven, tell me you didn’t.”
“I didn’t.”
Shakespeare exhaled in relief.
Nate was not following any of this. “Hold on. You were the one who kept saying the thing was a menace and had to be killed. I thought that was what all this was about?”
“Since when do you listen to me?” Shakespeare rejoined.
“I am serious. We have gone to all this bother. The steeple. The canoes. Lou nearly drowing. And now you are saying it was all for nothing? That you have changed your mind and don’t want the thing dead?”
“That is pretty much it, yes. Remember the Bard. He said that the quality of mercy is not strained; it droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven.”
Nate shook his head in bewilderment. “You are as fickle as the weather. Next you will be saying that it was a mistake for us to come out after it.”
“A mistake and then some,” Shakespeare concurred. “What merit were it in death to take this poor maid from the world?”
“Are we talking about a woman or the creature?
“Ah, Horatio!” Shakespeare beamed. “A fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy.”
“I can never tell when you are serious.”
“I am always serious,” Shakespeare said. “Except when I’m not.”
“You are a lunatic.”
“And you have not so much brain as ear wax.”
“Enough.” Blue Water Woman pecked her husband on the chin. “Stop teasing him, Carcajou. Why have you changed your mind about the water devil?”
“Fish,” Shakespeare said. “It is a fish. Not a water devil. Nor a beast. Not a monster or a demon or a creature. It is a plain and simple fish.”
“I have looked into its eyes,” Blue Water Woman said, and shuddered.
“Et tu?” Shakespeare quoted. “And what did you see in them? What did your womanly intuition tell you?”
Blue Water Woman hesitated. “I am not certain.”
“I am,” Shakespeare said. “Have I mentioned that it saved me? That the dugout had capsized and I could not right it? And the fish did it for me?”
Nate started to laugh but caught himself. “Wait. The fish has gone from menace to savior? I take my words back. You are not as fickle as the weather. You are more fickle than the weather.”
“The answer is there, Horatio, if you but have the eyes to see,” Shakespeare said.
“I don’t even know the question.”
Shakespeare swept an arm at the watery expanse in which their canoes were drifting. “My mistake was one anyone could make. After those incidents we had, I jumped to the conclusion the fish was out to harm us. To be honest, I didn’t think it was a fish. I figured it was a holdout from the dawn of time, and that when we cornered it, it would turn out to be something completely new. Or, I should say, completely old.”
“I never saw a fish like this one,” Nate said.
“It is unique. But it wasn’t always. It had to come from somewhere, and that somewhere was other fish.”
“You are taking the long way around the bush.”
“Straight tongue, then,” Shakespeare said. “The fish was not trying to harm us. It wanted to be friends.”
<
br /> Nate had heard his mentor express some peculiar notions over the years, but this one beat them all, and he declared as much.
Shakespeare sighed. “Pay attention. I am the schoolmarm and you are the student.” He dipped his hand into the lake and held it out as the drops splattered the surface. “This lake is your home. Once—”
“Mine?” Nate interrupted. “I am a fish now?”
“If I had a tree limb I would beat you. Let me finish.” Shakespeare paused. “Now, as I was saying, this lake is your home and you share it with others of your kind. But one by one they age and die until you are the last one left. The other fish in the lake are not the same. You share the lake with them, but you are as different from them as an elk is from ants. Do you savvy so far?”
“As strange as it sounds, you almost make sense.”
“Good. So you are the last, and you go on living, year after year, winter after winter. But you have no one to call a companion. There is you and only you, and you are as lonesome as lonesome can be.”
“Oh, brother,” Nate said.
“Then one day new critters show up. Two-legged varmints who spend a lot of time near and in the water. You hear them. You smell them. Naturally, you want to find out more about them, so you swim close to them a few times, and because you do not realize how big and strong you are, you break their fishing line and knock one of them over when you push in too close to shore.”
Nate’s eyes widened. “You are not suggesting—”
Shakespeare did not let him finish. “I certainly am. The fish was never out to harm us. It was curious, is all. Curious and friendly, and its friendliness nearly got some of us killed.”
“It is a fish,” Nate said.
“Yes. We have established that fact. For a student you are an awful dunce.”
“You make it sound almost human. You don’t know it was only curious. You don’t know it was only being friendly.”
“It fetched you to me, didn’t it?”
“I must have missed that part,” Nate said.
“You were following it, weren’t you? And it led you right to me. I think it was trying to help.”
“I think I need a drink.” Nate looked at Blue Water Woman, who had been strangely quiet. “What do you think?”
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