The Underneath

by Kathi Appelt

  He considered the answering creek. Here and here and here, it whispered back. The creek was taunting him. He looked to the other side. He had to get across. Somehow. Some way. Soon.

  81

  WHEN NIGHT SONG vanished, Grandmother did not weep at all. Instead, she was furious that her daughter had left her once more. She became ravenous. She swallowed anything that moved. She could not be satisfied. Instead of sleeping, she caught mice and rats and foxes. Instead of napping, she dove into the bayou and swallowed up fish and baby alligators and anything else that swam—mink, beaver, even other snakes.

  Her scissor-like jaws grabbed onto their bodies and snapped them like twigs. Anything unfortunate enough to cross her path was likely to be sliced in two. Do not look into that mouth of cotton. That terrible cotton mouth.

  Her appetite was enormous, and so was she. She grew and grew and grew. And as she grew, so too did her anger. Her daughter had chosen another over her. Two anothers.

  Hawk Man.

  The daughter.

  Hawk Man.

  The daughter.

  Hawk Man.

  And then . . . Ahh, thought Grandmother. The daughter. At last she paused in her ravenous binging. The daughter. And she remembered the glimmering girl. Night Song’s daughter.

  In the next breath, she said, If I cannot have Night Song, I’ll take the daughter.

  And she began to laugh, a high-pitched, careening laugh, a laugh that made the trees shiver. Yes, she thought, I’ll take the daughter. She curled up on the stump of the old cypress and began to make a plan.

  She would bring the child to her dark lair and keep her there. She would teach her the ways of the creeks and bayous, show her the underwater caves of the crawdads, introduce her to her alligator cousin. Together they would turn their backs on the humans. Imagining it made her smile. Soon the daughter would adore her, just as Night Song once had. No longer would she be alone with only her vengeance as company. Ssssoooon, she hissed, ssssoooon my time will come.

  And this time she would not be so naive. She would be more watchful, more fastidious in her keep. Once a creature has been adored, she never forgets it. Grandmother had not forgotten Night Song’s adoration. But this time she would not take the adoration for granted. She would not let this one go.

  The Alligator King, hearing of her plan, asked, “Sister, what if the child cannot step out of her human skin?”

  Grandmother paused. This was something she had not considered. It caused her momentary consternation. But then she smiled.

  “This child is shot through with old magic,” she said. “A human shape is not her only one.”

  “How can you be sure?” asked the alligator.

  “She’s the daughter of Night Song, is she not?”

  The alligator blinked his yellow eyes. “No matter what her shape, a child is a child.”

  Grandmother hissed, “She’s mine.” Then she added, “I’ll take the daughter.”

  And with that, she stretched her long body and began her crawl back toward the Caddo village. She did not know that the child was looking for her, too. She did not know that the child was lost.

  Grandmother slithered over the pine needle floor, slipped in and out of the marshes, skimmed over the boggy fens.

  Daughter. I’ll take the daughter. She chanted it over and over as she crawled toward the creek, toward the village of the humans, toward the girl who glimmered. Ssssssttttt. I’ll take her for my own.

  At last the edge of the creek came up to greet her. She skimmed along the shallows, cool around her huge body. She raised her head. Where was the girl? The daughter? She should be near here, shouldn’t she? Shouldn’t she be drawn to the water, like her ancient forebears?

  She looked over the side of the bank. All she saw was a jar, gleaming in the afternoon sun.

  82

  WHILE HAWK MAN slept, the birds kept vigil outside his hut, the falcons and sparrows and blue jays, the catbirds and cardinals and painted buntings. They called to him.

  Brother! Step out of your human skin.

  He sank ever deeper into sleep. There was a rule. A rule he was bound by. That old rule: Once you forsake your human skin, you can never go back. He had known this. Why hadn’t Night Song?

  Don your feathers, cried the birds, the spotted owls and nighthawks, the whip-poor-wills and bobwhites.

  Fly away with us, called the killdeer and mockingbirds and the black-bellied plovers.

  But he couldn’t. He had a daughter. What about his daughter? She was a human. He had to keep his human shape for her. If he took back his feathered body, he would be lost to her, just as Night Song was lost to both of them. Weariness coursed through his body, drugged him into more sleep.

  Sleep. All-consuming sleep pulled him into a huge, quiet emptiness. And all the while the birds, the red-winged blackbirds, the tiny finches, the mourning doves, circled in the air above.

  After three long days and nights, he finally woke up. His dark eyes with glints of gold were crusted from the tears that had fallen while he slept. He brushed them with his fingers. He looked around the room. Empty. Such emptiness. A huge and overwhelming emptiness.

  The mat beside him where Night Song had slept was still empty. He rubbed his hand over it. Then he looked at the other side of the hut. The mat where his daughter slept was empty too.

  His daughter! Where was she? How long had he been asleep? How long had she been gone? And then he noticed. The jar was gone too.

  83

  CATS ARE BUILT for naps, and Puck was no exception. He spent a lot of time snoozing. In between, he worked on his hunting skills until soon he became adept at sneaking up on the tiny mice that built their nests just beneath the long red needles of the towering pines. He added an occasional salamander and tree frog, although this latter was more fun to catch than to eat.

  Hunting made him think of his sister. Sabine. He remembered how she lay in wait for him beside the old fish traps, then leapt out at him, front paws raised above her head, all spit and fur. Hiissssss!!! It made him smile.

  With his belly full of a juicy mouse, he thought she might be just a little proud of him. He sat on the edge of the salty creek and looked down at the water. When he closed his eyes, he could almost feel his mother right beside him, licking the mud off his tattered gray coat. For the first time in many days, he purred.

  Purring is not so different from praying. To a tree, a cat’s purr is one of the purest of all prayers, for in it lies a whole mixture of gratitude and longing, the twin ingredients of every prayer. Here then is a small cat, purring, praying that he will find his way to his sister and Ranger. He opened his eyes and looked to the other side of the creek. They were out there, somewhere.

  Promise, his mother had said. And he had.

  Promise smoldered inside him, like an ember. But unlike that warm desire, the creek was cold and deep. And now it had become something else. An enemy. And like any other enemy, this one was clever and crafty. It taunted him and hissed at him as it rolled down to the river. Puck was sure that it could swallow him, just as it had swallowed his mother.

  So he watched.

  And watched.

  Then, one day, on the surface of the water, he saw a large limb floating along. The limb bumped from one side of the creek to the other.

  He might have ignored it. He had seen many limbs do the same thing. But on this particularly sunny day, on this particularly large limb, he noticed five sawback turtles riding atop the limb. There they sat, perched like birds on a branch. Just like that.

  Yes, that’s right. They were riding the limb. On top of the water.

  Puck sat up. He watched the turtles. Now they were on this side of the creek. Next they bumped against the other side of the creek. The other side. Where he wanted to go. Over there. Turtles on a limb.

  Then he realized that if he ran downstream just a short way, he could meet the tacking limb and jump aboard. Then it would carry him to the other side, just like it carried the turtles.
The simplicity of it took his breath away. Yes, he would ride the limb to the other side and jump off. If turtles could do it, so could he.

  He jumped up and started following the floating turtle boat. At first he trotted beside it, keeping it parallel to him on the bank, but quickly he saw that he needed to get ahead of it so that it would come to him. He picked up his pace and ran. Finally he came to a small bend and looked over his shoulder. He could see the limb heading straight toward him.

  Closer and closer and closer. Almost.

  Yes!

  He slid down the bank and landed, oomph, right in front of the turtle-laden limb.

  He closed his eyes and . . .

  jumped!

  As soon as he leapt onto the log, the startled turtles slid into the water. That combination, leaping cat/sliding turtles, set the limb to spinning. Puck ran, the limb spun. Puck was a swift cat. He could run fairly fast, but not fast enough to outrun the spinning limb. Soon he dug in his claws, all of them, as hard as he could, which turned out to be a bigger mistake, because it just meant that he was stuck to the limb when he went under.

  Splash!

  The cold of the water shocked him. He gulped in a large mouthful and started choking.

  Meow!!!

  Fortunately, all that spinning had kept the limb right beside the shore. So even though he had taken a good dunking, once he righted himself, he was only up to his belly in water. He coughed the last of the water up. Then he climbed onto the bank and caught his breath. When he looked up, the turtles were climbing back aboard and floating away. They didn’t even look back at him. He sat down and watched. Then he looked again at the opposite shore. It seemed farther away than ever.

  He licked his wet coat and coughed.

  The only good thing that had come of his experiment in sailing was this: The cold water had loosened the last of the old mud, and his coat, though completely wet, was now completely clean.

  This was small consolation. A clean coat did not get him any closer to the other side of the creek. He shook his wet fur, first one paw, then another, then his whole body. He sent the water scattering into the air around him, tiny prisms in the afternoon sun.

  As the drops settled, he heard the rapid thrumming of wings just behind him. He looked over his shoulder. There she was again.

  The hummingbird.

  Here.

  There.

  Gone.

  84

  GO BACK A thousand years, to this same spot along the creek, here beneath the trees. Go back to the moment when Grandmother slithered along its bank, in search of her granddaughter, the little girl who glimmered.

  On that day the sun shone like a spotlight on the abandoned jar. Grandmother looked at it. She had seen it before, only days ago when she had come to fetch Night Song. Seen how the threesome, Night Song, Hawk Man, the daughter, had joined hands around the jar. She had seen them together, seen their embraces, their smiles. Now she pulled her huge body onto the bank and began to slowly circle the jar.

  Here was a jar of beauty, graceful in its round and perfect symmetrical shape, large in its size. Here was a jar that was built for utility, for holding water and berries and grain. But here also was a jar for admiring. Grandmother noticed the artistry, the band of crescent moons that ringed the rim.

  But ahh . . . the snake etched on the side. That was something to behold. Grandmother lifted her head and ran her chin along its curved lines, traced it with her tongue. She sat back. Night Song! She could smell her daughter’s presence, pressed into the hard clay. She breathed in the wonder of it. This jar. This lovely jar, made by her own daughter. Then she hissed. Sssssssttttt!!!

  Night Song! If it weren’t for Night Song, she wouldn’t be so lonely. Night Song had abandoned her, not once, but twice. She drew herself up and prepared to strike the jar. With her terrible jaws, she could crack the rim and destroy it. She curled herself into a coil, felt the poison pool in her mouth, felt the tension build in her million curved bones, her sinewy muscles.

  This jar was her enemy. This jar made by Night Song. The jar with her very own image on the outside. She drew back like an arrow on a bow and opened her cotton mouth. . . .

  But at the moment of striking, that moment when every muscle was taut and ready, she suddenly felt something grab her from behind, felt a tight grip around her neck like a vise.

  She sputtered and spit. She twisted and curved, whipped her body around and around. She gagged. The grip around her neck was tight. Tight. She tasted her own poison as it spewed onto her thin tongue. She felt droplets of moisture seep out of her diamond scales, run down her body. She twisted again. The grip tightened.

  “You!” She heard a deep voice. And all at once, she knew who it was. Hawk Man.

  He turned her around so that she was facing him. His hand held her at arm’s length from his face. Otherwise she would strike him directly on the face. But she could do nothing right now. He had her in his hand. She could see the glints of gold flashing in his dark eyes. She noticed the feathers growing in his hair. Ahhh, she realized, this was no ordinary man.

  He looked directly into her eyes and spoke.

  “What have you done with them?” he said.

  “Night Song is gone,” she answered. Then she added, with a sneer, “She was done with you.” She saw the flash of sadness, just a glimmer of it, in his eye. But it wasn’t there for long. She told him, “It’s too late for Night Song.”

  She expected him to break down, to weep, as humans do. But instead he started shaking her. “What did you do with my daughter?”

  The shaking made her cough. She sputtered and spit. The poison ran down her throat. “What do you mean?” she asked.

  “Where is she? What did you do with her?”

  In that moment, Grandmother realized, here was a man at her mercy. Here was a man she could use for her own devices. She would lie to him to make him put her down, then she would quickly dispatch him and go on her own hunt for her granddaughter. Yes, the daughter. Soon, she would be all hers.

  And this ploy might have worked if she had moved faster, but before she could say anything, Hawk Man squeezed her again, and when he did, her body convulsed and her tail, like a whip, slashed across the skin on Hawk Man’s thigh, opening a wide and gaping wound.

  Hawk Man howled in pain.

  Here was a man in agony, a man who had lost his wife, a man who could not find his little daughter. Hawk Man was done with sorrow and hope and dreams. Here was a man who was furious.

  And in his rage, he lifted the lid on his daughter’s jar, the large and wonderful jar, and stuffed Grandmother into it, forced her enormous and thrashing body into the deep, smooth jar, a jar meant for carrying fresh water and crawdads, meant for storing corn and grain, meant as a gift from a mother to a daughter.

  “Your time has come!” he shouted.

  He jammed the old serpent down into the beautiful jar and slammed the tight-fitting lid on top. And just to be certain that the lid would not come free, he lifted a large, heavy stone from the side of the creek and set it on top.

  Then he began to dig. With his bare hands, he dug and dug and dug, through the hard and sticky clay beside the creek, until at last he had a deep hole, a hole that was perfect for burying a jar. This jar. With its terrible contents.

  As he lowered the jar and covered the hole with dirt, he did not notice the puncture wound. In the pain he felt on his thigh where Grandmother’s vicious tail had slashed him, he did not notice the pain in his hand, did not see the swelling that started there and began to race up his arm, did not feel the poison racing through his veins, his arteries, coursing through his own enchanted blood, the blood of the phoenix, the roc, of Thoth himself, the ancient birds of magic, those old and forgotten shifters of shape, those birds.

  Something else he did not notice: the pine cone, brushed into the hole, the pine cone that would lay there, just below the surface, through a long and thirsty drought, until at last a furious fire cracked the cone open and becko
ned it to sprout, to spread its roots into the red clay beside the creek and encircle the jar in their web, to send its small trunk up toward the sun, where it would widen and reach, widen and reach, where it would stand for a thousand years through thousands of storms, until one storm in its last breath of wind would send out a bolt of lightning that would carve a large and fiery slash deep into its trunk, beckoning the end.

  This tree.

  This large and lovely tree.

  85

  GAR FACE KNEW that the alligator was toying with him, playing a game. It made him angry. Every night, the same. He waited on the water’s edge for the bubbles to appear. Then he steered his boat toward them, only to arrive and see the bubbles rise up behind him.

  He took a deep draught from his flask. Vodka. It was cheap and wicked, and it burned going down. There it settled in his gut, burning even more.

  The alligator, mixed with the alcohol, was making Gar Face simmer from the inside out. Then one night, as he pushed his boat toward the bank, he heard a bump on the bottom of the pirogue. Many times his boat had been bumped by alligators or fish, or even the rat-like nutria that had moved here during the last century. Water rats, they feasted on the lilies that grew along the shore and built their dens out of mud.

  Bump! There it was again.

  Bump, bump, bump! Again and again and again.

  Gar Face knew. This was not a water rat or a fish. The boat began to rock from side to side. Gar Face sat down, hard. The pole that he used for steering slipped into the water. With a sensation of horror, he realized he was stranded. The shore was only a yard away, close enough to step outside the boat and pull it to the banks.

  But he knew that if he put a foot over the edge, the alligator would take him down. All at once, Gar Face was furious! He swore at the beast beneath him, even as the boat rocked and rocked. He felt the vodka rise in his throat, tasted the bitterness of his own bile.