the ends of the reeds, continued to gracefully finger the notes along the length of each submerged reed, and the sounds she produced were sweet beyond hearing, like, yet unlike, hymns of praise, for this was a melody far, far older than any hymn which rose up to a specific God, a melody far more free and unfettered than any designed to show respectful praise and thankfulness to the All Mighty.
And, as he stared with eyes grown watery from the slanting last rays of the western sun, between the notes she used one hand, then the other, to beckon him, a motion unmistakable in its playfulness and lack of dire urgency.
The white woman needed no saving, of the physical or spiritual variety—of that, the good cleric was certain beyond a need for any words to that effect.
“Water demon,” he spat out through numb rough lips, even as his eye lingered on the ever-less-distinct round smoothness of her plump limbs and her swelling bosom. “Pagan devil...seek your worshipers elsewhere,” he added, through lips which trembled from cold rage, then pivoted in place before gliding off for the distant University; but with the coming of evening came the cessation of the breeze, so that the sound of her bubbling melody (which slowly, purposefully, once again became a reed/skate duet on thin ice) grew all the louder and distinct to Alredge’s cold-tingling ears.
And with each note of her obbligato came the mental accusations: You could save her. Save her soul. If she lives, there’s a soul. The pagans were reformed. The pagans adapted. Pagans believed. Their idols could too. Save her. Save her soul.
(Save her body—)
Save her. Redeem her. Purify her. She can hear you. She’ll listen. Talk to her.
(Come to her—)
Say the Words. Sing the hymns. Save her.
The descending sun cast a sheen of silky gold across the ice, and its dull radiance half-blinded Alredge as he raced back to the brushy tangle, and the cold window within it; the surrounding trees cast gnarled fingers of shadow across the ice, but enough light filtered down through them to touch her sunken flesh, and impart a false glow of living warmth there. And while her eyes were all white, they could see; when he peered over at her, she stopped breathing into the reeds, and instead pursed her lips, forming a solo kiss in his direction.
The cleric’s lips began to form a puckered reply when he noticed how the sun brought out the bas-relief-like texture of her cheeks, and the unmistakable pattern of white-on-white scales there—
“No animal, no beast, has a true soul!” The words jittered and skittered on his trembling lips and tongue, tumbling into the air like jagged chunks of ice falling from a warm roof. Yet she still kept her lips pursed, as if waiting for the touch of his lips upon hers, even as he stiffly turned and began to skate away from her across the oft-scored surface of the ice; with each frantic swipe and release of the blades, the furrows in the ice grew deeper, and began to spread in jagged forks like earth-trapped lightning, across the surface of the loch’s south end.
And as the sun vanished behind the pointed spires of the surrounding trees, leaving the loch draped in cold darkness, the brittle white skin of Loch Coventina parted just long enough to swallow the forward-moving figure on its surface, with a staccato smack and sucking gulp, before the fresh wound in the lake’s surface began to smooth over once more with a scab of thinnest black ice, so thin that the darting movements of the man and the woman below the freshly-formed surface might have been easily discerned, had there been people there to witness their silent duet in the cold, cold dark waters.
AFTERWORD
In 1992, Workman Publishing put out a seventeenth-anniversary edition of their 1975 B. Kliban cartoon collection, Cat, which included sixteen pages of color drawings in the middle of the book. If you can find that small paperback, there’s an atmospheric study of a sweater-wearing cat ice-skating toward a distant yellow rectangle of light amidst the twilight-hued surrounding landscape featured on both the back of the book, and the ninth color print within the book. That inspired this story, strange as it may seem. Naturally, I couldn’t very well write about an ice-skating cat, so I came up with this...and the concept of a submerged statue was something else which had been lingering in the back of my mind, so I finally was able to utilize that.
Ironically, I’ve never ice-skated in my life (my balance is too poor), so I ended up having my poor “hero” skate far too close to the edge, so close that under normal circumstances he would’ve crashed through the ice long before he actually did. My bad....
INITIAL APPEAL
May 6. Three more whiskers. On my chin this time, the tweezers didn’t meet closely enough to pull them out completely on the first try, so I ended up spending a quarter of an hour bending over the bathroom sink down the hall—and hoping the other tenants wouldn’t come knocking at the door—trying to pluck out the miserable stubby things. Have to remember to pick up a new pair next time I’m in the drug store, also tampons.
Got my proof sheets for “The Mouth That Wouldn’t Die” from B.Q., as usual with a note asking me to “get these back asap, running late,” etc. Only three typos, all minor. Another thing, pick up cotton balls at the d.s., too.
May 8. Think I jinxed myself, buying new tweezers. Five whiskers, three on my upper lip (gross), the others per usual on the chin. Looks like more might be coming; there’s a dark peppery coloration under my skin. I feel like Dustin Hoffman in Tootsie, only he was a guy. Maybe waxing would do it, but damn it hurts.
Editor from Bloodbath Quarterly called: would I consider some last minute fine-tuning on the “Mouth...” tale, nothing major, just a few lines at the end? I dictated new lines over the phone, sure glad no one but the dogs were around. I could feel two more whiskers pop out. This keeps up, I’ll be mistaken for Wolfie or Duke by the landlord. The boys looked up at me with those tongue-lolling sloppy pink doggie grins, but I wasn’t in the mood to join them in their mirth.
May 11. I think I will get—no matter the expense—a computer, a word processor, and especially one of those dinguses that hooks one computer to another by phone. Anything so that I don’t have to face anyone at that Post Office again. Jeeze, I mean the goon behind the counter didn’t have to be so obvious, so god-damned pointed about staring at my upper lip and chin, as if it were a sign of mental instability and gross metabolic abnormality to have a little bit (ok, a lot) of fuzz growing there. I’m surprised that he didn’t ask me if I was on the Pill (I’m not, but maybe I’ll have to tell people that I am if they get curious—oh-mi-gawd, don’t let it get that bad!) or, a bit more on the tacky side, ask me if I belonged to a Mediterranean race. And me with light brown hair. If this crap keeps up, I won’t be able to go out, period. I’m getting so bad that I’m starting to take a second look at those glitchy “Remove Unwanted Hair Forever!” ads in the backs of my women’s mags.
Not that it is that bad.
May 13. Received my first check for “The Mouth That Wouldn’t Die”; wonder if I can get direct deposit service at the bank, the kind senior citizens use. There is the automatic teller, but I hate messing with a machine, and besides, one of my neighbors down the hall got ripped off when she put a check endorsed for deposit only in one of those overnight boxes, and instead of crediting her checking account, some sticky-fingers employee at the bank cashed it or deposited it or something and took the money, and she had to make good on all the checks she inadvertently bounced.
Maybe my old bottle of Neet would work. I don’t think a hat with a veil would go with my jogging suit, or with the over-size tees.
Thank goodness I can get food delivered to my apartment. As for the dogs, they can do their duty on newspapers.
May
