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.