The Anything Box

Take your hook from her silken hair.
A broken heart must be your share
For the Grunder."
"Why that's impossible on the face of it," thought Crae with a pang of
despair. "The broken heart I've got—but the rest? Hook from her hair?" Hair?
Hairpin—bobby pin. He fumbled in his shirt pocket. Where were they? Yesterday,
upcreek when Ellena decided to put her hair in pigtails because the wind was
so strong, she had given him the pins she took out. He held the slender piece
of metal in his hand for a moment then straightened it carefully between his
fingers. He slowly bent one end of it up in an approximation of a hook. He
stared at it ruefully. What a fragile thing to hang hope on.
Now for a line—her linen fair. Linen? Ellena brought nothing linen to camp
with her. He fumbled with the makeshift hook, peering intently into the dusk,
tossing the line of verse back and forth in his mind. Linen's not just cloth.
Linen can be clothes. Body linen. He lifted the shoe rag. An old slip—ripped.
In a sudden frenzy of haste, he ripped the white cloth into inch wide
strips and knotted them together, carefully rolling the knobby, ravelly
results into a ball. The material was so old and thin that one strip parted as
he tested a knot and he had to tie it again. When the last strip was knotted,
he struggled to fasten his improvised hook onto it. Finally, bending another
hook at the opposite end, sticking it through the material, splitting the end,
he knotted it as securely as he could. He peered at the results and laughed
bitterly at the precarious makeshift. "But it'll work," he told himself
fiercely. "It'll work. I'll catch that damn Grunder and get rid once and for
all of whatever it is that's eating me!"
And for bait? Take the tears that fall from her eyes …
Crae searched the ground under the tree beside him. There it was, the
sodden, grayed blob of Kleenex Ellena had dropped. He picked it up gingerly
and felt it tatter, tear-soaked and rain-soaked, in his fingers. Remembering
ABC Amber Palm Converter,http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
her tears, his hand closed convulsively over the soaked tissue. When he loosedhis fingers from it, he could see their impress in the pulp, almost as he hadseen his hand print on her cheek. He baited the hook and nearly laughed againas he struggled to keep the wad of paper in place. Closing one hand tightlyabout the hook, the other around the ball of cotton, he went to the tent door.For a long, rain-emphasized moment he listened. There was no sound frominside, so with only his heart saying it, he shaped, "I love you," with hismouth and turned away, upstream.
The rain was slanting icy wires now that stabbed his face and cut through
his wet jacket. He stood on the rough foot bridge across the creek and leaned
over the handrail, feeling the ragged bark pressing against his stomach. He
held his clenched fists up before his face and stared at them.
"This is it," he thought. "Our last chance—My last chance." Then he bent
his head down over his hands, feeling the bite of his thumb joints into his
forehead. "O God, make it true—make it true!"
The he loosed the hand that held the hook, tapped the soggy wad of Kleenex
to make sure it was still there and lowered it cautiously toward the roaring,
brawling creek, still swollen from the afternoon sun on hillside snow. He
rotated the ball slowly, letting the line out. He gasped as the hook touched
the water and he felt the current catch it and sweep it downstream. He yelled
to the roaring, rain-drenched darkness, "I believe! I believe!" And the limp,
tattered line in his hand snapped taut, pulling until it cut into the flesh of
his palm. It strained downstream, and as he looked, it took on a weird
fluorescent glow, and skipping on the black edge of the next downstream curve,
the hook and bait were vivid with the same glowing.
Crae played out more of the line to ease the pressure on his palm. The line
was as tight and strong as piano wire between his fingers.
Time stopped for Crae as he leaned against the rail watching the bobbing
light on the end of the line— waiting and waiting wondering if the Grunder was
coming, if it could taste Ellena's tears across the world. Rain dripped from
the end of his nose and whispered down past his ears.
Then out of the darkness and waiting, lightning licked across the sky and
thunder thudded in giant, bone-jarring steps down from the top of Baldy. Crae
winced as sudden vivid light played around him again, perilously close. But no
thunder followed and he opened his eyes to a blade of light slicing cleanly
through the foot bridge from side to side. Crae bit his lower lip as the light
resolved itself into a dazzling fin that split the waters, slit the willows
and sliced through the boulders at the bend of the creek and disappeared.
"The Grunder!" he called out hoarsely and unreeled the last of his line,
stumbling to the end of the bridge to follow in blind pursuit through the
darkness. As his feet splashed in the icy waters, the Grunder lifted in a high
arching leap beyond the far willows. Crae slid rattling down the creek bank
onto one knee. The swift current swung him off balance and twisted him so that
his back was to the stream, and he felt the line slip through his fingers.
Desperately, he jerked around and lunged for the escaping line, the surge of
the waters pushing him face down into the shallow stream. With a gurgling sob,
he surfaced and snatched the last turn of the winding strip from where it had
snagged on the stub of a water-soaked log.
He pulled himself up onto the soggy bank, strangling, spewing water,blinking to clear his eyes. Soaked through, numbed by the cold water and theicy wind, with shaking hands he fashioned a loop in the end of the line andsecured it around his left wrist, his eyes flicking from loop to line, makingsure the hook and bait were still there. He started cautiously downstream,slipping and sliding through the muck, jarring into holes, tripping on rises,intent on keeping his bait in sight. A willow branch lashed across his eyesand blinded him. While he blinked away involuntary tears, trying to clear thedazzle that blurred his sight, the Grunder swept back upstream, passing soclose that Crae could see the stainless steel gleam of overlapping scales,
ABC Amber Palm Converter,http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
serrated and jagged, that swept cleanly down its wide sides to a gossamer tailand up to a blind-looking head with its wide band of brilliant blue,glittering like glass beads, masking its face from side to side where eyesshould have been. Below the glitters was its open maw, ringed about withflickering points of scarlet.
Crae squatted down in the mud, staring after the Grunder, lost, bewilderedand scared. He clasped his hands to steady the bobbing steel-like ribbon ofline that gouged into his wrist and jerked his whole arm. Was the Grundergone? Had he lost his last chance? He ducked his head to shelter his face fromthe drenching downpour that seethed on the water loud enough to be heard abovethe roar of a dozen small falls.
Then suddenly, without warning, he was jerked downstream by his left arm,scraping full length along the soggy bank until his shoulder snagged on astunted willow stump. He felt the muscles in his shoulder crack from thesudden stop. He wormed his way up until he could get hold of the line with hisright hand, then, twisting forward, he braced both feet against the stump andheaved. The line gave slightly. And then he was cowering beneath lifted armsas the Grunder jumped silently, its tail flailing the water to mist, its headshaking against the frail hook that was imbedded in its lower jaw.