The creature sensed her furious push from the ocean, against a current that struggled through sand and stone. She did not need much water to work, only some—only enough to dissolve and draw herself along like a salmon swimming upstream.
In the center of the pool she emerged with a geyser and a shout.
Her children jumped and turned their backs to the moldering chest, slapping their hands down and drawing quick breaths. They were caught off guard, and they were so frightened that they froze. Transformed or not, changed or not, beloved of the water witch or not—they were still seized with the very mortal fear of being eaten.
“Mother?” the man gasped. The woman straightened herself beside him.
In one of the witch’s enormous hands, black and rough like sharkskin, she held out the mermaid trinket from the Gasparilla’s music box. What is this, and why? she demanded.
The man said. “I don’t understand.”
Did you cast this? Did you throw it down into the water? Her voice was too low to be shrill, but too severe to be merely a shout. One of you did, I know.
“I did it,” the woman spoke up fast. “I found it on the boat—”
Out there, the decorated thing that’s about to break itself in the tide?
“Yes,” she said.
You found it there?
“She did,” the man interjected. “It was in a box, down below. A music box; I told you about it when you asked about the song. Please, before you get any angrier with us, won’t you explain? It is only a toy. She meant no harm with it. What is it, and why have you chased us into this confrontation?”
The water witch settled in the water, melting herself until she was shaped like a woman only from the belly up. The rest remained in the pool; she hid her lower half in the dark water, as if to cover it with a tremendous skirt. She crushed the mermaid in her palm, concealing and destroying it. You cannot lie to me, she said more calmly. I made you what you are, and I can see inside you, the way you work and the way you plot.
“Then you know that we hide nothing. Please, Mother,” he begged. “Explain to us our transgression.”
Her yellow pupilless eyes smoldered. You hide nothing, she agreed with him. She turned her attention to the woman. You found it in a music box. Do you recall the tune that it played?
“I don’t,” she said.
And you played with this, before you cast it over the side?
“I did.”
But you do not know why I’ve come?
“I don’t.”
While the water witch fumed and tried to read the hearts of her offspring, the creature on the hill nodded to itself, pleased at the mermaid’s successful summoning, even if the very nearness of the witch made its twig-filled face twist with disgust.
The song was not so hard to reproduce. The witch was not so difficult to beckon or banish after all. One needed only to know the correct arrangement of the right old tunes.
She glowered down at the stiff-limbed, stubborn woman, and she opened her hand. The mermaid was unrecognizable, so badly had she bent it. This was a signal, she said with care. It was an urgent request, charmed and loud. It was a cry for assistance and aid.
Having found the track of her subtle lie, the witch followed it. I was afraid for you both. I could smell your hands and I thought that something tragic had occurred. It was as if you screamed my name and it was a scream of terror, and I wished to answer but I feared for the circumstances. I did not mean to treat you so crossly, children of mine. But you worried me with your—She tossed the metal lump to the woman, who caught it and held it tightly.—little toy. I can only wonder where it came from. I would ask that you be more careful with the things you throw away.
She gave the woman another long look that was neither kind nor unkind. It was not a threat, but it carried with it elements of a warning.
And be careful also of the wishes you make, and cast. Baubles such as those may carry them far, and betray them as likely as grant them.
With that, she sank with a leisurely motion until the top of her head disappeared beneath the glassy surface and was gone, leaving only a circular ripple to mark her passage.
The creature also let itself sink, back down into the soil and through the tangled-tight roots of the slope. It emerged down at the water’s edge, where it hid in the shadows of the overhanging vines—though it was careful not to dip even one corner of its lumpy feet into the pool.
It hung back and waited while the man and woman caught their breath.
The night was still again, and the pool was as perfect as a mirror, except by the very outside edge . . . where a long black hand reached out slowly, crawling spiderlike from the lip of the water toward the blocky brown foot of the creature.
It spied the hand too late. Before it realized the witch was still there, her hand had seized its foot, and the creature roared—sending the small, frightened people scattering back behind the trunk and into the vine curtain, where they sought shelter.
Arahab snatched the foot and dragged the creature into the wet; it struggled and swore, and it clutched at the earth. It reached with its center, grasping hard for the roots in the sinkhole bank and trying to anchor and draw itself forward and away, doing its best to keep from being picked up.
But the water witch wormed her fingertips through the creature’s loose, leafy skin and she held it firm.
As it grew wet, it began to disassemble; and as it fought, it came apart all the faster. It changed tactics. It lunged against her, thinking it would be simpler to be torn apart and regroup later, but she halted the plan before it got under way.
She rose up again out of the water, huge and enraged. She held the creature by its neck and squeezed it with both hands.
You? You were the one who made the call and bade me come?
“No,” it insisted.
Don’t lie to me, Thing. Neither of those two— She gestured at the place where they hid. Neither of them knows enough to make such a device. They would not know whom to ask, or what questions to bring. They lack the power to summon my sort.
When she said my sort, the words were laced with razors to cut the insult deeper. She shook the creature, tormenting it even as she held it together. She had swollen herself until she was large enough to lift the creature aloft. The pool in which she stood was nearly empty, as she had used almost the entire contents to build her imposing, powerful shape. Her bottom half was a tentacled, finned anomaly that was forced to spread in order to support her.
“Our sort,” the creature threw the sentiment back at her. Its voice did not choke despite her grip, because the sound did not emanate from within its throat.
Furious, she hoisted the creature high and slammed it down into the mud where the emptied pool had left the ground wet. Its body split and would have shattered with the impact, except that she held it together in its beaten-sack shape with the force of her will.
You and I share no sort, no kind, and no kinship. We are in no way the same, and you have no power here. To emphasize her point, she beat the creature again, over and over until it was pulped and crushed like the mermaid that had drawn her out in the first place.
She hit the thing in time with her words, because she knew they would hurt it more than the blows alone.
Exile. Fiend. Traitor. She ground the creature down with her palm, burying it in the mud and leaving it all but immobile, so damaged was its form. Outcast.
It lay there and jerked, broken to the point that it could not move the crude body it wore.
I ask you again, did you create that call?
“No,” it said.
She beat it again, although it was scarcely more than pulp.
Why did you make it? she demanded.
“I did not make it. I did not call you. I would not dare it.”
She threw her wet fist down again, determined to erase him, to rub him into nothingness. You would not dare it? But you would dare to watch, and dare to follow. You traced them here, because you knew what
they carried.
“Yes,” it confessed.
Its answer caught her by surprise. You’ll admit that much?
“Yes.”
She stood up straight and stared down into the crusty puddle where its body had been before. But you were not summoned?
“No. I only heard the song, and wanted to know who had brought it and why. My crime is only curiosity,” it told her. “I heard it and I followed it. But you know as well as anyone of your kind . . .” It was being careful now. It had pushed the ruse too far, almost, and it needed to retreat. “I do not have the power to fashion such an enchantment. Who am I to summon you? If I were to make my very best effort, I could not summon the queen of the waters. If I were to work with the finest tools, and act upon the finest advice, the greatest result I could manage would not be enough to tug upon your smallest pet.”
She turned her head and eyed the place where her children had vanished.
“Not the tiniest fish,” it clarified, lest she infer its true intent. “Not the smallest water horse with a curled and coiled tail. Not the littlest crab with the most insignificant claws. I have not the will, nor the skill, and certainly not the desire to attract your wrath.”
She considered this.
The creature on the ground rested and struggled to pull itself back into a shape that would let it crawl away from her. It prayed to the universe or to the unseen that the water witch might swallow the lies and think no harder on the matter. It prayed that the long years between its exile and her outburst had dulled her memories. Let her contempt protect him. Let her disdain provide false proof.
It watched her eyes flicker with uncertainty. It had successfully worried her, but it had not completely thrown her off its treachery. Quickly, before she had time to give it any more credit, it added, “What reason could I possibly have to draw a goddess to me, when destruction is the finest treatment I deserve?”
She nodded, because it sounded like a fair plea—and it was presented in the obsequious manner she most preferred. As a matter of form, she pretended to object. Be careful with the titles you assign, you low and ridiculous insect. The pool at the sinkhole’s floor began to fill itself again as the water witch descended and returned the liquid to its proper location. Your praise is ill-considered, she accused. I do not trust you, and I do not believe you. Your treachery has passed into myth, and your deceptive spirit serves as a warning to all of us who remain. But no pathetic orphan could have crafted a signal so effective.
“I am a wretched ghost,” it affirmed, though it lent the admission more heartfelt misery than it would have liked. With exhaustive effort and a trembling twitch, it mustered enough stability to extend a penitent hand. “Pity your tragic servant, Mistress. I have meant you neither harm nor offense, and I only beg an undeserved pardon.”
That much is true; you deserve no pardon from me. You deserve no quarter, and no mercy. Arahab turned away from the slimy patch of earth and drew herself down into the frothed and muddied pool. We should have destroyed you long ago. We should have taken your last breath as well as your domain, and cast you into the formless void.
And the pool went still, its surface barely bubbling from the disturbance that the water witch left in its wake.
What was left of the creature’s battered shape cracked itself into a vicious smile. “Hag,” it spit. “You tried.”
Being Ware of Wishes
Insurance was not Sam’s passion. As far as he knew, it wasn’t anybody’s passion, but someone had to calculate and process it, and so far as the Bradenton Fire Company was concerned, that someone was Sam.
He sat sweating at his temporary desk in the purgatory warmth of the attic of the Anna Maria courthouse, and he scowled.
Upon the desk lay a letter from the county’s chief, its envelope cut and its contents spilled. Several phrases leaped up from the hastily handwritten note. One said, “No action necessary or practical at this time.” Another mentioned a conversation with the mayor. Yet a third indicated that perhaps Sam could find something better to do with his free time than trespass repeatedly and to no real purpose on private property.
“It isn’t private property, exactly,” he complained to the empty room. “Not if no one owns it. It’s city property. Langan has to buy it from the city.”
The papers rustled in response, stirred by the chain-driven fan above and a quick, light breeze through the window behind him.
Besides, wasn’t he working? For Langan, if not for the fire department precisely, he was 100 percent on task—investigating a potential property for an out-of-town investor. Just because he wasn’t working for Chief Porter, that didn’t mean he wasn’t working.
The final line of the letter proposed that Sam locate Dave more or less immediately, and return with him to the mainland.
Sam had an assortment of arguments stacked up against it.
For one thing, he could barely stand the sight of Dave for more than an hour at a time, and he wasn’t looking forward to the journey home. For another, his bureaucratic little soul had hit its threshold for refusal.
He’d filed no less than a dozen letters with various island city officials, and down to the last scrap they’d been ignored. So he’d filed a second set of meticulous documentation about the goings-on at the beach house, and that second set had been likewise disregarded.
In person, then, he had addressed every correct and proper agency. They all rebuffed him, sometimes gently, sometimes condescendingly, and sometimes with outright anger.
He simply couldn’t understand why no one thought it was even interesting—much less important—that criminal activity was taking place in this closed, quiet community right beside the ocean.
Granted, he didn’t have a great stash of evidence to show.
For that matter, he remembered grimly, he had no evidence at all. His carefully collected specimens from the courtyard had vanished from storage at the courthouse where he’d made his temporary headquarters; and no amount of outraged inquiry could retrieve the items or solve the mystery of their disappearance.
The secretary had stared at him as if he’d pulled a cat out of his pants when he suggested that she ought to look into this travesty, and possibly seek police intervention. She told him to notify the police if he liked. The policeman’s name was Bud, and he lived down by the lighthouse between the pier and the main road; but he’d gone down to Longboat Key for a fishing vacation, and he wouldn’t be back for a week.
Sam seethed at the unfair, incorrect, and inexcusable disorganization of it all.
Even when he took into consideration that this was a small city, accessible only by ferry, there was no good reason whatsoever for civic untidiness. If anything, he would think that a smaller population would make it easier to keep everything in order.
But no.
As long as things were quiet, no one cared what went on in the dark.
Well, Sam cared. Or at the very least, Sam was intensely interested—and he’d met with so much resistance that he couldn’t let it go.
Sometimes he wished he could be more like his traveling companion. Dave had long since let it go, or hell—maybe he never had it in the first place. If Sam knew Dave at all, Dave was down at the Sandbar trying to talk the man behind the counter into bringing out some of the bathtub liquor that everyone knew was made in the back.
Another insulting word blared up from the letter. “Impractical.”
If Chief Porter wanted to get technical about it, selling fire insurance on an island with no ready access to a fire company was completely, ludicrously impractical—but people wanted it. The chief insisted that they could drive their American LaFrance pumper out from Bradenton in no time flat if the ferry was waiting right, and anyway, there was always the old engine stuck in storage.
Sam rose from the desk and pushed his shirtsleeves as far up his arms as the fabric would permit. The lone window behind him didn’t let in half so much breeze as heat, and he was warm enough from being angry.
r /> Downstairs, the phone rang and the secretary answered it. Outside, a rickety truck rattled along the sandy street like a big mechanical insect.
“Also impractical?” Sam said aloud. “The steadfast refusal of proper pavement.” Even if the fire engine could arrive at the island in time to fight a blaze, the truck would never make it down the streets. It would be too heavy, with all the water and equipment. The machine would bog down before rolling more than a few feet off the pier.
He reached down and grabbed the letter, wadded it up, and threw it into the metal trash can.
His time and money were almost up. One way or another, he’d have to return to Bradenton within a couple of days, with or without any proof of the strangeness down at the house on the shore.
But with every hour that passed, he was more convinced that something weird was going on. It wasn’t just the traces of little fires; it wasn’t just the bones and the blood that he found smeared and scattered around the property. It was the way people looked at him when he tried to call attention to the issue. It was the sudden darting of their eyes, or hasty laughter.
And now he was being sent away. Urged home. Kicked out.
The secretary’s voice was low and measured. She was taking a personal call on the company phone. Otherwise, he’d be able to hear every word from his borrowed space, like usual.
Sam sighed. He was tempted to storm downstairs, burst past the secretary, charge onto the mainland, and return with the state police, or the FBI, or whoever else he could scare up with his reports of . . .
But if he were forced to admit it, he didn’t have much to report.
The animal parts could be attributed to a predator of some kind—an island dog, or even a panther, someone had suggested. Sam didn’t know if there were any enormous Florida cats on the island, but he was willing to bet there weren’t; and even if there were, they wouldn’t use knives. Some of the scraps of fur and flesh he’d found showed distinct signs of having been cut with something sharp.
And all the candle nubs, left scattered in the grass—they weren’t regular candles. They had a greasy texture and a black coating. Who used black candles? No one up to any good, that’s who.