Drowned the Whole Town

The screaming starts when he understands they’re leaving me.

“Bea’ris!” his little mouth works hard around my name. His tiny, powerful hands make fists in my shirt. “No leave Bea’ris,” he screams.

“You have to, little brother.”

“You come,” he says, scrunching his precious face into a frown. I look over his scruffy black hair to our mother. Who stands like a stone angel above a grave, saying nothing.

“I can’t,” I tell him, easing away the frown with my forefinger. “I can’t walk, and no one will— No one can carry me.”

“No,” he says, and now it’s a small voice of pain that makes me wish for the screaming. He curls into a ball, hiding his face against my stomach.

“Listen,” I stroke his head, “when the water comes, do you know what’ll happen?”

He doesn’t answer, but his stillness says he’s listening.

“Magic,” I say. “This broken body’s going to wash away, and in its place I’ll have shimmering rainbow fins.” He turns his head, one shining eye gazing at me.

“A mermaid?”

“Yes, a mermaid. And I’ll make friends with the fish. Swim all day long. So you don’t worry about me. And you don’t ever come back. Do you promise?”

He thinks. So serious, though still damp with tears.

“Promise.”

Our mother glides in to lift him away, handing him to our father, who retreats, bearing my brother out of the house.

“Thank you,” my mother says, and moves as if to touch me.

“Burn in hell,” I hiss. No need for the sainted mask of acceptance now my brother’s gone.“Murderer.”

She flinches, opens her mouth. Closes it. What words are there? For this monstrous thing she’s doing.

She stands, and walks away.

“Murderer!”

---

They’re like all the others, these kids. Strong and young. Full of beauty. Could be cast in molten gold they soak up the sun so well.

William entertains the idea of ignoring them, eyes on the work of his hands. On the slender silver wire and the little opal earring.

“Excuse me?” The girl stands between him and the sun, a halo of light obscuring her face. A necklace rests in the hollow of her throat, a gold pendant shaped like a feather.

“We’re looking for the rental pier?” asks the boy. There’s a duffle bag over his back, a picnic basket swings from his hand.

William points a blunt finger down the shore.

“You’re headed right.”

“You make these?” The girl looks at the work in William’s lap. Raises a hand to run her fingers through one of the wind chimes garlanding his porch. Its clapper strikes a song from the tubes, and the trinkets strung among them jingle sweetly.

“Where do these come from?” She glides her pinky over a small brass key, a pearl button.

“The lake.”

She smiles, and William can tell she finds it whimsical. Him and his grey face. His ancient mariner’s clothes. His wind chimes, made with his hands.

“Some locals told us it’s haunted?”

“Sure, there’s folk would rather cut off both hands than take a boat out after dark.”

“So it’s true?”

“You know how they made the lake?”

She shakes her head.

“Diverted the river. Drowned the whole town. School, hospital. The homes. The graveyard. People say a girl got left. Abandoned by her family when she couldn’t travel.”

“How horrible.” But she’s laughing as she shivers.

Whimsical.

Of course there’s no such thing as fear. When the sunlight’s breaking into diamonds on the lake, and the champagne’s beginning to sweat in its wrap of ice, and the strawberries, when the boy feeds them to her, will taste so sweet.

William sees them; sun-gilded and languorous as warm honey. They’ll take out the boat, lay their blankets in the bow and eat their picnic. Perhaps he’ll ask her to marry him, or only tell her he loves her, and they’ll make love as sunset ripens the sky. They’ll fall asleep beneath the stars.

He stops himself.

---

The moon is high when he rows out, and she’s eating when he arrives.

Her skin is waxen, grey as river stone, and so glassy it almost shows the bone beneath. Blood oozes through the double row of jagged teeth to drip from her chin. She shrieks an excited, animal scream and the thick muscle of her tongue writhes in the pit of her mouth. Webbed fingers, tipped with vicious claws, grip the boy by his head as she bares his ruined throat to lap at the blood. The girl lies butchered beside them.

William stows his oars. Holds out his hands. The creature slips into the water and for a single held breath all is still and black, and he doesn’t know if she’ll come to him.

She surfaces beside his boat. Below the water he can make out the rhythmic flare of the gills that slash her sides, the sway of her tail. Bulbous, pearly eyes flicker with membranes as she blinks.

Her scales capture the moonlight in their muted rainbow.

As she’d told him they would.

“Beatrice.” His grown man’s tongue doesn’t stumble over it anymore.

He reaches for her, and she nests her icy cheek in his palm, and the old ache blooms in his chest as he cradles her face. Monstrous. Slick with gore. And still—always—beloved.

A musical trill escapes her lips, and he can almost mistake it for the sound of his name.

“I know,” he says, “still breaking my promise.”

The creature uncurls a taloned hand to drop something in his boat.

A necklace, caught around a piece of pale, bloodied bone.

---

They’re like the others, these kids. Strong and young. Full of beauty. A group this time, three boys and two girls. He ignores them, eyes on the work of his hands. On the ivory tube and the slender wire. The golden feather pendant.

“Excuse me,” asks one of the girls, “do you know where we can rent a boat for the day?”