Peter Beagle - The Line Between

«Some get punished too much," I says, «and some not at all. Don't seem to make much difference, near as I can tell.»

Henry Lee shakes his head. «You got out the moment you knew we might have harmed even one person. I stayed on. I'll never be quits for this, Ben.»

I don't have no answer, except to tell him about a thing I did long ago that I'm still being punished for meself. I'd never told nobody before, and I'm not about to tell you now. I just did it to maybe help Henry Lee a little, which it didn't. He patted me back and squeezed me shoulder a little bit, but he didn't say no more, and nor did I.We sat together and watched Julia Caterina in the moonlight.

Come that nineteenth night, the moon rose full to bursting, big and bright and yellow as day, with one or two red streaks, like an egg gone bad, laying down a wrinkly–gold path you could have walked on to the horizon … or swum down, as the case might be. Julia Caterina went wild at the sight, beating at the window the way you'd have thought she were a moth trying to get to the candle. It come to me, she'd waited for this moon the same way the turtles wait to come ashore and lay their eggs in the light — the way those tiny fish I disremember flood over the beaches at high tide, millions of them, got to get those eggs buried fast, before the next wave sweeps them back out to sea. Now it were like the moon were waiting for her, and she knew the way there. «Not yet," Henry Lee says, desperate–like, «not yet— they've not…» He didn't finish, but I knew he were talking about the pale lines on her neck, darker

every day, but still not opened into proper gill slits. But right as he spoke, right then, those same lines swelled and split and flared red, and that sudden, they was there, making her more a fish than the tail ever could, because now she didn't need the land at all, or the air. Aye, now she could stay under water all the time, if she wanted. She were ready for the sea, and she knew it, no more to say.

Henry Lee carried her in his arms all the way down from his grand house — their house until two nights ago — to the water's edge, nobody to see nowt, just a couple of fishing boats anchored offshore. A dugout canoe, too, which you still used to see in them days. She wriggled out of his arms there, turning in the air like a cat, and a little wave splashed up in her face as she landed, making her laugh and splash back with her tail. Henry Lee were drenched right off, top to toe, but you could see he didn't know. Julia Caterina — her as had been Julia Caterina — she swam round and round, rolling and diving and admiring all she could do in the water. There's nothing fits the sea like a mermaid — not fish, not seals, dolphins, whales, nothing. There in the moonlight, the sea looked happy to be with her.

I can't swim, like I told you — I just waded in a few steps to watch her playing so. All on a sudden — for all the world like she'd heard a call from somewhere — she did a kind of a swirling cartwheel, gave a couple of hard kicks with that tail, and like that, she's away, no goodbye, clear of the shore, leaving her own foxfire trail down the middle of that moonlight path. I thought she were gone then, gone forever, and I didn't waste no time in gawping, but turned to see to Henry Lee. He were standing up to his knees in the water, taking his shirt off.

«Henry Lee," I says. «Henry Lee, what the Christ you doing?» He don't even look over at me, but throws the shirt back toward the shore and starts unbuttoning his trews. Bought from the only bespoke gentlemen's tailor in Velha Goa, those pants, still cost you half what you'd pay in Lisbon. Henry Lee just drops them in the water. Goes to work getting rid of his smallclothes, kicking off his soaked shoes, while I'm yapping at him about catching cold, pneumonia. Henry Lee smiles at me. Still got most all his teeth, which even the Portygee nobs can't say they do, most of them. He says, «She'll be lonely out there.»

I said summat, must have. I don't recall what it were. Standing there naked, Henry Lee says, «She'll need me, Ben.»

«She's got all she needs," I says. «You can't go after her.»

«I promised I'd make it up to her," he says. «What I did. But there's no way, Ben, there's no way.»

He moves on past me, walking straight ahead, water rising steady. I stumble and scramble in front of him, afeared as I can be, but he's not getting by. «You can't make it up," I tells him. «Some things, you can't ever make up — you live with them, that's all. That's the best you can do.» He's taller by a head, but I'm bigger, wider. He's not getting by.

Henry Lee stops walking out toward the deep. Confused–like, shaking his head some, starts to say me name … then he looks over me shoulder and his eyes go wide, with the moon in them. «She's there," he whispers, «she came back for me. There, right there.» And he points, straining on his toes like a nipper sees the Dutch–biscuit man coming down the street.

I turn me head, just for an instant, just to see where he's pointing. Summat glimmers in the shadow of the dugout, diving in and out of the moonlight, and maybe it's a dolphin, and maybe it's Henry Lee's wife, turning for one last look at her poor husband who'd driven both of their lives on the rocks. Didn't know then, don't know now. All I'm sure of is, the next minute I'm sitting on me arse in water up to me chin, and Henry Lee's past me and swimming straight for that glimmer — long, raking Devonshire strokes, looking like he could go on forever if he had to. And bright as the night was, I lost sight of him — and her too, it, whatever it were — before he'd reached that boat. Bawled for him till me voice went — even tried to go after him in the dugout — but he were gone. They were gone.

His body floated in next afternoon. Gopi found it, sloshing about in the shallows.

Her family turned over every bit of ground around that house of Henry Lee's, looking for where he'd buried her. I'm dead sure they believe to this day that he killed Julia Caterina and then drowned himself, out of remorse or some such. They was polite as pie whenever we met, no matter they couldn't never stand one solitary thing about me — but after she disappeared only times I saw them was at a feria, where they'd always cut me dead. I didn't take it personal.

The will left stock and business to the family, but left both ships to me. I sold one of them for enough money to get meself to Buenos Aires, like I'd been wanting, and start up in the freighting trade, convoying everything from pianos to salt beef, rum to birdseed, tea to railroad ties … whatever you might want moved from here to there. Got two young partners do most of the real work these days, but I still go along with a shipment, times, just to play I'm still a foremast hand — plain Able–bodied Seaman, same as Henry Lee. The way it was when we didn't know what he died knowing. What I'll die knowing.

He left me the recipe for salt wine, too. I burned it. I'd wanted to buy up the stock and pour every bottle into the sea — giving it back to the merrows, you could say — but the family wouldn't sell, not to me. Heard they sold it to a German dealer, right after I left Goa, and he took it all home to Berlin with him. Couldn't say, meself.

I seen her a time or two since. Once off the Hebrides — leastways, I'm near about sure it was her — and once in the Bay of Biscay. That time she came right up to the ship, calling to me by name, quiet–like. She hung about most of the night, calling, but I never went to the rail, 'acos I couldn't think of nothing to say.

it it it

Mr. Sigerson

I'm very proud of this storywritten for Michael Kirland's anthology Sherlock Holmes: The Hidden Tearsbecause it's my first mystery tale, and so far the only one.

I love reading mysteries, all sorts, and envy their authors almost as much as I envy musicians. I'd give a great deal to have the special mindset that creates a good mystery plot, and then peoples it with characters whom the reader feels don't draw their existence only from the plot. I'm no Holmes expert (though I've known the stories from childhood, and read them all aloud to my children); but I felt I knew the man well enough to chance presenting him through the eyes of a narrator who not only doesn't worship his brilliance but doesn't particularly like him. As much as anything I've done recently, I truly enjoyed being that crotchety, sardonic concertmaster, who admires Sherlock Holmes solely for his musical gifts, and to hell with the rest of the performance.