Christopher Buehlman - The Necromancer's House

Then it happens.

A glass bottle hits the water, bobs there.

She doesn’t know if anybody on the boat sees her white hand reach up and pluck the bottle under, but she doesn’t care.

She’s pissed.

She didn’t spend all morning breaking those disgusting zebra mussels off her shipwreck just to let these inconsiderate swindlers pollute her lake. So bourgeois. She knows that’s a Bolshevik word and she hates Bolsheviks, but bourgeois , with its suggestion of new money and bad manners, best describes the specimens on the Jaybird Sally .

“Sam Adams,” she says, looking at the little brown-vested colonial on the blue label, air escaping from her mouth in a wash of small bubbles. Stale air. She uses her lungs only to smoke and to speak.

When the Jaybird Sally stops again, she sees the hooked bait-fish plop into the water, watches a gorgeous chinook salmon swim toward it. She waves it off, still holding the beer bottle.

No fish for you, bourgeois!

But that’s not enough.

She bangs the bottom of the boat with her fist, hard.

Not hard enough.

She gets some distance, swims into the hull.

Likes the way that feels.

Attacks several more times, battering the Jaybird Sally with her shoulders and head; two of the blows open gashes below the waterline.

Especially the last head butt.

That hole is serious.

About the size of three strips of bacon laid end-to-end.

The lake starts pouring in.

She peeks through the hole, sees the startled captain see her.

He takes the Lord’s name in vain.

The alarm sounds ringing as the first float switch is tripped and the pump starts.

She puts her lips to the hole now and says, “Don’t litter,” swims off.

Realizes she was so mad she said it in Russian, swims back and says it in English now, adding, “Bourgeois assholes” for good measure.

The handsome one, still on deck, gripping the rail in anticipation of another collision, sees the rusalka’s pale, slender arm throw the bottle, watches it spin, watches it land amidships with a clunk.

He’ll forget he saw this by the time the others come up and the captain starts barking “Mayday” on VHF 16.

By the time the deck of the Jaybird Sally starts to tilt, he’ll put on his life vest, text wife and girlfriend, put his cell phone in a baggie.

“Don’t worry,” the captain says. “We’re not going in the drink.”

He points.

They would have already heard the helicopter but for the alarm.

The helicopter from Canada is coming with a P250 that will flush a thousand gallons a minute out of the ship.

Of course the rusalka could put her fingers in the gash and yank it so large that even the Canadians’ pump won’t help.

Or she could roll the boat; this would be hard, but not impossible.

No.

Not for one bottle.

But if so much as a cigarette butt hits the water.

When the Jaybird Sally finds suitable, safe mooring, she will put in for repairs. The diver will pull several long, coarse red hairs from the gash in the hull.

The boat will not be lost today.

The man who flips houses will fish again.

But, without remembering exactly why, he will never again toss litter overboard.

Skinning below the water like the dangerous thing she is, Nadia passes the Coast Guard ship coming to escort the listing Sally in.

Salutes it.

Later.

Nadia snatches down a placid seagull who stopped to float on the lake, so smoothly its fellows don’t even fly away.

She feeds violently at first, blood and feathers everywhere, then delicately, picking meat from bones like a girl on a picnic. She means to swim back to the wreck, and police it one more time before heading in to grow her legs back and spend the night protecting her magus.

She’s looking forward to growing her vagina back.

She hopes he’ll be ready for sex.

Drowning all those lumpy miscarriages of Andrew Blankenship really turned her on.

So much, in fact, she decides not to wait.

Swims down to the Niagara Mohawk nuclear plant, turns girl, and floats in the warm discharge current.

Pleasures herself.

Cries so loudly a custodian at the plant scans the water.

Sees only driftwood.

When she gets near her wreck, the sun is going down, throwing lavender and pink all over the sky, the water reflecting it on its gently rippling skin.

A silhouette in black stands out.

A boat.

Very small this time.

A rowboat, the kind you can rent at Fair Haven Beach State Park.

Whoever brought it here must have rowed for hours.

She makes out one shape.

A man.

She dives and swims under the water, comes up near.

He’s playing the guitar now, playing well.

He sings a song in Russian.

Improvised, perhaps, no rhymes, but sung in a gravelly voice full of pain and sweetness.

The man in the boat is young.

Not much light left in the sky, but her eyes are quite good in the dark. She sees he’s bearded, like boys back home were bearded. What is that accent? Someplace rural. Is it a boy? White hairs mix with black on his head, but, yes, a boy. Twenty or so.

He sees her.

“What are you doing so far away?” he asks.

“From shore? I might ask the same of you.”

She doesn’t mean to sound flirtatious but knows she does.

“Not from shore.”

A pelican glides to a landing nearby, nothing but a black shape, as much heard as seen. It positions a fish in the pouch below its beak, setting it up to be swallowed.

“From home,” he says.

“Home.”

He smiles at her.

It is a good smile.

“Are you Russian?” she says.

“So Russian I’m practically made of snow.”

“From what village?”

He raises an eyebrow.

“Why do you say village ? Do you think I am a farmer?”

A planet, she’s not sure which one, shines dimly in the freshly minted night.

“City, then. What city?”

“Your city.”

“You are not from St. Petersburg.”

“But I am!” he declares in his rural accent. “And not a farmer.”

“What then? Besides a liar?”

She is smiling when she says this.

“A soldier.”

It is easy to picture him on a horse with a wool coat and a saber, fine boots showing off his fine ankles. It is easy to picture him kissing her, coming underwater with her, down to the ship. She knows just where she will put him.

“I like soldiers,” she says.

“Then come closer!”

She does.

“I want to kiss you!” he says suddenly, like a boy saying it for the first time.

She flicks her tail, moves closer.

No.

Not yet.

They should enjoy this part… the other is so brief!

She stays just out of arm’s reach, smiling, her dreadlocks trailing in the water.

“Will you tease me now? Is that your game?”

“You can’t begin to guess my game, boy-who’s-not-from-St.- Petersburg.”

So dark.

Can he even see me?

“You have a beautiful smile.”

She laughs.

“You are from a village of blind men! My smile is the worst part of me.”

“And you smell like Samarkand.”

“If Samarkand had a fish market perhaps. Are you being cruel? Is that your game?”

He just smiles at her.