Charles De Lint - Dreams Underfoot

But if it was his music that first enchanted her, then he himself completed the spell. She longed to join her voice to his, to hold him and be held, but she never moved from her hiding place. One look at her, and he would be driven away, for he’d see only that which was scaled, and she had no soul, not as did those who walked ashore.

No soul, no soul. A heart that broke for want of him, but no immortal soul. That was the curse of the lakeborn.

When he finally put away his instrument and walked further inland, up under the pines where she couldn’t follow, she let the waves close over her head and returned to her home underlake.

For three nights she returned to the shore and for two of them he was there, his voice like honey against the beat of the waves that the wind pushed shoreward and she only loved him more. But on the fourth night, he didn’t come, nor the on the fifth night, nor the sixth, and she despaired, knowing he was gone, away in the wide world, lost to her forever.

Her family couldn’t help her; there was no one to help her. She yearned to be rid of scales, to walk on shore, no matter the cost, just so that she could be with him, but as well ask the sun not rise, or the wind to cease its endless motion.

“No matter the cost,” she whispered. Tears trailed down her cheek, a sorrowful tide that would not ebb.

“Maraghreen,” the lake replied as the wind lifted one of its waves to break upon the land.

She lifted her head, looked over the white caps, to where the lake grew darker still as it crept under the cliffs into the hidden cave where the lake witch lived.

She was afraid, but she went. To Maraghreen. Who took her scales and gave her legs with a bitter potion that tasted of witch blood; satisfied her impossible need, but took Katrina’s voice in payment.

“A week and a day,” the lake witch told her before she took Katrina’s voice. “You have only so long to win him and your immortal soul, or to foam you will return.”

“But without my voice ...” It was through song, she’d thought to win him, voices joined in a harmony so pure how could he help but love her? “Without it ...”

“He must speak of his love first, or your soul will be forfeit.”

“But without my voice ...”

“You will have your body; that will need be enough.”

So she drank the blood, bitter on her tongue; gained legs, and each step she took was fiery pain and would be so until she’d gained a soul; went in search of he who held her love, for whose love she had paid such a dear price. Surely he would speak the words to her before the seven days were past and gone?

“Penny for your thoughts,” Lucia said.

Katrina only smiled and shook her head. She could tell no one. The words must come unbidden from him or all would be undone.

Matt was late picking Katrina up on Sunday. It was partly his own fault—he’d gotten caught up with a new song that he was learning from a tape a friend had sent him from Co. Cork and lost track of the time—and partly from trying to follow the Byzantine directions that Lucia had used to describe the route to her Upper Foxville apartment.

Katrina didn’t seem to mind at all; she was just happy to see him, her hands said, moving as graceful in speech as the whole of her did when she danced.

You didn’t bring your guitar, she signed.

“I’ve been playing it all day. I thought I’d leave it at home.” Your voice ... your music. They are a gift.

“Yeah, well ...”

He looked around the loft, recognizing a couple of the posters from having seen them around town before, pasted on subway walls or stuck in amongst the clutter of dozens of other ads in the front of restaurants and record stores. He’d never gone to any of the shows. Dance wasn’t his thing, especially not modern dance or the performance art that Lucia was into. He’d seen a show of hers once. She’d spent fifteen minutes rolling back and forth across the stage, wrapped head to toe in old brown paper shopping bags to a soundtrack that consisted of water dripping for its rhythm, the hypnotic drone only occasionally broken by the sound of footsteps walking through broken glass.

Definitely not his thing.

Lucia was not his idea of what being creative was all about. In his head, he filed her type of artist under the general heading of lunatic fringe. Happily, she was out for the day.

“So,” he said, “do you want to head out to the island?” Katrina nodded. But not just yet, her hands added.

She smiled at him, long hair clouding down her back. She was wearing clothes borrowed from Lucia—cotton pants a touch too big and tied closed with a scarf through the belt loops, a Tshirt advertising a band that he’d never heard of and the same black Chinese slippers she’d been wearing last night.

“So what do you want—” he began.

Katrina took his hands before he could finish and placed them on her breasts. They were small and firm against his palms, her heartbeat echoing through the thin fabric, fluttering against his skin. Her own hands dropped to his groin, one gently cupping him through his jeans, the other pulling down the zipper.

She was gentle and loving, each motion innocent of artifice and certainly welcome, but she’d caught Matt offguard.

“Look,” he said, “are you sure you ... ?”

She raised a hand, laying a finger against his lips. No words. Just touch. He grew hard, his penis uncomfortably bent in the confines of his jeans until she popped the top button and pulled it out. She put her small hand around it, fingers tight, hand moving slowly up and down. Speaking without words, her emotions laid bare before him.

Matt took his hands from her breasts and lifted the Tshirt over her head. He let it drop behind her as he enfolded her in an embrace. She was like liquid against him, a shimmer of movement and soft touches.

No words, he thought.

She was right. There was no need for words.

He let her lead him into Lucia’s bedroom.

Afterwards, he felt so still inside it was though the world had stopped moving, time stalled, no one left but the two of them, wrapped up together, here in the dusky shadows that licked across the bed. He raised himself up on one elbow and looked down at her.

She seemed to be made of light. An unearthly radiance lay upon her pale skin like an angelic nimbus, except he doubted that any angel in heaven knew how to give and accept pleasure as she did. Not unless heaven was a very different place from the one he’d heard about in Sunday school.

There was a look in her eyes that promised him everything—not just bodily pleasures, but heart and soul—and for a moment he wanted to open up to her, to give to her what he gave his music, but then he felt something close up thick inside him. He found himself remembering a parting conversation he’d had with another woman. Darlene Flatt, born Darlene Johnston. Belying her stage name, she was an extraordinarily wellendowed singer in one of the local country bands. Partial to slowdancing on sawdusted floors, bolo ties, fringed jackets and, for the longest time, to him.

“You’re just a hollow man,” she told him finally. “A sham. The only place you’re alive is on stage, but let me tell you something, Matt, the whole world’s a stage if you’d just open your eyes and see.

Maybe in Shakespeare’s day, he thought, but not now, not here, not in this world. Here you only get hurt.

“If you gave a fraction of your commitment to music to another person, you’d be ...”

He didn’t know what Darlene thought he’d be because he tuned her out. Stepped behind the wall and followed the intricate turns of a song he was working on at the time until she finally got up and left his apartment.