twice before it became too dark for him to walk back to the University in time for the last tea of the day.
But he only managed to propel himself forward by ten feet or so before he stopped, brow furrowed with unvoiced concern, and stood once more upon the ice, listening.
This time, he had stopped before the reedy accompaniment to his skate-song could cease its repeat of his performance, so he found himself cocking an ear toward the spot he had so recently quitted, the southerly tangle of ice-trapped bent and upright dead reeds.
Despite the quick beat of silence which followed his sudden halt on the ice, Merewode felt it deep in his bones—this was the spot which sang a wordless duet in keeping with each push and glide of his skate blades. This spot...and no other.
“No sense...it makes no sense,” the cleric mouthed softly; the loch was ringed with intermittent bunches of the dead vegetation, around its entire circumference. Yet, the sound (cut short a moment too late for its own good) had seemed so definite in its direction, so specific—
Softly chanting “No sense, no sense,” in time with each push forward on the ice, Alredge narrowed his eyes, to better focus on the sounds rather than the sights around him, as he deliberately altered the pacing of his skate-strokes on the ice, left foot long, right foot short, left short, right long, then long, long, short, long...but whether or not it made any sense, the low hooting whistle of the wind kept perfect time with his erratic ice-rhythm.
And it grew ever so slightly louder with each southward pass around the small oval loch....
Momentarily closing his eyes, Merewode let the wind’s malleable fingers caress his cheeks, his forehead, his pursed lips, while he concentrated on the unknown partner in this icy duet; the sound was not unlike a reed flute, or a recorder, yet less defined, almost like a breath-driven percussion instrument with no definite notes or scale per se, and no specific pitch. Rather like blowing across the moue-tight mouth of a bottle—
His field of vision, deeply red-hazed through his closed eyelids, the Reverend soon found himself losing his physical bearings, and it was only the touch of the frost-kissed reeds against his hands and thighs that warned him that he was skating too close to the thin dark ice near the partially submerged reeds. Opening his eyes to a blinding patch of whiteness, Merewode managed to push himself backwards on the ice, away from the danger of the brittle patch before him. And when he blinked, he saw blooming transparent afterimages, silent fireworks of flickering green and red, which cleared away far slower than real fireworks might have dissolved from his sight.
Only when his vision was true did he look downward, toward the reed-embedded ice which hugged the shoreline...but what he saw (thought he saw) beneath a translucent patch in the center of the sharp-angled dead reeds gave him pause, to the point of making him place a protective gloved hand over his still-opened eyes, while he silently told himself, It was a fish, it was a beastie, it was nothing.... I didn’t see it move, I didn’t—
It was then that the unknown partner in his frigid duet made an almost tentative swoosh? of a keening hooting noise, a lonely, yet somehow persistent sound, one which was independent of the breeze which teased and caressed Merewode’s exposed cheeks and forehead, and played I’ve-got-it with his cold-tipped nose. And, reacting with an almost primitive urge he later regretted, Alredge Merewode removed the shielding hand from his eyes, and stared into the ice-windowed depths of the loch, down at the spot where, what he didn’t see move before, most definitely moved again.
White-against-white flesh moved under the previously still dark waters, causing small irregular bubbles to cluster around the pursed lips, and the submerged reed-ends, as the noise began again, still echoing the sound and meter of Alredge’s blade-strokes. And as the water-distorted lips and cheeks alternatively puckered and distended, other submerged bits of vegetation undulated in time with that watery woodwind solo, even as the long hair surrounding the head slowly, dreamily, waved and billowed in place.
Even the open eyes were white....
“Statue,” he whispered. “Something the pagans cast off when they learned of the word of God...something made by man, to be falsely worshiped by him,” even as the cleric knew in his man’s heart (which he’d had long before he’d given over his surrounding body to the Lord) that no statue could blow bubbles beneath the icy water...especially not when the surrounding water was relatively calm. But the figure still moved, as if surrounded by wind and not a gelid blanketing of slushy water, and it still stared (as if indeed its white eyes contained an equally white pupil) up at Alredge, while the reed-encircling lips continued their skate-metered movements, despite the lack of accompaniment from him.
“Music-box figurine,” he half-reasoned, remembering the fantastic mechanical beings he’d seen on holiday in the Rhine, even as he plainly saw that the movements below him were too elastic, too supple for a construct of metal and papier-mâché...and it continued to blow bubbles, hinting of more than a mere bellows within the white-draped chest.
“Trick of the light, trick of the sun on ice,” he implored, his voice all but overshadowed by the fortissimo swell of the breath-amplified reeds, as the hand of the white form below him rose up above its head, and the pale fingers worked the reeds, as the melody suddenly became complex, and he could almost swear he heard elements of the musical scale—
“Gasses rising from a dead maiden,” he verbally decided, even as her eyelids fluttered, and even as her lips released the reeds, before forming silent words. “She has been killed, and thrown in the waters of Loch Coventina...the water has bleached her, the waters now animate her limp flesh.” Merewode’s voice was more brittle than thin ice, and equally pale in tone as he hurried away from the patch of dead, bent reeds, toward the northeast, where the University with its warm rooms, flickering gas lights and steaming pots of tea awaited him, his skate blades snick-snicking in short, staccato swipes on the sun-glared ice, and his arms pumping in time with the muffled thuds of his man’s heart...until the plaintive sound of the breath-blown reeds behind him cut through the icy snick of his blades, and the whistling hoot of his own tortured breath.
A maiden, true...but perhaps not yet dead. Cold unto death, cold past active struggle for release from the icy embrace of the sluggish waters, but perhaps not yet dead-cold—
Turning so quickly on the loch that his blades sent up a feathery spume of shaved ice in his wake, Alredge raced back to the tangle of brush and reeds, and peered down, his face far closer to the ice than before, at the figure beneath the waters and film of protective ice. White was her hair, yet young was her face, and beneath the adhering drape her bosom was small but upright over her rib cage, and when he moved still closer, he saw the almost classical smooth outlines of her legs and nether regions beneath the clinging garment she wore, and he chided himself, A statue...like any in the Royal Museum...any dug up from ruins in Greece or Rome. Women are not shaped and colored and contoured thus...alas. This...image never drew breath, or saw the glare of the sun, or felt air on its flesh. Only a trick of the waters, only a cunning contrivance of the sun’s dying rays.
Yet, as if in counterpoint to each scolding thought, each mental rebuke, the white woman continued to blow the ends of the reeds, continued to gracefully finger the notes along the length of each submerged reed, and the sounds she produced were sweet beyond hearing, like, yet unlike, hymns of praise, for this was a melody far, far older than any hymn which rose up to a specific God, a melody far more free and unfettered than any designed to show respectful praise and thankfulness to the All Mighty.
And, as he stared with eyes grown watery from the slanting last rays of the western sun, between the notes she used one hand, then the other, to beckon him, a motion unmistakable in its playfulness and lack of dire urgency.
The white woman needed no saving, of the physical or spiritual variety—of that, the good cleric was certain beyond a need for any words to that effect.
“Water demon,” he spat out through numb rough lips, even as his eye lingered on the ever-less-distinct round smoothness of her plump limbs and her swelling bosom. “Pagan devil...seek your worshipers elsewhere,” he added, through lips which trembled from cold rage, then pivoted in place before gliding off for the distant University; but with the coming