Mercy Thompson 06 - River Marked

Grandpa’s hunting leathers.
    I couldn’t help but wonder what Gordon Seeker had wanted us to see here. The family had moved on—I could hear the children talking in the hallway outside this exhibit room. I didn’t see the woman who’d been watching us.
    I paused by the big chunk of stone near the hall that led to the rest of the basement exhibits. There were several blocks of stone, with petroglyphs incised into their surfaces, in the room. From one, a giant predatory bird glared at me.
    “I wonder when this was done,” I said, letting my fingers hover over the stone. I could have touched it—others were touching the gray rocks—but I couldn’t quite make myself do it. As if the press of my fingers might damage it, when hundreds and maybe thousands of years of wind and rain had not. “And how long it took to carve it.”
    “These were taken out of the original site when the river was dammed, and the canyon they were in was flooded,” Adam said thoughtfully, reading the little card next to the exhibit. “I’d figure it was carved a long time ago, or you’d see more roughness from the creation process. A thousand years almost certainly. Could be ten thousand, I suppose.”
    We had sandwiches in the museum deli, right next to the Rodin exhibit, then headed out to Horsethief Lake, about fifteen miles west of the museum.

    JANICE LYNNE MORRISON WAS A THIRD-GRADE TEACHER and a camera nut. Her photos would never grace a museum, but she loved to scrapbook her adventures. This adventure, in particular, needed scrapbooking because she was unhappily certain that her life was about to fall apart.
    They had stopped at a picnic area on the Columbia for lunch—after this it would be restaurants until they reached Lee’s parents’ house in Wyoming. Everyone had eaten, the remnants of the food were packed away for snacks, and the boys were playing on the rocks.
    Lee was in the car taking a phone call. She wasn’t sure when she first noticed the phone calls, maybe after school got out, and she was home more often. Her husband worked from home, and it was not unusual for him to get business calls and take them in private. But these calls came at the same time every day—eleven fifteen. When he got off the phone, he would make a great effort to do nice things for her—the kinds of things that someone who was feeling guilty would do. More damningly, he wouldn’t meet her eyes, not right after one of the calls. Either he had a bookie or someone on the side.
    After their vacation, she would talk to him about it—so she wanted to save all the memories she could.
    She couldn’t get both of the boys in the shot with the right light, so she kicked off her sandals and waded out into the water a few feet and tried it again. The light hit her digital screen so she had to use the regular viewfinder and put the camera up to her eye. It still wasn’t quite right. She needed just a little more field of view. She took one more step back—and there was nothing beneath her feet.
    As she fell backward, something snagged her leg and pulled her upstream. She struggled for a moment more, then grew calm. Peaceful. The water rushed past her and took all of her cares away.
    Green eyes examined her with interest while some light-colored and fluttery tentacles that formed a fringe around its sharp nose caressed her. It opened its mouth, and she saw long spiky teeth before a wave caught her and pushed her away.
    She didn’t want to go away from the creature but had no will to fight its need. She staggered out of the water, coughing and choking from the water she’d swallowed. Blood dripped from a gash that wrapped all the way around her thigh just below the line of her shorts. Her head ached, and her eyes burned, but she was calm and happier than she’d ever been before.
    It wanted her.
    “Mommy, Mommy, are you all right?” A young boy—her son, she thought, what was his name?—held her arm. “Are you all right? Where’s your camera?”
    She reached out and took his hand—and the hand of the little boy who hadn’t said anything, too. He was only wearing his pull-ups and one shoe. Another time, she knew that one shoe would have bothered her. But nothing bothered her anymore.
    “Janny?” A man interrupted her before she got the boys to the river, and she frowned at him. Her husband, that was who he was. “Janny, what happened to you? Are you all right?”
    He wouldn’t let her take the boys, she knew, so she let them go