Abigail and the Seamonster, pt. 2

Part 1 . Part 2 . Part 3 . Part 4 . Part 5 . Part 6 . Part 7

Before I go any further, a note about the story. The story idea originally comes from a song by the Violet Burning titled, appropriately enough, "Seamonster." It's found on their album The Violet Burning Demonstrates Plastic and Elastic, and a stripped down version (my personal favorite) can be heard on I Am a Stranger In This Place. Either one of these would make a fine addition to the collection of fans of the Cure, the Smashing Pumpkins, Radiohead, Echo and the Bunnymen, et al.

Anyway, once upon a time another Violets fan, one Audiogirl a.k.a. Carrie, came up with a kids' book roughly inspired by the song. I've never read her book, but when I heard about it it inspired me to come up with my own kids' book based on the song (it's a song with which I've always associated a lot of clear, powerful images). I laid out the plot of my story for her, and she tells me it bears no resemblance whatsoever to her version.

That explains the Seamonster part of the title. Abigail, on the other hand, is the name of the daughter of a friend of mine. Abby celebrated her seventh birthday several months ago, right around the time I started writing this. I got the great idea to use her name in the story and score a bunch of points, while saving money on a birthday present, but as is my wont I failed to get it done on time. But the name stuck.

So that's what's going on.

I should also mention that the version posted here is only partially finished. If I waited till it was perfectly polished before showing it, I'd never show it. So any constructive criticism is welcome.

And now I give you...


ANOTHER ONE OF ABIGAIL'S favorite things was to go down to the shore of the lake and play in the shallow water. She and her brother would put on their swim suits and splash around in the water and squirt each other with water guns until their mother made them stop. Then they would walk around in the shallows and look for shells and fish and things. When she looked at the water from a distance it was always a certain color, blue or green or purple, but when she stood in the water and looked down at the bottom the water was clear. She could see her toes wriggling in the mud. Her feet made squishing sounds whenever she walked in the lake. She liked the way the cool mud felt when it oozed up around her feet.

There were so many things to look at in the lake. There were schools of tiny fish that darted all around the shallows. If she held very still with her head down to the water the fish would swim up so close she could see their stomachs moving inside their clear skin. She would sometimes hold her finger just under the water and wait for the fish to swim by. Sooner or later one of them would come sniff her finger and nibble at it to see if it was food. It tickled when the fish touched her finger.

She also liked to go walking along the wooden dock that jutted out from the shore into the lake. It creaked a little when she walked on it. It creaked a lot when her father walked with her. She could look down through the cracks in the boards and see the water sloshing back and forth, and when the wind blew the water towards the shore she could lean out over the rail at the end of the dock with the water moving past her and the wind running back across her face. It felt like she wasn't standing still on a dock, but was on a boat moving quickly across the lake.

Her father kept a small rowboat tied to the end of the dock. Sometimes when he took the boat out fishing in the evening he would let Abigail come with him, if she promised to not make too much noise. Her mother would make sandwiches and fill two thermoses, lemonade for her, coffee for her father. He would row, and she would sit in the back of the boat and watch their house on the shore get smaller and smaller as they went further out on the water, until their house looked even smaller than one of her dollhouses, just a tiny yellow square on the shore. After the sun went down and the stars came out she couldn't see the house at all.

At night on the lake she sometimes felt that she and her father were the only two people in the world. The water was dark, and when there wasn't any wind the slapping waves died down and the lake seemed to reflect every one of the bright stars in the sky. The only land Abigail could see at night was the low hills around the lake, and these were only dark shapes against the stars. When the moon was out the lake would reflect the moon as well, so that it seemed there were two moons, one above them and one beneath them, and their boat was floating in the middle of a world of stars.

After it got dark she and her father would talk quietly, so that they wouldn't disturb the fish. He would tell her stories about when he was a kid, or about when she was a baby. She loved to hear those stories, about things she had done as though she were a character in someone else's story. He would also talk to her about the lake, tell her made-up stories about the fish who lived there. Her favorite of these were the stories he told about a seamonster that lived in the lake. The seamonster wasn't mean, even though it was a monster, but instead it helped all the other creatures that lived in the lake.

One night when they went out in the boat together Abigail asked her father about the man who lived in the lake. She was watching the place where her father's fishing line went into the water.

"Daddy, what if the man who lives in the lake gets caught on your fishing hook?"

Her father laughed. "I don't think you have to worry about that, honey."

"But what if he does? Maybe he doesn't see it?"

"Abby, he's been around for a lot longer than I've been fishing here. He's smart enough to not get caught on a fishing hook" He looked at her in the dark. "What makes you think he's a man?"

"You said he was!"

"I don't think I did, honey." Her father sounded puzzled. "Are you sure that's what I said?"

"Umm." She thought back to what her father had told her before. "You said he's a person."

"That doesn't make him a man."

"But what is he then?"

Her father leaned over and kissed her on the top of the head. "It's hard to describe. You'll have to meet him for yourself."

She started to pout. "That's what you always say, Daddy. I'm never going to meet him."

"Honey, you will. Don't worry."

"But when?" She wanted to cry.

"When he wants you to," her father told her again. "It's not like he's my pet, Abby."

"But it's not fair! I'm the only one who's never met him."

"You're right, honey," her father said. She could hear him smiling. "You're the only person in the entire universe who hasn't met him." He was teasing her. She climbed off her bench and felt her way to the stern of the boat, where she sat pouting, clutching her knees in her arms. She fell asleep there, and later when her father carried her up the hill to the house she thought it was a dream.

# posted by Daniel at 2:54 PM.

---