Abigail and the Seamonster, pt. 4

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

It's been awhile since the last installation of Abigail and the Seamonster, but Clan McMains has been pestering me to get back on the ball. So that's one of my goals for the summer--to finish this up. It's still much in need of polishing, so (as always) feel free to offer whatever criticisms you might have.


ABIGAIL TOOK A LONG time to fall asleep that night. She lay awake in the dark, thinking about the seamonster, and wondering if it was friendly or not. Finally her eyes closed, and she began to dream.

She had a very strange dream. In her dream the man who lived under the lake was walking along the bottom of the lake whistling. As he whistled bubbles of air dribbled up from his lips. Then, out of nowhere, came the seamonster. He swam around the man who lived under the lake. He was enormous! She saw his entire body, not just his head. He had four legs that ended in broad flippers, and a tail that was as long as the rest of his body. He swam around and around the man under the lake, faster and faster, until he was just a purple blur. Then he stopped swimming, and looked at her. The man who lived under the lake was riding on his neck, just behind his head. He looked at Abigail and waved, and the seamonster swam towards her, getting bigger and bigger. Then she woke up.

The next morning she got out of bed before her mother, even though her mother usually had to come in and shake her shoulder to wake her up. From the windows at the back of the house she looked out over the lake. The sun was just coming up, and the lake was covered with fingers of gray fog. She leaned against a window and watched it for a long time. After a while her mother came into the room drinking coffee.

"You're up early today, honey."

Abby looked out the window with her chin in her hands, her elbows sprawled on the windowsill. "I wanted to see if I could see the seamonster," she said. "I had a dream about him."

"What happened in the dream?" asked her mother.

"I don't know," said Abby. "He was swimming around a lot. I think he knew I was watching him."

"Have you seen him this morning?"

"No, there's too much fog."

"Why don't you eat breakfast, and then you can go down to the lake and look for him. There won't be as much fog then."

Abby's heart started beating faster just at the thought of going down to the lake. The thought of seeing the seamonster again scared her more than anything she had ever seen or thought of. But it was the only way she could see him again, and he had given her the green shell. She thought she should at least say thank you. She wanted to see him, too, even though she was scared. She felt very confused, like there were a bunch of different colors swirling around in her stomach without ever mixing.

After she ate breakfast she walked slowly down the hill. The sun was higher now, and although the air was still mostly cool from the night the fog was gone. When she got to the edge of the lake she realized she didn't know what to do. She walked up and down the edge of the lake several times, looking for the seamonster. After awhile she got her courage up to yell across the lake, "Hey, seamonster! I'm here!" She yelled this several times, and even threw some rocks out into the lake to get his attention, but he never showed his head. She had just sort of assumed that since she was looking for him, he'd be easy to find, but that was turning out to not be right. Suddenly she realized that he must've been living in the lake for her entire life. Anything as big as the seamonster must be much older than her. But he'd been there her entire life and she'd only seen him for the first time the day before. That meant that it might be years before she saw him again. With a sick, sad feeling in her stomach she sat down in the dirt and hid her face in her hands, trying not to cry.

"Hello, Abigail."

A deep voice boomed across her ears. She looked up. The seamonster's purple head, as big as a car and not twenty feet away, was smiling at her. She screamed and scrambled away from it, then turned around to run back up the hill.

"Stop!" the seamonster said. She stopped where she was standing, then turned slowly around to face the seamonster. The front part of his body with his long arms was propped up on the shore of the lake, his back sloping down into the water. "Didn't you have something you wanted to say to me?"

Abby caught her breath, and then realized she hadn't told him anything about wanting to talk to him. "How--how did you know that I wanted to talk to you?"

"You've been calling my name all morning long, child," he said. "I heard you."

"But--why didn't you come right away?"

"I had other plans," he said. "It was better this way. But what did you want to say to me?"

Abby looked down. She felt suddenly shy. "Did you leave the green shell for me?"

The seamonster made a rumbling, wheezing noise that Abby thought might be laughter. "I leave all the shells for you, child. But yes, the green one was a special gift. Did you like it?"

"Yes. Thank you." She didn't know if she should call the seamonster "sir".

"I'm glad you liked it. I've been looking forward to meeting you for some time."

"Really?" She couldn't believe that the seamonster had been looking forward to meeting her. "How did you know about me?"

He made his hoarse laughing noise again. "You live on the shore of my lake. You play in my water and go in the boat with your father to catch my fish. Every night I see you with your father and mother sitting down to supper. I saw you this morning staring out of the window at the fog. I've known you for a very long time, Abigail."

Abigail didn't know what to say. She stared at the seamonster, looking at her with big eyes as blue as dinner plates. She had a sudden picture in her head of what she and her family must have looked like to the seamonster, the light from their windows shining out across the lake, their dark silhouettes moving across the lights. She thought about the times she and her father took the boat out, how the boat must've looked from underneath the water, and how she must've appeared in the mornings when she walked up and down the shore with her basket for shells, crouching at the edge of the water. Part of her felt scared by this strange creature watching her and her family day and night, but another part felt small and safe at the thought that he had been looking in on her for as long as she had been alive.

"Would you like to see the bottom of the lake, Abigail?" the seamonster asked. It was funny that he called her by her full name that her parents only used when she was in trouble. She nodded at him.

"Climb onto my back."

She started to walk out into the water, but realized there was no way she would be able to climb up the seamonster's tall, wet sides. "I can't do it," she said.

"Then hang on," he said. The seamonster reached up and over his head with the long whip of his purple tail. Abby didn't realize what was happening until he wrapped it around her waist and suddenly hoisted her into the air. She gave a little scream of surprise and clutched to the tail roped around her middle. For a second she was high in the air, as high as her house at the top of the hill, and she looked back for a moment and saw her mother through the kitchen window washing dishes. Next thing she knew she was seated high on the seamonster's neck, peering out over his head. She had just enough time to clutch tight to the wet, wrinkled skin at the back of his neck before he raised up high and dove backwards over his body into the lake. She screamed again as she saw the blue water rushing towards them, sparkling with morning sunlight, then shut her mouth as they fell into the lake, the water roaring in her ears.

# posted by Daniel at 2:56 AM.

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