The naiad.
Thursday July 21, 2011
She takes the last 2-liter plastic water bottle from the green crate and with exaggerated effort, a theatre of exhaustion that masks how tired she really is, she wrenches off the cap and upends the bottle, pouring it out, glug glug glug, into the shallow reflecting pool. Then she tosses it over her shoulder into the mound of plastic bottles back by the sliding glass door, hundreds of them, thousands in all sizes from little disposable sports-bottles up to the 2-liters rolling and bonging hollowly down the slopes as it settles under the blow. All of the bottles have the same logo, a stylized mountain reflected in a placid tarn, Altay Water, they all say. She shakes out her hands and undoes the clip holding her dark hair in a bun at the back of her head. Her hair falls heavy and straight and she tilts back her head to let it sweep along her back and brush the tops of her thighs. She begins to undo the wooden buttons of her long grey dress. She wears glasses with thick black frames. If you were to ask her age, she might tell you she is twenty-nine, or thirty-two, and you would believe her. She is over two thousand years old. She is a witch.
Naked she is not so much bony as wiry, and her belly’s shaded by the faintest ripple of muscles. Her breasts are round and soft with large dark nipples and her pubic hair’s been trimmed away, all but a single white lock. She squats to pick up an awkwardly large pair of scissors, shears really, and there between her rangy thighs below that lock the lips of her cunt unfurled, undone. She rubs her fingertips against her thumb, makes a kissing smack with her lips. Tch-tch of tongue against her teeth. The black cat sleeping by the pile of crates looks up, uncurls, stretches, stalks toward her. It’s a sere old thing, its jutting hips and shoulders and the knobs of its spine clearly seen through the loose black fur. It ducks its head, bumbling against her hand, and she strokes it, ah, she says, old boy, and her hand a quick remorseless claw clamps about the back of its neck and she hauls it limply frozen up as she stands and steps into the pool.
In the middle of it, small and shallow, she kneels, the water breasting her hips, lapping at the hollow of her navel. She looks up at the blue-grey sky above, neither day nor night, then looks at the cat, who growls low and long as she kisses the tip of its nose. Then she plunges it under the water and holds it there until its thrashing weakens, and slows, and stops.
She lets go of the cat’s body and looks up at the blue-grey sky again, neither clouded nor clear. Her dark eyes behind the thick lenses of her glasses are expressionless and dry. She takes up the weight of her hair in her free hand, the hand that drowned the cat, and gathers it into a hank. The shears in her other hand come up and back and with great gnawing cuts she saws away that long dark curtain and lets it drop to the surface of the water.
There before her the water trembles and roils.
She stands then, water dripping from her elbows, hips, buttocks, runneling down her legs, and her free hand darts between her thighs, rubbing once, twice, three times along the lips of her cunt. She takes the lone white lock of pubic hair between her fingers and her thumb, twirling it into a curl, and carefully with the tips of those shears she cuts it away. She lifts it to her lips to kiss it, and then she holds it over the troubled water and lets it fall.
The water leaps into the air and settles in the form of a woman, her back to the witch, her skin pale in the uncertain light, dressed in a thinly clinging gown of falling water. She turns, a sly smile on her face, one hand lazily stroking her belly. The sheen of her watery gown dimples and purls as it falls around her fingers. Where am I, she says, and her voice is low and clear.
Los Angeles, says the witch. In a pool I have made for you with these hands.
Why am I here, says the woman.
The witch looks back at the litter of bottles on the patio. They meant to bottle the water from your spring and make a profit, she says. I ruined their factory and broke their bank and left them pleading in the poorhouse. I bought up all they meant to sell and brought it here, to keep you safe.
With steps that sound like a gurgling brook the woman steps right up to the witch, her hands on the witch’s shoulders, her hips, water trickling down her skin where the woman’s hands have passed. She kisses the witch, and the witch opens her mouth as water runs from her lips down her throat between her breasts. Oh you are, murmurs the witch, so cold and sweet, and her hands settle on the woman’s hips, pressing the flesh there, the woman’s thin wet gown rippling over the witch’s fingers.
Why am I here, says the woman again, and her hand’s between the witch’s rangy thighs.
I cut away my hair and drowned the best of my familiars to body you forth, says the witch. I was, and she sighs as the woman’s fingers work their way up in her, and water begins to gush down her trembling legs, I was, says the witch, so lonely…