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Riou first sees the flash of silver from his peripheral vision, too far out to sea to be an immediate threat but big enough and bright enough to make his hands reach for his gun and his binoculars. The lake isn’t that big, and he’s never seen any signs of large aquatic predators. Birds, yes, and the occasional land mammal, but nothing larger than the small, dully-colored fish that have become a mainstay of his diet. (He hasn’t run out of dishes to try with them yet, though; they’re quite versatile.) But something bigger--enough fish to dry out and make jerky, enough fat to keep him set for a while--is too good of an opportunity to pass up.
Once Riou holds them steady, he focuses the binoculars on the spot in the lake where he’d seen the flash. Nothing appears, and he’s about to put them away, when something bright glares off the water as it emerges to the far right and he can’t swing the binoculars around at the right combination of fast and steady to get a good glimpse before it recedes back into the water. There’s something out there. It might not want to come in toward shore; it might be too large or too comfortable where it is, among whatever else is out in the middle of the lake with it.
Riou builds a boat out of old nails salvaged from a run-down shack overgrown with weeds, trees growing out of its broken windows, and logs made of some trees near the clearing where he camps. He doesn’t need as much firewood right now, anyway, given that the weather is getting warmer and the days are getting longer (and he’s all stocked up on batteries from his last trip into the city). The lake has always been there and he’s always thought idly about going out further than he lets himself swim, but it’s just been a passing idea that touches his mind like weeds growing on the bottom of the lake brushing his feet when he treads water. Of course he’s been curious about how deep it goes and what’s there--but pragmatism had outweighed curiosity, until pragmatism had said there was something out there. (It’s hiding again, though; when he takes breaks from building he looks through his binoculars at the center of the lake. There is no flash of silver, no flash of anything else, either.)
He makes the boat big enough for him, and for a large fish.
The day after he finishes the boat, Riou rows it out. He makes quick time to the center of the lake, squinting in the glare of the sun off the still surface ahead of him. There are no disturbances, no large fish waiting at the surface or darting out of the water, no small insects gliding along. The surface is murky; if he peers into the shadow of the boat he can make out movements, probably the same kind of small fish he catches. Nothing so bright as what he’d seen the other day. He opens his tackle box, baits the hook, and drops the line into the water and waits.
Riou’s elbow itches, but he remains still and quiet. The water is stilling around him, and though the little rowboat is not quite stationary it’s not going in any direction or making any coherent movement. In the forest around him, birds twitter. The small fish dart around under the surface, but they haven’t bitten, and Riou doesn’t see even the shadow of anything larger. He waits.
The first tug on the line is what he’s used to, the weight and drag of what he gets from fishing on the shoreline. He reels in the line, and sure enough the fish is about the length of his hand, good enough for food but better as bait for a trap on land. It flips its fins, wriggling its body, and Riou grabs it. He doesn’t need any small fish; he might as well throw it back.
Two hours in and the back of Riou’s neck is burned in the sun. He’s caught and thrown back three more fish, and almost kept one of them, a foot long--but not what he’d come for. The wood of the boat is hot to the touch, and he can only dip his bandana in the lake so many times without disturbing the fish too much. A little longer, perhaps. The surface of the water is still and glassy, Riou’s float barely bobbing up and down. Riou’s back is stiff, but he won’t rock the boat now.
A bubble near the surface perhaps six inches away from Riou’s float, and thena rough yank nearly sends him forward, chin-first into the floor. The boat rocks; Riou tightens his stance; the fishing rod bends as Riou tries to wind it. It won’t come in; he has to hold it fast to keep it from unwinding all the way. This is the fish; it has to be, and bigger than he’d even thought. (How deep does this lake go? How many are there?)
The rod snaps. Riou still does not yield; he can still wind the line. He turns the crank slowly, slowly, a few degrees. It won’t give. He can see something coming to the surface, but it doesn’t quite look like the head of a fish--and then, something very human emerges. A diver, perhaps, but with no gear and a bare torso that seems unlikely. He shakes the water from his silver-white hair, and there on the side of his neck are--gills.
Humans don’t have gills, but merfolk aren’t real, just legends too varied to agree on anything but the broadest strokes. The gills look real, though, fluttering at the rhythm of breaths. Can they breathe air?
“Oh, it’s you,” says the merman.
“Yes?” says Riou.
“You live in this forest.”
“Yes,” says Riou.
“Right,” says the merman. “This is my lake. I don’t care if you swim or take fish from the edge or whatever. Or even if you want to row across. But don’t fuck around out here, okay?”
Riou wants to ask why--if there are other merfolk out here, if the merman is protecting his stock of large fish (but had he been the one Riou had seen earlier?), if there’s something else. He’s no longer in the military; he can ask questions, but his sense is that he’d better not.
“My apologies,” says Riou. “I’ll leave.”
“You can stay,” says the merman. “Just don’t fish.”
Riou looks at the broken rod, and then reels it in. The merman watches warily the whole time, until Riou places the rod in the bottom of the boat and his hands are open.
“I should go in,” says Riou.
He almost doesn’t want to. There’s something about this merman that makes him want to stay, but he is hungry, and since there won’t be fish for dinner he’s got to prepare something. Still. His hands don’t go to the oars until he thinks about it a little harder.
“The trees on the west side make good rods!” the merman calls after him.
His way of making up for the broken one, perhaps. Though if he catches fish with his hands, in his teeth--why would he know that? Riou will ask him the next time they see each other.