The Boggart and the Monster (15 page)

H
AROLD
P
INDLE
stood on his improvised platform outside the trailers of the Kalling-Pindle Research Project, facing a small forest of microphones and a crowd of reporters and cameramen. He still wore his jeans and sweatshirt, but with a clean shirt underneath. Lights flashed, voices shrieked.

“Harold! Look this way!”

“Over here, Professor!”

“Professor Pindle, what are your plans for the next survey?”

“We start tomorrow,”
Harold said happily.
“Just the same as before — we‘ll go from one end of the loch to the other, with sonar and the ROVs.”

“How soon d'you expect to meet the Monster again, Professor?”

“Your guess is as good as mine. He could be anywhere. But one thing we're sure of now — he's down there!”

“Have you definitely identified Nessie as a plesiosaur?”

“It certainly seems likely,”
Harold said, with his broad open smile.
“Until we get close enough to check out his DNA.”

“You have plans to do that?”

“You bet. My assistants and I are all qualified divers.”

“Professor, the roads round Loch Ness are jammed with sight-seers, and there are a lot of boats out there. A number of people have even started diving. Isn't this going to get in the way of your research?”

“We're appealing to the good sense of the general public to keep clear of our survey,”
said Harold Pindle, raising his voice a little as a helicopter flew by.

“Dream on, Harold,”
said one reporter to another, under his breath.
“Dream on.”

*  *  *

I
N
G
ÖTEBORG
, Sweden, a reporter from BBC Radio was interviewing Axel Kalling. She had arranged to meet him on the waterfront, for the authentic sound of seagulls in the background.

“Mr. Kalling, you must be very gratified by the amazing results of your expedition.”

“Most glad, yes,”
said Axel Kalling, dapper and immaculate in one of his old-fashioned suits. He smoothed back his white hair as it was ruffled by the sea breeze, and smiled at the reporter.
“I have always had confidence in Worm.”

“It's good of you to make time for us — I know you're
about to get the next ferry on your way to Loch Ness.”

Axel Kalling twinkled at her.
“No problem,”
he said.
“I am always glad to talk to pretty girl.”

The reporter, who was very young and trying to be dignified, frowned a little. She said severely,
“You must be greatly looking forward to your first sight of the Monster.”

“It is shy Worm, you must understand,”
said Axel Kalling.
“It may not wish to be seen so often, but to stay at home with Mrs. Worm.”

The reporter blinked.
“Mrs. Worm?”

“And all the little Worms,”
said Axel Kalling roguishly.

“Uh,”
said the reporter.
“Uh — yes, of course.”

*  *  *

“M
R
. M
ASON
,”
said the television talk-show host to Chuck, under the hot lights of the Edinburgh studio,
“what do you feel about your sponsor's announcement that the Monster may have a family?”

“You mean Axel?”
said Chuck from his seat on the uncomfortable sofa.
“Axel Kalling is a great guy, a terrific guy, but not a scientist.”

The host looked at Jenny, who sat next to him in an equally uncomfortable armchair.
“Miss Wong?”

“It's Professor Pindle's call,”
said Jenny.
“I do have to say it's not exactly likely that a single plesiosaur would have survived in Loch Ness since the Jurassic Age. There have to have been generations.”

“So there might be more than one Monster in Loch Ness?”

“Ask us next week,”
said Jenny with her disarming smile.
“But we do know that there is certainly one.”

And the screen showed, for the hundredth time that week, Angus Cameron's unbeatable classic picture of Nessie rearing up over the surface of Loch Ness, teeth bared, head and long neck arching out against the sky.

*  *  *

I
N HER COTTAGE
next to the nursery, Miss Urquhart got up and turned off the television set, and then the living room lights as well. She crossed the darkened room, opened the French doors, and went out onto her little paved terrace. It was edged with pots of heather and herbs, and when she looked out from it, she could see Loch Ness and the mountains beyond.

On a cloudy night, there was never anything but darkness to be seen, with a prickle of lights from the houses on the opposite side of the loch. But tonight a half-moon hung bright in the sky. In its colorless light she saw the whole distinct picture of sky, dark mountains, the star-scatter of houses on the opposite shore, and the glimmering water of the loch, edged below by the broken-toothed outline of Castle Urquhart's ruined remains.

Miss Urquhart looked down at the castle, and then she turned toward the west. For a long time she looked out beyond the loch, out at the western skyline, where the end of Argyll's great rift lay, and Loch Linnhe, and Castle Keep, and the sea.

“Good night, Nessie,”
she said.
“Be happy. Don't be homesick. We're still here.”

*  *  *

I
T WAS BRIGHT MORNING
in the Camerons' village shop, and Tommy had gone off early in his little puttering boat to take the morning paper to Castle Keep. His mother stood at the counter of the post-office corner of the shop, her glasses on her nose, checking the weekly accounts. She added up a column of figures, stared at it, blinked, and reached for her calculator.

Angus Cameron came into the shop from upstairs, pulling on his jacket on his way out to the van. He was whistling. He reached across the counter, tilted his wife's face upward and kissed her on the nose.

“I'm going fishing with Johnny Mackay,”
he said.
“I'll bring a couple home for dinner.”

“I hope you'll bring a great many home, that we can sell for other people's dinners,”
said Mrs. Cameron, smiling. She glanced down at her accounts.
“Though I must say, we've made more money from your Nessie pictures in the last week than the shop made all year.”

“Aye,”
said Angus noncommittally. He took his fishing rods from a corner behind the counter.

Mrs. Cameron looked at him curiously.
“Are you not going back to Loch Ness?”
she said.
“The whole world's waiting for the next sight of the Monster, and you haven't been there for a week.”

“Oh, I've done my Nessie story,”
said Angus easily.
“I'll leave it to the rest of them now. See you later, love.”

He ambled out, and Mary Cameron watched him go with an affectionate, resigned smile. That was her
Angus: easygoing, seldom excited, even by the Loch Ness Monster. After all, for twenty-five years they had lived here with a real live boggart just across the water, and though she felt Tommy was very well aware of his existence, she knew Angus had never even noticed. And she was sure he never would.

But then, Mrs. Cameron had not seen Angus fly.

*  *  *

T
OMMY
, J
ESSUP AND
E
MILY
were perched over the water's edge at the far end of the Port Appin promontory, with parkas and jackets under them against the wet of the seaweed that mounded the rocks. They were watching the choppy grey-green sea, and the glistening Seal Rocks beyond, for a sight of Nessie and the Boggart.

Six days before, they had arrived back at Port Appin with Mr. Maconochie, and driven straight to the stretch of gravel shore that served as parking lot for the Camerons' shop. It was raining, but there was no wind. As they unloaded the Range Rover beside the little jetty where Mr. Maconochie's dinghy was waiting, they had been aware for an instant of a shimmering in the air beside the car's open door. And then, out in the channel between the jetty and Castle Keep, they had seen the gleaming heads of two seals, swimming away.

Today the rain was gone, and out of a cloud-patched blue sky the sun glinted on the rocks and the small breaking waves.

“There!”
Jessup said suddenly.

He pointed, and beside the Seal Rocks they saw a big dark seal swimming. He hauled himself clumsily out of the water onto the rock, and then a second and a third came after him. The third shook his head like a wet dog, and they saw the sunlight glitter on the drops of water spraying from his whiskers.

“It's not them — it's the real seals,”
Jessup said in disappointment.

“I love the real seals,”
Emily said reproachfully. Suddenly she shifted a little on the rock, and winced.
“Ow!”
she said.

Tommy leaned sideways, to look at her.
“What's the matter?”

“I'm sitting on a pebble —
ouch!
”
Emily scrambled to her feet on the seaweed-covered rock, clutching at Tommy's curly head as she almost lost her balance.

“Something stung me!”
she said, rubbing the back of her thigh. Then she realized that her other hand was still buried in Tommy's dark curls, and that he was sitting very still. She took it away hastily.
“Sorry,”
she said.

“Felt nice,”
said Tommy mildly. He picked up the parka she had been sitting on, handed it up to her, and inspected the seaweed on the rock underneath.
“Can't see anything. Maybe a crab nipped you.”

Emily took the parka, and found a small hard lump in it, with a sharp edge that seemed almost to send a current up into her hand. She investigated the pocket.
“No — it was this! My little shell.”

The fossil cockle shell lay in her palm, gleaming white in the sunshine.

Over on the Seal Rocks, the biggest seal splashed into the water. His head reappeared, and to their delight and astonishment he swam toward them, crossing the few yards of water that lay between the rocks and their own promontory. The two other seals rolled off the Seal Rocks after him, but did not follow; they stayed back in the water, watching him.

Nosing along the rocky shore, the big seal found a place where he could haul himself up over the mounds of brown bladder wrack seaweed on to the rock. The children could hear him puffing, like a tubby old man. He was very close to Jessup, who sat motionless, gazing at him, frozen with excitement.

But the seal was looking at Emily.

Emily looked back into the big black eyes, entranced. It was like meeting a longlost friend, it was like talking and talking, though what she and the seal were saying to each other she had no idea. She felt a prickling in the palms of her hands. The big seal lurched a little closer to her.

And suddenly Emily knew what he was telling her. She glanced down at the shell lying in the palm of her hand, and then she looked up wide-eyed at Tommy.

“The seals helped us,”
she said softly.
“They helped Nessie. They gave me the shell, and so it was in my pocket, and three times they made me hold it. I remember now, it was like the shell calling me. Three magics, to make Nessie disappear. And I didn't even know.”

“Maybe if you'd known, it wouldn't have worked,”
Tommy said.
“You were needed for a different magic.”

“
We
were needed,”
Emily said.

Tommy smiled a little. He was watching the seal. He said in a whisper,
“I think now he wants it back.”

The seal was still gazing into Emily's face, calm and patient, waiting for her. Very slowly and carefully, she moved forward on the rock and held out her hand to him, with the shell on her fingertips. She could feel Tommy poised to grab her in case she might slip.

The seal took the shell; she felt his lips cold against her fingers. He looked at her for a moment again, and then he turned and lumbered back toward the edge, sliding into the water with a great splash.

They all flinched instinctively away, shouting with laughter as the water half-drenched them, and it was only as they wiped their eyes, blinking the saltiness away, that they saw the shimmering in the air around them, the blurring of the real world as the Old Magic moved briefly through it. And through the soft regular breathing of the waves against the rock, they heard a thread of a voice, or perhaps it was two voices, faint, musical.

“
Tapadh leibh. Thank . . . you. Tha ar cridheachan maille ruibh.
”

And they saw five seals in the water now, swimming and playing — for two silvery doglike heads had joined the first three. They dived and resurfaced, over and over, the glistening bodies rolling in and out of the waves, and not Emily nor Jessup nor even Tommy Cameron could tell Nessie and the Boggart from the seals.