Chapter 10 Mrs. Smith #2
Studying the race locations, she pictured the terrain below the surface of each bay.
The junior regattas would begin next weekend with a race west of Cold Harbor, in the waters near Port Jefferson.
It was a place of ferries, barges, and sports cruiser boats.
Men would be racing larger sailboats there, too.
With all that activity, a capsized boat could go unnoticed for a few minutes.
A few minutes was all Mrs. Smith would need to devour a Pure One.
Mrs. Smith knew these boats were manned by two children. The skipper would be older, between fourteen and eighteen. Too old
for her needs. It was the first mates she wanted. These children could be as young as ten and as old as thirteen. She could
draw a single craft away from the fleet of young sailors. Make it look like the wind’s work. A daylight hunt was risky. She
would need the camouflage of many eels.
Some of her children would die—their bodies mauled by propellers and tangled in anchor chains—but they would not turn away
from their deaths. They knew her survival was paramount. Without her, they would all perish. They’d be netted by the thousands.
Their bodies would be used for food or for medicine. The humans would consume them until they were only a memory. A creature
existing only in books.
Despite her warnings, too many of her children were caught by human traps. The humans’ underwater cages and mesh tunnels littered
the seabed. The poison from their engines and factories stole oxygen from the water. Their litter slid into her children’s
bellies or wrapped itself around their necks.
Long ago, she’d hunted with eels the size of school buses. A swarm of these magnificent animals could kill a whale in seconds.
But when the oceans changed, her first children could not adapt quickly enough.
They never learned to breathe the air above the water, and so they perished.
The humans grew more cunning. They made weapons and built ships.
They took to the seas with harpoons and nets, and the largest descendants of the giant eels vanished, too.
Still, the Mother of Eels endured. She would endure for another hundred years as long as the old ways were honored. The old
ways bound her, but they also gave her power.
Setting the newsletter aside, Mrs. Smith recalled what Elaine K. Bernstein had written in her letter.
I respect your privacy, but this event is very important to my family. I hope you understand and are willing to make exceptions
for such an important occasion. If there’s anything I can do for you in return, like run errands or prepare meals, I’d be
happy to return the favor. After all, that’s what neighbors are for. We’re here to help one another.
The letter had filled Mrs. Smith with rage. The woman wanted to set off fireworks from the end of the yacht club dock. The
woman wanted to cut Mrs. Smith’s precious vines. To erect a party tent. To play loud music. This soft, weak, useless human
was making demands.
Despite her fury, Mrs. Smith knew she had to appease the woman in white.
Elaine K. Bernstein was not a solitary entity. Humans were social animals. They were group hunters. Once they selected a common
enemy, they would focus all their energy on that creature’s destruction. As of this moment, they had no idea she was their
enemy, and she needed to keep it that way.
It had been many years since Mrs. Smith walked the length and breadth of her property, because her human legs were too weak.
She cared little about community standards but understood that she would have to pay attention to them now. The neighbors’
eyes were upon her.
She would fulfill Elaine K. Bernstein’s requests.
For a price.
She would make several very specific requests. On the outset, these requests would appear to serve the woman’s purpose. They’d
come across as considerate. Even helpful. But in the end, they would benefit Mrs. Smith. They would give her everything she
wanted. And cost Elaine K. Bernstein everything she held dear.
With her claws hanging over the typewriter keys, Mrs. Smith’s mind drifted to another time.
A time when fireworks meant setting fire to bamboo stems. The minor explosions stayed firmly on the ground. They did not illuminate
the whole sky or fill the air with thunderous claps. They didn’t drop debris into the ocean. Fish did not feed on bits of
charcoal, paper, or plastic because humans wanted to create their own stars.
Swimming through her memories, she remembered when a man had gifted her with fireworks.
She’d just begun a new life cycle, which meant she could easily adopt a human form, and she’d chosen to masquerade as the
beautiful and mysterious widow of Captain Josiah Smith.
Suitors and sycophants came out of the woodwork, showering her with costly gifts. One of these suitors, the man who’d presented
her with fireworks, had also brought her chests of treasure from the East. Her servants had carried them to her boudoir and
thrown back the lids to reveal embroidered silks, jade ornaments, ivory carvings, foo dog figurines, porcelain vases, and
exotic plants for her conservatory.
The man was generous by nature, and he gave cuttings of these plants to several acquaintances. Before long, pots of oriental
bittersweet were thriving in the protective glass rooms of a dozen Gold Coast mansions.
Two brothers who owned a nursery in Flushing were enchanted by the new plant and became the first to propagate Celastrus articulates. However, they weren’t the first to plant oriental bittersweet in the ground. That honor belonged to a female gardener hired
by Mrs. Josiah Smith.
Mrs. Smith’s servant buried the seeds in the loamy soil right before the spring rains. Shunned by her fellow humans for having
a child out of wedlock, the woman whispered to each seed as she dropped it into its dark hole, willing it to cover the land,
the houses, the electric lights. Willing it to choke and strangle whatever it touched.
The plants thrived. They drank in the sunshine and nutrient-rich rain. They climbed over the arbor. Surged over the stone
walls. Became a green wave cresting over the garden gate.
In late summer, their fruit turned yellow and split. The red berries looked like beads of blood. Sparrows and starlings plucked
the berries off the vine and carried the seeds in their bellies.
The birds flew to neighboring yards. They flew to other counties. Other states. Along the way, they deposited their droppings.
The seeds burrowed into the earth. The rain found the seeds in their wombs of soil and compelled them to wake.
The oriental bittersweet grew and spread. Grew and spread. It became an infestation. An invader. An enemy.
Though Mrs. Smith did not feel love, she did feel tenderness toward certain living things. The oriental bittersweet pleased
her. She admired its tenacity and its invasive power. The humans had taken so much land for themselves. Perhaps her dogged
vine could take some of it back.
Mrs. Smith reached an impossibly long arm to the window overlooking the garden and raised the shade. A century ago, servants
had filled the garden with things the humans found attractive. There’d been roses and boxwood bushes, benches and sculptures,
gravel paths and a reflecting pool.
Now the benches and sculptures had disappeared under layers upon layers of bittersweet vines. Riding over the backs of thorn bushes, the vines fanned out in all directions, their tendrils tirelessly reaching, reaching.
Let them cut you, thought Mrs. Smith. You will only grow stronger. You will come at them from below. From the deep. From the dark. As will I.
Then an idea came to her, and her mouth curled in a serpentine smile.
Using a single hooked claw, she began to type.