Death's Excellent Vacation (Sookie Stackhouse 9.5)

FOUR of them went on that long-ago fishing trip: Iguana Man, Astounding, Atom, and the Green Force, who kept the mortals safe and dry. In ordinary ice fishing you shine a light into the murk under the ice. At the bottom of the water, they shone Atom. They could barely see past the yellow ball of light that Atom threw. They were all wasted, laughing so hard they were falling down. Suddenly scales turned in the murk like ragged hands and a single dark eye glared at them before it flashed away into darkness. The world's last monster, trapped in her lake. "Shit, boys, " Iguana said. "It'd be bad to be like that, " Atom said soberly. "No, " the Green Force said. "Not us. We won't be like that. " He thought there was an us. They'd all live forever. There would always be big, colorful villains to fight, Nazis and Yellow Perils, and beings like himself to fight them. He had seen something but it took him years to know it: the Great Fish, trapped in her size and strength, with no path out; too big to get out; without the talent to die.

IT'S two days into an endless fishing trip before he finds out what their talents are. As far as he can tell, they're normal annoying teenagers. They bundle themselves up in parkas, stare into the ice hole for fifteen minutes, get bored, and move the light around so they scare the fish. They forget to watch the flags. They play with Game Boys and plug their ears with iPods. They giggle and bicker, and kick and punch, and yell "Pow! Wham!" like they are making up their own soundtrack. The boy with the long braid farts like an elephant; nothing worse than the smell of teenage boy. The fathers are polite and heat endless hot water for tea. It's clear what Lan's talents are. She makes popcorn and sushi, cleans the trout they occasionally catch, braids pigtails, dries little-girl tears. On the afternoon of the second day the fog comes in. "We aren't going fishing today, " Mr. Green says. "Probably not tomorrow. You can play with your Game Boys in the cabin. " They give him the big-eyed stare. "Ice is dangerous. Can be a foot thick one step, two inches thick the next. Worse when there's a thaw. Where the Muskeag comes into the lake, the river water's eating the ice from below. Where the ice got broken up by our old fishing holes, where the fish gather, where there's a lot of weed, the ice is thinning out and not healing yet. By the shore the level of the water goes up and down and the ice breaks. But it's foggy, so you're not thinking about that, just trying to find your way to the shore. Unless you know to respect the ice, and you kids don't, you don't fish. " The kids mutter in Japanese. He and Lan go outside, and she checks the weather report on her magic phone. "Above freezing for the next two days, " she points out. "You foresaw that, right? So it's your problem. " "Come on. They could have a more interesting time. " Their boots slush through the runny snow. "You could do for them what you did, " she says. "You and the others. Back then. " "That's what you want for your kids? Bam, pow, monster? I don't do that anymore. " "They can't even go out in this, " she says. "Just can't fish. " "They can't. No. I mean they don't want to go out in this. It sets them off. Their Talents. " "Which are?" he says. "They're shape-changers. " He waits for more. She doesn't say anything. "You did it to them?" he prompts. He's given her plenty of chances to talk about it. They've been fishing from the same ice hole for two days. She hasn't said a word. She doesn't say a word now. "You cursed them?" He doesn't believe in personal curses. "None of my business, I guess, " he says finally. She turns away from him, looking off into the trees. "What do they change into? Werewolves? Bats?" "Various things, " she says, turning back toward him, blinking. "Shortlived things. One of them changes into a cat. She'll live ten years. " Ten years is a moment. "I did that to them, " she says. "And I'm sorry. I want to help them. " "What are you looking for from me?" he says. "How not to die? That's the kind of advice you want?" "How to live!" she shouts at him. "Yes!" "I move things. Air toward me, water and fire away from me. But I don't know why I keep on living. " "Teach me how you live, " she says, "so I can teach them. And I'll find out how you can die. "

WHEN they get back to the cabin, the kids are gone. She says something under her breath and starts running down the path toward the lake, her boots wallowing in the snow. He begins to run too. It's three-quarters of a mile to the lake, and the footing is horrible, slushy snow over mud over frozen earth. For years he's made his body into an old man's. He slips and his arms windmill as he catches up to her. "--foresaw this?" he pants. She turns back to him, furious. "Are you a Talent? Does it always work for you? I was talking to you! And if you can push fire away, why can't you push earth and just fly?" "I don't fly--" He is a man. Men don't fly. He is a man, like others; he had friends; he had a wife; he was in love. He is Mr. Green, Bill Green. He is not something fallen from the sky, doomed to be alone. He doesn't fly. He was mankind's Protector once, and he is too lonely to go back to that lonely place. A Protector flies. A man doesn't. He hears screaming from the lake. And he flies.

Nothing superhero- like, rocketlike; he just pushes the force of gravity away. He's awkward, rising, wobbling. Too far at first; he thinks he'll be spotted and spends too much time scanning the sky for a plane. He ducks down into the trees, gets tangled and caught in a pine, flails at branches. He bullies his way through the treetops like a bear through shrubs, sticky with pine sap, whipped by branches. There's light in front of him, a plain that looks like a wide white field. The lake is smoking with fog. He can't see anything. He drops downward, shouting for her, for them, looking for the shore. In the fog, somewhere, they're shouting for him. When he hits the ice, it tilts. Broken ice. Open water. He runs across them both, light as a skater. He's never lost anyone on the ice, and he's not going to start now. The ice bobs under his feet, and suddenly, out of the fog ahead of him, he sees the kids. They're stupidly huddled all together by the edge of a fractured black hole, and thrashing in the water he sees two of them, the boy with the long hair and his father. Lan is already out on the ice, flattened on it, her red hair a shock in the grayness, holding her hands out to the boy. "I've got you, " Green shouts at her. "It'll hold. " But it doesn't. He tries to extend a cradle of force all the way across the ice, over the hole, without trapping the boy and his father. But there are too many of them, the kids all together are too heavy on all that tipping ice, it's too far, it's been too long. The ice cracks; she slips and flails and is gone. One by one the kids slide in after her and in a moment the ice is empty. His giant invisible hands of force reach out and tilt the ice back, find a struggling body here, a furry parka there. His giant invisible fingers sieve the black water, hunting the kids. He shapes a globe of air and shoves a drowning kitten into it. A bear is grabbing at the ice, breaking more chunks away. A Red Sox hat, a Hello Kitty backpack, but no flaming red hair-- He touches something, touches her. Pulls Lan out of the water, her hair a river of blood down her back, her face blue. Throws her down onto the bank. How to get water out of lungs? He makes up something, moving air, moving water. Feels something in her dark and alien as death. Then feels her retching cough. "What am I looking for?" he yells at her. Another part of him is a net, dredging. "Help me find them!" In the end he recognizes them only because there are the same number of them as before. There were five girls, one boy, two men; now, one girl, a snake, a great brown bear, five little beasts. A bedraggled kitten stares up at him, a sobbing round badger clutches a girl's glasses in one wet paw. The girl has a long braid. The bear has a Red Sox cap. They look at him with adoration, as if he could solve all their problems, and their superhero is so lonely he could howl.