Death's Excellent Vacation - By Charlaine Harris & Toni L. P. Kelner Page 0,17
them from a distance, like a guard dog, half-angel, half-wolf.
Then he got involved.
He had friends.
He fell in love.
Now he fishes.
“Death is what people do.” Not so long ago, a moment ago in his long life, the other Talents showed up. Each of them unique, wild, strange. Together, a gang. Friends. And Lana. He thought he was people. They proved he was wrong.
“What do those kids have for talents?” he asks.
“Oh, one thing, another. They look after each other,” she says. “That’s talent enough.”
Yeah. “They got long life?” he asks. “Is that one of their Talents?”
She sits with the towel on her knees, looking into the fire. “No. I’ve known lots like them. The others are dead.”
“What’s their story? Born with Talent? Made?”
“Made.”
“How?” Atom, an atomic explosion. Poor Elastic, a vat of chemicals. Himself falling like a star.
And he has touched something. The Chinese girl stares into the fire, her eyes dead black and her mouth widening into a grimace. Her hands tighten around the towel.
“I made them,” she says. “I cursed them. Me.”
And she gets up abruptly and leaves.
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