Listening, Listening
                                         by Bruce Holland Rogers
This story copyright 1995 by Bruce Holland Rogers. This copy was created for Jean Hardy's personal
use. All other rights are reserved. Thank you for honoring the copyright.

Published by Seattle Book Company, www.seattlebook.com.

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   Anyone who sang out sweet and high over the waters of the lake might bring up the monster if the light
and air were right, but none of the men living in those rough cabins were willing to sing out in a voice like
a woman's, and they weren't about to let their women do it, either. No, they would say, whatever is
meant to be seen will appear of its own accord and will rise when it is meant to rise. What lies in our
keeping is the fruit of our traplines: the fox, the hare, the mink. If our roofs were beneath the lake, our
traps would be there, too. We will not disturb the sleep of anything we don't mean to kill.
   So the women met by night, slipping from the sides of sleeping husbands when moon and mists were
as they had to be. They gathered on the rock that rose, shiplike, from the farthest shore, and they held
their breaths to hear the sound of coils unwinding underneath the waves. Then some one of them would
softly sing a note as clear as water, and another voice would join hers, and another after that. The men,
still asleep in their beds, would dream of masts and sirens.
   Sometimes a shadow would glide beneath the surface. Sometimes not. Sometimes the waves would
clash with ripples that rose up from below. Sometimes not. And then on some rare nights, the monster,
dripping water from its nostrils, would raise its head into the glowing mist to listen to the one-note song.
   And then the giant head would slip back beneath the waves. The steady song would slip back into
silence. The women, silently, would slip between black trees, back to their cabins, back beside their
husbands.
   Among themselves again in daylight, the women would exchange no glance, speak no secret word
about what passed in the night, even after the men, with traps and chains rattling from their shoulders, had
made their way into the shadows of the trees.
   Once a man who dreamed of sirens reached for his wife and, not finding her, woke up. He rose,
naked, and followed the sound, the one high note in many voices, until he came to the water's edge. Out
across the lake, he saw the women singing, saw the water ripple underneath the moon.
   The moonlight shone whitely on his body, and he let the cold air in through his nose and out through his
mouth. And then, without meaning to, he lifted up his voice, singing with the voice of a woman from the
body of a man.
   The water did not froth in the center of the lake. The great head did not rise into the mist. At last, one
by one, the women fell silent, until the man was the last one singing. He stayed there on the rocky shore,
sending his voice out over the water long after the women, even his wife, had made their way back to
their beds. When he stopped singing, he crouched beside the water, unable to go home. When the
eastern sky began to pink, his nakedness drove him back.
   His wife was waiting up. She had a fire in the stove, and she looked at him strangely when he came in.
   He stood confounded for a moment, and then he lowered his brow. "What was that nonsense you
were up to last night?" he demanded. Then he put on his clothes. "I can't look at you, woman," he said.
"I'm ashamed of the things you do. I am so ashamed."
   He never spoke of it to her again, but some nights he would wake to the sound of singing. He would
not stretch out to feel the bed empty beside him, but would lie very still and angry, imagining what it
looked like, the massive head held high above the water, listening, listening.
Published by Alexandria Digital Literature. ( http://www.alexlit.com/ )

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