DAMFollowing the eel proved tougher than Floor expected. She darted around cars parked too close to the canal’s edge, keeping her camera in her hands and her eyes on the water. The eel swam close to the surface, but box-like houseboats kept blocking her sight, and the murky-green canal made it hard to catch more than glimpses while she ran.
Floor evaded a cyclist by a hair’s breath. The bell rang in her ears as the bike passed, but she was already distracted—the houseboats had come to an end, allowing an unobstructed view of the water. Floor ducked into the first opening between parked cars. She crouched by the water’s edge, leaving nothing between her and a meter-plus drop into the canal but a metal beam that barely reached her ankles.
The eel was an agitated shadow just under the surface, coiling up and straightening out again. It wasn’t moving on, though, giving Floor time to lean in, one hand curling around the rusted beam to steady herself and snap some photos. They’d no doubt turn out crap, but Floor hadn’t even known there were eels in the Amsterdam canals; she wanted evidence to show her dads or maybe Lisanne at school.
Not that Lisanne would be interested in this blur on her camera’s display. Floor played with the settings, cooing at the eel, “Just a couple more seconds … Wow, you are big, aren’t you?”
In response, the eel twisted under the water. It swam in circles before dashing straight ahead, its movements smoothing out—like it was showing off, making sure she saw the blue sheen on its scales and got every angle.
Spanish-sounding voices just meters behind Floor had her tensing up. Being a fourteen-year-old girl running around the city center with a plus-sized camera meant that tourists bothered her more often than not. She checked over her shoulder. A trio of friends shielded their eyes from the light as they looked up. Banners stretched across the second-floor windows of three neighboring canal houses, thick cloth against aged bricks and cream-white shutters. The sun reflected off the banners, obscuring one letter or the other. Floor squinted to read the first sheet:
OUR HOMES OUR WINDOWS
The second said:
NOT YOUR ENTERTAINMENT
The third:
AM DAM
A doodled pentagram acted as the star. It must’ve turned out way too big since it cut into the D and the M was just a squished scribble at the end.
Floor spotted a couple through the fourth house’s wide-open windows, working together to install another banner. The woman balanced precariously on the windowsill, trying to toss a rope onto the pulley installation near the roof as the wind tugged the sheet to and fro. Floor barely made out the black scrawls of letters:
NOT A MUSEUM
“Nice,” Floor said. “Bad handwriting. But nice.”
“Hey, girl?” One of the Spanish tourists with a goofy grin and deodorant she could smell from here turned towards her and pointed at the banners. “The words? What do they mean?”
“Those houses are beautiful!” a girl with a scruffy mohawk added in smoother English. “Why cover them? I love the …” She gestured with thin hands, searching for the words. She ended up simply indicating the pyramid gables. “It’s such a shame. They shouldn’t allow it.”
Floor shifted her weight, still crouched. Why did they have to look at her like that? “Well … they don’t.”
She didn’t want to translate the banners. They were in Dutch for a reason. She didn’t get the chance to, anyway—a sudden splash behind her demanded her attention. Drops of water sprayed onto her bare calves. Floor spun just in time to see the eel slithering away, the water closing up above. The surface jerked with waves, streaked with unruly white bubbles. How had the eel created a big enough splash to reach her from so far?
Her eyes followed the waves until she caught another glimpse of movement. A second eel. Its shape twined, its figure smaller and grayer than the blue one. It slashed left and right, spinning and winding in a way that almost made her forget the blue eel’s continued splashing.
“You’re a pretty one, too, aren’t you?” The sudden delight in Floor’s voice prompted a burst of laughter from the tourists.
“Do you live here?” Mohawk Girl asked. “Where? Those houses?” She pointed at the canal houses across the water, tall and thin.
“Do you see fish often?” Deodorant’s grin widened.
“You look angry,” said the third friend. “Smile for us, pretty girl.”
Floor kept her lips adamantly straight. Faking a heavier accent than her real one, she said, “Bad English. Sorry.” She turned back to the water to focus on the new eel rather than the tourists’ ongoing questions. Did it matter what the Dutch word for fish was?
“Two eels at once? Where’d you come from?” She kept the words under her breath this time.
In the corner of her eye, the blue eel snapped into motion. It sliced through the water towards the new eel. Like it had a goal. Floor tensed up, unsure whether to be excited or repulsed. Her legs froze in their crouch. The tourists chattered in Spanish, no doubt noticing the movement, too.
The blue eel dove into the other one from the side. From the back of Floor’s throat came a surprised yelp. Darkness billowed from the impact site. The eels circled each other, the injured one shuddering. The blood in the water thickened.
The tourists’ chatter turned to nervous laughter. “Think it’s jealous?” Mohawk Girl asked.
Floor gripped her camera tighter, snapping photos without stopping. “It’s just animals. They’re … territorial.” She licked her lips, adding despite herself, “Possessive.”
She couldn’t look away from the fight. It took four minutes. Then the blue eel drifted off, leaving nothing in its wake but darkened water and uncharacteristic waves.
In the distance, tram bells rang.
“Pieter?” Floor asked her dad. She leaned against the kitchen door frame, relishing the houseboat’s faint, familiar sway. “What color are eels? Can they be blue?”
The musty-warm smell of kale filled the kitchen, hanging lazily in the corners and fogging up the windows even with half of them open to the water of the Brouwersgracht outside. Pieter was hunched over the kitchen counter. Short, off-blond locks dangled over his face. One arm held tightly onto the pan, the other working the old-school potato masher, matching the rhythm of the Dutch tunes blaring from the radio.
“Can’t you look that up?” Pieter ran his hand along his forehead. His breathing came heavy.
“I just figured, if you knew …” Floor wrinkled her nose. “Kale? In summer?”
Pieter shrugged with one shoulder, still focused on the kale. In a way, Floor was glad for it. It made her feel less self-conscious. “I was in the mood. Anyway, eels are gray-silverish, or beige, at least when smoked. Blue … maybe if the light hits them right?” Pieter wiggled one hand in a gesture of uncertainty.
“I’m pretty sure I saw one in the Prinsengracht earlier.”
“Then I guess eels can be blue.” He laughed. When he continued, he talked uncomfortably fast. “Wow, I haven’t seen fish in the canals in ages. They must’ve been close to the surface—or maybe the city really is cleaning the water.”
Floor stepped farther into the kitchen, passing the table where a folded-open letter caught her eye. A few phrases stood out. Protected City Sights; left outer-wall repairs; August 20th. She didn’t need to read more. Protected City Sights: A nice way of saying, “Live downtown? Expect to spend a lot of dough keeping your place authentic-looking—or we’ll make you.”
No wonder Pieter sounded off. Apparently, the city had set a new deadline. Amsterdam had been hitting up houses for renovations left and right—such was the downside of the city center being on the World Heritage List—demanding specific paint colors, materials, styles of ceilings or fireplaces. Banners were strictly regulated. So were ads. Blinds, canopies, satellite dishes. Facades. Flags.
Floor moved on, hoping Pieter hadn’t caught her pause. “Check these out,” she said. She lifted her camera and scrolled through the photos, a backwards film of the process of putting up the fourth banner. After receiving that letter, she had a feeling Pieter would appreciate the sentiment. “That’s just around the corner. Cool, right?”
Pieter glanced over. “That, Floortje, depends entirely on the fine.”
After school the next day, Floor sat in her bedroom’s window. Her netbook was propped against her drawn-up legs. A neighbor was practicing the violin, the breeze dragging along scattered notes she couldn’t fit into a tune. She ought to be editing photos or studying—the final exam week of the school year was coming up—but instead she browsed Wikipedia for information on eels.
The eel that was currently dancing in the water outside her window, long-stretched and swift, had a lot to do with that.
“Shouldn’t you be digging into mud? Hunting? Hiding out?” She laughed under her breath. “You’re just as big as the one from last night.”
She noticed a swampy smell like rotten plants. Steadying her netbook, she fell silent when she saw a flat boat passing under the curve of the nearest bridge. From the front of the boat a bright orange metal arm protruded with a joint in the middle and a rusted hook dangling from the end. The hook slowly sank into the water.
At the base of the arm sat an operator, his legs crossed at the ankles, his bald head reflecting the sun. With a snap of a joystick-like device, he brought the claw back up. Black-brown hooks pinched the front wheel of a city bike, the frame drooping in the air. Another bike was crunched immovably in the hook’s center. Mud dripped past the metal.
As the dredger approached, the eel faded in and out of sight, re-appearing across the canal, then a meter from Floor’s bedroom window. Its movements came snappier, lashing out like the crack of a whip. Maybe the boat’s movements disturbed it, or the smell, which was only getting worse. Rust mingled with the stink of wet dirt. Floor slipped her computer off her lap when the bikes clanged onto the stack already on the boat. She’d wait inside until it passed.
“Sorry, eel-buddy,” she said as she wrenched the window down, “looks like you’ll have to hide for a while. Hope it won’t mess up your house.” The claw was scraping over the muddy canal bottom, sending clouds of muck billowing. It brought up one or more prizes almost every time. She bet fish lived in those wrecks.
When the dredger reached Floor’s house, she could see the stack of twisted metal, bikes upon bikes covered in a film of yellowed mud, bent wheels and twisted shopping carts, chairs of all kinds, a mangled crowd control fence, small boats that must’ve gotten overloaded with rain water, plastic sheets, the casing of an old TV.
The hook dumped a single bike wheel on top. The boat leaned suddenly to the right. A ripple trembled over the water, reaching the houseboats on the other side. The dredger corrected itself—too far, sending it careening to the left. The operator sat up straight, fighting to correct the boat’s balance on the normally still water. The rest of the canal stayed placid.
Another wave rippled out. The operator grabbed the seat of his chair, mouthing something Floor couldn’t hear.
The wave reached her houseboat. She barely noticed—might not have if she hadn’t seen it coming—but then a tremor ran to her spine. The almost-empty glass of Sprite on the windowsill rippled.
The operator struggled to keep the boat straight. Subtle waves tipped it one way or the other, sloshing up against the houseboats and boats alike.
Floor steadied the Sprite glass, waiting until the dredger moved past and the water quieted into smoothness. The boat steadied. When the mud settled back in the deep, the eel showed up again to spin and curl as elegantly as before.
Floor grabbed her camera.
The eel seemed to like this part of the canal. It hung out by her bedroom window and showed up almost every time Floor did homework on the nearby dock, her feet dangling in the cool water. She’d look up from her notebooks and whisper, asking what it was doing and taking occasional snapshots, now more out of habit than anything else.
It was the same eel, she’d decided, her eel. It had that same shimmer of blue even when it swam centimeters below the surface. Other times, when the sun hit it just right, the eel’s shade veered closer to purple or silver, sometimes all at once.
She wasn’t the only one who noticed. Passersby walked up, captivated without fail; they ooh-ed and aah-ed and snapped pictures the same way Floor did, and she’d quietly grin, glad the attention was no longer on her, and tell her eel its show was all the rage.
Today, though, she couldn’t afford the distraction.
She scribbled German grammar puzzles into her battered workbook with one hand, holding an oily paper cone of Flemish fries in the other. She breathed in the smell of her fries, salty and just the right kind of greasy, interspersed with a whiff of fresh mayonnaise that made the image not just complete but perfect.
More water splashed.
“Not right now, pretty fishy,” Floor singsonged. “Big test coming up.”
If it wasn’t her eel flailing about dramatically for the umpteenth time, it was probably just tourists on a canal bike or someone kicking garbage into the water. She glanced up anyway. Her hand stilled mid-scribble.
A fisherman across the street—one she’d thought was sleeping, Ajax cap drawn far over his eyes—had caught her eel. It thrashed about two meters from the shore, spraying water everywhere, slapping its tail on the surface, throwing itself against a nearby boat. The fisherman knocked back his chair as he shot upright. He reeled the eel from the water, arms bulging, back arched. His weathered face stretched into a smile.
A couple of passersby paused to see the spectacle, shopping bags in hands.
The sun caught every drop of water spraying from the eel. It shimmered on the eel’s scales, which gleamed blue and green and then—then more, Floor thought, purple and red and a sheen of yellow, but she couldn’t stand to look, couldn’t stand the eel’s panic as it dangled from the fishing thread. She pressed her hand flat onto her workbook, focusing on the fisherman instead or the mix of eagerness and disgust of the audience that’d gathered.
The fisherman leaned in, steadying the eel’s body as he wormed the hook free.
The eel would be fine. It had to be; they were catch-and-release only, and she’d read that eels could survive on land for ages, anyway. The eel kept thrashing. It took both the man’s hands to wrangle its slick body. He shouted at the crowd to take a picture. “Big one, right?” he called. “Biggest one I’ve seen. Gotta be a meter long! Are you seeing these colors? How about—” He coughed, then tried again. The word bubbled from his throat. “About—”
He doubled over and spat in the dirt at the base of a nearby tree. The eel slipped from his hands. It landed on the cobblestones with a wet thump Floor couldn’t hear but imagined easily.
A woman placed her Albert Heijn bags on the ground and approached, mouthing something that was lost in the distance. The fisherman didn’t respond. He spat out more and more until it wasn’t spit but water, whole streams of it. He wracked his body, gripped his throat. Then he stumbled, missing the eel slithering across the pavement by a hair’s breath. He didn’t notice. He was still coughing, spitting water that streamed past his chin. Then—dripping from his nose. His eyes.
The fisherman couldn’t breathe. The water kept coming.
The eel splashed into the canal.
Floor turned, spilling her fries as she yanked out her cellphone. She stumbled from the dock towards the bridge that’d take her across the canal, already dialing one-one-two for an ambulance.
Fifteen minutes later, Floor hugged herself in the middle of the already-dissipating crowd, watching the ambulance’s taillights bump over the bridge. The fisherman was alive, but it’d been close. He was coughing up less water already. He’d be fine. She hoped.
“What do we do with …?” The woman with the Albert Heijn bags gestured at the fishing equipment.
“I’ll take it. He’s gotta live nearby—I’ve seen him before.”
No one protested, so Floor crouched, taking the fisherman’s bait jar, his rod, his sweat-drenched fold-up chair, and beer cooler. One bottle had rolled to the very edge of the street with a stain surrounding it and a bitter stench floating upward. Must’ve tipped over when the man fell. She grabbed the bottle, too, and set off.
As she crossed the bridge, she refused to look at the water. She saw the eel in her peripheral vision, though. Its shape right underneath the surface streaked back and forth, visible despite the darkened sky, the thickened clouds. Any last trace of a breeze had disappeared.
“Not now,” she said. It couldn’t be the animal’s fault. Floor knew that. But—there was that cloud of blood from that second eel, the waves tossing the dredger around when it had disturbed the canal bottom, the water dripping from even the fisherman’s nose and ears—
And the way the eel now followed her across the bridge and the canal shore, lagging only meters behind. The light hit its scales to bring out its colors, begging for photos. Floor walked faster. She looked stubbornly ahead, focusing on her houseboat, trying not to think of the fisherman’s body curled up on his side and seeming to break in half with every cough. Trying not to think of how.
Pretty or not, she’d just ignore the eel. It didn’t own her.
She stopped mid-stride.
On the deck right outside her living room window stood a couple, thirtyish, maybe. The woman was leaning over, pressing a point-and-shoot to the glass, an audience captivated.
By Floor’s home.
The camera flashed, once, twice, then a third time before the woman turned to look at Floor. Her husband already did. His round face hovered between guilty and excited.
“Is this yours? We just, we thought it was so beautiful and …” The guy tried to smile. English. British accent.
“What are you. Doing?” Floor squeezed out, but then she shook her head, raised her hands, managed to stop herself from flinging the beer bottle at the last second. “Move!”
Exam week.
Each day, Floor locked herself up in her room, studying one subject after another. She’d turn her iPod dock up to the top volume to block out the rain slashing against her window, the howl of the wind, the water splashing against the house and the cracks of thunder.
A tap on her shoulder. Floor jerked up. Ronald hovered over her.
She reached for her iPod to turn down the sound.
She just managed to catch the last of Ronald’s words: “… in the living room, don’t you?”
“Wha—?”
“Your music, honey,” he laughed. “We can hear it across the house.”
She stuck out her tongue.
“What’s with the curtains?” he asked. “The canal’s beautiful. When the waves reflect the lightning … you really should look.”
“I’m studying.” Her voice came stiff. Opening the curtains meant having a constant view of the canal—the eel—even if only peripherally. “It’s distracting. Did you see the news?”
Ronald shook his head. “Did something happen?”
Floor pulled over her netbook and navigated to nu.nl, pulling up the appropriate article. “Flooding,” she said. “Lisanne mentioned it at school. Her backyard is practically gone. And a couple of blocks from the Dam, her uncle’s boat sank—a small one, at least.”
“I already thought the water level was higher.” Ronald let out a low, impressed whistle, cut short by another wave slamming the boat, shoving it towards the shore before yanking it back. Floor gripped the desk to steady herself. A film poster dropped from the wall and curled up.
“It’s getting worse by the hour.” Floor took a second to catch her balance as she got up, the houseboat’s swaying catching her off-guard. It’d never been this bad. “Is Pieter still nauseated?”
“You can say that.” Ronald ran a hand through his hair. “And—shit—you don’t know about the Herengracht houseboat yet, do you? A tree crashed onto the roof. Broke a woman’s arm, killed her cat.”
“Shit,” Floor echoed. They were safe here, right? The trees nearby were just saplings; the city had cut down many of the older trees to better show off the houses.
“I swear, someone must have pissed off a mermaid to cause a storm like this. Amsterdam will go the way of Reimerswaal.”
Floor looked at Ronald quizzically, still crouching as she rolled up the fallen poster.
“It’s a southern thing. Basically, we’ll all drown. Glug.” He grinned, but it looked fake, reminding Floor acutely of the city’s letter. Neither of her dads had mentioned it to her yet. “Can you even focus on your exams like this? You could stay with Lisanne.”
Floor glanced at the canal-side curtains, where the water splashed against the outer walls. She could swear it splashed highest against their boat.
She was being ridiculous, childish. Someone her age shouldn’t let herself get this spooked. Animals fought. Waves happened. People got sick.
But still. “Yeah,” Floor said, aiming for nonchalance. “Maybe I should.”
Floor had her backpack on, stuffed with school books and her netbook and a handful of clothing. She didn’t need much. Lisanne lived only ten minutes away. They could drive up and down easily.
She jogged for Pieter’s car, her hood drawn. As she tossed her bag into the backseat, she caught a glimpse of the canal. The waves were higher than ever. They crashed against the brick canal walls and the houseboats with white foam heads she’d never seen so far inland. The water exploded onto docks and porches. The wind whistled through the streets, tearing at clattering shutters, ripping off leaves and branches, and sending them tumbling into the water.
“Can I—do you mind waiting a minute?” she shouted at Pieter in the driver’s seat. The rain clattering on the roof almost drowned out her voice. “I forgot my camera.”
Pieter made a go-on gesture and turned up the radio. Floor dashed back inside, grabbing her camera and its rain cover. Forget exams, forget the eel—she couldn’t pass up this opportunity.
She went around to the dock sticking out between her neighbor’s homes. The wood was like oil under her feet, and the wind tugged at her from all angles. The rain stabbed her exposed cheeks. She pulled her hood in tighter, then crouched in the middle of the dock, avoiding the edges. With slick hands she tried to steady the camera, squinting at the screen through the haze of rain and the already-drenched plastic. She’d taken photos in the rain before, had read about it often enough, but never this intense. Nowhere close.
Click. Click. There: That tree leaning dangerously to one side. Click. Click. The teens running across the bridge. Click. The deformed umbrella tossed to and fro on the canal.
Floor shivered in her soaked clothes. At least the rain was softening.
She took another photo of the umbrella. A wave caught it, pulled it under, and spat it back out. The handle spun, sending drops flaring in a pirouette.
Her eel cut through the wave. Water flew off its back like a knife.
Instinctively, Floor pressed click—then lowered the camera, simply staring at the eel, its every scale like mother-of-pearl: glimmering red-and-orange, then the dark blue-gray of the clouds overhead, the sun’s fierce yellow, the cobblestones’ brown, the deep green of the moss in between.
The wind stopped yanking at her coat. Stopped tugging back her hood. Floor caught her muscles relaxing, grateful for the respite.
She followed the eel’s shape in the water despite herself. It dove and rose gracefully, twirling, and it was as though it pulled the waves along with its dance as though it straightened them out with every movement.
Today had to be the first time in days it’d had an audience. A lump grew in Floor’s throat. She raised the camera. Click.
The rain had stopped hurting her cheeks. She rubbed her face with one hand, and her skin felt numb, swollen, probably bright pink. Rain hit the back of her hand, but now the drops were warm. They bounced off harmlessly.
She had to test it. She had to convince herself this was real.
She looked down, ignored the eel, waited for it to break its act and splash angrily the way it always did—
Canal water sprayed her hands.
Her eyes opened. The eel jerked in irritation.
“You … you’re pretty, aren’t you?” she whispered. The words felt stupid. They drifted across the water to the twining shape of the eel under the surface. Under the now smooth, tight surface.
And she clicked her camera, whispered praise, watched the eel swallow her attention whole. Its colors shone bright.
“Floor?”
She looked around to where Pieter stood on the shore, his hair drenched. He wouldn’t believe her. Wouldn’t believe any of this. He jerked a thumb at the car. “Let’s leave now it’s cleared up,” he said. “You ready?”
She looked back at the eel. “I guess,” she said, her words coming forced and soft, barely a whisper, aimed at the eel and not at Pieter. She swallowed and tried again. “I guess I’ll see you tomorrow.”
The eel spun in anticipation.