Chapter Nineteen Lacustrine Dreams
Chapter Nineteen
Lacustrine Dreams
I had become a lake, vast and smooth and cool. Snow floated from the leaden sky and lit on my surface, melting and disappearing.
Deep within me, stone figures plummeted down, down, and farther down, vanishing into the crushing depths, sinking into the thick mud far below. Back into the earth that had birthed them.
My senses were slipping away from me, my thoughts turning into lake thoughts, water thoughts. Words and memories replaced by the slow churn of sun and wind and time.
From above me came alarmed honks and quacks as a flock of startled birds flew upward. Horses and dogs and hunters and guards had turned into ducks, geese, and a single bewildered swan I suspected was the king.
Oh. So that’s where the birds came from when Jonquil did it.
As they spiraled into the sky, a goose detached itself from the group and splashed down onto me. It twisted its neck around to tuck its head between its wings and shut its eyes.
Most of what I was dissolved into the lap of waves against the shore.
The snow stopped.
Light came, and darkness, and light again.
Sometimes the goose left for a while, but more often than not it was there, dipping the paddles of its feet into me, grazing on the pondweed near my edges.
Leaves drifted across me. Rain made pockmarks on my skin, and the wind whipped it into white froth. More light and more darkness, more darkness and more light…over and over. I didn’t keep track of how often. I had forgotten what counting was.
The snow returned, softer than the rain. A delicate lace of ice, thin and transparent as an insect’s wing, spread along my shallows. Dense, murky fog crept up to my shoreline from the woods. The goose woke and cocked its head.
“If you think you’re going to evade your marriage this way,” the fog said, “you are sorely mistaken.”
I didn’t answer. I was busy reflecting the gray smear of the moon hidden behind a cloud.
“Turn back into a human at once,” the fog huffed, sending streamers of vapor across my surface. “This has gone on long enough. I didn’t raise you to spend your life as a pond.”
A pond? That stirred a response from me. I’m a lake. A deep one. I had thermal layers. I had aphotic trenches where sunlight never reached.
“Yes, yes, very impressive. Your spell didn’t go wrong. For once.”
Of course it doesn’t matter to you. She did the impossible on a routine basis. By her standards, this was nothing more than a parlor trick.
“I said it was impressive. Why do you always have to be so difficult?”
The goose honked angrily at the fogbank. But I remained silent. A lake doesn’t speak.
“And now you’re sulking. I never know how to deal with you when you’re sulking.”
A lake can only be a lake. Nothing else.
“Ignore me, then. I won’t waste any more time on your stubbornness. Your sisters should be here as soon as the celestial spheres align. Maybe they can talk sense into you.”
My stepmother roiled away. Good riddance.
I relaxed back into the business of ebbing and flowing, my irritation floating away along with what little was left of my identity.
Endless uncounted moments drifted past, and I settled further into lakehood, letting go of the last remnants of my nonlake self. Becoming only water.
Until other voices started prodding at me.
“Melilot? Melilot, are you here? Calla, do you see her anywhere?”
“No, I can’t see anything but water. Why is she dreaming about water?”
“Are there any fish you can ask? Can you still do that in a dream?”
The two of them swam through me, around and around, their words becoming bubbles that floated to the surface and popped, releasing their meaning into empty air.
“Calla…I think she is the water. I think she’s become a lake.”
“Really? Good for her! She always wanted to.”
“No, it’s a problem. She’s nearly all lake. There’s almost no Melilot left. We have to turn her back.”
The words roused something buried deep within me, a thought that refused to be silenced no matter how waterlogged it was. First the fog and now this. They couldn’t ever let me be. They were convinced I was inept. Inadequate. Regardless of what I did.
Once more, like an involuntary reflex, an answer welled up from my depths.
I’m fine.
“Melilot? Is that you?” Calla. I vaguely recalled the name. The name of whatever was pestering me. She swam through the dark water, looking for the source of my voice, not quite understanding there was no source other than the water itself.
“Clearly you’re not fine,” said Jonquil. The other one. “You need our help. There’s a ritual I know that might—”
Leave me alone.
“Look,” she continued, paying me no mind, “just tell us where you were when you deliquesced. We’ll get there as soon as we can.”
You always do this.
“Do what? What are you talking about?”
You think I can’t do anything. Both of you. All of you.
“That’s not fair!” Calla burst out. “You’re the one who’s always belittling yourself. I don’t feel that way, and I’ve certainly never said that!”
Then why are you here?
My sister paused. “Do you not want me to care about you?” She sounded bewildered and hurt. I tried my hardest not to feel guilty about it.
I want…
What did I want?
“Stop being ridiculous,” Jonquil snapped. “You’re in over your head, and you need us.”
I didn’t ask you to come.
My waters went still. The goose, puzzled by the sudden change, flapped its wings in agitation.
You should go.
My sisters swam through me, yelling to get my attention. Their voices grew louder, their motion more frenzied.
GO.
I washed them from my dreams. Out of the lake. Out of myself. They drifted through my surface, into the air, vanishing in a spray of droplets.
And I woke up.