The Gist of a Lake

Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash

“And the lake must be spectacular!” the warlock in front of me waved his arms for emphasis.

Professionally, I did not scream. I really wanted to though. This was the tenth time he had used the word ‘spectacular’ as a must, while either only having a vague idea of what the university grounds should look like or being over specific about plants that wouldn’t work. No, we weren’t going to be putting in a man-eating pitcher plant next to the child-development building, not even with a railing, and especially not with a dragon guarding it.

“Right, the lake. How big is it?”

He gestured again, “It’s about two loch ness monsters long and half a monster wide.”

I made a note to find a conversion chart and didn’t bother asking anymore questions. He would either explain the conversion in long winded magnanimity or skip the answer in favor of astonished snobbery. Either way it would be faster to look it up at home. “Star lilies are impressive. They have large eye-catching flowers for the day time and at night when they light up they’ll look like floating votives.”

“No, no! We can’t have any water lilies.”

I held in a sigh. It had seemed like such a fantastic networking triumph when the sorceress had recommended me to her alma mater. Not only was it prestigious to be doing work for Vivienne University, but I also got to visit the UK. It should have been the chance of a life time. Now I was wishing she hadn’t bothered. “What’s wrong with water lilies?”

“Well, Ms. Linden, you can’t put them where there’s no water.”

I blinked. I must have misheard him, “But we’re talking about a lake, right?”

The warlock smiled indulgently and patted my shoulder, “There are lakes and whole oceans on the moon that don’t have a drop of water. It’s very much the same thing here.”

This was such an absurd explanation that I couldn’t even question it. So I foraged ahead, not sure what I was doing. “How about some bachelor buttons… and maybe some monkshood… we could recreate the look of a lake in flowers! A bunch of blue flowers. Blue roses would be absolutely stunning!” As I warmed to my theme I actually started getting excited. I had fallen in love with blue roses just the summer before when I was doing work for the sorceress and was itching to use them again. But the warlock waved me off. “We can’t get in the way of the archeologists. It wouldn’t do to have something put down roots only to dig it up.”

I tried to wrap my head around the instability of this preposterous idea. “And are you sure you want a garden in the… lake, at all?”

“Of course there should be a garden! It’s the most important site on campus! Two years ago a student was doing some recreational diving and unearthed Excalibur at the bottom of the lake. We had to drain the lake to excavate the site properly. It’s the most spectacular discovery in history! We must show proper respect to it.”

“I see,” I said. “I haven’t heard about any of that.”

“Naturally, if we’d announced it right away, we’d be crawling with treasure hunters and professors from other universities would want a go at it. So it’s been kept quiet until now. But soon, we’ll be presenting our finds to the world. So you see, everything must look spectacular!” He positively beamed at me, as if he had just handed over Excalibur itself, and not an impossible task worthy of the fairy queen.

I chewed my lip in thought. A lake without water, a garden without roots, a spectacular display without stability. Was it a demand like this that had caused Merlin to create Stonehenge? Catching hold of the faint hope this thought carried, I made one last offer, “How about a rock garden?”

For more of Ms. Linden's garden adventures see Avalon Gardens.