The Missing Lake

Photo by Dylan Freedom on Unsplash

I looked over the rock garden with a frown. I’d spent weeks designing and trying to create a lake-like effect with bare stone. It was supposed to accentuate the archeological site in the drained lake. In a few weeks, the University would be unveiling it to the world as the place where Excalibur had been found. So far only the University professors and a few select scholars knew about the find and had been studying it in privacy. Of course everyone knew that something was going on, but the University had been telling everyone it was just looking for stuff about the school’s origins, which I guess was technically true. The Lady of the Lake had given Arthur and taken the sword back, and the University was named after her… If she even existed. From what I’d heard from the excited professors, it was looking more likely that a small city with an advanced blacksmith had been established here.

Even after all my work, the rock garden still was unsatisfactory. It was one of the most challenging projects I’d ever taken on. Vivienne University had been maddening insistent that the “garden” be movable and weren’t interested in anything with roots. It had taken me weeks of arguing to persuade them that moss tucked into the rock cervices and a small water feature would add sufficient interest to be worthwhile. With so many limitations, the garden wasn’t a masterpiece, but it had turned out better than I’d hoped, even if I wasn’t completely happy with it.

Walking along the gravel path towards the dig, I bent down to straighten a stone with gold lines running through it, when I touched it felt warm. Standing up to get a better look at it, I suddenly realized I wasn’t in England anymore. Gone were the rocks and moss I had slaved over. Instead, I was standing on some kind of a balcony, overlooking a flooded city. The gold lines in the rock I was holding were glowing. Alarm raced through me. Apparently I’d ended up in fairyland. How could I get out again? Turning around, I discovered there was a woman on the balcony with me.

I expected her to be the most beautiful woman in the world, but she wasn’t. Really, she was rather ordinary, except for the fact that she wasn’t. She was standing still and looked like someone had taken a picture right as she’d moved, so her edges were blurred. Not enough to be noticeable at a first glance, but enough that it was there and made her hard to look at. When she finally advanced towards me, everything about her shifted as if she wasn’t there and then she was. I was expecting a demand to know what I was doing in her domain, or a mysterious welcome into a world I couldn’t understand and braced myself for it.

“Where is my lake?” she yelled. “Where’s Arthur’s heir? I sent the brat the sword and has anyone come to ask my advice on anything? No! And now my lake is missing!” The water in the flooded city rose up with each crescendo of her voice, until it was a towering wave above us.

“I’m sorry,” I said trying to keep my voice from trembling. “I’m just the gardner and I’m not even from the U.K. Maybe you should talk to someone else.”

She glared at me, “How am I supposed to travel through the worlds if my lake is gone?”

“I got here. So there must be a way -”

She through her arms up in the air and the spray from the water drenched us. “Where’s the poetry in picking up a rock? I need a lake to rise from the waters as if I were a living wave. How can I be the Lady of the Lake if there’s no lake?”

Well that confirmed who she was. The University would have a field day if they knew the actual Lady of the Lake existed. What would that mean about the village with the blacksmith they had discovered? Her mere presence rewrote history. The history that we knew about anyways. “Perhaps you could talk to the University about the lake,” I suggested tentatively. “If you could answer some of their questions -”

She suddenly locked eyes with me and I couldn’t finish. Her eyes were strange - probably green, but with an eerie yellow glow. “Questions? I have answers for every question you mortals could ask.” She sounded disdainful, but the waters around us calmed.

“I’m sure they have tons of questions only you could answer,” I said helpfully. “And if you talk to them, maybe they’d be willing to put your lake back. If you like, I could take you to them.” I wasn’t sure about that last part. The University was terribly excited about the dig, and there was still more to unearth. But I was willing to say anything to get out.

Her strange eyes flashed and with a wave of her hand we were back on the University grounds. I promptly dropped the rock. The gold lines vanished as it hit the ground. Careful to avoid it, I picked my way across the path to the University. “Come this way,” I called over my shoulder, without stopping to see if she was coming. As I tried not to bolt across my rock lake I marveled that it was the most beautiful thing that I had ever seen and for the first time I was glad there was no water.

For more garden adventures see Avalon Gardens and The Gist of a Lake.