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.

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.

Withdrawal

Photo by TOMOKO UJI on Unsplash

winter gradually withdraws

stomping off clumps of snow

shaking off frosty icicles 

leaving puddles behind

spring steps up barefooted 

under cotton candy dogwoods

counting emerald clover leaves

calling to the violets and the dandelions

chickadees and cardinals sing back

together they greet the sun