Holly got up and started pacing the patio. Her feelings were all in a jumble. Excitement, because Amanda’s story confirmed Ohlan’s existence. Frustration, because she couldn’t show it to Mad as proof; it was phrased like a legend, though she suspected Amanda had just made it up.
There was no village maiden, and no water jar. Amanda was really talking about herself. Holly was sure of it.
And that made her jealous.
She glared at the book, lying on the chair where she’d left it. Stupid to think she was the only one who’d ever discovered Ohlan. He had told her himself there were others. She’d asked if he’d been in love and he’d said he had.
She closed her eyes. This was crazy. She shouldn’t let it get to her like this. She’d kind of fallen for Ohlan.
OK, not kind of. She’d fallen for him, hard.
But he wasn’t human. He couldn’t leave the spring. What kind of a relationship could he offer her, really?
Sighing, she returned to her chair and picked up the book. She had to read more; had to find out the rest about Ohlan and Amanda, though she wasn’t sure she really wanted to know.
She sat down and found the page she’d been on. There wasn’t a lot more to the “story” of the village maid and the water spirit. He proclaimed his love for her, she fell into his arms. End of chapter.
The next chapter was about the secret defense project. Holly flipped forward through the rest of the book, then checked the index at the end. There was nothing more about Enchantment Spring.
Frustrated, she got up and went into the townhouse. The TV was still on; Mad and Shelly were watching. Holly traded the book for her laptop and went back to the patio. The wireless connection reached out there, so she brought up a browser and searched on Amanda’s name. She wanted to find out more about the writer’s relationship with Ohlan.
If she was lucky, she’d find an email address for Amanda. Even if she could just get Amanda to confirm that she’d met Ohlan, she could show that to Madison. Then Mad would have to admit she wasn’t nuts.
The search brought up mostly library catalog entries for the memoir. Apparently it was the only book Amanda had written. Holly skimmed the search results, and on the second page she found a link to a newspaper item. She followed it and found herself reading an obituary.
Amanda had died of cancer in 1992. She’d been seventy-nine.
Well, crap. So much for confirmation.
Holly closed her laptop and sat thinking. So, OK—Amanda wasn’t available to confirm Ohlan’s existence. Maybe she didn’t need to prove he existed. What was more important was finding out how to help him regain his strength, and there was someone nearby who might have an answer for that.
She stood up and set her computer down on her chair, then stepped to the glass door and looked in. Through a gap in the blinds she could see Madison lying on the sofa, apparently absorbed in the TV show.
Holly went to the back gate, opened it, slipped through, and quietly closed it again. She’d have to make this quick.
There were lights along the path around the lake, but the grass between was unilluminated. Holly didn’t know the ground well enough to run in the dark, and she didn’t want to trip over a sprinkler or something, so she walked fast until she got to the lakeside path. Then she ran, heading for the cluster of trees and the dock where she’d seen Pam’s mermaid.
She slowed when she reached the dock, out of breath from the run. The trees blocked most of the light from the nearest lamppost, casting restless dappled shadows onto the dock. Holly hadn’t noticed the breeze before, but now she did. A chill wind blowing down out of the mountains.
Glad that she’d put on her sweater, she stepped onto the dock and walked out to the end. No moon tonight; the water was pitch black, with only occasional small glints from the lamps dancing on its surface. Holly looked down at it anyway, thinking about seeing into the lake.
“I’d like to talk to you,” she said. “I have a question.”
She waited, but heard only the water lapping at the pylons that supported the dock. A distant burst of laughter made her look up, but it was from onshore; some kids messing around on the other side of the lake. Holly turned her attention back to the water.
“I know you’re there. I have a friend like you. He’s the guardian of a spring near where I live.”
She knelt down, hoping that getting closer to the water would help. She remembered that when she’d first seen Ohlan, it had been after she touched the water in the spring.
She stretched out her arm, but the dock was too high for her reach the surface of the lake. She leaned forward as far as she dared. A gust of wind pushed at her, and she felt herself losing her balance.
Twisting sideways, she grabbed at the dock and managed to fall on her side on the wood, just short of the edge. At the same time she heard a splash.
Crap, had she dropped something? Breathing fast, she rolled over, sat up, and peered at the water.
Someone was there.
Holly could see her perfectly despite the darkness. Head and shoulders above the water, she looked pearly, not quite glowing. A round face, with large, slightly slanted eyes. The face Holly had seen earlier that day. A small shiver went through her.
“Hi,” she said.
The water spirit watched her, waiting, eyes wary. Holly shifted to a more comfortable position.
“My friend is weak, and we don’t know why. He can’t go very far from his spring. Do you know what could cause that?”
“The spring could be failing,” said the spirit. Her voice sounded like the wind in the rushes nearby.
“Failing?” Holly frowned.
Dying, she meant. Ohlan dying?
“Could there be some other reason? Some kind of magical attack?”
The spirit laughed, a whispering sound. “You humans are obsessed with magic. You think it is an object, a tool to be picked up and used. The only magic is the life that flows through everything.”
“But why would the spring fail?”
“Life ebbs as well as flows, child.”
And Ohlan’s life was ending? No. She wouldn’t accept that.
“Isn’t there anything I can do?”
The spirit tilted her head, gazing at Holly with an expression of pity, a hint of a smile. It made Holly angry.
“Hey, lookie here!”
Holly jumped, then turned her head. The kids who’d been goofing around across the lake had come to the dock. There were five of them, boys her age or a little younger, in ripped up baggy jeans and muscle shirts. The one in front had black hair and a tattoo on his bare shoulder. He grinned.
“Whatcha doin’ out here, baby? Fishing?”
Holly looked back at the water, but the spirit was gone. She scrambled to her feet, heart pounding.
She could jump in the lake, but she probably couldn’t get away that way. They could run around the shore faster than she could swim. Would they give up and go away, or chase for the fun of catching her?
The black-haired guy set a foot on the dock. The others closed in behind him. Holly shoved her hand in her pocket, but she hadn’t brought her cell phone.
“Is there a problem here?” said a deep voice.
Holly glanced past the boys and saw a policeman. A nice, big, burly policeman with a nice, big gun on one hip and a nightstick on the other. Relief flooded her.
The boys froze in their tracks; the black-haired one scowled. The policeman looked from them to Holly.
“You with them?”
“No, sir. I’ve never seen them before.”
“Move along then, boys.”
The black-haired guy flashed Holly a look of pure hate, then backed off. He put on a smile for the cop, pushing one of his buddies into another, jostling and laughing. The cop stood watching while they ambled away, then looked at Holly.
“Shall I walk you home?”
Holly swallowed. “Yes, please. And thanks. Thanks—so much.”
“You might not want to come here alone again.”
“Yeah.”
She hurried off the dock to join him. Glanced back toward the lake, but didn’t see anything. Disappointed, she turned toward Madison’s place.
The cop walked beside her, unhurried. Holly expected a lecture, but he didn’t say anything more. She glanced at him a couple of times, thinking he looked vaguely familiar but unable to place him. He went with her up the hill to the townhouse, and Holly stopped at the gate.
“Thanks again.”
“You’re welcome. I’m sorry I couldn’t help about your friend.”
“What?”
Before her eyes, the cop wavered, then shrank and melted, uniform and gun vanishing as he morphed into the water spirit from the lake, draped in something filmy and green that stirred with the breeze. Holly gasped.
The spirit smiled. “All things come and go. The key is to enjoy them while they are here.”
She began to shrink again, brightening at the same time with a glow that had nothing to do with the porch light. In the space of a breath she became a small point of green-gold light that hovered in the air before Holly, then danced in a spiral. A firefly.
“Thank you,” Holly whispered as the light flew away toward the lake.
She watched until it was gone, then opened the gate and went in. Her computer sat on the chair where she’d left it. Slowly she picked it up and went inside.
The TV was still on. She didn’t want to be distracted by it; so trite, so insignificant compared to the magic she’d just seen. She put away her computer and headed for the bathroom to take a shower. With water pouring over her, she thought about the lake spirit and about Ohlan.
They must both be really old. Ohlan had come to life with his spring, and the lake had to have been here for a long time.
“All things come and go,” the spirit had said. She’d probably seen a lot of humans come and go.
And how wonderful that she watched out for them. Holly felt a rush of gratitude for the way the spirit had saved her from a nasty situation. How often did she do that sort of thing? She must care a lot, to watch over silly humans that way, and all the other creatures that came to the lake or lived in it. All of them coming and going, while the spirit remained the same.
There must be spirits like that in every body of water on the planet. How many times had they rescued humans or animals? They couldn’t do it every time—there were accidents, deaths. How many more would there be without the guardian spirits?
Holly felt a tingle of excitement. The world was far more magical than most people realized. How amazing, and how wonderful! She wanted to share it, and was frustrated that she couldn’t.
Her thoughts turned to Ohlan. He wasn’t really dying. She just couldn’t bear to admit the possibility. Tears sprang up at the thought of it, and here in the privacy of the shower she let them be washed from her.
“Enjoy them while they are here,” the spirit had said.
Whatever happened, Holly was determined to do exactly that. She would enjoy Ohlan, preferably for the rest of her life, but if that wasn’t possible, then as long as she could.
Had Amanda done that? She thought over Amanda’s story as she dried off, trying to glean any hints of the truth that Amanda had veiled with the fairy tale.
She pulled on the oversized t-shirt she used as a nightshirt and went back to the living room to get her computer. The dinette table had been cleared except for the pansies. Holly sat there and opened her laptop, then searched on Amanda again and brought up the obituary. This time she read the whole thing.
Amanda hadn’t died in Las Palomas. She’d stayed after the war, continuing to work for the government, but in the sixties she had married and moved away to Minnesota to raise a family. A son and a daughter had survived her.
Holly surfed on their names and found an obituary for the daughter, just a couple of years ago. The son, Thomas Benton, was apparently still alive, working as a high school sports instructor.
Holly searched in vain for an email address for him. The school he worked at was cagey with contact information for their instructors, and Thomas didn’t seem to have a blog. She found his name in school newsletters, but nowhere else. She looked up the school’s mailing address and saved it on her computer. If nothing else, she could send him a letter in care of the school.
And what would she ask him? Hi, did your mother ever tell you about the water spirit she was in love with?
Holly sighed. There had to be a way to ask that wouldn’t make her sound crazy. She was too tired to think about it now, though.
She shut down her computer and carried it to the living room. The news was just ending, and Madison sat up on the sofa, stretching.
“Ready to crash?”
“Just about,” Holly said.
“Well, I warmed up the sofa for you.”
Holly watched her sister grab her fanny pack and go out the front door. She bit her lip as she opened the sofa into her bed.
Sheila yawned, standing up with the remote in her hand. “That’s it for me, too. Should I leave it on?”
Holly shook her head, and Sheila turned off the TV, leaving the remote on the coffee table. “’Night, Holly.”
“G’night.”
Holly watched Sheila go upstairs, got herself a glass of water, and crawled into bed, thinking over the day. She seemed to have ended up with more questions than when she’d started. She lay drowsing, thinking about the lake spirit and wishing she’d asked her name. The last thing she noticed before she fell asleep was the quiet opening and closing of the front door, and a whiff of cigarette smoke.