the woman across the water wore the shape of love

He never could tell if her hair was white or just a flaxen blond, if her eyes were blue or brown, if her face was pretty. He never knew how old she was or even if she was very old indeed; her movements did suggest a younger woman, sure and strong and not yet stiffened by time. But he knew he was in love with her, this woman across the lake.

Every morning she emerged from her cottage and walked the length of the pier. Or rather she glided, her bare feet just touching the wooden slats, her dressing gown fluttering behind her like grey wings, her slim limbs light and full of all the natural grace of morning.

She stood at the water’s edge for hours, and sometimes he swore she stood there for days. Sometimes she seemed to slip into the lake like fog, and sink with the swell of the moon. Sometimes he thought he heard a thin high sound, halfway between song and wail, pour out of her throat on the coldest and darkest nights.

He wondered if she was a ghost, a hallucination, a fairy who’d come through a split in the spell between worlds. Or another Circe, trying to ensnare him even across this expanse of water. His cabin was small and his days were even smaller. It would not be hard, he sometimes thought, to ensnare me. I think I would become a boar for her. I think I would bear anything to see her close and real and rare.

In his best moments he thought he might have written her, so well that she flew from the page to existence. Since he had given her nothing to do, she was able to do nothing, and sometimes he regretted that on her behalf. He wondered if he’d been careless with description, let it get away from him. Better to proceed with action. Better to let his future characters live rather than be.

He envied other men, living in cities and in love with women they could touch. He envied people who lived in brick buildings surrounded by paved streets and by other brick buildings. He envied animals the ability to root in the earth around them. He seemed able only to stare and stare at the pines, the black rock, the wild lake, and her. Pale hair glowing against her drab gown. Straight and slim as a queen. The water stirring at her feet, birds circling above, the trees breeze-bent and kneeling before her. Could he steal her cloak, hide it like a skin? Could she be trapped by her own enchantment? Was she a white witch, sending water magic across his lake; was she weaving tangled messages on the waves that he couldn’t undo?

The man knew that other men had died for love. He read about them in books. He wondered if he might die, too, of this tight white burn in his heart for her. He rather hoped so, after he’d woken from a dream of swimming to her dock, emerging from the water like his own spirit, of waiting on the dock for her to swallow him whole. He wondered if her eyes were kind. He wondered if she would dissolve like pale ink in a pool if he swam too close. So he never swam close, never approached her cabin, never knew her age or her face or her name or even if she was really there at all—or if he loved but a trick of water and light, a flash of morning sun staining the cornea in the shape of a slim and lovely thing like a woman.