Can I have some hot chocolate?
Let me hang these last chimes, she said, moving the stool and climbing fearlessly on top of it. She was so old! If she fell she would probably die!
Be careful, Kendra said.
Lena waved a dismissive hand. The day I'm too old to climb on a stool will be the day I throw myself off the roof.
She hung the final chime. We had to take these down for you kids. Might have made you suspicious to see hummingbirds playing music.
Kendra followed Lena back into the house. Years ago, there used to be a church within earshot that would play melodies on the bells, Lena said. It was so funny to watch the fairies imitate the music. They still play those old songs sometimes.
Lena opened the refrigerator, removing an old-fashioned milk bottle. Kendra sat at the table. Lena poured some milk into a pot on the stove and began adding ingredients.
Kendra noticed that she was not just scooping in chocolate powder-she was stirring in contents from multiple containers.
Grandpa said to ask you about the story of the guy who built the boathouse, Kendra said.
Lena paused in her stirring. Did he? I suppose I am more familiar with that story than most. She resumed stirring.
What did he tell you?
He said the guy had an obsession with naiads. What's a naiad, anyhow?
A water nymph. What else did he say?
Just that you know the story.
The man was named Patton Burgess, said Lena. He became caretaker of this property in 1878, inheriting the position from his maternal grandfather. He was a young man at the time, quite good-looking, wore a moustache - - there are pictures upstairs. The pond was his favorite place on the property.
Mine too.
He would go and gaze at the naiads for hours. They would try to tease him down to the water's edge, as was their custom, in order to drown him. He would draw near, sometimes even pretending he meant to jump in, but always stayed tantalizingly out of reach.
Lena sampled the hot chocolate and stirred some more.
Unlike most of the visitors, who seemed to regard the naiads as interchangeable, he paid special attention to a particular nymph, asking for her by name. He began to pay little heed to the other naiads. On the days when his favorite would not show herself, he left early.
Lena poured the milk from the pot into a pair of mugs.
He became fixated on her. When he built the boathouse, the nymphs wondered what he could be doing. He constructed a broad, sturdy rowboat so he could go out on the water and be closer to the object of his fascination. Lena brought the mugs to the table and sat down. The naiads tried to upset his craft every time he set forth, but it was too cleverly constructed. They succeeded only in pushing it around the pond.
Kendra took a sip. The hot chocolate was perfection.
Barely cool enough to sip comfortably.
Patton began trying to coax his favorite naiad to leave the water, to come walk with him on the land. She responded by urging him to join her in the pond, for to leave the water would mean to enter mortality. The tug-of-war went on for more than three years. He would serenade her on his violin, and read her poetry, and make her promises about the joys their life together would hold. He showed such sincerity, and such perseverance, that on occasion she would gaze into his kind eyes and falter.
Lena sipped the hot chocolate. One day in March, Patton got careless. He leaned too close to the gunwale, and a naiad caught hold of his sleeve as he conversed with his favorite. A strong man, he resisted her, but the struggle pulled him to one side of the boat, upsetting his typical equilibrium. A pair of naiads heaved upward on the other side and it capsized.
He died? Kendra was horrified.
He would have died, yes. The naiads had their prize.
In their domain he was no match for them. Giddy with the long-awaited victory, they rushed him toward the bottom of the pond to add him to their collection of mortal victims.
But it was more than his favorite could bear. She had grown fond of Patton, seduced by his diligent attention, and, unlike the others, she did not consider his death an amusement. She fought off her sisters and returned him to the shore. That was the day I left the pond.
Kendra spewed hot chocolate across the table. You're the naiad?
I was, once.
You became mortal?
Lena absently blotted up the hot chocolate Kendra had sprayed, using a small towel. If I could go back, I would make the same decision every time. We had a joyful life.
Patton managed Fablehaven for fifty-one years before passing it off to a nephew. He lived twelve years after that - - died at ninety-one. His mind was sharp to the end. Helps to have a young wife.
How are you still alive?
I became subject to the laws of mortality, but they have taken effect gradually. As I sat by his deathbed, I looked perhaps twenty years older than I had on the day when I carried him from the water. I felt guilty about looking so young as his frail body was shutting down. I wanted to be old like him. Of course, now that my age is finally catching up with me, I don't care for it much.
Kendra sipped more of her hot chocolate. She was so enthralled that she barely tasted it. What did you do after he passed away?
I took advantage of my mortality. I had paid a steep price for it, so I traveled the world to see what it had to offer. Europe, the Middle East, India, Japan, South America, Africa, Australia, the Pacific Islands. I had many adventures. I set some swimming records in Britain, and could have set even more except I was holding back-no sense raising a lot of questions. I worked as a painter, a chef, a geisha, a trapeze artist, a nurse. Many men pursued me, but I never loved again. Eventually, there was a sameness to the traveling, so I returned home, to the place my heart never left.
Do you ever go back to the pond?
Only in memory. It would be unwise. They despise me there, all the more intensely because of their secret envy.
How they would laugh at my appearance! They have not aged a day. But I have experienced many things that they will never know. Some painful, some wonderful.
Kendra finished the last of her hot chocolate and wiped her lips. What was it like being a naiad?
Lena gazed out the window. Hard to say. I ask myself the same question. It wasn't just my body that became mortal; my mind transformed as well. I think I prefer this life, but it might be because I have changed fundamentally.
Mortality is a totally different state of being. You become more aware of time. I was absolutely content as a naiad. I lived in an unchanging state for what must have been many millennia, never thinking of the future or the past, always looking for amusement, always finding it. Almost no self-awareness. It feels like a blur now. No, like a blink. A single moment that lasted thousands of years.