Julian had been right. The Jumble’s newfound notoriety might have scared off some people—and proved interesting to others, like the man who wanted to book a cabin in the hopes an Elder would eat his wife and save him the cost of a divorce. (I declined to take his reservation.) On moving day, my office was returned to working order first, and they—meaning all the big scary males I knew, plus Aggie—parked me behind the desk with the pad of paper containing all the names and phone numbers Aggie had carefully written down from the humans who wanted to rent a cabin. Between returning calls and answering new calls and making notes so that I could ask Fred and Larry at the bait-and-tackle shop which weeks would be ideal for fishing in the lake—and asking Conan when the trout returned to the creek, information I assumed he knew because he’d chosen to live in one of the creekside cabins specifically to get his paws on the fish—I had booked all the available cabins into late fall, when I stopped booking humans into the more primitive cabins, thinking of how I would feel if I had to put on boots and a winter coat in order to go out and pee. I had a waiting list for the two suites in the main house and the two renovated lakeside cabins. The three universities in the Finger Lakes area solved their inability to rent cabins in The Jumble or rent rooms at Ineke’s boardinghouse by renting three of the Mill Creek Cabins from Silence Lodge on a year’s lease, negotiating with Ilya Sanguinati to allow their people to explore The Jumble as part of the lease agreement.
I remained the Reader and, with Julian’s assistance, continued to do a story hour three evenings a week. Gershwin Jones brought over a piano and a couple of drums, and we had a music night a couple of evenings a month. Hector and Horace acquired some ponies and ran a pony camp for visiting children—a couple of hours of learning how to ride combined with trail rides where the kids would see a Hawk or a Coyote up close. For people who didn’t want to walk the trails in The Jumble for one reason or another, they could take a donkey-cart tour and attempt conversation with whichever terra indigene was driving the cart and who couldn’t understand what the humans were saying half the time.
For reasons he wouldn’t explain, Ilya Sanguinati purchased a pool table and installed it in one of the undesignated ground-floor rooms—and asked Julian Farrow to provide the information for proper decorations to make it look like a pool hall. A few women grumbled about their men disappearing into the pool room in the evenings instead of spending time with them, but I ignored the grumbles when I noticed that our new chief of police stopped by a couple of evenings a week to shoot pool. Sometimes he wanted solitude and played alone. Sometimes he played with Julian or even Ilya, who was learning the game. It felt strange to see Wayne—because when he was dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, he was Wayne, not Chief Grimshaw—looking relaxed, but it also felt good. And it felt good to spend time with Julian, to take walks and talk—and to go swimming once my stitches and cast were removed.
It was toward the end of summer when a young Intuit photographer came to The Jumble—a friend of a friend of Julian’s. Because of that connection, and because this was his chance to build a portfolio of nature shots, I introduced the young man to Conan and Cougar, who permitted him to take photographs of them in both their forms—something they hadn’t done for other people who had been busy snapping pictures. He took pictures of Aggie, Jozi, and Eddie as Crows and in the black-and-white outfits they had selected when I hired them to help me take care of all the guests. It worked out well. Smart guests gave them a shiny, inexpensive trinket. In return, you could count on those sharp Crow eyes finding a guest’s missing earring whether it was under the bed, under a dresser, or in some other Crow’s stash of shinies.
That day the young photographer wanted to photograph the lake, and he asked me to go into the water. I demurred. I protested. I whined. But he was a pleasant young man, and maybe, being an Intuit, he had a feeling I needed to be in the water that day.
I waded in, up to my waist. And she rose out of the water right in front of me.
I looked at the photographer, who was staring at her and not quite daring to raise his camera and take a shot.
“He would like to take your picture,” I said. “Is that all right?”
“Our picture,” she said.
“I don’t like having my picture taken.” You couldn’t explain self-esteem and body image issues to an Elemental.
“Our picture. Then I will allow him to take one of me.”
“Why with me?”
“So that you remember why it was possible for him to take the other.”
He stood on the beach, with the water lapping at his feet, and took several shots of the two of us facing each other as if conversing. Then I moved away, and she turned to face him.
As a thank-you, he framed a copy of the photograph of me and the Lady of the Lake. He also gave me a framed copy of the photograph of her.
He won an award for that photograph. It appeared on the cover of Nature! and was part of a featured article full of photographs he took during his stay at The Jumble.
Those framed photographs hang on the wall in my bedroom. I look at both of them every day. I still wince when I look at the short, plump woman with unruly brown hair. Then I whisper, “You made the other one possible. Remember that.”
The other one. In the photograph of the two of us, she is this wonder, with sunlight turning water droplets into diamonds falling all around her. But in the other one, the one where she looks directly at the camera . . .
She is power. She is lethal. She is the Lady of the Lake. If the Elders who live in the lake were the inspiration for stories of mermaids—as long as you didn’t get a good look at them—then she is the siren song that lures sailors into dangerous water and takes them down to a dark, cold grave. Her eyes hint of temptation, but it’s that little bit of something behind her smile that warns you of what can happen if you give in to that temptation, if you’re not careful. She can be friendly, but she will never be your friend. And she is the little sister to the Elementals who live in the Great Lakes and in the seas and in the oceans. Challenge them at your peril.
I don’t forget, but I do swim most days while the water is warm enough. Sometimes Julian joins me for an early swim before he drives to Sproing and opens the bookstore. Some days I swim alone.
Not really alone. She hasn’t appeared to any of the guests since that photograph was taken, but when I’m on my own I can sense her nearby, sometimes see a face made from shadows in the water. And sometimes a dorsal fin will rise beside me, and the water’s surface will be broken by the playful splash of an Elder’s tail.