by Wendy Webb
Later that night, she felt someone shaking her awake. “Get up, my dear,” the wife of the fur trader said to her. “Something has happened. It’s your father. You must come. Quickly.”
She led Geneviève down the stairs to the drawing room, where her father lay sprawled on the floor. A man wearing a black suit knelt over him, and when the man looked into Geneviève’s stricken face, he shook his head, his mouth a thin line.
“Papa!” she cried and fell at her father’s side. “Wake up!” But she knew from the coldness of his skin that he was no longer there.
“He collapsed as we were discussing business,” said the fur trader, running one hand through his hair. “At least you can be comforted by the swiftness of his death, my dear. He did not suffer.”
“But—” Geneviève searched each of their faces in turn. “That’s impossible! We traveled so far to get here . . . He just . . .” But her words were sucked down into an eddy of grief.
“Say your goodbyes, child,” the fur trader’s wife told her. “The undertaker and his men are here now to take him away.”
Geneviève watched, both hands over her mouth, as the men brought a pine coffin into the house through the front door. She watched as they placed her father inside and winced as they closed the lid. And she watched as they began to walk out the door, her father’s coffin on their shoulders.
“This is a mistake,” she murmured, following the men out the door, crying, “Papa! Papa!”
But they put him into their wagon, and the horses clopped off down the street. They turned the corner and were gone. She was alone.
“Come inside, girl!” the fur trader’s wife called to her.
But Geneviève ran into the night, blinded by fear and panic and grief. She had no idea where she was going until she found herself at the water’s edge. There, she fell to her knees and wept for her father and for herself. How could she possibly get home now? Would she ever return to her mother or to the village she loved? What would become of her?
The sheer force of Geneviève’s wail awakened a sleeping spirit, the spirit of the lake itself. What was making this incredible racket? He took a quick breath in when he saw it was the most beautiful girl he had ever seen, the same girl that he had watched crossing the lake for the past several days, delighting at the way the sun was glinting on the water. It was the same girl who had smiled so sweetly as she had trailed her hand along the water’s surface while the canoe had skimmed its way toward its destination. The same girl who had marveled aloud at the vastness of the lake, its grandeur, its majesty. Her words of wonder at the lake’s beauty had sounded like a prayer to the spirit of the lake, and he had let them wash over him like a wave. Not many people said them anymore.
In that time and place, the people had begun to forget the old legends and tales told to them by their ancestors, legends of fearsome spirits of the land and the water and the sky. They no longer believed, no longer prayed, and so the spirits turned a blind eye to their troubles, refusing help during times of need and delighting in confounding those who crossed their paths. But this girl, something about her was not like the others. Geneviève’s beauty and the force of her grief softened the lake spirit’s heart. He watched as she wept by the lakeshore and moved closer to listen.
“Papa! Why did you leave me?” she wailed. “How am I to get home? What am I to do? I am all alone in this strange place!”
The spirit of the lake knew how far she had traveled to get there—she couldn’t possibly get home on her own. And the people, he thought with a sneer of disgust, couldn’t be counted on to help her.
And so he waded out of the water, donning the human form that he and all of the spirits kept for occasions when they walked among the people, and said to her, “I will take you home.”
Geneviève looked up into his black eyes, and for some reason, she was not afraid of this stranger. He seemed to radiate a glow, even there in the darkness.
“My canoe is nearby.” He gestured to a long wooden boat. “I have blankets and a heavy coat to keep you warm and plenty of food for the journey. You will arrive safely, this I promise you.”
He extended his hand to her, and she reached up to grasp it. “I don’t know what I would have done if you hadn’t come along.”
He placed his heavy coat on her shoulders, and she drew it around her, cuddling into its warm fur lining. Then she settled into the front of his canoe on a nest of soft blankets he had arranged for her, and they were off, gliding across the still water into the night.
The spirit of the lake had only planned to ferry her safely home, but sometime during the trip, he found himself staring at her long, shining hair instead of at the horizon as she sat in the front of his canoe. He began to make excuses to stop paddling and rest on land for a while so he could have a chance to sit and look into her bright eyes and talk with her face-to-face. He asked her about her home and her family and her upbringing. She spoke so lovingly of her parents that it melted his heart, and the first moment he heard her laugh, he knew he had fallen deeply in love with her.
When they finally reached her home, they were greeted with both celebration and grief. As the village mourned the loss of Geneviève’s father, they also celebrated the stranger who had been so kind to return Geneviève to the people she loved. They offered food and drink and hospitality to the stranger, who accepted it gratefully.
But Geneviève’s mother looked at this man and knew that it was not simple human kindness that had compelled him to save her daughter, and perhaps not human kindness at all. She was closer to the old ways and legends than anyone else in her village—she had heard tales from her elders of the spirits of nature taking human form and walking among the people. There was a slight glow about them, her grandmother had said, a subtle sheen in their eyes that wasn’t quite human. Look carefully enough, her grandmother had said, and you’ll see it.
Geneviève’s mother looked carefully at the stranger and knew what she saw. One evening, when they were sitting by the fire, when nobody else was near enough to listen, she told him she recognized who he was. He did not deny it.
“What do you want of her?” Geneviève’s mother demanded.
“I am in love with Geneviève,” the spirit answered. “I want her to be my wife.”
“But you cannot marry my daughter!” her mother cried. “She cannot live where you live.”
The spirit nodded his head. “That is why I will consent to live where she lives. If she’ll have me.”
Coming upon them at that moment, Geneviève sat down next to him and held out her hands for his to grasp. “If I’ll have you?” She smiled.
“Since your father is not here with us, I was asking your mother for your hand in marriage.” He smiled, his face glowing like the lake’s surface on a sundrenched day. “If you’ll have me.”
Geneviève threw her arms around him and laughed, a sound that filled up his heart like the prayers of the faithful once had. And so it was done. The spirit of the lake took the human name of Jean-Pierre to honor his bride’s father and married Geneviève on the lakeshore one beautiful, bright day. They settled into a small house in the village.
Along with his new name and his new bride, Jean-Pierre took on a new vocation as well, that of a fisherman. It was a way for him to at least visit his beloved home, even if he could no longer dwell there. He would paddle his canoe into a secluded spot, shed his human form, and slip beneath the water’s surface, stretching out to touch each and every one of the billions of water droplets that made up this great lake. Home. And there he would stay for much of the day—fishermen were away from the village from before sunup until sundown, after all—until he would fill his canoe with fish, don his human form again and paddle toward the village and his beloved wife. If there was anything Jean-Pierre adored more than his water realm, it was only Geneviève.
Soon, they welcomed a child into the world, whom they called Violette. Jean-Pierre walked to the lakeshore with the babe in his arms and waded into th
e shallows to introduce his darling girl to his true home.
“She’ll catch her death!” Geneviève’s mother called to him, but he wasn’t so sure about that. This girl was a spirit of the lake just like her father, wasn’t she? When he set the girl into the water and she floated like a fish, he knew he was right. The villagers rejoiced with the young couple as two became three.
But as happy as the Lake was on land, he began to see signs that things weren’t right in the water. Salmon did not spawn, trout were dying. Fishermen came home with empty nets day after day. The shoreline was receding. No waves hit the rocks, not even on the windiest of days. No sparkle shone on the lake’s surface, just a dull sheen. Without its spirit, the lake itself was dying. Jean-Pierre knew what he had to do, although it broke his heart.
The spirit of the lake spent one last night with his beloved Geneviève, telling her everything. At first, she didn’t believe him, but her mother confirmed the truth of what he had said. And the couple held each other until the sun came up, for what they knew would be the last time. Then the Lake, his bride, and their daughter walked down to the shore, where he waded into the shallows and bent down to his daughter. “I will watch over you even though I cannot be with you,” he said. “You are the daughter of the lake. The water will always be your place of refuge.”
“Will I ever see you again?” asked Geneviève, tears welling up in her eyes.
He looked up at the shining full moon. “Luna has promised to lend you her gifts,” he said. “Dream, my love, and you shall find me.”
And with that, he sloughed off his human form, sank down, and vanished into the water.
Geneviève watched as a great fury was stirred up then, enormous waves coming forth on a calm day, crashing violently into the rocks on shore. She could feel her husband’s spirit in the icy spray, and smell his scent on the wind.
Although she sat on the lakeshore every day of her life, that was the last Geneviève saw of her husband until her dying day. She was an old woman then, lying on the bed in the same house they had shared all those years ago. He appeared to her just as he was back then, young, vibrant, glowing. He carried her to the shoreline and sat with her, stroking her hair and telling her how much he loved her, until she took her last breath. Then he gathered her body into his arms and walked into the shallows, the waves lapping gently at the shore.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Great Bay
Addie closed the book and sighed. “What a beautiful and sad folk tale. You said your grandmother wrote it?”
Marie nodded. “Yes, child. But it’s not just a folk tale. Geneviève was your grandmother’s grandmother.”
Addie squinted and curled her nose. “I don’t mean to sound impertinent, but that’s just not true.”
“No, you don’t understand, my girl. I’m not saying this folk tale is true, but as you know, many of these old tales have kernels of truth in them, no?”
Addie nodded. “I guess so.”
“My grand-mère wrote this story to . . . well, to explain certain things about our family to future generations.”
Addie curled her legs underneath her. “I’m not sure I understand. What sort of things?”
“It’s the women in our family, Addie. We have gifts. One is a rather otherworldly relationship with the lake—”
Addie took in a quick breath. She knew all about that. It’s just what had always been. “What’s the other gift?”
“We have the gift of dreaming,” Marie said, stroking her daughter’s hair. “I’ve always known you were happiest in the lake—that was evident from the day you were born—but I didn’t know you had inherited the dream gift, until now. And the gift of sight.”
Addie shook her head. “Why haven’t you ever told me about this?”
“My mother made me vow to keep it a secret and never tell a soul,” Marie said, her voice low. “Not even your father knows. But it’s the truth, and now I’m telling you.”
“Why couldn’t you tell anyone? What’s the harm?”
“The harm is other people, Addie. My grandmother was very gifted in dreaming—she got so good at it that she even interpreted the dreams of others—and she was killed because of it.”
Addie’s eyes grew wide, and a gnarling began to form in the pit of her stomach. She wasn’t so sure she was going to like this story.
“She had the gift from the time she was a young girl,” Marie went on. “When I was just a child, I remember people coming from miles around to see her at her house—this was up in the old country, of course, before my parents and I came to Great Bay.
“They’d knock at the back door, not wanting to be seen coming in the front of the house. I was young then, but even I knew that people thought it was rather blasphemous to put any stock in dreams. They would pretend not to know my grandmother on the street or in town, but nonetheless, they would all come through the back door to sit at her kitchen table from time to time, have a cup of tea, and talk to her about their dreams.”
“What was she like?” Addie wanted to know.
“For one thing, her name was Violette,” Marie said.
Addie smiled. She had not known this before now.
Marie went on. “She told me that she was a great beauty in her youth, with long black hair and deep, dark eyes. She told me that all the boys in town were after her, but she only had eyes for my grandfather, who was a young apprentice for the town’s blacksmith. Her parents didn’t approve; they thought she could do better, but she defied them and married him anyway. She was right, of course. They had eight children and were happily married for thirty years.
“By the time I came along, my grandfather had died and my grandmother was an old woman, but I still thought she was beautiful,” Marie went on. “She was wild and funny and reminded me of the gypsies who would travel through town now and then. She always had something good simmering on the stove, stew or soup or mulled cider. Bread in the oven. I would make my way across town to her house whenever I could because I loved her and I was interested in hearing her stories.”
Marie stopped then, looking backward in time to those idyllic childhood days. Addie sat quietly, knowing that her mother would pick up the story where she left off.
“As I said, she’d had the gift since she was a young girl,” Marie continued. “It was forbidden to talk of such things openly—the church had a tight rein on people then, much tighter than it does now, and things like dream interpretation were considered heresy. You could be hanged, or worse, for something like that. She had to be very careful. But she told me that, when she was a child, she herself had a vivid dream that told her she had the gift. It told her that she would use it to help people decipher what their dreams were trying to tell them.
“She believed that dreams were messages from the spirit world,” Marie whispered. “They were a communication from the beyond, or from another time, another place. She believed that people needed to trust what their dreams were telling them—for their own good.
“First, she would ask them to describe what happened in their dreams,” Marie confided. “Then, she would tell them what it all meant. I truly don’t know how she did it, but much of what she said was true. Or came true.”
“What kinds of things?”
“I don’t remember much of that, because she never let me stay in the room when she was talking with people about this,” Marie said, and it wasn’t quite a lie. Young Marie would scoot out of the room, it was true, but she would listen at the doorway, just as her grandmother knew she would. But now, with Addie staring at her, wide eyed, Marie knew she had to tell the whole tale. It was time. For her daughter’s own good.
“On the last day I ever saw my grandmother, I was visiting when a man came to the door, asking grandmother to interpret a dream he’d had the night before. In the dream, he was walking through his own house and came upon a door he had never seen. He opened the door to find a long table filled with all kinds of food. Fruit, breads, soups, meat, cakes. A feast was
laid out before him. His wife was there with a group of people, laughing and eating and having a wonderful time, until she caught sight of him. Then everything—the wife and the table, the people, the food—all of it vanished, and he was left standing in a stark, empty room, alone.
“My grandmother was not afraid to talk about the bad along with the good. In fact, she would warn people before they sat down at her table that if she saw bad things that had already happened or especially warnings of future events, she would tell them without hesitation. It might not be pleasant, it might not be palatable information, but she would tell them nonetheless. She warned them to be prepared for the worst, and also for the best. Dreams didn’t just predict harsh events in the future, they also foretold marriages, babies, and bountiful crops.
“On this day, as she did every day, she told the man what she knew to be true. His dream was a warning that his wife was not who she appeared to be. She was living a secret life. He objected to this strenuously, telling my grandmother what a wonderful woman he had married. But again she told him, ‘Go home and watch your wife carefully. Do not let on that you suspect her of anything. She will reveal herself to you by accident, and then you will know.’ I watched in the doorway as the man stormed out of the house in a rage.
“It did not end well. I was just a child, and my parents tried to shield me from much of it, but I learned that the man did indeed find his wife in the arms of another man several days later. In a jealous rage, he killed his wife and her lover, then turned that blistering fury on my grandmother. He ran through the streets, calling her a demon who had bewitched his wife with an evil spell. Soon, a crowd of townspeople gathered and followed him to her home.”
Addie’s hands flew to her mouth. “Oh no!”
“Yes, child. I’ll spare you the horrible details, but my grandmother did not make it out alive, because they believed she was a witch. That very day, when my father heard the news of what had transpired in the town, he packed up our family’s possessions and we fled, fearing the angry crowd would turn on us, too. When we ended up in Great Bay, my mother declared there would be no more talk of dreams or spirits or enchantment. We would be a good Christian family. Nothing more.”
