Daughters of the Lake(3)

Ruby stood knocking at Marie’s front door. Why wasn’t she answering? Lord, thought Ruby, she might be having that baby right now. Ruby tried the door and, finding it open, walked inside.

“Marie!” she called, but there was no reply. Where is she? Where are those damned dogs? Ruby began searching the house, becoming more and more frantic with every empty room. Something was not right. When Ruby found the kitchen door open to the backyard, she flew through it, heedless of the blinding fog. Ruby knew her way from this kitchen down to the lakeshore and could walk it blindly, if necessary. It was necessary now.

Ruby hurried down the path, stumbling on tree roots and stones—Why didn’t Marcus properly clear this path, the lazy sod—until she reached the lakeshore. She could see only a few inches in front of her. Which way to go? She turned to the left and began running down the shoreline, calling her friend’s name.

It wasn’t long before Marie floated out of the fog, almost at Ruby’s feet. She was lying in the shallow water, unconscious or asleep or dead, her dress entangled around her legs. There was no sign of the baby.

Ruby’s shrieks brought everyone in earshot running. Her husband, Thomas, first; then came Otto and Betsy Lund. By the time the men had carried Marie back up to the house, allowed Ruby to get her into a dry nightgown, and laid her on the bed, she had awakened from whatever it was that had entranced her.

“Where have you taken her?” Marie cried in her delirium. “Where is my baby?”

Nobody asked why she had gone to the lakeshore. Nobody said anything at all other than, “You rest now, Marie,” and, “You’ve been through quite an ordeal,” and, “There, there, now.”

But words such as these cannot comfort a grieving mother. Marie’s eyes darted this way and that as she tried to rise from her bed again and again. “My baby,” she kept repeating. Ruby took her husband by the arm and ushered him outside.

“Look in the backyard, in the lake, anywhere you can,” she whispered. “That baby’s out there somewhere. Don’t let the wolves get it.” It needs a good Christian burial, she thought, but didn’t voice it aloud. Where is that doctor? He’ll have something to give Marie to quiet her cries.



Young Jess Stewart didn’t tell his parents, or anyone else, that something had called him down to the lakeshore that morning as clearly as if it had spoken his name.

He was lying under his bed, staging a battle with the wooden soldiers he had received from his uncle for his fifth birthday, when he heard a noise he had never heard before. He poked his head out from behind the blanket to listen. It sounded like singing, but there were no words. And no tune, really, not like the other songs Jess knew. This was something else. Jess thought it was the most beautiful music he had ever heard. He laid his head on the cool floor, closed his eyes, and let the music wash over him.

The sound floated into and out of his ears, creating a tapestry of thoughts inside his head. He imagined being out on the lake in a rowboat with a beautiful woman. She wasn’t his mother, but she had long hair like his mother’s, and she looked so kind and loving that he wanted nothing more than to crawl into her lap and go to sleep, the way he had when he was a baby. But he was a big boy now, beyond such babyish things. He opened his eyes, left the soldiers in the middle of their battle, and crept to the window. Maybe he could see something. He just had to know what was making this music.

But he didn’t see anything out of the ordinary. Just the fog. He couldn’t quite tell where the singing was coming from, but it sounded to Jess as though it was somewhere by the lake. What was it? Who was it?

He crept to the back door, put on his jacket, and stole down the hill toward the lake. He didn’t tell his mother where he was going. He knew she wouldn’t let him outside in the fog, and he had some serious investigating to do out there. As he got closer to the lake, Jess found that the fog wasn’t so heavy as it was by the house. He could see a few feet in front of him, but only in the direction of the water.

Jess stood and stared awhile, trying to see something, anything. Just then, a dark figure popped its head out of the water. It looked a bit like a beaver or an otter, but much larger. Did it have horns? Jess wasn’t certain. He squinted and looked closer. Yes, he thought it might. Were those humps or spikes on its back? Jess was enthralled. He had never seen anything like it. Was this a sea monster?

Whatever it was, it was staring in his direction, beckoning him closer. He inched toward it, wanting a better look. They locked eyes. It was a defining moment in the life of this young boy, something he’d never forget. It was a moment that, when he was much, much older, he would often talk about with friends over too many drinks in the local tavern, only to be the subject of their good-natured jokes and mocking. But all their ribbing couldn’t convince Jess he was the fool. He knew what he had seen that day. Throughout his youth, he would sit there by the lake often, calling to this strange creature. But it never returned. The memory of it haunted him all his life, its strange song ringing in his ears in the dead of night, when he’d awaken from a dream.

As a young man, Jess would pore through books about the animals of this region, looking for information about the kinds of creatures that inhabited these shores. But in all those stories and in all those illustrations, he never found any hint of recognition, nothing that reminded him of what he had seen that day. It was as though this strange creature did not exist at all.