Daughters of the Lake(4)

If he had only noticed the ancient pictographs that decorated the caves dotting the shoreline just beyond his boyhood home, Jess would have found a drawing of the very creature he had seen that day. Others had seen it, long ago. That might have led Jess to further exploration of the legends and lore of the region in which he lived. He would have found a story about an ancient, magical creature that existed in these waters, a fearsome spirit that was well known to the ancient peoples there. It was said that this creature was the embodiment of the lake itself, rendering its waters capable of saving or taking the lives of those who ventured on and around it—at its own whim. Legend had it that this creature could take human form at will. Back then, the locals knew the lake played favorites, calming rough waters whenever certain people came near, kicking up sudden storms to capsize the ships of others. They so respected and feared the power of this creature and the lake itself that, before setting out into their canoes, they would first offer gifts of appeasement, hoping to please it into granting them a safe journey.

Of course, modern-day folk weren’t given to such superstitions. They had a way of forgetting the past, so intent were they on the future. Legends and lore became nothing more than stories that might entertain guests sitting around the fireplace after a nice dinner. The old beliefs faded as the modern age dawned, but the spirits that inspired those legends remained, kept doing their important work, waiting for someone to believe again.

But for now, on that foggy day, young Jess Stewart stood on the shore, watching as this strange animal opened its mouth and sang. Something made Jess turn around just then, and that’s when he saw the dogs. Polar and Lucy, the Cassatts’ two Alaskan malamutes. They were staring out into the water, watching something. It was Addie, but he didn’t know her name then. What he saw was a baby floating in the shallow water between two big rocks. When he turned back around, the strange animal was gone. The singing was silent. All that remained was a baby floating in the water.

Jess called for his parents, knowing this was much more than a five-year-old should handle alone. “Mama! Papa! Come quick!”

Phil Stewart poked his head out of the back door. Unlike that daft Marcus, he was home that day, like any sensible fisherman would be. “Jess! Get back inside the house!” his father called.

“But there’s a baby . . .”

“Get in here, I said!”

Jess heard the door slam shut. Of course they didn’t believe him about the baby. Parents never believed children when they had something important to say. So he scrambled back up the hill to the house to try again.

“There is a baby in the lake.” He began crying with the urgency of it all. That got his parents’ attention, just as he knew it would.

“What do you mean, dear? What kind of baby?” His mother, Jennie, put down her needlepoint and looked her son in the eye.

“A human baby,” Jess cried, gesturing wildly toward the lakeshore. “You need to come right now.”

Jennie and Phil exchanged concerned glances. A human baby?

Phil shook his head and was settling back down with his newspaper, but Jennie knew Marie Cassatt was heavy with child. When that thought overtook her, Jennie’s entire body was filled with the sort of vibrating, humming dread that descends when someone has arrived with very bad news but hasn’t yet said anything. She shot up from her kitchen chair so fast that it fell to the floor. She flew out the door and down to the lake, her husband and son following close behind.

Neither Jennie nor Phil really expected to find a baby alive in the water, let alone floating calmly with one hand in its mouth. But Jess knew that was exactly how she would be, because that was how he left her.

“I’ll be damned,” Phil said.

“Run,” Jennie told her son as she scooped the baby out of the water and wrapped the tiny thing in her shawl. “Run down the shoreline to the Cassatts’. Tell them we’re coming.”

Jennie wasn’t certain this baby was Marie’s, but it was a pretty good bet. She also didn’t know how or why the baby had wound up in the lake. Had Marie tried to drown her? That didn’t seem possible. She knew how excited the Cassatts were about the birth of their first child. Was Marie herself hurt?

Phil fumbled with his pocketknife as he cut the baby’s umbilical cord, and Jennie tied it off as the placenta floated away. Then the pair hurried through the fog down the lakeshore toward the Cassatt home.

When they reached the house, Phil pushed open the door, making way for Jennie, who held the baby in her arms. They were greeted with a chorus of gasps from the neighbors still congregated there, hovering around Marie.

“You folks aren’t going to believe this,” Phil said, with more caring in his voice than anyone had ever heard from him. Marie sat up straight in her bed, wide eyed, silent, not daring to breathe, as Jennie laid the baby in her arms.

Phil sat down on a straight-backed chair, shaking his head. “The baby was floating in the lake near our place. It was Jess here who found her. When he called out to us that a baby was down by the beach, Jennie and I thought he was just talking crazy. But he made such a fuss about it, we went to see what it was. It was a baby, all right. Clean as a whistle, happy as a clam, floating in the water as if she had been born there, which, I reckon, she was.”

The neighbors were rapt, but Marie was barely paying attention to Phil’s tale. She was staring into her baby’s violet eyes and thanking the lake for saving her child’s life. She should have known that’s where her daughter would be.