Daughters of the Lake(9)

“What’s that?”

“She had recently given birth.”

“And the baby?”

Janet sighed. Children were always the worst. It took months for their faces to fade from her memory. Sometimes much longer than that. “There’s no water in the lungs,” she said. “The baby didn’t drown. And there’s no obvious signs of trauma.”

“The baby was born dead, then, or died shortly after?”

“It’s inconclusive at this point,” Janet said. “Although if you gave birth to a baby that didn’t make it, why would you dress her? The baby had a nightgown on.”





CHAPTER FIVE

Great Bay, 1894

Marie didn’t explain to any of her neighbors why she had gone down to the lake to give birth that day. She thought it best not to tell folks about the strange music she had heard, how it had beckoned her to the shore. She certainly didn’t tell anyone that the lake itself had called to her, saying that it alone could keep her baby safe in its watery embrace, protect her from the evil fog. Fog will take your baby, the lake seemed to say to Marie. It will spirit her away, and she will be gone forever when the mist lifts and the sun shines on the shore once again.

She didn’t tell folks how she had heeded the lake’s call and crept down to the water’s edge or how she had waded into the water. It had felt warm and velvety, despite the coldness of the air. It was soothing to Marie, and so she had waded into the shallows, walking farther and farther still, until she was standing waist deep in the Great Lake. She had lain down then and floated, enveloped in the lake’s embrace, and her baby had glided into this world easily, like a glistening, pink fish.

The next thing Marie knew, she was opening her eyes in her own bed. At first she’d thought it was all a dream, until she saw the people crowded around her, their concerned faces, their comforting words.

Marie often found her thoughts drifting back to an old family legend Marie’s grandmother had told her when she was a child—tales about the lake and spirits and curses and love. Could they possibly be true? No, she told herself that morning, shaking her head as if to shake away those thoughts. After her grandmother died when Marie was just a child, Marie’s mother had forbidden any talk of the old stories, and she had obeyed. As she grew up, the tales had faded further and further into the past until she could barely remember them anymore.

But as her own daughter grew, the memory of those tales nagged at Marie, nudging her, creeping bit by bit out of the abyss of denial where Marie had banished them all those years ago. Every time she saw Addie in the water, the stories came closer to the surface. Marie couldn’t deny the fact that, as soon as the girl could move on her own, she crawled and toddled and tumbled and ran toward the lake. Whenever Marie would turn and find Addie gone, she knew just where to look for her.

One blustery November afternoon when Addie was no more than three years old, Marie wrapped herself in a shawl and walked down to the lakeshore (yet again) to retrieve her wayward daughter. She thought she’d find the girl immersed in her favorite activity, playing by the water’s edge. But this time Addie was nearly submerged in the dark and angry water, whitecaps rising over her head and falling with the wind.

During the month of November, this inland sea, which on the best of days was unpredictable and fierce, became a veritable graveyard for the unlucky fishermen who ventured out onto its waters. It was said that in November, the lake became sly and murderous. On days that seemed placid and calm, its glassy waters would beckon ships to set sail. Yet, at a moment’s notice, the lake would churn up monster storms with wind, sleet, and hail, entrapping and engulfing even the largest of vessels that had been fooled into leaving the safety of port. Indeed, enormous steel tankers had found their way to the bottom of the lake in an instant, with all hands aboard, in that deadly month.

That November day, Marie dropped her shawl and ran into the waves toward her child. “Addie!” she cried as she scooped her daughter into her arms. “You’ll catch your death! What were you thinking?”

“I was just playing, Mama,” Addie cooed, unsure what all the fuss was about. Back on shore, when Marie draped the shawl around her tiny daughter, she felt that the girl’s body was radiating heat. It was as though she had been sitting in a hot bath.

Marie hurried up the hill to the house with her child in her arms, hoping the neighbors had not seen this peculiar display. The God-fearing people who populated the town were none too tolerant of differences, especially those of a rather strange and otherworldly variety. But surely her own neighbors would never turn on Marie and her family the way they had turned on her grandmother when Marie was just a child. Not again. Not here.

Still. There was no harm in being careful. Marie did everything she could to hide Addie’s peculiarities. That the girl loved to splash and swim in the water in any sort of weather was evident—nobody could miss it. While other swimmers cried that the cold water stung their skin even on the hottest of August days, it was always silky and warm where Addie swam. The girl would watch people brace themselves on shore and run into the waves, shrieking with laughter as they surfaced, while she floated on her back. Addie thought them all mad for behaving in such an odd fashion. The townsfolk shook their heads, not knowing what to make of this girl.

But Marie laughed it off. “My Addie loves the water,” she would say, shaking her head. “But then again, she was born there, wasn’t she?”