Lady of the Lake, the Princess, and the Offer

 “Do you ever get tired of being in the lake?” I asked. I heard the sadness in my heart leak out in my voice.  

Deep waters she existed in swam through her eyes, unreadable and mysterious. Instant regret added to my despair, asking such a stupid thing, losing sight of who sat in front of me. A spell cast a thousand years before bound her to the lake, some part of her body always connected to the water. Yet she existed uncomplaining, forever keeping the lake’s treasures and secrets safe. By what trick of the gods was I chosen by her that she would want to have any kind of conversation with me?

“I am keeper of the water's secrets.” She paused, then continued thoughtfully, “I've only had brief knowledge of the world and that was so very long ago. What has changed since I last walked through countryside villages? My favorite is music! I love and long for music! It doesn't sound the same through the water.” she said, tipping her head sideways lost in her memory, dark eyes staring at me while her toes stirred the water at her feet. She hummed the song I sang in the moonlight before she first appeared to me. It penetrated the depths below and curiosity compelled her to seek out the sweet voice’s owner.

“I am so sorry for asking such a thing!” Mortified still at my thoughtlessness. “We both have our own worlds we have to live in, don’t we?” I was weary to my bones. Sleep was a precious thing I didn’t have much of lately, my mind always rejecting circumstance. How could I do or be anything else in the world? I was not trained for anything else, knew nothing else. I didn’t even know how to bake bread.   

“That is not true," the Lady said, her voice a whisper lost in the night.

I missed it completely. 

“I am a princess,” echoing my mothers repetition of contrition. “I will never be queen, my sister and brother are before me, as are their children. But I still have duties, obligations. Including my impending marriage to a man I barely know and don’t love. My duty is to have endless children. My entire life will be spent caring for my family, running a household. I accept it, but it’s just not in my soul."

"I want adventures, my Lady! To paint pictures of unknown exotic lands. You can’t do that if you have babies and a husband to take care of,” I said. “I dare not tell anyone though! You are the only one I share my thoughts with lest it get back to Father and Mother. Especially Mother.”

Her beautiful nude elf-like body defied gravity right in front of me, her red hair floating in the air like living fire! Every one hundred years she could only once offer the exchange. So few came, fewer still took the offer. The Lady of the Lake rose, spread her arms before me becoming the goddess. Gone was the thoughtful female sprite who asked about my boring life. She became a beacon of glowing power rivaling the moon from within her rising form. 

“I offer an exchange,” her voice filled the air. “By YOUR WILL we may change places for a year. I give you my power in exchange for the gift." 

“You will be keeper of the lake, protector of it’s treasures. In one year we return to undo the binding and I will take my place with the sisters. You will find time changes many things,” she said.

Nothing in my existence ever gave a hint anything like that was even possible. In shock, I was unable to speak, lost in the magnitude of her words and what it meant.

“Go, make peace. Bind memories of those you love to your heart,” she said. “The sacred magic is forbidden, dangerous for you if it were known. Tell no one” Her words took on power. “Come to the lake on the next full moon. I will cast the binding of souls. I can only make the offer once. My choice has been made.”

Her voice was in my mind. “As you are bound to air, so shall I be. As I am bound to the water, so you shall be. 

My goddess friend awed and inspired me. Me? Be like her? I couldn’t imagine life at the bottom of the lake.

Or could I? 

“I am allowed a short time to love and learn of this age.” The Lady had a mischievous knowing smile on her face as she returned to the mysterious depths. Her words haunted me as I returned home, new possibilities to occupy my thoughts. 

Over the next moon I looked around with fresh eyes. I was ignored, disregarded and overlooked. My engagement and marriage filled everyone's day without anyone bothering to ask me what I wanted. My mother designed my dress, my sister tried my hair in the latest styles, both of them chattering endlessly about this scandal or another. I listened endlessly to things I never had any interest in, dreading the whole idea of marriage to a stranger. I felt like an object, dressed and trained to look the part. A princess wouldn’t slouch or climb trees or sleep in the stable with horses. I felt they were afraid of me having thoughts of my own. 

My favorite memory would take me back to a moonlight ride she gave me through the water several full moons ago. I held tight as The Lady and I moved through the water so fast! There was a solitude under the water. To live there? Was such a thing possible? I closed my eyes remembering.

My quiet thoughtfulness was attributed to my upcoming nuptials. I kept my head down and thoughts I could not share to myself causing whispers. Some surmised I was growing up, accepting my place and duties. Others were mean with made up speculation. I cared less about the drama they filled their empty lives with.

I at some point made peace. I don’t remember exactly when I knew. There was nothing in my life that couldn’t wait for a year or be done by someone else. Anyone else. 

When the next full moon gave it’s glow to the night I slipped out of the castle without notice and crossed the moonlit grounds. I regretted that my attendant would be beat for not knowing where I was in the morning when I was missed.

I wore the simplest shift and sandals. The small dagger my mother gave me for protection hung on my hip. I let my hair down as soon as I was in the trees and couldn’t be observed from the upper windows and I ran. I felt only freedom of being alone in the cool night air. 

I trusted her but she was not there when I arrived. I was nervous, but not afraid and waited on our favorite flattop boulder wondering if she changed her mind. I had not but what if I hadn’t done something right? What was The Lady gong to want me to do?   

I felt eyes upon me, and started, she was right there watching me, giving me time to change my mind. Floating there dripping and staring at me, she pushed wet hair away from her eyes in a very normal reassuring gesture. Like an exotic lace dress her wet red hair clung to her bare body.  

“Leave your clothing and the blade. When you have decided...join me.” Silently she sank with a nod and knowing look. 

No one knew how deep the lake was, only legends retold around the fire of water spirits and goddesses kept the curious away and it’s treasures safe. Since my first encounter with her, it changed everything I believed I knew. Behind the legend of The Lady was a powerful keeper of secrets with a human heart.  

Ripples spread disappearing to leave the water undisturbed like she might not really have been there, giving everything a dreamlike quality. Mist-like magic began to shimmer off the water. Below could have been deep as the ocean and I didn't care.  

I put my feet in the water to test the temperature as I removed my dress and shoes, laying my dagger on the small bundle. For the first time in my life I stood nude in the open delicious air. I glanced back toward the only home I’d ever known wishing them all to somehow find peace and purpose.  

I felt more excited than I ever remembered being in my life. What was in front of me?

Why didn’t I feel more grief or remorse for my choice, choosing to leave my life? Knowing I had a whole year of adventure and a new kind of responsibility ahead of me was more real than the superficial life I was leaving behind and I wanted that. 

My family would look for me, but eventually go on with their lives. My mother would suffer my disappearance more than others. Yet knowing I would return in a year helped me choose to let things go. It was just for a little while, right?  

Warmth from the day’s sun lingered in the water. It felt so pleasant on my naked skin!

I paused before diving into the unknown. With the constraint of clothing gone I dove in and swam boldly some distance. It felt so very right, yet surreal and impossible it was actually happening. 

The Lady was there, took my wrist and pulled me down into the abyss, following her long red hair fanning out behind her. Her pale blue glow pushed back the dark as we descended further than I believed possible.

I was out of air, suddenly afraid, the black water stretching off into the unknown all around me. The Lady turned impossibly fast and kissed me. I thought it was a kiss until her face and body began to pulse rhythmically with the heartbeat I heard in my ears. Light poured from her mouth with weight and substance, filling my body with liquid fire. Nothing existed except the pulsing light, back and forth, back and forth. 

Suddenly an explosion of energy burst from within my body rivaling the midday sun. Powerful light magic surged, merging our souls, creating the binding. We were entwined like one organism.     

All of her memories filled me! Everything she knew from birth to every person she ever encountered. Her love for Merlin and others. So many others. A millennia of knowing and caring for those above her in the sun, watching over precious things cast into the depths and her care. 

Abruptly releasing me she shot to the surface leaving me alone and stunned. I should have been in total darkness and drowning, but I was not. I saw everything, every magical detail of the underwater world and endless living things around me. Sounds of the earth withdrew leaving me in peaceful solitude.

Energy still pulsed from me. I moved my hands slowly in front of my eyes playing with the beautiful sparkling light. New images, thoughts and possibilities swirled, overlapping, merging into endless new things to understand in my mind.

The water moving in my lungs was a sweet nectar nourishing me. My skin was morphing, turning blue like The Lady’s even as I watched. My own blond hair became pure white and was growing longer by the moment. Power ran through my soul.

I rose with a new weightless ease through the water. Everything was different in this new state of being. I felt like I could float all the way to the moon. I passed through the surface into the crisp night until my toes stopped my upward ascent and the water was alive, holding me, needing me, filling me with a ravenous thirst new to me, drawing me back to its depths. 

The Lady sat on our favorite rock wearing my dress and sandals, and playing with the small dagger, tossing it hand to hand to test its weight and balance. She gave a slight nod of approval and smiled at me floating with ease.

“I have to thank you,” she said standing, put the small knife in its sheath, bowing her head. “You are the rarest of souls. You belong to the water now. I tell you, it’s been so long since my soul rested. I’m excited to taste life, to know music and love.” Smiling, she nodded at me again and turned to go.

What would happen to her? How could she understand the world or know how to survive? I knew inside of me this offer was not made lightly, but that she wanted it, somehow needed it, too. 

“Wait! My Lady! What will you do?” I called out to her in a new voice altered by power and unfamiliar to my own ears. 

Moving toward the dark tree line, she turned back one last time. “YOU are Lady of the Lake now. For a full year. I know my way and you will find you know yours. Peace till we meet again my sister. I waste not a single minute of your sacrifice,” she said. Very human, her red hair glinting in the moonlight before she was swallowed by the forest shadows. 

I sank letting the lake know me. Where I would rest was as clear as if I had been there a thousand times. I also found I could feel the sun below the far horizon, that soon it would share it’s light and warmth, an eternal gift of life. 

When morning's first light cleared distant hills I would be waiting at the exact right spot and moment to see the beams dance across the jewels of Excalibur. And so many other treasures and creatures of the lake to discover, mine to watch over and protect. 

Sisters to find.