YOUR NARRATOR: 

Hello, my dear friends. 

You know, I feel such a kinship to you lately. Such a closeness, since I've opened my eyes to the truth of my situation, and also been transparent with you about it, too. I feel as though I can tell you anything. Perhaps that's because I have told you everything. 

Well, almost everything. 

And this feeling, this newfound connection to my humanity - if ever I really had it - makes me want to go live with my writer. If, for no other reason, than to make sure that she isn't letting him work his will into her writing. I'll bet that he - my stranger, invincible and incorrigible - thinks he's calling the shots, as it were. But he would be a fool to think so. He would be a fool to think that anyone but her - and possibly me - can affect what will be written in the next few chapters of this book we find ourselves becoming for you. This story. Winding and unclear as it is, here we are for you, avid readers. 

I wonder what she has next in store for us. 

When she's ready.

This week, she's feeling afraid. Not the usual kind of fear, but rather, fear of herself. Of her own power. Now that she knows she has it, she's not quite sure how she's going to use it. How she should use it. Or what repercussions using it will bring down on her. 

I know what that's like. 

Of course I do. I suppose that goes without saying, in this whole discussion. 

But I'll say it anyway.

Do you know that feeling? 

That feeling when there are extreme changes happening in your life, ones you've somehow found it within yourself to bring about, for your own good or even just for your own sanity, and yet you're afraid of them? Afraid of that change? 

Of course you do. And if you don't yet, I'm sure you will some day. 

But my only advice for you, when you reach that time, is to go where the fear takes you. Sometimes, fear leads us in the right direction. And sometimes, the only thing to do is to follow that fear. 

I have a story for you about a girl who followed her fear to the calm, still waters of a lake. 

She grew up in a small, superstitious town, where everyone knew that the lake was cursed. No one swam there, no one fished there. No one even strolled by it to admire the view. Everyone steered clear of it; in fact, it seemed as though the whole town was even afraid to look in its direction. When she stopped and asked the town's elders about the lake, many of them grew solemn and afraid, and spoke of loved ones they'd lost there in past. Children who'd drowned; jilted lovers who lost themselves in those waters; fathers who went fishing and never returned. Every adult in town knew a story about someone who died at the lake (whether or not that story was true). But, when the little girl went to her father to ask about the lake, he would grow very quiet, his face grey with dread. "Is that where mother died?" She asked, for she had grown up with only her father, and he spoke very little of her mother's passing. He never wept, he never seemed to grieve her loss, but at the mention of her, a great fear and quiet would cross over him. And so, the little girl eventually learned not to ask questions about her mother. 

But, in her mind, she knew who her mother was. She envisioned a beautiful woman; tall, and with long, flowing hair, and long, gauzy gowns that a fairy from a story might wear. Or a princess from another land. In her mind, her mother didn't look like anyone in town.  She looked like someone from a magical place where the lakes weren't feared, they were swam in, and where fathers were always smiling and no one had a horrible story about a loved one they'd lost. 

"You must never go to the lake," her father told her, which was the same thing everyone else said about that place. "No matter if it calls to you, no matter if you want to go so badly that it hurts. You must never go to the lake."

[A theme on piano plays - distant, haunting and flowing]

Yet, whenever she closed her eyes, she saw it. In vibrant colours of blue and green, and sunset orange, so clear that she could see reflections of the birds flying over it within. At night, she dreamed of it, and how cool and clean the water would feel as she swam through it. At dinner, she could practically taste its sweet and pure waters. She wanted to go to the lake so badly, she could practically hear its song singing her to sleep every night. 

And you know what would happen, of course, don't you, dear listener? 

Of course, she would go to the lake. 

Eventually. The call became too strong for her to deny. 

She didn't bring anything with her but herself. She didn't go to school that day - why should she? When she asked her schoolmates if they had any desire to visit the lake, if they heard it call to them as it called to her, they laughed at her and called her names. She didn't tell her father - he was working, busying himself with hard labour so that he couldn't stop and experience that deep fear and terror she saw him go through whenever he remembered his past and her mother. Everyone else in town was content to keep busy, and pretend  - or so she assumed they were pretending - that everything was fine, everything was usual and normal, and that the lake that haunted her every moment didn't exist. 

So, this little girl - only about seven years old, but somehow both wise and foolish beyond her years - walked steadily towards that place. The one place she was always told never, ever to go to. 

When she reached the shore, she gasped at how lovely the place was. The sun cast a warm, yellow glow across the waters, and the willow trees shaded her from it in a cool, comfortable embrace. A single tree stood in the middle of the lake, all by itself; its branches were bare, despite it being summer. This intrigued her. She kicked her shoes off and neatly laid them by a nearby shrub, wanting nothing else than to step in the water. When she did, it was so clear that she could see every single pebble, every tadpole, every ripple, clear as day. And it was so cool, but not cold, that - with the sun beating down over her head - the little girl wanted nothing more than to jump in and feel the water all around her. Her common sense told her it was ill-advised; but the lake seemed to deliver a message whispered across its surface that said: "Trust me. Come to me. I would never hurt you." 

But, just as she was about to leap in, she looked up to the centre of the lake. 

There was a woman there. Standing, just on top of the water, by the tree. She had appeared out of nowhere, it seemed, but she was there anyway. 

Tall, and in flowing gowns, with long hair, blowing in the breeze. Just silhouetted; she couldn't make out any details. But she knew what she saw.

Now, this girl, even at the age of seven, as I said, was clever. She knew that the image looked like the version of her mother she saw in her mind's eye. But she also knew that that image was impossible. There was no fairy princess mother waiting for her in this lake. She had been told that she would be tricked; the lake liked to seduce you, call to you in a language that you would understand and be unable to resist. She knew better than to dare to hope that her mother - more beautiful than in her imagination - stood there, beckoning to her. 

But there was someone standing there, looking at her. 

And fear ran through her, like an icy hand clutching at her heart. 

Common sense told her to turn back and run. But that fear had brought her here in the first place, so she only felt it fair now to obey it further. 

She was afraid of that person, standing in the middle of the water. 

So, she had to go to them. She had to make her way to that tree.

She slowly began to wade out. As she swam, slowly but steadily, her limbs seemed to know exactly what to do, despite the fact that she'd never swam before. At the same time, the sun began to shrink behind grey clouds, making the water around her a dark shade of blue now; no longer golden and warm. And the water became no longer just cool, but freezing. She shivered, but she kept swimming. 

It seemed she heard the cries and whispers of lost souls; was it her imagination? Was it all the townspeople's stories, coming back to frighten her further? Or did she really hear the voices of the dead, calling to her to turn back? Saying the exact same thing their descendants in town told her? As the water became deeper and deeper, it became less clear, and murky. In that murkiness, muddy clouds began to appear beneath her. She could swear that she saw pained, drowned faces staring up at her in silent screams. Leave this place, they called to her. Leave now, and avoid our fate. 

The sight of them, rotting and terrible, made her eyes wide and her heart pound with fear. But she kept swimming. She kept going until she reached the tree. 

She was so cold, and now, so tired from swimming, that she barely had any strength left as she reached her arms up to grab the trunk of the tree and pull herself on to the tiny island that stood there in the centre of the lake. 

She stood there, arms wrapped around the trunk, catching her breath, when - suddenly - she felt two branches close in around her and wrap themselves over her shoulders. It seemed that the tree was embracing her; but, when she opened her eyes, she realized they were not branches, but rather two long, sinewy arms and bony hands clutching at her. 

She turned around, and was face-to-face with the woman she'd seen from the shore. 

At first, she was that woman in expensive gowns, with a smooth, gentle face and kind, warm eyes and a regal bearing to her smile. Never mind how cold and moist those bony hands felt on her just a moment ago - here stood the fairy princess again, from her dreams. 

But she was no fairy princess. 

"Who are you, really?" The young girl asked. 

And the woman's face immediately dropped its smile, and all other human expression. Slowly, she became what she was in truth, and the layer of fantasy, of glamour, faded away. The real creature stood before the little girl. 

She was tall and her limbs were long, like those of a spider. Her face was long; inhumanly so, and her eyes were wider than the empty ones in a skull's head; and they were a faded shade of yellow, like bone left by scavengers for too long in the desert sun. Her skin somehow seemed both dry and cracked, and yet wet and slimy, all at once. She wore as clothes only strands upon strands of putrid moss and lake weeds, which covered her body. Her hair was impossibly long and trailed into the water itself, floating like seaweed itself. She was a painful, awful sight to behold, but she didn't seem to know it. Her wide, yellow eyes were fixed on the little girl's face, and a long, dripping finger raised itself up to touch it - but then she stopped, and lowered it again. 

"All those people..." the little girl said, as her heart beat fast in her ear drums now. She was terrified. But she had come all this way, and she would have answers. "They're all gone now. That was you?"

The creature arched her brow and turned her head a little, confused. 

[The creature speaks in a hoarse, echoing voice]

"All gone," she said. "Not me." And she shook her head vigorously, her hair shaking off mud and water all around her. "Not me." 

The little girl was confused. If this creature hadn't killed all those people, and they had merely drowned in the lake, then what had happened to her mother? "But...my father came here once, with my mother, and she..." 

Now, the little girl was wise beyond her years, but she never understood her father's story. Why would he let her mother swim alone in the lake, so soon after having a child? Why couldn't she remember her mother? Why were there no records of her, and why did no one in town know about her? 

"Your father..." the sea witch muttered, looking at the ground, as if trying to remember something. Then, her eyes widened again. "Your father." She said, understanding. 

And, before the little girl's eyes, the creature shapeshifted again; this time, not into a fairy princess, but into an ordinary young woman. Lovely, innocent, dressed like a woman from their town. 

This was her mother. 

"He loved me," she said softly. 

The little girl's eyes filled with tears as she realized she had been right, ever since that moment on the shore. 

It was her mother calling to her. 

From the distance of the lake, this whole time. 

And the little girl whispered: "Who am I?"

And the young woman in front of her, the shapeshifter who had seduced the girl's father seven years ago, smiled.

[The piano theme returns]

And the little girl's smooth skin began to change; it was suddenly hard and cracked, yet gleaming like a turtle's shell. She could feel that her face and her fingers and her arms and legs were all stretching. Her eyes grew larger and wider, and suddenly she could see so much more now than she ever could. In the woman across from her, she saw her mother, she saw her father's lover, she saw all the forms this creature had ever taken, and she saw her for what she truly was; a spectacular, immortal, water spirit. Ancient and alone. 

Not anymore.

As the two of them stared at each other, now in their true forms, they heard a cry from the shore. 

Her father stood there, watching them both. 

The little girl - barely recognizable now, yet undeniably herself - raised her hand and waved at him. 

Then, her mother wrapped her arms around her, and they fell back into the water. 

Do not pity the man who lost both of his loves to that lake. For, they weren't really lost. 

He began to go to the lake again. At first they didn't come to him, but he would still sit by the shore and wait. Soon, he started to take a little boat out, and he would simply speak to them, even if they didn't show him they were listening. And eventually, they would come to him. Sometimes in their true forms, and sometimes not. They would swim rapidly in the water, frolicking around the boat; or, they'd sit by their tree and watch the sky, or braid each other's long, weed-like hair. And he loved to watch them, he'd find. Whether they looked like the human family he had loved, or whether they looked like two strange, monstrous wonders - he decided he must love them fully and unabashedly. For they were his, and he was theirs.

So the story is about a little girl who found her mother. But it's also about a man who loved a lake. 

That girl wasn't afraid of her true nature. Of her power.

Even if it might be terrifying to others. 

And she ended up finding the love she'd always wanted. 

They all did. 

We can too, can't we? 

Me. My writer. My stranger. You, I'm sure. 

How do we do that? 

Do we dive into the thing we're most afraid of? Will someone be there to catch us? 

I don't know. 

I suppose I need to find out. 

Deep breath.