One Chance

It struck him one day that nobody cared.

The lake was getting smaller; not that it had been that large to begin with.  Twelve houses faced it, most gone to seed now that the nearby town had all but packed up and moved to Tunica.  The new casinos meant money, jobs, and something better than scraping a living out of a dirt farm or a one-room grocery or an auto shop and veterinary.  So it wasn’t just the lake that was getting smaller, but unlike the town, the lake had no excuse.

Jake Curlin stood in the soft mud and poked at some slime-covered rocks with a hickory stick.  Less than three feet away the lake’s black water reflected the bright blue sky like a polished mirror.  Jake looked behind him and guessed there was a good ten or twelve feet of mud to the grass and reeds that used to define the water’s edge.  Each day it was another couple of inches farther from the grass to the water.  Where was it going?

He’d called the Department of Agriculture and they’d sent out a man who looked around for a few minutes and passed it off as evaporation.  The summer heat was boiling the water off, the government man said, but Jake didn’t believe it.  The water had always been cold, real cold, no matter how hot it got outside.  Old man Johnson said that was because it was fed by an artesian spring.  Jake hadn’t ever seen evidence of an artesian spring.

He was pretty sure it had to do with the little dogs that ran along the water’s edge just before dark each night.

He’d never really gotten a good look at them, but they snuffled and loped around the lake just like the wild dogs that ran around on Miller’s farm, chasing and killing a few of the chickens until Miller shot a couple of them.  They were smaller than those dogs, more the size of a cat, but they acted like dogs, barked kind of like dogs, and left spoor like a dog’s.

Thing was, he hadn’t seen them for a while, not since the Highway Department started working on the state road spur.  That was when the lake had started shrinking, too, come to think of it.  He looked up to the west where the superstructure of a large crane broke the sky above the trees.  Could they have somehow caused the lake to drain with their digging?  It didn’t seem possible, but what other explanation could there be?

He walked toward the construction site, climbing out of the muck and clambering up the embankment to stand on its rise and stop abruptly.

Wandering back and forth from the direction of the site, noses down and apparently tracking a scent, were five of the little dogs.  They were completely engrossed in their hunt and did not appear to notice him as they pursued they invisible prey south around the lakeside.  He watched them pick up speed as they went, until they were running single file, heads up and barking in their odd voices.  They disappeared under the embankment and soon their barking faded.

Jake looked at the crane, then toward where the dogs had disappeared.  If he followed them, maybe he could find out whether they really were connected to the problem.  He’d been to see the highway construction site and found nothing but a bunch of bored guys digging holes and filling them back up.  At least the dogs seemed to be going somewhere with a definite idea of what they wanted.

He set off after them.

Their tracks led him around to the south end of the lake.  He’d been there only once or twice before because that was where Mr. Belmont lived, and he didn’t like trespassers.  He came to a stand of trees protecting a small rock outcropping where tiny wildflowers sprayed color on the ground and gray-green lichen clung to the stone from which a small brook issued.

The trail ended abruptly in a dark, bare, roughly circular patch of soil about eight feet across.  Its perimeter was defined by several dozen large toadstools, reminding him of a story he’d read once about elves and fairies.  It had said the magical beings gathered at a “fairy ring”, described just like this.  He squinted at one of the mushrooms but it was just a mushroom.  He poked it with a stick until the cap popped off with a small cloud of black dust.  Nothing remained but the stem, like a dead man’s finger pointing at the sky.  There was no other sign of the dogs.  Impossibly, they seemed to have vanished into thin air.  Maybe they went down a hole in the rocks or maybe they backtracked, he thought.  He scoured the area for nearly an hour, with no success.  The longer he looked, the more determined he became that they had something to do with the lake.  He was going to find out exactly what.

He was out early the next day to watch for them.  Whatever happened, he was going to find out if they were connected to the lake’s shrinking.  He settled down on a stump near the stand of trees and munched on an apple, watching some ducks cavort in the lake.

Nearly four hours later he caught a glimpse of movement on the lakeshore.  Three of the little dogs were scurrying rapidly, nose to the ground, toward his hiding place.  For a terrible moment he thought they were on his scent, but they turned abruptly less than thirty feet away and made for the fairy ring.

A shimmer appeared in the air over the dark soil, as if it had become suddenly as hot as desert sand.  Jake stared in awe and disbelief as the animals ran into the circle, through the shimmer, and disappeared.

He blinked once, twice, then rubbed his eyes and blinked again, but the dogs were gone.  Only the shimmer remained.

Without thinking, he sprinted across the clearing and ran into the fairy ring.

For a moment he thought nothing had happened.  The trees looked the same.  The rocks looked the same.  The brook still babbled out from between them to head for ---

The lake!

It was much smaller than it had been just a few moments ago, the mud dried and cracked.  Grass was making its way into the dry circle, reclaiming what the lake had given up.  But what startled him most was what rose out of it.

Reflected in the lake that surrounded it like a moat, the alabaster tower shone in the late afternoon sun, rising from a castle of palest green.  Its doors were silver-inlaid marble, its minarets bright with gold.  Its beauty took his breath away and brought tears to his eyes.  A soft breeze brushed his cheek and brought the scent of honeysuckle from the vines that lined the causeway heading from where he stood to the castle gates.  Slim birch and hickory held the honeysuckle away from the lake and hard against the road, their roots entwining sometimes all the way across the lane.

The road had not been traveled recently, or at least not often.  The tree roots had broken the causeway’s cobblestones, allowing grass and wildflowers purchase.  The beautiful emerald walls were chipped and weatherworn.  The only artifact that seemed immune to the advancing entropy was the central tower.  It stood brilliant and defiant against the darkening sky.

Drawn irresistibly, Jake stepped toward the tower, picking his way over the roots and broken roadway.  He caught sight of the dogs loping toward the castle gates ahead of him.  If they looked around, they would see him, probably could already hear him, but seemed uninterested.

The great gates opened and Jake stopped, heart pounding, fighting the urge to run.  He poised, quivering on the brink of flight but held by curiosity and an odd longing of which he was only now slowly becoming aware.

A figure stepped into the gate and stood quietly as the dogs leaped around it.  It was a woman so stunningly gorgeous the castle seemed dark and old in contrast.  She was reed slim, walking with a liquid grace that made the dogs look clumsy and awkward.  Her face was half hidden under a full head of flaming red hair, her voluptuous body barely concealed under a swirling diaphanous gown.  With an unspoken command she sent the dogs into the castle but she stayed at the gate.  After a bit he realized she was waiting, waiting for him to decide what he was going to do.

They stood unmoving for long moments, each moment a chance for decision, but Jake could not shake his paralysis.  Each time he felt he could almost see those eyes that promised so much, a chill would settle down his back and his feet would refuse to rise to the occasion.  Seconds became minutes and she stood quietly patient as the failing sunlight caught the blinding brilliance of her hair, taking his breath yet again as he struggled against his immobility.  He caught her glance at the setting sun and knew she would not wait beyond its retirement, but even so the possibility of becoming one with her unaccountably frightened him on a level he barely understood.

She was, pure and simple, everything he’d dreamed of in a woman.  Beauty, compassion, intelligence, and patience, willing to escort him out of the drab existence on the other side of the fairy ring into the magic of the unknown.  Inside he screeched his need, sweat forming on his forehead and upper lip, but deeper inside he cowered.  The thought of abandoning what he had always known, the small town with the familiar people and its easily-defined and handled problems, for the mystery of what lie beyond those gates held him firm.

The shadows lengthened until finally she nodded to him, a sad but resigned motion, stepped back, and disappeared behind the gates as they closed.

The castle walls loomed over him, mocking his indecision.  The bright tower haunted him with its beauty so like the magnificent apparition at the gate.  The longing overpowered his fear and he ran to the portal.  He pounded on it, shouted at it, pleaded to it, and cried out to no avail.  The gate remained fast.

Darkness found him sitting, exhausted and full of despair, huddled against the wall.  Fatigue claimed him as the first stars showed.

Jake woke the next day to familiar surroundings.  He was back in his own world, near the stand of trees and the fairy ring.  Around him were many tracks, mostly of the little dogs, but one set was definitely a woman’s.  It led from the circle to his resting-place and back.

Jake wept for a long time.

The lake continued to shrink, but he no longer cared.  He knew why now.  The man from Agriculture had called back to tell him the lake was being drained by the construction nearby.  Excavation had weakened the aquifer and created a new water table level.  Eventually the level would stabilize, probably after the construction was complete.  The lake would be lower by a few feet, just low enough to dry some of the mud and let greenery in closer to the water.

The dogs still hunted along the shore, but Jake never followed them.  He knew it was useless.

You only get one chance at perfection.