The Water Field
It was three AM in Wisconsin, and it was not a dark and stormy night. In fact, a frustratingly bright full moon shone directly into Erin Mulhoney’s bedroom window. Erin had not slept in twenty-one hours, and she was tired of everything. Most of all, she was tired of being tired.
Ever since her older brother disappeared two months ago, Erin’s tightly-bonded family had shattered into razor-edged shards. She and each of her parents walked their own path, made their own meals, and took great care not to bump into one another along the way. Erin didn’t usually mind this arrangement; the three of them each had their own method of coping. Hers just didn’t involve her parents, and theirs didn’t involve her.
However, Erin thought, at three o’clock in the morning, it would be nice to have someone to accompany her on late-night trips to the kitchen for a midnight snack. She remembered when she and Thomas were little, and would get up and have midnight snacks together. She’d later discovered that their parents had known about their late-night excursions, but that had never lessened the exhilaration of being five years old and awake at midnight.
Erin only realized that she had dozed off when she was startled awake no more than an hour later. Some sort of sound had shaken her from her sleep, though she could neither recall nor describe the noise itself. Hungry, and impatient with her inability to sleep, she decided to get up and have a midnight snack after all. Perhaps some toast and warm milk would clear her head.
Sighing, she sat up, shrugged off the blankets, and slipped off the side of her bed, waiting for the familiar feeling of her thick carpet beneath her feet. . . but it never came.
She fell
and fell
and fell
until SPLASH!
Erin gasped as she landed in waist-deep water, her head suddenly enshrouded in a thick fog, blurring the world around her and obscuring her vision. Startled, she scanned the horizon, but the fog was thick and dark, and she could barely see her hand in front of her face, let alone make out the horizon. Looking up, she saw no sign of her bedroom, no sign of anything at all.
In an attempt to quell her rising panic, she tried to make use of her other four senses to survey her strange surroundings. She heard only the gentle lapping of the water against her body; there was no wind, and no sign of other people- that is, no sign of life at all. Before she could properly register the alarming meaning of this, she moved on to her sense of touch. The floor beneath her feet felt like wet sand. She thought of the beach, and let her mind wander to the day when she, Thomas, and their parents had driven to the East Coast for the first time. She remembered the striking vastness of the ocean, and the panic she felt as seven-year-old Thomas shoved her five-year-old self into the tumultuous waves- No, she corrected herself. That was not panic. Five-year-old Erin did not know the meaning of panic.
This is panic, she thought, and tears welled up in her eyes as she once again looked around her, the black fog thickening around her head.
A soft breeze suddenly swept her dark matted curls away from her face, and she again wondered what this strange place was and how she had managed to get there. Re-assuming her higher powers of reasoning, she decided that the best thing to do would be to walk, since evidently standing in the water and crying was doing her no great service. She plodded along, determined, though significantly slowed by the rhythmic pulsing of the murky waves.
Just as her progress and her willpower were beginning to waver, she spotted what suddenly seemed to be a glorious sight, the most beautiful thing she had seen since her arrival in this desolate place. She picked up speed, fighting the water that tried to slow her down as she raced toward the human figure in the distance.
It was not until she was very close to the shadowy figure that she could tell that it was a boy, a little taller than she was, his eyes covered by a tattered gray mask. He seemed to be wandering aimlessly, his path determined by the direction of the current.
“Hello?”, she ventured warily, “Do you know where we are?”
His head turned in her direction, though it was clear he could not see her. “This is the South.”, he replied, in a voice that sounded as though it came from far away.
“South of what?”, Erin asked, confused, and though she felt foolish, “Do you know the way to Wisconsin?”
The boy turned away from her as he answered, “The Southern Water Field. The Palace lies to the north. That way.”, and he nodded away from Erin. He was then quiet, apparently contemplating this mysterious invisible Palace, and she wondered if he had heard her second question. Before she had the chance to repeat it, he spoke again.
“You are new here.” he said. A statement, not a question. Erin nodded.
“I must take you to the Emperor”, he said, in that same vague, faraway tone. As he began the slow journey north, she assumed to the Palace, beckoning for her to follow him, Erin wondered how he had sensed her nod, as he had not yet removed his mask. She thought of the deep-sea fish she had once read about, creatures that lived so far beneath the surface that they had no eyes, for no sunlight reached the depths where they resided. She remembered that these monster-like animals compensated for their lack of sight with heightened senses of hearing, touch, taste, and smell. She wondered if humans could do that too, if a person kept their eyes covered for long enough, if they could see movement with their other senses.
As she pondered the strange nature of this Water Field, it occurred to her that she did not know her companion’s name, if that was what he was, so she asked him.
“Name?”, he inquired, with a quizzical look on what she could see of his face. Erin felt a pang of uncertainty as she repeated her question. “Your name. You know, what you are called?”
He was again silent, and Erin began to fear wherever he was taking her. She now felt certain that the Emperor of the Water Field was not someone with whom she wished to be acquainted. But now she saw it was too late. The Palace came into sight, a gargantuan structure that, Erin noticed with astonishment, appeared to be constructed entirely of water. It had the appearance of medieval castles she had seen photos of, except the moat of this castle consisted of a strip of dry land, the first she had seen thus far. On either side side of the watery drawbridge, she noted with a pang of fear, stood two huge, eyeless creatures that bore a shocking resemblance to deep-sea eels. Each brandished a whip made of seaweed, which they raised as Erin and her guide passed through the tall archway.
The inside of the Palace was dark and shadowy, though there appeared to be no source of light to produce the shadows. Erin’s companion led her through countless hallways, until she was certain she could never find her way back out again. A splash from behind them confirmed her suspicion that the castle guards were indeed following them.
Just as she decided they would never reach their destination, they arrived in a large, high-ceilinged chamber, its towering walls made of murky waterfalls and its floor of smooth, colorless seaglass. Before them stood a great throne of driftwood, seating a shadowy creature Erin could only compare to sea monsters she had read about inn Greek mythology. As she took in the beast’s scaly tentacles and shadowed face, she noticed that the boy had knelt down, apparently bowing down to this creature, and was gesturing for her to do the same. As her knee touched to soggy hard floor, the monster spoke, in a voice that was simultaneously silent and deafeningly loud. It had no mouth, yet Erin had no trouble understanding it.
“I AM THE EMPEROR KRAKEN AQUATICUS.” the monster declared. “I SEE YOU HAVE COME TO JOIN MY KINGDOM.”
Kingdom?, Erin thought. This soggy wasteland?
She recoiled in horror as the Emperor responded to her thought, in its enormous voice that was, she realized, entirely inside her head. “CHILD”, it sighed, and she could hear the beast’s wicked smile, though she could not see it. “TO MANY, MY KINGDOM IS A PARADISE, A REFUGE FOR THE WEARY. I HUNT DOWN THOSE WHO HAVE GIVEN UP IN YOUR WORLD, AND GIVE THEM A LIFE HERE, THE LIFE THEY WANT, WHERE THEY WANT FOR NOTHING AND NOTHING IS EXPECTED OF THEM.”
No one would want this life, Erin thought defiantly, as she glanced at the boy kneeling on the ground, his mind empty of independent thought, trained to do the bidding of this hideous creature before her. No one would want to wade aimlessly through this terrible fog.
The Kraken’s voice reverberated through her skull: “THINK ABOUT IT. NO DEMANDS ARE MADE OF YOU HERE. NO EXPECTATIONS. NO RESPONSIBILITIES. WHAT MORE COULD YOU ASK FOR?”
Erin thought of her silent house, her solitary meals, her brother’s empty bedroom, and she could in that moment think of nothing that that faraway land of expectations and responsibilities could offer her.
She looked again at her companion’s bowed head, remembered his emotionless answers to her questions, and thought, nothing is worse than this. As she stared at his wet, sand-encrusted hair, something clicked within her subconscious brain, and remembered the sun glinting off the ocean, the refreshing coolness of the blue waves, and the exhilaration of being young and awake at midnight.
Summoning her courage, she looked the Kraken in the eye. “The ocean”, she shouted. “The sun. The smell of freshly-baked bread. Ladybugs crawling across your hand. Laughing.” and with each word, the Kraken’s shadowy being became fainter and fainter, the palace walls thinner and thinner, until, still spitting words like daggers, Erin stood up, grabbed the boy’s arm, and together they marched out of the water palace. As they raced across the drawbridge and into the field, the magnificent archway collapsed, and the Kraken’s anguished cry rang in their heads until, with one last surge of water, the entire palace imploded.
Astonished, the boy turned towards her, and in a voice that suddenly seemed to belong to him, he hesitantly spoke up. “When we met, on the way to the palace, you asked me what my name was. What I was called.”
She nodded encouragingly, then remembered the mask. “Yes, I did”, she whispered.
“Yes”, he said, and paused. “Are you called something?”
She smiled. “Erin”, she said. “I am called Erin.”
“Erin”, he whispered, and the fog began to lift around them. Erin’s heart began to pound against her rib cage as something occurred to her. “Take off your mask.” she demanded forcefully.
“My mask?” He reached up to his face, perplexed, as though he had forgotten that the gray cloth was there. With some difficulty, he pulled off the mask, and the tattered gray fabric fell from his face into the murky gray water, where it belonged, Erin thought.
The boy’s eyes were blue, a bright, familiar blue, the first color Erin had seen since her arrival in the Water Field, and suddenly the world turned upside down and it was Erin’s voice that came from far away.
“Thomas!” she cried, and the fog was gone, and then the water was gone, and then she was floating, her vision clearer than ever, ready to soak up the colors of the world once again.
“Erin!”
She awoke with a start, to the sound of her mother’s voice, and her breath caught in her throat. “Yes?” she asked faintly.
“Erin, you’re late for school! Your brother’s already halfway through breakfast. Your alarm should have gone off fifteen minutes ago!”
She scrambled out of bed, savoring the sensation of the carpet between her toes, and hurried into the kitchen, where her parents and Thomas were seated over bowls of cereal and fruit. Bewildered, she sat down. Her parents were chatting away about this and that, as though nothing had changed. For a moment, she worried that perhaps it had all been a dream, but then she caught her brother’s eye and grinned as he winked at her across the kitchen table.
Elise Stankus 2020. All Rights Reserved.