The Watersprites
CHAPTER ONE
I’ve tried to write this story a thousand times. Each attempt turns out differently because I can’t quite get my head around it. Can I do it justice? Some things can only exist in your mind — how you see and smell the events, how it unfolded, the details, the thoughts, the way you perceived it.
I was sixteen and at school. I played the flute, went to drama club, yawned, yawned, and I have a boyfriend. Yippee! We get on, we like each other … and all the rest of it.
Mum was overprotective. Aren’t they all? Anyway, we were coming home; she’d picked me up from school so that I could drive home. See, I’ve got it wrong already – I had to be seventeen to drive. Thinking about it (I don’t keep a diary, so I can’t tell you the exact dates), I was more like 17 and a half. It was early summer, and my birthday was in November, so that’s about right. Sorry, kids, I thought I was younger. I did not think of myself as a child. The driving, the car, the boyfriend and all the rest of that stuff. I was trying to drive, and we got into this blazing row. Looking back on it, I see two kids fighting, not a mum and her daughter; I see a playground slagging match. She had to pull over to say her piece. It wasn’t about my boyfriend; he was away on his gap year before uni; it was about someone else I was seeing and how much time we were spending together. I didn’t like him that much … but enough of that … well, this isn’t going to be that kind of story, so you can make this bit up. Either way, the argument was unjustified. What business was it of hers? I wasn’t stupid.
Meanwhile, coming out of town, the traffic is horrendous. The more upset she gets, the Mother, the more impatient I become with a bus that is always getting in my way and not being able to pass every time it stops because it can’t get into its stops for some reason or another. Noting much the Mum version says goes in, just as well. I was aware of it. Got the gist of it, picking out the odd word that could easily be dropped into some sentence or another that meant the same thing. She was pissed off with me. Dropping the piano, the boyfriend, this guy on the side. She didn’t care how I drove, so eventually, I flipped, got up the nerve, did the mirror, signal manoeuvre thing (I hope), pressed hard down on the accelerator and got past this flipping bus. I wish I hadn’t; for some reason, the faster I drove, the more words my Mother managed to get out, the louder it became and the more graphic the descriptions of what she thought of me. So I flipped, and coming to the edge of town, I saw an opportunity to pull over – at a bus stop. It wasn’t long before we had this bus, my bus, up my back end. I got out, slammed the door, ran over to the bus and jumped in the queue. No jacket, no bag, a handful of coins. I paid what I had for a ride some dozen stops down the road. I didn’t know what I’d do next, but I wanted my actions to have an impact. At first, they didn’t, but boy, oh boy, did things go pear-shaped after that. At first, at least.
This is what happened. Mum sat fuming in the passenger seat. My younger sister was sitting in the back? I forgot to tell you that. During this adult-like, parents in the front of the car arguing thing, we had both forgotten that ‘the children were in the back.’ I bet she thought it was all hilarious; she had it all coming. Lucky sod had a far smoother ride of it than I did when she got to my age.
So, where am I? I’m on a bus, a red single-decker that is heading out of town on the West Road. I needed enough for an eleven-mile trip. I had enough to get me less than half that distance down the road. Sod it. I’d get as far as I could and walk the rest. I was sure Mum would follow the bus all the way home. After all, I was only sixteen. Or seventeen and a half :( You see, retelling the story as it was, I am starting to see it from the point of view of others. I was, after all, 17 & a half. I was learning to drive. I could have passed my test by now and be driving myself home. If I had to walk five or six miles, that would do me no harm. (That was something else I’d gone off in the last eighteen months. Family walks. They were okay when I was 12 & 13, but then it became tiresome. Once, my boyfriend came on a walk with us, and that was fine; we’d drop behind or get ahead and have a snog behind a tree or behind a rock or round the bend). Anyway, back to the bus.
I get into an argument with the driver. I think he recognised the car that had been bugging him all the way out of town and had shot past in a dangerous manoeuvre some x minutes or so ago. I begged him to take me all the way, but he was having nothing of it. My being a girl and vulnerable didn’t wash. My not having my mobile to ring Mum didn’t mean a thing. I could take his bus, pay what I had and then get off. Which is what I did.
Drizzle. Turning dark. A dual-carriageway for four miles, then a minor road that ran down to the river and up the bank to the other side. A couple of hours. It would be pitch black. No sign of Mum. If she didn’t turn up in the next twenty minutes, she’d not be able to pick me out anyway. So I start to walk. I needed to get started. I get home soon enough. What I hadn’t expected were the pesky drivers who kept stopping to see if I was okay, if I needed a lift, if my parents knew where I was.
It got unpleasant; there was this one bloke in a white van who came back, said he’d brought home and spoken to his wife, who thought it best if he picked me up – not safe to be out in the dark and your age kind of story. Well, I wasn’t having any of that; I was straight up this grass bank, over the fence and starting through a field before he had a chance to grab me. I’m sure he reached out to hold me. He got out of the van and took a few steps up the bank. I knew where that could lead: a head down in a wet ditch after a lot of nastiness. I’d watched Helen Mirren in Prime Suspect. It doesn’t take too much of an imagination to believe these things happen – they do happen. So I scarpered.
Looking around me, I was worried about the growing darkness but could orient myself with ease. The orange glow of town behind me, street lights coming out of town on either side of the valley where I could follow the river. Some giant electricity pylons took me more or less home. If I wanted, I could follow the buzz from them and get to a road I knew that went into the village. I’d be home before the 10 O’clock news.
I didn’t reckon on the stickiness of the soil; school shoes aren’t the best thing to wear if you’re going cross-country. I cursed not having my bag with me. We’d P.E. with Mrs Whoppet (which sounds like her name), so I’d trainers. And money. And my mobile. I so wanted to speak to my boyfriend, the proper one —the one I texted and sent messages to too often. Would he be worrying already? He was a thousand miles away and not due home for another two weeks :(
This wood loomed up, not so much a wood as a large copse. I was on a farm track in the middle of this field. I was heading west; I knew that. I could see the street lights on the top of the escarpment in the distance; I could even pick out the dual-carriageway to the North, too. Sorry girls, I’m alright with Geography and maps and that. My boyfriend (he could drive) and I’d gone off on a trip, and I’d done the map reading. He was unfairly critical at first, but then he was rather impressed; he hadn’t shelled out on a satnav thingy, so I did it for him, including the funny voice and everything.
This wood was challenging to work with. It didn’t look as big as it turned out to be, and it was bang smack in my way. Did I go around it or through it? Being a sensible wee missy, I turned my head skywards for a look at the stars. Please don’t ask me to name more than three or four constellations, but I knew with the Plough, I could get to the North Star. Sod it. Cloud-baked orange from city lights to the North. Anyway, I’d ploughed on with plenty already that day, so making this decision wasn’t so hard. I could judge a straight line. I’d go straight through, aiming for the river, the land dropping to the south, on my left, which should get me down to the river. This I could follow inland for a couple of miles to our village; there was bound to be a path by the river. There are always paths by rivers, aren’t there? So, this is what I set out to do.
CHAPTER TWO
I find a path, others have been in here, perhaps they too had been taking a short cut. Not far in, twenty metres or so, there was a huge tree on which a sign had been nailed.
‘Danger Keep Out’
And below it a second sign, as if the admonition alone would not suffice the additional sign, more an explanation really.
‘Deep Water’
I suppose this ought to have put me off, but I’m the kind of person who once they are resolved to do something they stick to it. I wanted to get home and had decided that the fastest route was through this wood. I say this now by way of explanation though in all likelihood I was being lured. It became more clear as I went deeper into the wood and heard this voice, a voice of a young man singing. I would describe it as a chant, a haunting. sound that made me think of a Gregorian cant crossed with a tribal grunt or guttural bark for a beat.
Pressing on I came to a pool that was described as ‘Deep’ that I felt I could only describe as a water-filled tip, part full of rubble & junk as if this was someone’s favourite place to fly-tip, not a lake and something that gave me no impression of being deep at all. Most odd of al was the sight of some bloke sitting on the trunk of a fallen over tree, He was perched there in the light of a lantern. Edging around the pond, away from the water’s edge and keeping in the shadows I was able to move closer. The desire to see his face, to make out who he was compelled me to go on – my mind was emptied of all else. And heck, that voice of his was dead sexy!
Someone else entering the woods disturbed him, he stopped his singing and turned his head to look directly at me. I hadn’t made a sound, that was coming from behind me, Looking into his eyes I knew one thing immediately – he wasn’t human (though he was human-sized and of human form). With a movement that reminded one of a bird rising from a cliff top nest and dropping into the air this creature rose, then dropped into the water – there was barely a ripple, not even a splash just the sound as if someone had dropped an iron rod into water – and he was gone.
There were voices behind me – male & female, laughing and ….. This tree where I stood had a hollow in it so I stepped inside to keep out of sight. I wish I hadn’t because I found myself trapped. This group of three young men and a couple of girls had with them a cardboard box of bottled drink and takeaway food. Using a long branch they reached out to get a rope that I saw had been attached high up in the tree. It wasn’t long before they were taking it in turns to swing on it. One of the bottles wasn’t to drink – it must have contained petrol or meths. They made a fire in the hollow of the tree where I was hiding and lit it – to escape their attentions while they were here I shimmied up the hollow. Big mistake. For a while I tried to tolerate it hoping that I’d either choke from the smoke nor cook from the heat.
Three lads and two girls isn’t a good mix if you’re intending to cop off with someone. It wasn’t long before the two couples that formed were at it while the last guy gathered wood and looked enviously at the others as he built up the fire intent on burning the tree down.
I had to come down, to show that I was there.
“It’s one each now.” Said this git as he lifted his face out from the chubby cheeks and massive hair of the girl he was engrossed in. “You can have her, Connor.” He suggested to the lad who had been building up the fire and had as a result smoked me out.
I wasn’t having any of this, I had no desire to be groped by one of these oiks so made an attempt to escape – the water seemed the only answer, which is how I found myself 10m or so out into this pond, clothed & treading water. I got my school jacket off and shoes too – I put one shoe in each pocket, I didn’t want to lose them. I still had a few miles to walk. (I’d done my Duke of Edinburgh Survival so I knew how to meet a challenge). Not being able to see how far it was across this pool I kept just 10m or so out and not too far from the light of the fire they had burning.
By this stage the lads had got through most of their drink and one bright spark decided that it would be a good idea to throw the empties at me. I was getting tired of this by now and scared and cold. I could swim well enough to tread water but wasn’t enjoying my predicament at all – being used as target practice wasn’t fun and worst of all the sod quickly got his hand in so I had no choice but to duck beneath the water – the second time I did this I got such a shock I kicked with so much fury that I swear I got myself out of the water down to my waistband, but just as I got so high, I sank just as low and too my greater surprise there were people in the water near me – not only were they watching me, but whenever a bottle hit the water they’d swim after it and throw it back to the bank so refuelling ‘the enemy’ as I now saw them. At that point a bottle from the bank caught me on the side of the head and taking a final gasp of air I lost consciousness and sank.
Game over. Or was it?
CHAPTER THREE
Now I know why Mum has this “gay” thing over George Clooney; there is a look, a smile, a glint in the eye, the shape of his chin, the thickness of his eyebrows and hair and those broad shoulders and long arms. I loved in particular his wrists, I don’t know why. Herschn, his name, as best as I can spell it – think of the sound as a hayfever-sneeze, has these protruding veins on the back of his hands when he uses his fingers. And his smile, have I said that already? His ear-to-ear grin, his winsome, cheekiness, his loveliness … all this and he isn’t even human.
All of these feelings are to come, for now I’m a frightened girl who wonders if she is about to die or has died already. I am beneath the murky waters of a pond, this beast’s face, it’s jaw dislocated, its mouth over my nose and chin … one arm around me, part clinging to me so that I can’t let go, partly guiding me I think as it swims so fish-like through the water. Like a dolphin. I’m certain, if I saw anything at all that this creature had double-jointed knees and ankles, its legs were more fish-like that human, in water at leasat, yet he had appears human to me when sitting on the log above the water.
We got down too far for me, five or more metres – the water presses on my ears and squeezes my sinuses. I don’t like it all and at this stage I struggle, but then we enter some cavern and start to rise towards a warm glow and I find myself in what I can only describe as a den – there is a fire burning and artificial – did they have electricity? He releases me, though I am reluctant for a moment to give up the breath that he has been breathing into me, to gasp in plainair once more. Herschn climbs out beside me. I cough, pull myself away from the water’s edge and find there are what I can only describe as sun-loungers to lie on. And it is then that I can observe for the first time the transformation that takes place when a watersprite leaves water – they transmogrify (I’ve looked it up, it is a word, it means to change form). Obviously I’ve seen this many times now, so I know what takes place in detail, but this first time it was rather like a magician at the end of a show becoming a real person again – when he stood up, first his ankles, then his knees articulated so that he could stand and be less fish-like, he pulled his fingers in turn, each one, and as he did so the webbing folded away. A lizard like film over his eyes, a second eye-lid, open to reveal the human-like eyes below … and his chest, while under water, so large it reminded me of the gaping mouth of a basking shark, though on a smaller scale, collapsed into his chest. So this is how they could breathe on land.
They are not of this world; you must realise this by now. I’m getting ahead of the story, but I feel I ought to give you this bit of background now. ‘Watersprites’ is my word. The word has been used for centuries to describe nymph-like creatures that lived in pools and lakes – a few could well have been the first visitors, none of whom survived to have families … they simply died out. Mostly.
These humanoids, watersprites, as diverse in their nature and culture as we humans are, travelled from a system of planets many thousands of light years away. They travelled in a form of stasis, frozen in spaceships made from water, hard frozen into shapes and forms we would think impossible. Like comets, these ships would travel indefinately in wild arcs that occasionally would be trapped by a sun and drawn to a planet that they may or may not be able to inhabit. Odds on, as we know, the greater percentage of these cargos would be lost, plunging into suns, melting into planets comprised of a poisonous soup, or so cold that our friends, these watersprites, would be frozen for eternity. But then, and very rarely, a comet such as this would enter our solar system, travel in just the right plain s to be caught by the earth and would descend, on its way splitting into thousands of parts the size of pieces of small icebergs, quickly reducing in size as they melted to units about the size of a Mini whereupon they would hit water, or land, or cities … and be destroyed or saved, the contents smashed against rock or land, the contents burning up in salty water, but in freshwater lakes and ponds there was a chance the contents would not only survive, but after some months they would come to life and break out.
Had I any idea how much time had passed by now? No. I reached for my mobile, but of course I didn’t have it. Girl in school uniform in some kind of beaver bungalow by the water in a wood by the Tyne. Mum would be worried by now. She would be thinking the worst. That was only natural. I had to go home, I knew that.
“You can stay here if you like,” Herschn said in a voice so strange, as if he were speaking through organ pipes round the back of his head.
“I need to get home.” I replied.
He understood this.
Several other heads then appeared in the water, all eager to see who was here, some friendly, some not so. I don’t think they’d had a human in their den before. In this place of theirs.
“Where do you live?” Herschn asked.
Stupidly I tried to point, I had this idea that I lived somewhere behind my left ear, but that might have taken me anywhere, instead I worked on the basis that Hersch knew the local geography. They spoke our language, they most have been mixing with us for years – like gypsies or travellers. There was something a bit Polish, maybe Eastern European or Russian about them I thought.
I indicated that I wanted to draw something, a map. Herschn slipped into the water and returned with a pad of some kind. It was more IT than cartridge paper, like a Wacom board, one of those drawing tablets my Dad has plugged into his iMac. The thing only worked in water, so I had to lean over the entrance to the pool and scribe on it under a few centimetres of water. I thought electricity and water didn’t mix, but clearly the watersprites had fathomed that one out.
I put in the obvious landmarks, the River Tyne, the hills on either side … the A69 and the row of electricity pylons that stretch from Consett to Wide Open. (It is a place, look it up, north of Gosforth on the old Great North Road, once the A1) Google it! I put in the North Sea too – I didn’t know if their geography stretched this far, but it seemed a reasonable way to try express it.
Herschn was eager to show how they expressed rivers and land and other features. It struck me that it was as good as an OS map, but turned inside out … I’ve seen Admiralty charts so could imagine how someone how spent their life on water might picture the land … We got there. Features such as bridges Herschn could pick out, indeed it seemed they had some measure of where they were within thirty miles of this spot.
While we were doing this I found it disconcerting to see out of the corner of the my eye that we were being watched all the time, but maybe one or two different people at a time – then a face I’d become familiar with would return as if to take a second look or to check up on us.
We were about to set off, Herschn indicated that he’d take me along the river, even walk me to my door – which spooked me, the thought that these creatures were travelling up and down the river in the dark and could at any stage peer in through our windows. We were about to set off when we were joined by a girl … I knew she was female because physiologically (big word, biology, I am doing the A’level after all), she had the boobs and the hips. Her name sounded like Fry-up which struck me as somewhat inappropriate name for a humanoid-fishy person so I just called her Freya which seemed to make her happy.
Freya it turned out was Herschn’s older sister – and get this, she had been told to travel with us to chaperone Herschn in case I tried to … well molest him I guess! As if I would. He was a fish-based alien for a start, however gooey he made me feel when he took me by the arm with that firm grip of his.
It was Freya who took me in her embrace this time. I closed my eyes as her jaw dislocated and these gummy lips went over my nose and mouth. Her breath, as I should have expected, was sweater than that of Herschn. There was a minty flavour to it, while Herschn’s breathe tasted more of nettles.
Did I tell you they are vegetarian? Something else I found out later so I shouldn’t have worried about them putting me on the menu, that would never have happened. And by being vegetarian of course it was far easier for them to go unnoticed for so long – crops and fruits of the forest and hedgerow going missing don’t rate so highly as missing sheep, cows or humans. They hadn’t told me at this stage that there were another race of watersprites that ate little else but meat (we’ll get to them later, they’re on earth but thousands of miles away from the little old island of Britain with its protective salty waters).
These two took me back into the pond water and we travelled just beneath the surface to a gate, beyond this, and deeper through a water filled tunnel until were able to spill into a swirling pool. It was notorious whirlpool on the Tyne that was a fairground ride to these too. They knew they had this important task to complete – to take this land-loving girl home but they nonetheless insisted on a few spins around, rolling and twisting and gyrating in the flow of the water like they were fish. I suppose they are. But they’re not … they’re no more fish than we are, but we swim. They’re no more birds, but they too can fly. With artificial wings and an engine of course. All of this I learn from them later, how the history of their home had been passed down to them and that how their technologically had been more advanced than that of humans … not by much, say a dozen generations they figured … 250+ years.
You know what people in flippers are like when they walk around the side of a swimming pool or down to the sea. There was a hint of this as the watersprites walked by my side along the path by the Tyne. Had we been seen and the observer known they may have thought that these too had cerabral palsy- a physical disability, but able to walk and run in a manner of their own. So they wouldn’t go noticed, indeed, knowing human nature, many people would consciously look away rather than stare, which suited the Watersprites fine when they were travelling around in our world incognito, which to my surprise they said they did all the time, just no one noticed and they hadn’t thought it wise to join the local swimming club.
We walked together across the bridge at Wylam. I kept a look out for my mother’s car … Dad could be out looking for me by now, the police even. Would they spot me in this group of three? Perhaps not. At the bottom of Beech Bank row Freya left us. Did she feel like a gooseberry? Do Watersprites feel like gooseberries? Do they understand the concept? In any case, I had a boyfriend. I hadn’t felt the need to tell anyone that, he was hardly there to protect me and in their society what would that have meant? Who knows?
Outside are house I saw Mum and Dad through the kitchen window. There was a flap on; I didn’t need to know they were upset. It wasn’t that late. I looked at the time 9.30pm. I thought it could have been way later, 2 in the morning … but no. It wasn’t that late, but if they can’t reach you on the mobile and you ought to have been home a couple of hours they will get agitated, won’t they!?. And who would blame them? Here I was, at the end of the drive, a creature from another world holding my arm and about to kiss me.
I know it was a kiss. As his face came close to mine his jaw didn’t break in half and his eyes roll into the top of his head when they are giving you their breath, no … this was a kiss like we humans do, lips puckered up and pressed against mine, my mouth closed. No effort to do more, but I opened my mouth and I just let my tongue brush his lips. This tingle made him blush, if you can see a blush in the semi-dark on a creature that isn’t human. I think he blushed though, a peculiar iridescence filtered across his cheeks and for a moment it was as if little lights lit up behind his eyes.
Ooops. I’m too timing. Ooops. I fancy him. Oops. He’s not of this world. And quadruple oops, I’d better join the swimming club and get fit if I am going to have fun with this one!
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