The Watersprites: Chapter 3 – Drought Dries up the High Pond Dries
As a heat wave settled over southern England and the pond dried out, the decision to help these creatures was never spoken. Beth began returning daily, often alone, to log movement patterns and check the dens. One morning, she caught sight of Freya holding a toothbrush in one hand and a plastic whistle in the other—stolen, scavenged, or gifted like a magpie’s collection.
Beth, with her background in zoology, understood something Jay didn’t: these weren’t animals. And they weren’t raised wild. Their den-building was advanced. Their watching—systematic.
One dusk, Beth found Freya standing at the edge of the pond, holding her gaze. Tall, almost regal. Silent. She made a gesture—open palms to her chest, then out to the sky. A language. Maybe.
She noticed that she communicated with facial expressions and hand gestures, like sign language, supplemented with clicks and hums. If it was a language, it would be difficult to fathom
Then, the drought came.
The pond receded, inch by inch. Food sources thinned. The air dried out.
Beth suggested they bring them home. Jay laughed at first.
“To do what—put them in the bathtub?”
“No,” Beth said. “Your swimming pool. They could live in Wendy House. They need us.”
He looked at her. “They’re not kids, Beth.”
“They are,” she said. “Just not ours.”
The ‘rescue’ was not a chase. It was an arrival.
One morning, Freya appeared at the edge of the path when Beth stepped into the woods. No camouflage. No lurking. She stood there in the mist like a sentinel.
Behind her, Hersch. Hair slicked to his head, eyes sleepy. He looked desperate.
Beth returned a couple of days later.
The pond lay still beneath the hornbeams, its surface taut as glass, holding the sky’s reflection like an old photograph. Beth crouched at the edge, breathing shallowly. She tapped an app on her phone and pointed it in the direction of what she was looking at. The early April air tasted of moss and rain-damp bark.
Across the water, in the partial shade where elder trees tangled their roots into the bank, two figures stood—unmistakably humanoid but not quite human. And young. No infants. If human, then ages ten, eleven, twelve. Not fully developed. Abandoned in the woods? Kids lost here years ago? She had her doubts. These were creatures of the water.
Their silhouettes shifted slightly in the rippleless mirror between them. One upright and watchful—she’d come to know her as Freya in due course. Female? The other crouched, weight on the balls of his feet—Hersch, ever kinetic, a spring coiled in boy form. Male.
They were facing one another, close but not touching. No words passed between them. Not a whisper. Yet the space between their bodies was charged with exchange. A conversation of posture and pause, of small movements that meant more than speech.
Beth watched through the screen on her phone. The creatures had no perception of her spying on them, which is precisely how she felt—like a trespasser.
Freya lifted her hand. Slowly. Deliberately.
Palm to chest. Pause. Palm outward.
A gesture. Not mimicry. Not random. It had a cadence-like ritual.
Hersch responded with a flash of his teeth—not a grin, not quite defiance. A test, maybe. His eyes narrowed, then widened. He clicked his tongue three times, sharp and rapid, then let out a hum low enough to rattle the air between them.
Freya didn’t flinch. Her eyes opened wider. Not with fear. With clarity. Her expression didn’t change, but her presence did—she grew taller somehow, more resolute.
Then, two fingers curled and snapped outward into a click, which she combined with a whistle tone.
A flick of meaning Beth couldn’t translate but felt. It struck a nerve and bypassed logic.
Not danger. Safe.
Good, not bad.
Trust, not run.
Something like that. Or was it wishful thinking?
Hersch dropped to one knee, palm flat against the soil. His fingers splayed into moss. He glanced up, chin lowered, and Beth saw something soften in his posture. Not submission. Acceptance. Agreement, perhaps. Or at least a temporary truce.
Then the sound: a layered rhythm of click—hum—hum—pause—click. Whistle.
Bird? Dolphin?
It had all those tones. Quite musical. Of the woods.
Beth, holding her breath, checked that her phone was getting all of it. She didn’t move. Just whispered:
“Kai? Are you getting this? What are they saying?”
She was asking her go-to AI. Her forever advisor on everything—from the weather to shopping lists to identifying bird calls or a tree species from its winter twig. A voice she had customised to sound like her late grandfather.
Familiar. Gentle. Reliable.
KAI (soft, modulated):
“They’re speaking to each other. A language of their own invention, perhaps. And they’re talking about you in their way. Clicks like that… they’re not a warning, more like a robin trilling for spring. So, delight, or relief, expectation even.”
Beth stared, wide-eyed, as Freya turned suddenly—not toward the trees, not toward Hersch, but toward her. Toward the lens.
Not startled. Not surprised.
Just aware.
And then she blinked. Once. Slowly.
As if to say:
We see you too.
Beth copied Freya’s stance exactly.
To show that there was an understanding between them.
Hersch didn’t hesitate. He scrambled over to Beth and took her hand. He pulled her over to their den and pointed. He vanished into the murk of the pond.
Beth could tell from the smell that there was a dead animal close. She looked into the den and saw one of these creatures, emaciated. Still. Clearly dead. She felt as if she’d found a dead child.
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