The Watersprites Chapter 5 – The Wendy House Den
Jay’s house stood near the edge of town where the tidy cul-de-sacs of Lewes gave way to the brambled wild of Landport Bottom and the rising chalk of the South Downs. Behind the house, a black poplar tree soared—hollowed by time, six metres around at the waist, its interior cavern used by children for generations and now, it seemed, by something else entirely.
The garden felt old. Wildflowers bled into nettles and rusted fencing. The 17-metre outdoor pool, laid decades ago by Jay’s father, was part amenity, part monument. In spring, it was drained and scrubbed. But today, it lay heavy with winter’s leaf fall, dark at the bottom, a few sycamore seeds skittering on the surface. Beside it stood the Wendy House—white paint flaked from its wooden slats, curtains askew behind miniature windows, and a garden gnome long toppled off its porch.
Jay opened the back gate slowly. Freya followed him without sound. Hersch bounced behind, barefoot, touching everything. He sniffed the air. Touched bark. Dipped his toes in the neglected pool and squealed, delighted. A blackbird launched itself from the poplar with a sharp clack of alarm.
Beth trailed behind with two rucksacks, glancing between the house, the children, and the Wendy House as if trying to triangulate a solution. She gave Hersch a pair of Jay’s old swim trunks, which he immediately put on backwards, and Freya a loose cotton dress and leggings, which she examined curiously before copying the motions of putting them on.
They weren’t cold, though it was chilly in the shade. But they were weary. The journey had dried them out. Their skin—always a little luminous—looked duller now, brittle almost. Jay unlocked the back door and gestured them in. Hersch bounded toward it, but Freya paused at the threshold.
“Come,” Beth said gently. “It’s all right.”
Freya stepped through.
The inside of the house was modest. Bookshelves groaned under field guides and swim meet trophies. The kitchen table was cluttered with damp towels, half a toolbox, and an old toaster Jay had been trying to resuscitate. Hersch’s eyes lit up at the fridge magnet poetry. He stuck random words to the door—“glide,” “cloud,” “wish,” and “fizz.”
“Start here,” Beth said, handing Freya a towel and a soft-bristled brush. “It’s yours. For now.”
Freya held the towel like a ceremonial sash. Hersch was already curled beneath the radiator with the family dog’s bowl, now filled with filtered spring water. He drank eagerly, then splashed some on his arms.
That evening, Jay and Beth cleaned out the Wendy House together. Childhood relics lay inside—Barbie torsos, dinosaur books, a mouldy plush rabbit, and a tin of coloured pencils fused together by weather. Beth left the drawings, some cushions, and the bunk beds. She added a camping lamp, a soft blanket, and a folded-up map of the South Downs.
Freya stood in the doorway, watching. Jay offered her a brush and a choice of pillows. She picked one striped like a badger and placed it near the window. Later, Hersch dragged in his own collection: two plastic spoons, a tennis ball, a feather, and a jelly shoe he’d found near the compost heap.
They didn’t argue. They didn’t hoard. They simply began making the place theirs.
Beth found Freya one morning arranging the alphabet magnets from the fridge on the Wendy House floor. They formed no clear words—but the shape and order changed each day. Hersch made a slingshot out of two sticks and an old pair of Jay’s goggles.
The pool became theirs by default. Jay cleared the surface with a net, added fresh spring water from the garden hose, and watched in awe as both children swam without kicking up a single splash. Freya sliced through the water-like thought. Hersch spiralled, leapt, twisted—more seal pup than a swimmer.
Jay started noting things down. Not like Beth, with her researcher’s precision. Just fragments. A shape they made in the water. How long they could hold their breath. How quiet they were when they watched him. He tried not to feel watched. But he was.
Beth, meanwhile, had begun her own notebook.
Specimen Log (Preliminary)
Estimated age: 11–13
Sex: Male (Hersch ), Female (Freya)
External morphology: Partial webbing between toes. Slightly iridescent epidermis. Hair thinning in heat.
Respiration: Nasal and possible cutaneous? Further study is required.
Behaviour: Cooperative. Bonded. Non-aggressive. Demonstrate mimicry, play, and protectiveness.
She wrote “protectiveness” after Freya curled herself around Hersch in the Wendy House during a thunderstorm, shielding his ears and humming a low, vibratory tune. It matched the rhythm of the rain.
Freya never spoke, but she sang. Strange, melodic syllables that looped like birdsong. Beth tried recording it on her phone, but the sound always flattened—like trying to trap river light in a jar.
They communicated with each other effortlessly—looks, gestures, little rhythmic slaps on water or skin. When Beth handed Freya a toothbrush, she copied the motion instantly. When Jay asked Hersch to sit down at the table, he did, then sat cross-legged on the chair like a frog.
They weren’t imitating. They were learning.
One afternoon, Jay came in from the garden to find them all asleep.
Freya curled at the far end of the sofa, a blanket up to her chin. Hersch is half-on, half-off a beanbag, holding an open copy of The Gruffalo. Beth had fallen asleep too, head tipped back, mouth slightly open. The TV murmured the closing credits of Spirited Away.
Jay didn’t move. Didn’t speak. Just stood there.
He’d coached dozens of children. Some brilliant. Some broken. None like these.
He felt something shift in him. Not awe. Not fear. Something older. More rooted. Paternal.
Beth found the shift harder to name. But one evening, while brushing Freya’s damp hair by the Wendy House and watching the girl study her own reflection in a tin-foil scrap, Beth realised this might never be temporary.
“Where do we take them back to?” Jay had asked once.
Beth now knew the answer: nowhere. There was no “back.” Only forward.
She recalled articles she’d once flagged for her thesis: captive orcas. Mutilated pangolins. The accelerated collapse of amphibians. The things humans did to the wild. The things they did to each other.
“They’re safer here,” she whispered. “Even if they don’t belong.”
Freya began reordering things in the Wendy House. The magnets now lined the top rail of the bunk bed. The tin of pencils had been sorted into a colour wheel and taped to the wall. A photo of Jay’s father, smiling in 1970s Speedos beside the pool, had been quietly propped upright again.
Jay, let it be.
He caught Freya looking at him once, just before bed. The same way his father had once looked at him from a diving block: steady, certain, withhold judgment.
“Good night,” he said softly.
Freya didn’t reply, but she blinked once, slowly.
And that was enough.
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