Some Tales Need Telling

June 12, 1932

I rose from rumpled sheets and slipped cautiously through the dimly lit room to open the tall windows framing the narrow balcony beyond. The full moon spilled in with the pale street lamps of Paris, followed swiftly by the scent of the jasmine blooming in the small hotel garden below. 

The silk wrap I'd tucked around my body did little to break the chill, but it was a welcome sensation after the smouldering heat Henry and I had built over the last few hours of frantic lovemaking. It had been several weeks since we'd seen one another, and our fevered letters had stoked an insatiable fire. Well, almost insatiable. 

Spread out on the bed, pale skin gleaming, Henry lit a fragrant homemade cigarette.

"Satisfied, Anaïs?" he asked between drags.

I turned my face and offered a coy smile over my bare shoulder. "For now." 

"Penny for your thoughts?" Henry was always the best at listening after a particularly athletic bout of sex, but my mind was blissfully free of the incessant monologue that routinely circled like buzzards. 

As an answer, I poured the last of the champagne into our fluted glasses. The ice in its bucket had long since melted, but the drink fizzed over the rims with no less vigour. He received the offering with a smile so warm it very nearly rekindled my fire.

"Tell me a story, then," he prodded persistently.

I reclined on the pillow beside him and sipped, the sweet bubbles the perfect postcoital digestif. "A story? Very well. Have I ever told you about the monster that lived in our pond?"

He choked back a laugh, improperly timed with a sip. "There was a monster in your pond?"

I nodded and considered where to begin. "We moved there when I was, oh, eight maybe? After my father left, it felt as though there was a string of new houses, new tutors. Our finances were so uncertain that Mamá could never let a house for more than a year. As soon as I set out to explore the grounds - much smaller than the place we'd lived the year before - I could feel something very old watching me." 

"What made you think it was old?" He smoked lazily but could tell his ears were perked.

How to explain my strange, extrasensory perceptions in a way he could understand? "I guess the same way you'd know a tree was old, even with your eyes closed. The roughness of the bark, under your fingers. The feeling of deep-reaching roots. The girth of the trunk, more than you could reach around. It's more than that," I smiled into my champagne, "but that's about as close as I can get. The sum of a series of impressions."

"Did you know where it was coming from?"

"Not at first. The whole area - well, you could say it smelled like the monster. Its territory was clearly marked: our whole estate, and the rolling hills blanketed in an orchard beyond. It went right up to an abandoned cottage nearly invisible among the walnut trees. The roof had caved in long ago." 

I looked up at the plaster ceiling and cast my thoughts back. "I think we had trouble finding help, at first, so Joaquin and I were left largely to ourselves that fall. Thorvald was older, and away at school. The previous tenant had left some months before, so the grounds were unruly. We built houses with sticks among the willows and terrorized the goldfish in the decorative pond. We stayed far away from the larger one, though, as Mamá had warned us off with fiercely worded threats of lashings and no more cake. She'd seen her cousin drown, you know, when they were both young. 

"Now and then we'd find the remains of a bird or a rabbit. Sometimes we couldn't tell what it was - all that was left was a few bones, some tufts of fur, scattered feathers. Joaquin made up a story about a mountain lion that had wandered down off the Alps and would gobble us up if we stayed out past dark. I would pause in my play to look up at the mountains that loomed nearby and shiver delightedly with fear."

Henry barked a laugh. "I bet you made a pretty picture."

"Hardly. I'd lost six of my front teeth that summer and the new ones regrew at uneven speeds. For nearly a year, my smile was awkward and self-conscious. I was relieved we were so isolated."

I took another sip and continued. "Mamá's warnings - and instinct, perhaps - kept us away from the pond, though it was reportedly well stocked with perch and Joaquin loved to fish.

"Then one cold afternoon - I remember wearing my winter coat but we couldn't find my mittens - I was following a neighbour's cat that had come to visit. I was fascinated by the way she meandered through the tall grasses and browned leaves, casually hunting. I was so absorbed I didn't realize we'd wandered quite close to the pond, much closer than I'd dared to go before. 

"I'd grown used to the sense of watching, by then, oily and hungry. Now it was too strong to overlook, though, like opening a box to find a rotten creature inside. Pungent and putrid. I froze, a rabbit hoping the hawk would fly by. The cat continued on to the edge of the pond for a drink. I saw her pink tongue, lapping the water daintily. 

"I watched, riveted, as a dark green mass that I'd mistaken for seaweed reached out of the water and engulfed the cat. It was so heavy and wet that the cat disappeared without a struggle. The mass slid back like a wave and left barely a ripple. I unfroze and ran back to the house, shrieking."

Henry watched me with eyes too large. His latest cigarette now forgotten, I took it gently from his fingers and inhaled.

"What - did you ever find out what it was?" he finally spoke.

"Not until long after. Winter blew down off the mountain that night, fast and deep, and come morning I could see from the safety of my window that a layer of ice lay over the pond. For the next few weeks, I barely left the house. Mamá was worried that a neighbour had frightened me, and demanded I give her the details. But by then she'd so often ignored my stories about the creatures I saw that I couldn't find the words to tell her the truth." 

"Oh, Anaïs," Henry clutched my free hand and I could see the shine of sadness reflecting in his eyes. "You must have been so frightened."

"I was, and it was all I could do to contain my tears every time Joaquin put on his boots. But then the new tutor finally arrived, a young woman from the village who was hoping to get a teaching certificate. She was sweet and timid, and my terror gradually evaporated in the light of her sunny disposition. She loved to read me fairy tales, though, and an ancient part of my mind was busy cataloguing the stories in search of the fiend that lurked in our frozen pond.

"When spring came, she tempted me with promises of bluebird eggs, so we dressed warmly to go explore the small thicket near the orchard. But to get there, we had to skirt the pond, newly thawed. 

"I hinted that we should go another way, but then she started to talk of tadpoles and muskrats, and she half convinced me there was nothing to fear. I just won't go too close, I reassured myself as the ground began to squelch under my boots.

"Then I heard her cry out and I jumped, but it was only her delight at spotting a nest brimming with eggs among the reeds. If the geese are laying, the creature must be gone, I thought even as its foul presence filled my nose."

Beside me, Henry lay so rigidly I stroked his arm to soothe him. I swallowed my last honeyed sip with regret. We artists are too sensitive for our own good.

"I trembled terribly and began to tug at her hand. 'Just a little closer,' she said and I heard in the chime of her voice a strange inflection that I knew at once was enchantment. The same sinister presence that drove me away was pulling her close; the empty, desolate cottage nearby suddenly told a malevolent tale. 

"I began to thrash and shriek but she held my hand too tightly to break away. As her boots touched the water, I spotted a branch within reach, stripped of its bark. I lunged towards it, and my desperate fingers found the cool, smooth surface of bone." I could hear my voice from far away, still recounting my tale. But I was also the little girl, desperate to flee the monster, clutching for breath.

"I swung it at her head like a club. She stumbled, splashing deeper into the water, but also she let go of my hand. I turned and ran back to the house."

I didn't know I'd stopped until Henry's voice broke through. "Your tutor - was she - "

"She came in only a few moments behind me with a story about how I'd tried to push her into the pond and an angry bruise on her forehead rapidly swelling. She quit in a huff and I was sent to bed without my supper."

Henry and I stared at each other through the moonlight for a few moments before he wrapped me up in his arms. Our breath synced up and gradually slowed, the scent of jasmine, the scent of Henry, a healing balm to alleviate an old and unhealed wound. It was a story I didn't know I'd needed to tell until after it left my mouth. 

"Thank you for believing me," I whispered into the night before falling into sleep.