The House Across the Lake
This story was inspired by the artwork of Maxine Vee. Check out her website and Instagram to see more of her beautiful paintings!
Most of the time, there was no house across the lake. The waters shallowed and gave way to a low bank, and beyond that, a thin meadow was bordered by the great evergreen forest swathing the mountainside in viridian, emerald, and jade. When a gale swept down from the peak of that mountain, it blustered through the treetops, carried their whisperings across the breadth of the lake, where the wind petered out and left only the faint impression of voices in the air.
Hollyhock had grown up beside that lake. The long summer months of her childhood and the cooler autumns that followed had been passed almost entirely on the shore listening to the whispers of the trees carried on the breeze. An old wooden pier jutted out a short way into the lake. Most of her time was spent seated at the very end with her legs tucked under her or dangling off the edge. Her mother, her grandmother, her great-grandmother, and so on until the settling of her ancestors on this strip of a bank had all learnt the ways of witchhood from those distant trees. They had their books and their schools, as all witchlings did, but there are some things only the forests and the rivers and the mountains can teach. Few beings are as wise as the willow, the oak, and the pine.
The whisperings were barely audible to witches and unheard entirely by mortal ears. Not so much real words as the mere afterthoughts of them. Not even when straining to hear and cupping her hands around the backs of her ears could a witchling make out what was being said. Hollyhock sometimes tried to decipher those half-spoken lessons, but it was easier just to sit and listen.
When she came away from the lakeside with the descent of the world into twilight – it was best to be inside at night, for that is when the trees whisper of darker magics no witch should have cause to learn – she would find herself with a more complete knowledge of moon cycles and how they affected her powers, or varieties of mushrooms, or with the beginnings of a new skill. And so were taught the young witchlings of the family.
For all her seventeen years of life, the opposite bank had lain bare, the view from shore to forest unbroken save for the odd cluster of bullrushes and wildflowers. In the golden hour on the anniversary of her birth, that changed. A house appeared on the distant shore. Its walls were painted in an autumn red a few shades lighter than Hollyhock’s auburn hair. Its gabled roof was white with lichen, and the whole structure seemed to have a subtle glow about it from the evening sun.
Unbidden, a gust of wind swept down from the mountain and carried whispers, louder than before, but just as indistinguishable, to her ears. Hollyhock stood on the edge of the pier and watched the treetops swaying. Though she could not quite hear what they said, the meaning behind those unheard words was clear in her mind.
Come, they said.
A little rowing boat appeared beside the pier where never had there been a boat before. Not in Hollyhock’s lifetime anyway. But she was full grown, and it was time for her to embrace fully her witchling ways. She settled herself down on the oak seat and the vessel started out over the water.
The wind quietened during her crossing, though there was still a murmur emanating from the opposite bank. It had grown so quiet, and the boats movements were so gentle, that the surface of the lake before her had turned into a sheet of polished glass. The house, the forest, the mountains – all were echoed in the lake, but in its reflection, the house was blue instead of red, and the sky was filled with stars that were not yet visible above Hollyhock’s head.