Time Like Water

by Ashley Evans

There is an ancient place humans fear, a forest where a spring-fed waterfall empties into a deep pool. I am part of the place and the place is part of me. It gave me life, and I’ll live forever, as long as the water flows.

The humans call this land Britannia now, but I was here long before the Romans built their roads and walls, before the Celts, whose healthy fear kept them away and alive.

Some days I may choose to be a sleek, almost-human woman, sitting naked on a rock, combing my long hair. Sometimes I am a beautiful young man, letting the sun catch the droplets as they travel the planes and angles of my unspoiled body.

Other, darker days, I am an equine creature — all untamed, rippling muscle and unharnessed energy. This form attracts more people than it deters, despite too-sharp teeth in my muzzle, even though I refuse to trot out of the pool when they click their tongues and call. The desire to dominate another living thing never seems to be something they have to reach hard for, even the weaker ones.

Sometimes I let them pass by, unmolested. I just stand and watch, still as a statue in the churning water.

Some days I stare a challenge and wait for them to take that last step into the shallows, so eager to climb atop my back, to conquer something wild and unwilling.

Some days I am merciless, dragging my prey screaming down to the depths where I finish the job — the one water pouring into their mouths, their lungs, started — with those razor teeth. Ripping…tearing…tasting blood.

But I am always hungry.

***

My prey all attempt to speak to me at first. It is human nature to coax and cajole with words before resorting to violence. It seems a waste of time to me.

But you — a child crouching at the edge of the water — are the first to ask my name. “What shall I call you?” You are inexplicably unafraid of me, the horse that is not a horse, lurking just out of reach.

Like the land where I live, I’ve been called many things, but none are truer to my essence than the most vague. “I am a spirit, born of this place. You may call me that, if you wish.”

Your bright blue eyes spark with intelligence, as young as you are. Perhaps you are so smart, so curious, because of your youth. Life has yet to dull your senses, the years wearing you down like water running steady over stone. “Maybe I shall call you Demon. The elders say you drag whoever you tempt down to the underworld.”

“I drag them to the bottom of the pool, where I feed. The sand down there is littered with bones.” I lash my tail back and forth. “Do you want to see? Climb aboard my back and I will show you.”

“You killed my friend Felix.” Your glare grows harsh and I glimpse the man you will become, gaze like flint. “They named him ‘lucky’ and you proved that wrong.”

I let out a cackle. “Foolish little boys who believe themselves invincible are my favorite meal. All who wade into my pool drown. It appears you are wiser than your friend to stay on the shore.”

“My grandfather told us he didn’t suffer. That drowning is peaceful. Like going to sleep.”

“Your grandfather lied to you. Drowning is agony.” I split my face into a smile, far too wide and toothy.

“How do you know?”

“Because I can feel it when they die. Every single one.”

You sink into a crouch, letting sand slip through your fingers. “Why do you do it, Spirit?”

“I need to eat, same as everything else.”

“Could you not eat the waterlilies or the reeds? Or the fish in your pool?”

Your questions amuse me, so I pose my own. “Can you eat the sunshine? The wind that shakes the willow branches?”

“No. A human boy cannot get nourishment from those things.”

“A spirit cannot get nourishment from reeds or fish. I cannot change my nature any more than you can change yours.”

“How do you know unless you try?”

I’ve haunted this pool, beneath the waterfall, longer than humans have wandered this world, and no one has ever asked me to be something besides myself.

“I grow weary of your company, youngling. Go home. Come back only when you’ve grown brave enough to come into the water. Then perhaps we’ll find out.”

I watch you skip away before I dive, leaving only concentric rings of ripples to show I’d been there.

***

It does not surprise me when you don’t heed my warning. You return often, each time a little taller, a little broader, to talk about whatever is on your mind. I learn so much about human life from you — concerns, fears, joys. You speak of war far to the south, whether you’ll heed the call when it comes.

“My father says it is my duty, Spirit, to serve the Empire. We are all Roman citizens, even here.”

“Not me.” More and more I take a human form in your presence. But I am as fluid as the water in which I live, and I am not governed by the whims of man.

“No, I suppose not.”

It’s a long time before I ask your name.

“Gaius,” you offer without hesitation. To give a creature like me your name is to invite me to possess power over you. It appears your elders never taught you that important lesson. Or perhaps you don’t care.

“Gaius,” I repeat it, try the sound out on my tongue.

“Am I the first person whose name you’ve learned?”

“Yes.”

“See?” you say. “You can change, Spirit.”

“You think so? Touch the water and find out.”

You only smile and retreat for the day. But you will return, and I come to enjoy your visits almost as much as I enjoy feeding.

I listen and wait and watch you grow. The timbre of your voice drops, the stride of your gait lengthens. But you still won’t approach the water, lingering on the shore.

Long ago, you warned the people of your village to stay away from the waterfall, that it was as deadly as it was beautiful. That the spirit living there was the same. But you cannot prevent travelers passing through these lands from stopping for a drink, from bathing in my pool. You can’t stop greedy men from following my figure with their eyes. Male, female, equine — it doesn’t matter to them.

They want to possess me, but in the end, it’s their bones arranged at the bottom of my pool, free of the flesh that once clung there.

Water washes all things clean with time.

***

You bring the scroll on midsummer’s day and hold it up so I can see the symbols inked there. To me, the written language of your kind is no more than scratches on the curling paper.

“What does it say?”

“I’ve been conscripted. I must go to Lindum and join the army there by the end of the week.”

Your head hangs; your whole body sags with the weight of your sentence, because that’s what it is. I’ve learned from you that men who march off to war rarely come back.

“Pity. You should come into the water.” Today I am the supple maiden, with long hair the color of the sun. My obsidian comb flashes in the light as I pull it through the strands, glinting blue-black. “It’ll be a more pleasant death than what you’ll get on the battlefield.” My voice becomes a hiss. “A spear through the gut. A knife’s sharp heat on your tender throat.” Then I shift my tone to soft, musical. “Drowning is peaceful.”

“Drowning is agony, Spirit,” you counter. “You told me so yourself, long ago.”

Time is like water to me, everything flowing together, many streams of memory merging, but I recall after a moment’s pause. “So I did. You were young then. I could make it peaceful now. I could make it pleasurable.”

You’re a man grown, and you want this womanly figure the way living things want water — for life. I shift on the rock so you can see the body I wear in all its glory. Supple breasts. The warm, wet cleft between the thighs. I could draw you into the pool, beneath the spray of the waterfall, and kiss you down into the depths. Breathe life into you until we’re too deep to swim back to the surface on that last mouthful of air. I would hold you down until you died, and other than my scaled arms ringed around yours, you wouldn’t feel a thing.

If my offer tempts you, I cannot tell. Your handsome face is carved out of stone. “I’ll take my chances with the army.”

“Suit yourself.”

“Goodbye, Spirit.”

“Goodbye, Gaius.” Good fortune.

As I watch you go, I try to remember the boy I ate so long ago, the one supposed to be lucky. I can’t recall his face, and I wonder how long it’ll take to forget yours.

***

Many seasons pass before you return to the waterfall. Summer-fall-winter-spring. Summer again, easing into autumn. The days grow shorter. Ice frays at the edges of my pool.

You appear, unexpected, one cool afternoon. “You’re still here, Spirit?”

“Gaius.” I didn’t forget. Not yet.

You hobble when you walk now, your gait altered by some battlefield injury. Shaggy hair shadows your hollow-cheeked face. But your blue eyes still hold that spark, and you’re still alive.

“I am tied to this place. I cannot leave.” Wearing the maiden-body, for the first time, I slip off my perch and wade toward where you stand.

“I wish I’d never left. I saw…so many terrible things.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Are you sorry, Spirit? Can you feel empathy? Regret?”

“I don’t know. But I do not wish suffering on you.”

You shuffle your feet and wring your hands, and I know what you are going to say before you say it.

“I should have let you drown me long ago. Will you do it now?”

“Gaius…”

“I’m so tired. I want to rest.”

Slowly, I open my arms. “Come here.”

You strip until you stand bare before me.

It’s always the same when someone first touches the surface of the pool. The water ripples through me, singing, as you step one foot in, then the other.

I could move like a darting eel now — slick, faster than lightning arcing across the sky, but I only back away, arms still held wide, inviting, until we stand chest deep in the pool, inches apart. My golden hair floats towards you on the surface of the water, beckoning, as I reach up and place a hand on your chest.

“Aren’t you afraid?” Your heartbeat, beneath my palm, is strong, and your eyes are clear.

“There’s not much in this world that frightens me anymore.” Then you chuckle and bring your own arms up to ring them around me. “Maybe a little.”

The impulse to press my lips to yours is like nothing I’ve ever felt.

Without warning, I dip below the surface, swimming away, leaving you confused, calling the name you gave me.

“Spirit?”

When I breach again, spray cascading off my scales, you stand with your mouth agape.

The hair is gone, as are the breasts and the legs. I’m a beast more akin to a serpent in body. But I keep the arms, the human-like face and the mouth with which to speak your tongue.

“Are you ready?”

The words catch in your throat, but you force them out. “I am.”

You don’t fight when I coil around, dragging you under, because it happens so fast. But drifting down, you begin the struggle, reaching and clawing towards the light.

No one is ever prepared for the sensation of suffocating.

Beneath the crush of the water, I permit myself to put my mouth on yours, breathe air back into your lungs one last time.

At least I tell myself it’s the last. I will feast on your flesh and leave your bones to wear away underwater for eternity.

And then I see the naked fear in your blue eyes, and somehow I change my nature a second time.

When I haul you onto the shelf of rock behind the waterfall, you cough and sputter and beat your fist on your chest until you regain your speech.

“I thought —”

“It’s not death you want, Gaius. You’ve tasted enough of that now.”

“What do I want?”

Like liquid, I shift my form again — the human woman, something that can satisfy you.

“Life,” I whisper, and kiss you for real.

***

We spend many nights that early autumn hidden from prying eyes by the cascading water of the falls. Our lovemaking reveals something I didn’t know I possessed — the ability to want beyond the need to fill my belly.

The weather grows colder, and you can no longer remain with me in that sacred space. As a creature of water, I cannot approach the fires you build. As a human, you cannot submerge your warm-blooded body in the freezing waters of my pool.

“I’ll return when the weather warms.” You kiss the lips I’ve created to please you. I never wear this form for any other purpose now. “Until spring.”

As I lift my hand in farewell, I feel the beginnings of something raw in my heart.

Pining for love is a form of hunger.

As winter freezes the surface of my pool, halts the flow of water down the falls, I spend all my days below. I emerge as soon as the ice breaks, praying you’ll visit me soon.

You don’t come.

For a long time, I wonder if the army forced you to return south.

I grow ravenous as the seasons rotate again, all without word from you. I take a fool who wanders into the water with my equine form, snapping my teeth around his cloak and holding him under until his spasms cease. That satisfies me for a while.

A second winter passes since I didn’t drown you, and still you do not return.

***

One morning, when it’s summer again, a small child appears in my grotto. It creeps closer to the edge of the water, picking up pebbles and tossing them, playing.

“Hello,” I call, and the tiny thing startles, blinking at me with big blue eyes.

“Who’re you?”

“I am the keeper of this place.” I’ve reverted to using the female human form when necessary, as it’s the best suited for small prey.

The child frowns, then opens its mouth and bellows, “Papa! There’s a lady in the water!”

Time flows like a river to me, and I don’t know how many moons…months…years…it’s been since I saw you last. But when you step into the sunlight, smiling, I can spy the streaks of silver threading through your dark hair.

“Hello, Spirit.”

My heart clenches at the sound of your voice, and the rawness your love carved into my chest curdles into something more sinister.

I say nothing, waiting for you to explain your absence.

“I met a woman in the village. Never expected her to return my affection, maimed as I was. But —”

“You married. You had a child.”

“Yes. And another on the way.”

Jealousy is a kind of hunger, too — coveting things that aren’t yours.

“I wanted to tell you.” Your eyes are tired, your smile weary. “But I didn’t know if you’d let me leave. I couldn’t risk it.”

I manipulate the water to lift this body up, let the swell carry me closer to shore.

You hold your offspring the way you once held me, and the rage inside grows.

“Yes, protect the babe, you coward. If you ever let it wander here again, I will drag it down screaming, and you’ll know nothing but sorrow for the rest of your days. Just because it comes from your blood doesn’t mean I will spare it.”

The horror on your face pleases me. “Perhaps I should have named you Demon after all,” you spit.

“Perhaps. Begone from this place. Go home to your wife.” I echo the warning I gave years before. “Come back only when you’ve grown brave enough to come into the water.”

I turn away, tears leaking from my almost-human eyes, and do not watch you leave.

***

Years pass. I remain ever-changing and changeless as things live and die and live again around me. And still the water flows, down the waterfall, into my home, through myself.

I expect to mock you when you reappear as an old man, but I cannot bring myself to say cruel things.

You use a walking stick for assistance as you stumble along the shore.

“Spirit?”

“Here I am.” I flaunt my youthful body, the one you’d loved and left, in the waning sun. It’s near dark, the birds singing their final song of the evening to the wind.

“It’s time, Spirit. My wife is gone, my children grown. I am ready.” The stick drops to the ground beside you.

“Drowning is agony,” I warn. “Wouldn’t you rather die in your bed of some human ailment?”

“I thought I owed you this much. I couldn’t stay with you, Spirit, but I can give something back.”

“So be it.”

There is no fight in you this time as I bring you below the surface, gently as I can. I watch the light dim in your bright eyes.

Your body sinks to join the others. I may take my fill later, or I may leave you to rot.

You were the first, but you won’t be the last. The memory of your betrayal will slip away and I’ll be fooled again by my own eternal heart.

Given enough time, water washes all things clean.