Sweet Water

The summer sun was unbelievably hot in Spree that day, the kind of sun that makes you feel shell-shocked and causes the world around you to look like it’s underwater. Sandy felt like she was half out of her body, hardly hearing herself as she half-heartedly answered a question her friend had just asked her.

“What do you mean you haven’t been down to the river yet?” Charity said with a derisive little laugh. “It’s the place to be around here when it gets this hot.”

Sandy knew that made sense, but she couldn’t help feeling a little apprehensive. Yes, she was hot. But she’d been afraid of water ever since she was a little girl, and she never had learned how to swim.

“Well, you know, I’m new here,” Sandy replied with a shrug, not caring to get into the whole swimming issue just then. “I haven’t had a chance to look around or go many places yet.”

“Well, you’re going to this place,” Charity said, grabbing Sandy by the hand and jerking her forward so hard her shoulder hurt. “You’ll like it, you’ll see. Everybody does, especially once they’ve lived here long.”

Since it was crystal clear she wasn’t going to be given a choice, Sandy decided to just go along to get along. Not only was it what she always did, but it seemed to be the best way to avoid trouble with personalities as strong as Charity’s. And she could always come up with an excuse to hand her parents as to why she’d missed lunch.

They barely noticed her when she was around anyway.

The walk down to the banks of the Sweetwater was pleasant enough. Like all of the young men and women of Spree when the summer came, neither Charity nor Sandy was wearing shoes. Sandy relished the feeling of the soft earth under her feet. It had been gently warmed by the hot summer sun and cushioned each footstep, allowing her to move soundlessly as a rabbit.

All along the path clear down to the river grew wild lemon trees, their branches heavy with yellow fruit that perfumed the air with its clean tartness. And a cool breeze kicked up just often enough to keep the girls from growing truly uncomfortable under the burning rays of the hot sun. By the time the two reached the river itself, Sandy was in a great mood, her apprehension about the treachery of water forgotten.

The Sweetwater was big and expansive, singing that pleasant song every river seemed to know and sing so well in the summertime. Here and there on the water were charming little boats, each painted a brilliant shade of pearl white with laughing, smiling people aboard. Some were casually fishing. Others were lying back with their hands in the water, relishing the coolness of it as they stared up at the sky.

And all along the banks were children and young people, including many in their mid-teens like Sandy and Charity. Some gathered in groups beneath the tall lemon trees, tasting the fruit and making faces at the sourness of the juice. Others were wading in the water, the boys with their trousers rolled up to the knee and the girls with their long, white skirts raised just high enough to prevent their getting wet.

They talked amongst themselves as they admired the round stones on the riverbank and carefully chose a few to take home and add to their treasure collections at home. Every once in a while, someone would squeal with delight at discovering a crab or a shrimp hiding among the rocks.

Sandy had seen rivers before, so it’s not like she was new to water, but even she had to admit there was something about this place. The very air vibrated with a strange energy. This felt like the kind of place where just about anything could happen (and probably did at least occasionally).

But before she had had time to think it over much, Charity was impatiently pulling Sandy along by her arm again toward the water’s edge. Once they got there, Charity reached into her shoulder bag, pulled out a silver cup, and filled it to the brim with the cool, clear water as it swirled and lapped around her ankles.

“Here,” she said, handing the cup to Sandy. “Everyone needs to drink from the river the first time they come here. It’s tradition.”

Sandy thought that sounded like a strange tradition, but she also realized she was incredibly thirsty and dying for a drink of something. So before she even had time to consider whether the water was safe to drink here, she’d taken the cup from Charity’s slender fingers and drained it dry.

It was the sweetest, cleanest, most delicious water Sandy had ever tasted, and it refreshed her entirely. She could feel its coolness making its way down her throat and spreading throughout her body, clear to the tips of her fingers and toes. And before she’d even had time to think about it, she’d stooped to the water’s surface, filled a second cup, and drained that, too.

When she handed the cup back, Charity was smiling a warm but mysterious smile. “You’re one of us now,” she said, her mouth turning up at one corner as the sunlight made her blonde hair sparkle.

Sandy liked the sound of that. She didn’t think she’d ever actually belonged anywhere before.

Sandy’s mother hadn’t been thrilled at her missing lunch, but she softened a bit when she saw the fat, yellow lemons her daughter had brought back from the riverbank with her. And at least it sounded like the girl was making friends for a change instead of always staying solitary at home.

She already looked different somehow – less meek and more confident. Maybe she’d grow into herself one day yet.

And Sandy felt different, too. All the sun and fresh air must have done her good, because she felt wonderful. That feeling continued for the rest of the evening and on until bedtime. She fell asleep instantly and dreamed she was a fish, slippery and silvery, swimming as fast as she could upstream to ancestral homelands she couldn’t quite remember but nevertheless couldn’t wait to see.

As the summer wore on, Sandy went to the banks of the Sweetwater many more times. She forgot her fear of water and remembered she was a child of the sun. And after a while, it became difficult to remember a time when she had seen herself as anything else.

She even swam in the river now, despite no one having taught her.

One day, while wading at the banks, picking up rounded dove-grey stones, and listening to Charity’s chatter, it had been as if she remembered she could swim all along. And she was suddenly seized by an urge to strip down to her underwear and surge against the current like a fish, which she did as naturally as you please alongside all the other children who did this daily.

And Charity had simply looked on as if it were the most natural thing in the world. “I told you this was the place to be in the summers,” she’d said knowingly. “This river has a way of washing away all the things that hold a person back.”

Sandy couldn’t argue with that. At this point, there was no denying that she felt very different – not as if she was changing so much as she was waking up after a very long sleep.

Imagine being afraid of the water and then remembering that you could swim as naturally as any fish. Imagine realizing that every stone at the edge of a riverbank was a wish that had been turned over and over again until it was smooth and perfect. Sandy felt like the world was opening up on a strange new level.

It was like this river was washing away years of dirt and silt, making it possible to see what truly lay beneath for the first time.

And at night, Sandy would dream the most vivid dreams. Dreams of swimming up and down the Sweetwater like she’d been doing it her entire life. Dreams of diving all the way to the bottom where the crabs lived, of letting the cold water fill her lungs and breathing it as naturally as you’d breathe air.

After a while, it became so difficult to figure out where the dream version of herself ended and the real her began that Sandy barely noticed when a rather large patch of skin on her left thigh began to develop a shiny, translucent look to it, almost like it was covered with the most delicate scales.

The night Sandy wandered out to the banks of the Sweetwater alone, she barely remembered who she was anymore, and she wasn’t sure that it mattered. This place felt more like home to her than her real home did.

Stripping down to nothing, she dove into the darkness of the water, letting the current take her where it would. And when she let the water fill her lungs the way she’d dreamed of doing so many times before, she realized that she could breathe it after all. She noticed that the water around her was filled with hundreds of beautiful silvery little fish like the one she’d dreamed of becoming.

And she could feel her body changing, too – shrinking and lengthening, the silvery patches of scales expanding until they covered her. Her arms shrunk into fins, her legs fused and grew into a graceful, glassy tail. Her transformation complete, Sandy – if that could even be said to be her name anymore – gave herself over to the river, letting it call her home to where she really belonged after all.