pounding, but this time he would remain calm. He fully
expected Petal to return. And this time he would be waiting
for her.
Alas, lulled by the croaking of the frogs, he fell asleep.
In the morning when he awoke, the gown was gone
from his hands. He dashed straight back to his cottage
where he found, sure enough, Petal curled up in her bed, the
puddles of water on the floor.
“How innocently you sleep there,” muttered Aron, his
eyes asquint, “just like the little girl I once knew, eh? But
look here, these puddles belie that innocence. Well, sleep
soundly, my daughter, for you will be deceitful no more.”
Aron left the room, knowing what he had to do. For one
more day, he would play the innocent. For one more day, he
would pretend he had nothing burdensome on his mind. He
even whistled again at his loom, which had the intended
effect of reassuring Petal.
But as soon as night fell and Petal went to bed, Aron
dropped his pose. He quietly secured both her window
shutter and door with braces of wood. Taking up his lantern
and stick, he hurried to the pond.
When he got there, he placed himself near the old
beaver dam. There, in a high voice, he called out, “My love,
my love, take me to your home.” Then, his lantern lit, he
crouched down and waited for the creature to rise to the
surface.
It didn’t do so, either because it was fearful of the light, or
because it knew that it was not Petal who called.
No matter, thought Aron. He stood up. “You shall
reveal yourself whether you like it or not.” And, with that,
he gripped his walking stick with two hands and started to
break apart the beaver dam.
He stabbed at the dam repeatedly, prying it, pulling out
the limbs, branches, and mud. The water rushed out of each
break, swelling the stream on the other side. The pond itself
slowly began to shrink, leaving behind a widening shore of
mud that was laced with stranded lily pads and their limp
stems. Several frogs left high and dry began burrowing by
backing into the mud, their bulbous eyes disappearing last
with a blink.
His heart pounding ever faster, Aron worked all the
harder. “Come, come!” he called out over the increasingly
loud rush of water. “Don’t be shy! Let me see your fishy
face!” He put down his stick and eagerly held his lantern
over the surface.
He was rewarded for his efforts. He saw, swimming
among an ever thicker riot of fish, a large, human-shaped
something – no, two human-shaped some-things, both still
vague in the muddy, benighted water.
For a moment, one of them seemed to be the pale form
of Petal, and Aron had to remind himself that he had
secured her in her room. He was tempted to run back to the
cottage just to make sure, but the water was very low now,
and he would see everything soon enough.
Finally, though, as the water dropped to a depth of a
mere hand’s span and the fish were bumping into each
other, many of them forced out and flopping about the
muddy shore, the two creatures began joining the frogs and
burrowing into the mud.
“No! Where are you going?” cried Aron, stepping
forward, his foot sinking in the mud with a slurp.
But the two forms burrowed deeper, even as the pond
became only a mud hole, leaving behind a mere trickle of a
stream that meandered among the stranded lily pads,
flopping fish, and stunned turtles, which just stood there
stupidly, not knowing which way to go. In the center of all
that was the writhing mud, as the two creatures dug down to
escape the lantern light, or the air, or Aron himself.
Eventually, the writhing slowed, the mounds flattened,
and the ground was still. All was quiet. Even the fish lay
exhausted, their gills opening and closing uselessly. Aron
felt cheated not to see the face of the creature whom Petal
had called “My love, my love,” but he was satisfied that it
would be a problem no more.