Tidefall

A short story.

I'm not one hundred percent positive I'm using the word tidefall correctly, but hopefully it's fine.

Please give feedback if you have any! Enjoy!

Tidefall

            When the tide went out, Caleb always ran out to collect the seashells that remained in its wake.  What he really wanted was to find a pearl in an oyster, so he was delighted when one day he picked up a seashell and a diamond ring tumbled out into his hand.

“Where did you get this?” his great-aunt gasped when he showed it to her.

“In a seashell, from the tide,” he replied.  She took it from him and held it in her hand.  Caleb was surprised to see tears in her eyes.

“Take it back,” she whispered, thrusting it back into his hands. “It belongs to the sea.”

~

Alena held on to Ethan’s arm.

“Don’t go,” she begged. “Please don’t go.  Everyone knows the Lake is cursed.”

“Those are just stories to keep trespassers away,” Ethan reassured her, kissing the top of her long dark hair.  “My grandfather was an apprentice at Lac-Ater House, as was his father before him.”  And if it is cursed, he added to himself, I won’t ever let it stand in the way of healing you.

“That was before,” Alena whispered.  “Please, Ethan.  I can get well, we can find another way!”

Ethan pulled his hand through his brown locks and frowned.

“How would you get well? I have already tried everything I could.”

“No. You haven’t.  But your heart is set on learning healing magic, I realize that.  But Ethan.”  Big blue eyes stared up at Ethan’s brown ones. “I’m asking you not to go.”

But Ethan was determined to take this opportunity to go to Lac-Ater House like his grandfather, in order to save Alena’s life.  He knew there was no real curse. Ethan’s father had avoided following the family tradition because of the rumours of the curse, and his aunt had tried to go instead but had been rejected because the Master of Lac-Ater preferred to teach men.  His father had begged him not to go, but from a young age Ethan would visit his aunt and listen to the longing in her voice as she said,

“There is nothing I would rather do than learn magic.”

She would tell him all the stories of Lac-Ater; how The Lake was actually a bay leading out to the sea, though everyone knew it as a lake for its name – Lac-Ater, the Dark Lake; how the Master never seemed to grow old no matter how time passed; how many apprentices, both men and women, used to come to learn magic at Lac-Ater; how the Master had a lover once, who had drowned in the lake, and how after that, suddenly no more people ever came to Lac-Ater to learn. 

“It’s not actually cursed, though,” she told him.  “That’s just stories to filter out the applicants. The Master has become stern since the death of his lover, and wants only the best of the best.  And he only allows men to come now.  Ethan, you come from a line of mages. You are the best of the best.”

So he, too, began to say, like his aunt, “there is nothing I would rather do than learn magic.” 

It became his dream to go to Lac-Ater, and later, when Alena started dying and they could not figure out the cause, it became a necessity. So despite her pleas, he set off for Lac-Ater, leaving her with the promise of his return in the form of a diamond engagement ring.

The Master of Lac-Ater house was expecting his new apprentice and welcomed him into large empty rooms and long corridors that whispered with the echoes of past apprentices.  Ethan was the Master’s first apprentice in years.  Magic was a lost art now, and the Master started Ethan’s lessons with a tiredness that betrayed his age. 

“The most important thing of all,” he told him, pointing out towards the lake, which was down the hill from the house, “is never to venture out to the Lake.  Especially not at tidefall.”

Ethan agreed to avoid the lake, and concentrated on his lessons with fervour.  His first success happened when the edge of a paper sliced his finger open and he closed the wound with a single touch.

“Healing magic!” he whispered in awe.

“Ha!” laughed his Master.  “That, healing magic? That’s like saying a puff of air is a hurricane.  Healing magic! That’s a good one!”

But Ethan was not discouraged.  His heart filled with the hope of seeing Alena well again.

The nights, though, were dark and dreary.  He kept dreaming that Alena would die before he could reach her, and then he would wake in a panic and hear the sound of faraway singing.  At first, Ethan ignored the singing, but as the nights progressed he felt a growing urge to see where it came from, so one night after another dream of Alena’s death he found himself wandering outside in search of the source of the singing.

It led him down right to the edge of the Lake.  He stood there and stared at the swirling mist coming in from the sea, mesmerized as it drew closer and closer.  The singing grew louder and carried across the water to him with complete clarity.

“Ethan,” the breeze whispered, sweeping his dark locks off his forehead.

“I am here,” he whispered back.  In the mist he could see the form of a lady, and she was beckoning to him.

“Come, my love,” she sang.  She had Alena’s shape, Alena’s hair, Alena’s voice.

“Alena!” he choked.  He realized now what this meant. He was too late to save her; she was dead!  And her spirit was here, at Lac-Ater, to be with him.

“Ethan,” she sighed, “come home to me!”

The legs that led him out into the water moved of their own accord.  It wasn’t until his head went under that the shock of cold brought him back to his senses.

I won’t let it stand in the way of healing you! he cried inwardly.  The water clutched at him with long icy fingers, dragging him down, but he focused on the shore the way his master had taught him to focus, and fought his way back.  He fled to the house without looking back.

“I will not let you down,” he shivered into his blankets after he had changed and dried.  But the cold wouldn’t leave him, or the image of the lady, or the rushing sound of water in his ears – or was that the singing, far away on the sea, still pounding in his ears?

The image of the lady in the mist was so distracting that Ethan could no longer focus on his lessons.  Finally, he got leave from his Master to return home for a few days so he could see Alena and prove to himself that she was still alive.

Silence was the first thing to greet Ethan as he entered his hometown.  Absolute, awful silence.  Not a soul did he see as he walked down the road to Alena’s house, not even a bird or a butterfly.  He started running.

“Alena!” he yelled as he burst in.  “Alena!”

There she was, lying on her bed, her eyes closed and her chest still.

“Alena,” he cried, shaking her.  “Wake up.”

Her eyes opened and looked right at him, but they were not the eyes Ethan knew.  They were cold, empty, lifeless.

He was too late. She was gone.

Ethan started to weep, and he gently removed the ring from her finger.  Then he remembered the lady on the lake.  Alena’s spirit was at Lac-Ater! He had to go back.  He had to be with her.

Ethan stood up to leave, and felt something latch itself onto his arm.  To his horror, Alena had sat up and her hand was gripping onto his arm.  Her lifeless eyes stared straight at him.  His throat thickened in panic as he tried to pry himself free. 

“Don’t go,” he recalled her saying before he went to Lac-Ater. “Please don’t go.  The Lake is cursed.”

Ethan tore her stone-cold fingers from his arm, but she reached for his face and grabbed onto a chunk of his hair.  She pulled his face to hers and Ethan felt cold, such cold, cold like the water of Lac-Ater Lake, shoot through his heart.  He pushed her from him and fled.

Lac-Ater was also silent, when he got back.  Ethan could not find the Master in the house or anywhere on the grounds, and the whispers in the corners were gone.  Ethan found a letter addressed to him on the table, which he opened in a frantic hurry:

Dearest, please come home.  I am getting stronger but I cannot live without you.  Come home to me.

A cry ripped from Ethan’s throat and he ran down to the Lake, screaming Alena’s name.  It was tidefall.  When no one answered, he rushed into the water and let its dark depths envelop him.

~

After Ethan left, I wept bitterly, for I knew in my heart that he was not coming back.  My heart grew weaker without him, though my health started to improve after a travelling gypsy sold me a potion and warned me about the dangers of Lac-Ater.  I immediately sent Ethan a letter begging him to come home, and a few days later he did… but this was not the Ethan I knew.  The man who came through my door that day was utterly, horribly changed.  It was like his soul was missing; his face was closed, his expression emotionless, and worst of all, his eyes were completely void of life.  I started screaming at him, as though by screaming I could wake him and he would stay with me forever.  But I knew he was gone; the lake had already claimed him.  I was powerless as his fingers, cold as ice, removed the ring he had given me.  I held onto his arm in a last desperate attempt to rouse him, and for a second something sparked in his eyes – something terrified, pleading, and helpless – but then it was gone.  I wept and wailed, but there was a wall between us.  He did not hear my cries.  I tried to kiss him, my own tears running down his face of stone, but I knew there would be nothing I could do to bring him back to life.  I collapsed in grief when he left, and remained that way for I don’t know how long.  It was years before I bid him goodbye and went on with my life, letting myself be happy again – but never forgetting.

I left my home in my later years and moved to the seaside with my sister’s daughter and her little boy Caleb.  My heart knew we were close to Lac-Ater, but my mind forgot, so I was shocked to see a familiar ring in Caleb’s hand one day when he brought it back from the sea after the tide went out.

“Take it back,” I told him.  “It belongs to the sea.”

I didn’t need to keep the ring to remember him.  He remained in my heart, and in the memories that came in and out with the tide.