Author’s note: To get the most out of this story, I recommend you first read the previous blog about the place. Thanks!
“The businessman was back.”
Setting her tablet on the chair next to her, Luna tilted her head slightly and squinted at her husband. “Was he?”
Fenn nodded. “Auryn’s going to fold.”
Luna sighed. “I feared as much. She’s weak.”
“Weakness can’t be abided.”
“What will you do? With the businessman, I mean.”
Fenn rubbed his beard. “I’ll talk to the others. Same as before, I suppose.”
Luna stood, walked to the entrance of their home, and opened the door. Like all lake dwellers, they lived in a small structure tunneled into the side of a hill. On the outside, only brightly painted doorways distinguished one home from another. Earthen walls kept them cool in summer and warm in winter, eliminating the need for artificial air control. Solar panels powered lighting and the appliances used in cooking and cleaning. Furniture, of sturdy wood composite, was built to last for several generations, and body suits, received upon reaching adulthood, lasted a lifetime. Reduce the human imprint on the land—that was the pledge of lake dwellers.
Luna’s doorway had been painted a greenish-beige to match the tule reeds that grew in the wetlands around the lake. Auryn’s doorway, a vivid violet, matched nothing. She was Luna’s neighbor, but because her property was one of the largest along the lake, they rarely came in contact with each other. A widow whose children had left the lake to become city dwellers, Auryn was a soft touch for every businessman who came along. They all wanted the same thing—to buy her property and alter it to suit the needs of urban dwellers looking to escape the polluted air and tainted water in the cities.
“I’m going to the lake.” Luna gathered her hat from a rack by the door. “I’ll bring back fish.” Most of the protein in their diet came from fish, supplemented by waterfowl and an occasional deer.
Fenn waved and returned to his woodworking. Like his father and grandfather before him, he built the beds, tables, and chairs found in lake-dwelling homes. Most of the furniture he used as barter for other items he and Luna needed, but when coins were required for something special, he sold pieces to city firms. Luna spent her days reading on her tablet, preparing meals, and going to the lake, where she fished, paddled, swam, or just relaxed.
She started down the path. Oaks and pines provided partial shade. Above the canopy, cottonball clouds skitted across a deep blue sky. On a bend in the path, the forest parted and the lake came into view. Her heartbeat always quickened at the sight. A vast sheet of transparent blue water stretched across the horizon and fingered into forested hills on the far side. Hundreds of birds circled overheard, waiting to pounce on fish nudging to the surface. Children scampered along the beach and in shallow waters, and fishermen paddled boards into the deeper areas. The lake was beautiful, healthy, and abundant, giving them all they needed to live good, simple lives.
As far back as lake dwellers could remember, the lake had been healthy. And yet . . . there were stories, told in whispers around campfires at night, of a time eons ago when the lake was dying. Its waters shrank, exposing slopes of desiccated soil. Fires raged. Algae and toxic plants produced poisons. Fish and waterfowl died. Humans suffered from rashes and often fatal sicknesses, and many starved.
No writings remained from those times, but the lake dwellers carried deep in their bones a communal consciousness to leave nature alone and harm the lake in no way. When the local gnats proved especially bothersome, residents wore mesh nets over their heads. When algae bloomed and stank, they paddled to other parts of the lake to bathe and fish until the bloom subsided. No one wanted to do anything to cause a return to the terrible times of the dying lake.
Of course, city dwellers had other views, views of progress and changing the lake to suit their needs instead of the other way round. City dwellers couldn’t help but tinker.
Fenn and the others took it upon themselves to make sure they didn’t.
**
“The businessman won’t be back.”
Luna tilted her head slightly and squinted at her husband. “Won’t he?”
Fenn nodded, then closed his eyes and took a deep breath. “It’s done—until the next time.”
