After six years of therapy, Melissa’s voice still calls me from the lake.  My shrink’s three hundred and twelve cream-colored business cards sit on my desk.  One card for each appointment that failed to stop me from hearing my lover’s whispers in the patter of rain on dead leaves, in the footsteps on a flagstone path, in terror-soaked dreams.  I can’t tell what she is saying, but I know the voice is hers.

The cards form a perfect column, smooth sides and straight edges.  Three hundred and twelve cards, three hundred and twelve times questions asked and answered: ‘How do you feel about the lake, Irina?’  ‘It took Melissa’s soul, doctor.  How do you think I should feel?’

#

During the week number three hundred and thirteen I run out of my medications, the little pills in bottles labeled, May cause drowsiness.  There is a problem with my medical insurance and I can’t pay for the pills out of pocket.  Three days later Melissa’s voice, full of torment and pain, calls to me in my dreams.  It is no longer a whisper, the way it used to be, but a cry for help, as sharp and urgent as a razor blade pressed against a trembling wrist.

I know about wrists and razors.  When told my relatives in Russia about Melissa and me over the phone, they disowned me.  I became a lesbianka to them–only murdering someone would’ve been worse.  I was eighteen at the time.  The razor seemed the only way to cope.

When I wake, I find that Melissa’s voice has followed me from the dream, like a pulsing red thread of Ariadne.  Instead of meditating it away the way my shrink taught me, I listen to it closely.  I will not snap the thread that connects us.  Not anymore.

In my backyard where a stunted olive tree grows among knotgrass and oxalis, I dig a hole in the damp soil next to a sprinkler.  ‘If you have a woe, dig a hole and tell your woe to the Mother Moist Earth.  Make an offering to Her and to the one who can grant your wish,’ my great-grandmother told me when I was a little girl, back in Russia.  ‘Superstitious nonsense,’ I would’ve said a few months ago, maybe even a few days ago.  When I came to this country, I made a decision to leave all the superstitions behind.

On the other hand, maybe it’s just the lack of pills talking, telling me to do the things for which my shrink, if he knew, would have me admitted to a psychiatric ward.  But after six years of his cream-colored cards, the lake still holds my lover and me captive.

A handful of redwood compost goes into the hole.  It smells like decaying pine needles on the forest floor that sees only dappled sunlight.  Then I sprinkle in the seeds from different flowers: daisies, begonias, dahlias, dianthus.  Perhaps one or two will be chosen.  I whisper my plight into the hole, my words falling in like droplets of sorrow.

From a plastic jar I pour lake water onto the mound.  And I wait, and water, and mark the days on a calendar with a red pen.

When the plant finally blooms, I recognize a dahlia, but not the kind I have ever seen before.  Its outer petals are blue, like the lake on a summer day without clouds.  The inner petals are as black as the lake at night and among them a moon-yellow center is nestled, bristling with the tentacles of stamens.

I wear gloves to cut the dahlia.  The way its colors glow, its melody that I can almost hear, this flower is not meant for human hands.  I do not know if the lake will accept this otherworldly dahlia in exchange for Melissa’s soul.  Perhaps it no longer knows the meaning of beauty because it has grown used to empty beer cans, candy wrappers and other garbage that people toss into its waters.  I have to take my chances.

So, I drive the dahlia to the lake in a closed cardboard box marked “X-mas, etc.” and Melissa’s voice grows louder with every mile.

The night is eerily like the one from six years ago: the drowned moon, the fishy smell of silt, the drooping willow branches combing the waves…

When I drop the dahlia into the lake, it does not float but sinks like a chunk of lead.  I wait.

The mist rises, just like before.  Fear is a copper coin on my tongue.  But I wait for her to come to me.  She steps out of the mist, her lake-weed hair trailing like a bridal veil.  Her body looks as before: It is made of aquatic plants, fish, a beer can, a candy wrapper, a used condom.  Her terrible beauty that held Melissa captive as she kissed my lover’s life away on that night still glows like a will-o’-the-wisp.

My road splits here: She will accept my offering or I’ll join Melissa.  The lake will take its toll either way.  That’s alright with me.  Mostly.  As I meet her glowing yellow gaze, a drop of sweat slides down my left temple.  It is chilly as melt water, even though the night is warm.  I shiver.

She holds her hands together, as if harboring a live moth within.  The dahlia blossom has replaced the beer can that used to be her left breast.  She nods to me, opens her hands and lets a puff of fog rise from her palms.  Before the fog dissipates, I catch in it a glimpse of a face, a lopsided smile and a dimple in the right cheek.  “Melissa,” I whisper.  Then I am alone and silence is only silence–it whispers nothing into my ears.

Back at home I keep vigil by the fireplace as I watch the cream-colored business cards turn to embers, then to gray ash.  The lake at last has let me go.

The end

A Witch Without Magic (paranormal fantasy novel)