In the Water

Our 10-minute prompt for today has already been finished by Deb, Leah, and Caitlyn (she didn't post hers to her blog). The prompt was this: Begin a story with "And they lived happily ever after. The end." Here's mine:

Camryn jumped from the edge of the stream to one of the rocks that stuck up above the water. “And.”

She jumped to another. “They.”

Each time she said a word, she jumped to a new perch. “Lived. Happily. Ever. After. The…”

Before she could say, “End,” she slipped on a particularly mossy rock and slid into the chilly, wet, muck. When she came up spluttering, Ollie was clapping and giggling. Camryn pulled her long sandy hair off her face. “Are you laughing at my story, or my…” she indicated her spot in the water, “…ending.”

Ollie grinned, but didn’t answer her question. “How am I going to get across, Camryn? I don’t want to get wet, too.”

Camryn turned around to look at the far side of the stream in order to hide her face from Ollie. She made up the story and was being silly to take his mind off of being lost in the woods. Now she was soaked and she didn’t know how to start a fire.

“I’ll walk on this side and you walk on that side until we find a safe place for you to cross, okay?”

Ollie nodded and waited for her to trudge through the last ten feet the opposite bank.

It didn’t take long for Ollie to speak again. “Sing a song, Camryn. The one about the water sprite.”

Camryn sighed. She didn’t want to sing. She wanted to sit and rest and figure out how to get dry. Her clothes were heavy with water and the seam of her pants was rubbing uncomfortably. But she opened her mouth anyway.

Come away dear, come away
while the babies coo and the grown ones meet
Come away to the water’s edge
And take my hand my dear my sweet.

Never before had that song bothered her, but as Camryn sang the last word of the verse, her stomach curled in knots. She stopped cold.

Looking over the stream to Ollie, he was happily skipping along the water’s edge, humming the tune to himself. Over the water, a mist seemed to be forming, and small lights danced along the tendrils.

Camryn shook her head. She was imagining things.

She took a few more steps, not wanting Ollie to get too far ahead of her. The mist seemed to be following him, too, though. As she stood and watched, it condensed, taking on the form of a lithe, wispy woman, her hands outstretched to Ollie.

The words of the song stung in Camryn’s mind as the echo of the notes came back to her. No.

“Ollie!”