Cold Water

The little river ran quiet and shallow over pale sand. Its path meandered through the woods of tall, dark pines. For the most part, the water was bright, swift, and only ankle deep but, in the shadows under the trees, it was dark and still and long-legged bugs skated across the serene dark water. In a few places, the currents scooped out enough of the riverbed to create pools of water deep enough for a child to splash about in.

In one of the sunny sections of the river, a little girl played in a child-deep section of water. It was a day at the end of summer and, though it was, in some distant field away from the river and the trees, hot, it was comfortably cool here, on the river deep in the woods. The river was cold and fresh, its source a spring in the heart of the forest where no light reached the ground except for a few dapples on a particularly bright day. That spring flowed up from deep within the earth and retained the iciness of its subterranean origins for miles downstream.

The child loved the water and, though she was still small, she could paddle about with some skill and floated like a cork. She was sticky with the juice of the melon she and her mother had chilled in the river and eaten with their lunch and had warmed up since her last dip, so she was eager to cool off in the river.

The water, tinted by the pine needles that fell into it and the sand it ran over, had a golden cast to it and looked like clover honey sparkling in the sun. It was very inviting to the girl. Her mother was asleep on a blanket in the sun, lulled by the sound of the wind blowing through the pines and the gurgle of the water, but the child felt no desire to nap. The thought of taking a nap on such a beautiful day on the river was the height of sacrilege to her.

The town the river flowed through and the lake that it emptied into were far to the south. All that was to the north for many miles were the piney woods and the river narrowing and cutting deep through bluffs of red clay. That was why she liked the river and the woods. It was so quiet here. The only sounds were the water, the wind, and the occasional birdsong.

The child relished the solitude and ducked and splashed before simply sitting in the water and feeling the currents flow past her body.

It took her awhile to wonder why her mother had not woken up to caution her to leave the water before her lips turned purple. She shivered in a way that had nothing to do with the cold water and was about to turn her attention to the bank where her mother slept when she heard splashing from further up the river and decided to investigate the source of the noise.

She walked a short way to the other side of a bend in the river and there, standing in the shadows in a pool of still, black water was a pony, the same honey color as the river in sunlight. The beast nickered musically and knelt in the shallow water and if encouraging her to ride. The strange equine even seemed to glow, though the girl thought that could just be her imagination or the effect of the pony’s pale coat in shadow. She had ridden a pony at a faire before and loved them so, although she knew she shouldn’t approach a strange animal, she did so and climbed on the pony’s back.

They were off like a shot racing upstream. The ride was so smooth if felt more like floating than riding. They raced past the red bluffs and to where the river narrowed to a stream and the canopy of pines met above the water. The girl was not and did not even think about jumping off. The trip was too exhilarating and the pony smelled not of horse but of honey. The more the child breathed in that honey-scent, the more distant everything but this ride on the river became.

The pony finally stopped at the spring that was the source of the river. Water gurgled out of a deep pool of water. She leaned to peer over the pony’s shoulder to look at it. The water was clear but she could discern no bottom. A single white feather floated on the surface.

Suddenly, the pony bucked sharply and sent the child flying neatly into the center of the spring. The water was frigid and she started to swim toward the edge but, before she could make the two stroked it required to reach land, she felt something strong grab her ankle and pull her under.

Had you come upon that secluded spring minutes later, you would have seen no pony and no mark of disturbance on the water or the ground. If you were observant, you might have noticed a rind of ice around the rim of the spring quickly melting in the warmth but dismissed it later as your imagination. No body was ever found and the next day a storm came and finally brought cool weather. People say the river was even colder after that and would make you shiver, even on the hottest summer day.