Second Canto 5

 Canto V: The Return of the Water

A thousand years passed, and the world changed its face.
The towers of Alwen had long since fallen to ivy and rain. Kings became dust, names became echoes, and the lake — the Mirror Lake — slept beneath a crust of reeds and time.

Only the elders remembered the old stories. They said that when the Lady’s sorrow was healed, the water would rise again, not to drown the world, but to cleanse it. The young laughed at such tales, for the lake had been dry for generations — a hollow basin filled with fog and wildflowers.

But one summer, the earth began to hum.

It was a low, steady note, like a heartbeat beneath the soil. Wells overflowed. Rivers changed their course. The villagers gathered at the rim of the ancient mere and watched as mist poured upward, turning to rain that fell only inside the hollow. The lake was returning.

Fear took them then. Some fled. Others tried to dam the water with stones and prayers.

Only one stayed: a girl named Isla, who had grown up listening to her grandmother’s songs of the Lady. She believed not in curses, but in remembering what the world had once loved.

When the flood came, she did not run. She waded into the rising water, clutching nothing but a single lamp. Its flame flickered, then steadied. She called out — not a plea, but a greeting.

“Lady,” she said, “I have come to bring you home.”

The water rose above her knees, her waist, her shoulders. For a moment, it seemed she would vanish like all the rest. But then the light beneath the surface changed — blue, then gold, then white as dawn.

When the waters stilled at last, the valley was gone. In its place stretched a new lake, calm and clear, with a single island at its heart. On that island grew a willow whose branches sang when the wind passed through, a soft melody that needed no words.

Travelers still visit the place. Some hear only leaves. Others hear the echo of a woman’s voice, joined by a second — a younger one — rising in harmony.

And they say the Lady no longer sleeps alone.

What we destroy in fear may yet be reborn through courage.
And every song, given time, finds its echo.