#WritePhoto Enchanted Spring

March 2, 2017 — #writephoto, ancestry, fiction

enchanted spring

Before we leave on the long pilgrimage to our forefathers’ homeland we gather vessels to fill with the water from the magical spring. Although it is heavy to carry on the slippery mountain trails we consider the water to be lucky. It is pure and clear, arising form deep within the earth, filtered through the sandy aquifer, arriving crystal clear and delicious. In the old days there was a superstition about drinking the water to be invited to return. When visitors arrived in the town that were undesirable to the townspeople they were all given beer to drink. The locals believed that once a person drank water from their enchanted spring, they would never leave. They had discovered this the hard way, and wanted to keep their precious resource to themselves.  They became isolationists just when the rest of the world was hooking up with transportation, commerce, trade, and immigration.  The elders wanted to maintain the purity of the water as well as the people’s thoughts.

These purity campaigns rarely result in a better environment.  Somehow the strict rules, the isolation and control of learning, social recreation, and dress customs, had the effect for freezing time.  The population survived, but only through sacrifice and very hard labor.  They freely allowed anyone to leave, but continued to tell strangers there was no water in town, only beer.  After a while the visitors stopped and the population dwindled.  The few old true believers still living in the area were now too feeble to climb up to fetch the water from the spring for themselves, and nobody was left to do it for them.  The enchantment was now completely wasted on them because it was just out of their reach.  It was still flowing copiously as it had done for centuries, but only a handful of people even knew where the spring was.

When the last surviving elder was on his last legs a young girl wandered into town and asked for a drink of water.  The old man broke down in tears while asking her who she was.  She replied that she was a descendent of someone who had lived in the village in the previous century.  She had heard stories about the miracle cures and the enchantment of the spring water that was legendary.  She came because she was curious.  She had fought through some dense forrest to arrive, traveling alone.  She carried with her a copper cup with some inscribed symbols and a name.  This cup had once belonged to her ancestor who left the village to live in the modern world.  Now her curiosity about the cup brought her to this undiscovered part of her inheritance.  The old man saw the cup hanging from her belt and asked to see it.  He recognized the clan symbols inscribed on the side, but when he drew the copper close to his eyes he was able to see the name.  He overflowed with emotion as he read the name of his own maternal great-grandmother on the cup. This was the last miracle the spring delivered to him.  He perished in tears of grief and relief after he showed this youthful distant relative how to find the trail to the spring. When she returned with her vessels full of water, his body had turned to a pile of colored dust. She realized he had been sustaining his own life with leftover magic from the time when he could still climb to the spring to wait for her arrival.  He had fulfilled his duty, and spent all of his extra lives. Now the responsibility was hers to share the enchantment of the spring.  Her hike back out of the forrest was somber indeed.

This short fiction is written based on the fabulous photo prompt from Sue Vincent.  Please join us to read, comment, or submit your own take on this picture.

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