Lake Silence

CHAPTER 40

Vicki

Thaisday, Juin 29

The morning of the trail ride beach party, I walked out of the laundry room and found a pony in the kitchen. To be precise, I found a pony with his head in the fridge, rummaging around. I wasn’t sure if he was really looking for something or just enjoying the cold air that was wafting out of the fridge, but I realized the tried-and-true phrase “Were you born in a barn?” wasn’t going to convey what I wanted it to convey.

I hurried around the table, giving myself plenty of distance from his back end, then skidded a little on some water. Gods, I hadn’t been out of the kitchen long enough for the fridge to start defrosting from the heat, but where else could the water have come from?

Looking at the pony’s tail, I chose not to contemplate the alternate answer to that question.

“Hey,” I said sharply.

The pony pulled his head out of the fridge, a bunch of carrots dangling from his mouth.

He was a small white pony with a barrel-shaped body and chubby legs, and clompy hooves the size of dinner plates. Okay, they weren’t that big, but I was wearing sandals and felt a little nervous about anyone who could stomp on my toes, intentionally or otherwise. Once I got over the surprise of finding a pony in the kitchen and stopped wondering if Hector or Horace had brought him over early for some reason, I started to wonder about the color of the pony’s mane and tail. They were aquamarine, a lovely shade of greenish blue, with streaks of stormy gray. I wanted to believe there was some colored glass in the kitchen somewhere that was coloring those bits of him, but I knew there wasn’t any colored glass. Maybe someone dyed the mane and tail? Not likely.

Which meant that whatever he was, he wasn’t quite what he seemed. Which meant I should do the neighborly thing and let him have a carrot.

“I’ll take those.” I reached for the bunch of carrots. The open fridge door blocked him on one side and the kitchen table created a barrier behind him. Short of running me down to make his escape, there was nowhere for the carrot thief to go.

My hand closed on the carrots. His ears went straight out from his head, like little handlebars. I had a momentary crazy thought of grabbing the ears and saying vroom-vroom, but he still had clompy feet and I was still wearing sandals. After a brief tug-and-pull, I ended up with the carrots and he ended up with the green bits—which he dropped on the floor before following me to the counter beside the sink.

I washed one carrot and prepped it as if he were a human guest. As I cut up the carrot, I said casually, “I don’t know if your person lets you have carrots.”

Vigorous head bobbing, as if to say of course he was allowed to have carrots.

“You might be allergic to them.”

Equally vigorous head shakes. Or maybe he was fluffing his mane as a prelude to flirting with me.

I fed him one of the carrot chunks and said, “Let’s go outside.”

I shut the fridge door, thinking hard as the pony and I walked out. I had a hand towel attached to the fridge’s handle, so he could have pulled on that to open the door. And the screen door into the kitchen had a handle, so he could have pushed it down and then pulled on it to open that door. But the porch’s screen door had a different kind of lock and latch, and there was no way a pony could get that one open.

“Caw!”

Unless he had an accomplice.

I studied the crow—or Crow—happily splashing in the birdbath. Could have been Aggie; I didn’t see her in her Crow form often enough to be sure I could identify her in a lineup. Didn’t matter. The pony had wanted to come in and someone had helped him. Why? No idea. Okay, I had an idea about why he had wanted to come in, but how would he have known about the carrots?

I also didn’t know why a strip of the porch floor was wet, just like the floor from the kitchen door to the fridge was wet.

Every few yards I stopped and fed the pony another chunk of carrot. We continued that way until we arrived at the beach. Feeding him the last bit of carrot, I slipped off my sandals and dashed across the already hot sand to the water, intending to stand in the shallows for a few minutes before going back to wipe up the kitchen floor and get on with preparations for my part of this party.

The pony followed me into the water, and we both stood knee-deep in water that was refreshingly cool. Then the water began swirling around me, like a friendly animal circling my legs. There was no natural reason for it to do that all of a sudden, and the motion was causing the sand to shift under my feet.

Before I could become more than mildly alarmed, the Lady of the Lake rose out of the water to my left and said, “You shouldn’t tease Miss Vicki after she gave you a carrot.”

The swirling stopped. I looked to my right. The pony had disappeared.

“He’s curious,” she said, “but he won’t hurt you.”

I heard the slight emphasis on “you.” “I’m glad you’re here. I wanted to tell you that Ineke and I are hosting a beach party this afternoon, so there will be a few humans who will be swimming and using the beach. Maybe even taking a walk farther up the beach.”

“These are friends?”

“Well, this group of people are friends. If this party is a success, Ineke and I will offer more trail ride beach parties to her paying guests and mine.”

“Why offer parties to humans who are not friends?”

“They will be guests—humans who pay to stay in the cabins for a few days and spend time swimming in the lake.”

“This is important, having humans who pay?”

“The money I earn from renting out the cabins will help me take care of The Jumble.” And provide me with food and clothes and other essentials, but I figured The Jumble would be of more interest to her.

After a moment’s consideration, she nodded. “I will tell the others. They may want to observe, but I will tell them to keep their distance from your guests.”

Who wanted to observe?

“What happened to the pony?”

She laughed. “Whirlpool? He’s around.”

She sank into the water until only a vaguely human head and chest showed. Then she leaped high, her human-shaped torso becoming a column of water below the hips—becoming an arching prism of colors as she dove back into the lake.

I waited a minute, then headed back to the house.

Whirlpool. Really? I thought about the water swirling around my legs and decided it was better to think of something else before a party that had swimming as part of the activities. Like, who were the others who wanted to observe us? And why would the Lady tell them to keep their distance?

“Miss Vicki!”

I stopped and waited for Aggie, who came running up the path from the lakeside cabins to the main house.

“Did you let the pony into the house?” I asked when she reached me.

“Can I help you with your party? I’ve never been to a human party and—” Aggie stopped. Stared at me. “Pony?” She looked toward the lake, then focused on me again. “Pony?” She leaned toward me and whispered loudly, “One of them?”

Not knowing who they were, I couldn’t answer that. “Maybe. His name is Whirlpool.”

“Don’t let him near your bathtubs.”

Well, that sounded ominous—and made me deliriously happy that I preferred taking showers.

“Okay. But if you didn’t let him into the house, please tell your pals not to help him get inside until we establish some ground rules for taking things out of the fridge.”

“But you said the food in the kitchen was for all the guests,” Aggie pointed out.

I could have pointed out in turn that, technically, Whirlpool wasn’t a guest, but I had a feeling that broadening my definition of “guest” was right up there with “don’t smack a Panther on the head” as a basic rule of how to live with all my neighbors.

“Even so, standing in front of an open refrigerator and staring at the food is a human boy behavior that females everywhere should discourage. So Whirlpool should wait for someone to help him if he wants a treat. And, really, a cold treat might not be good for his tummy.”

Was a pony like Whirlpool in any way like a regular pony or horse? Would the same gastric rules apply? Something to ask Hector when he came over this afternoon.

“Can I help?” Aggie asked again.

As my lodger, she was entitled to join the party, and enlisting her help might encourage the rest of the Crowgard to prove they had good manners. Or not. It was worth a try. “Yes, you can help.” I opened the porch’s screen door. “The first thing we need to do is wipe up the water on these floors.”