For as long as we can remember, our rivers, gorges and fountains have been places touched by lore. Legends tell us about the keepers of the old wetlands, about the unearthly beauty of the water ladies and the enchantments carried by their songs.
Telltales say that they were ferocious hunters and men were their prey. Captivated by their songs they often drowned and sank into the depths of the lakes. Others just turned to stone as soon as they saw them.
But this is all just hearsay. The truth of the water ladies comes perhaps, again, in the form of a legend. A very old legend from the lands of Catalonia, a tiny kingdom in the borders of France and Spain. And this is how the story goes:
A long time ago Catalonia suffered a terrible drought. After a year of 365 full suns, not a single drop of rain had fallen upon the broken soil. The little springs were the first to go, soon after the ponds, the lagoons and the rivers followed; leaving the land bare and the people thirsty. Desperation forced them to go deep into the woods in search of food and water. The first recollections of the water ladies belong to this period in Time, particularly the tale of Paitida.
Paitida lived in the heart of Montseny mountain, a mountain of color turning beech’s forests near the town of Arbúcies.
She was in every sense beautiful, yet her beauty was unique. Her hair was as dark as fresh ashes out of a fire and her portrait was pale and strong. Her manners were particular as well. While her sisters liked to dance in the water through the night, Paitida was busy learning about mushrooms and forest weeds with which to prepare oddly tasting brews by the shore.
They were powerful sorceresses, no doubt, they mastered chanting spells to make Nature deeper and even more radiant. But Paitida’s spells also aimed to heal the soul of the land and its inhabitants and to her the outside world did matter. She believed that Nature needs balance and every imbalance will be ultimately corrected in the end. Perhaps that was the reason why Paitida was so different to her sisters because she had another course to take, one that would lead her where she wanted to go most: to the far-away valleys of sunburnt soil, to the people who laboured it and to the world.
On a bright full moon night, while she was out singing, scouting for wild berries to cook her newest cure-all potion and her sisters were practising synchronized swimming at the lake, Paitida heard a noise in the bushes behind her. She knew, immediately, that a human was spying on her sisters. She decided to cast an ‘Irrumator praetor fugit decurrit’ spell, also colloquially known as ‘run run fucker run’ enchantment, and this time, she appeared in front of the meddling human as an enormous vicious octopus with thousands of tentacles. She did try to gut the human for a little while but only for a very little while because she soon realized that he was in fact gravely ill and laid unconscious on the forest floor.
She took him in and that changed everything. Her sisters would not forgive her transaction, water ladies like them – they said- do not mix with the outside world. They belong to the leaking rocks and the pathless woods with timeless dripping clocks.
However, Paitida found him in the forest and her vocation for healing shined stronger than the so-called rules of an elitist fairy society. The man laid still for a long time while Paitida fed him and looked after him. Many years after, he would recall those days like a dream and yet unlike any dream because it was rich in smells of moss and leaves.
The first time he ever saw her was through the reflection of the lake. He had finally awoken after an endless sleep and rushed to the river bank to touch the water. He had found it, he thought, the cure for the dry land. Then he saw Paitida with her dark grey hair standing behind him. He knew her, somehow. He remembered having glimpsed at her just before fainting. Her soft singing was a calling for the forest fruits to shine; simplifying, in this way, their own ripping. His last memory before he passed out was of the forest glowing like a Christmas tree full of gleaming berries.
He looked up, this time directly into her eyes and he saw the forest looking back at him. Her eyes were as green as a forest constantly drizzled by rain.
The following days were a magical bliss, some say. Although they are not taking into account the constant bickering of Paitida’s sisters, of course, who did not tolerate the human’s presence. They wanted to sacrifice him to keep the secret of their existence. Paitida would not have it. Instead, she made a pact. A pact which bounded all the water ladies after her. She would go to live with him and leave her leafy kingdom behind with two simple conditions. First, he would never reveal her magical nature to anyone and, second, he would not deliberately harm her. He swore an oath that day which he, unlike others, never broke. And this is how the water ladies code was born.
Many water ladies after her chose to follow her path but very few were as fortunate as she was. Most of them got betrayed by the kingdom of men. She, on the other hand, got to fulfil her calling. Not only she worked for the land but she got to heal it as best as she knew, chanting songs of rain and water that slowly paid off in rich harvests and blooming meadows which kept the humans far away from the heart of the forest, her home.
They say she still visited the forest on full moon nights and joined her sisters for some dancing by the riverbank. Others say, although she did not regret her choice, she still missed the beeches and the streams and often cried at night; leaving on her pillow small diamond tears made of salt. Each diamond tear contained a memory and a dream locked inside, and when poured on the rapids of a river it would melt and reveal the secrets of a lifetime.
Oneironaut stories 