8,800 words

He isn't looking where he steps. It's hard to make out the ground in the fog anyways, but Yixing guesses he's run into the lake when his foot sinks down in a puddle of soft, water-logged earth and soaks through his boots. He stops, not bothering to sigh, and backtracks a few steps.

He's here. He doesn't even know where here is. Except per the guidance of the village boy, Jongin, he probably would never have arrived at all.

"Follow the trees, take a left at the oak, right at the rockpile, three hours through the mists, into the third valley, then sit down and the stars will point your way. If they want you to find it."

Maybe the stars did want him to find it, this place, this very secret place.

There are no trees anymore. By his own head, Yixing figures it must be late into the afternoon, but it looks like early morning. The stars disappeared into haze, the mists have never retreated. It's a foggy, barren landscape in shades of browns and faded green. The lake is black. And vast. Vast beyond what Yixing expected. In every storybook, it's called the Vanishing Waters, only found when it wants to be found. Home to a spirit, a ghost, a ghoul, Yixing doesn't know which, but he's determined to find it.

He begins to walk around the shoreline, mesmerized by how the water ripples silently, how it stretches out further than the eye can see, obscured by the fog, by the terrain, by the hills which seem to ring the entire valley, not a tree in sight. Except - Yixing blinks and clears his eyes - for one. In the center of the lake, past where any man might wade, sits a tiny island with one scraggly tree. He doesn't know how he missed it before. It's as clear as anything can be in this fog, shimmering there. It glows with a soft blue-greenish light, faint and unremarkable until Yixing stares at it some more. It's like it wants to be seen, as if it wants Yixing to find it.

"Don't swim in it," Jongin had warned him. He couldn't have been older than ten years of age, sullen, silent, dirtied face and his clothes were tattered although he wore good boots. Yixing tipped him a few pennies before setting off, promised more if he came back in one piece, and Jongin didn't even smile as he shrugged and trotted off. Even if the directions were wrong, which clearly now they weren't, Yixing would spare every penny he had if only he could wake the spirit.

He puts another toe to the water's edge, Jongin's warning echoing in his head, and a sharp gust of wind blows from across the lake. He steps back and frowns, wondering if that was a sign. There is a boat on that island; he can barely make it out. A boat that no one can get to, in the middle of the lake, long and thin, twice as long as a grown man's height made of dark colored planks, weathered and torn. A single oar rests at an angle inside, poking up as if waiting for someone to take it. Could it be, that is where the spirit resides?

Yixing can't swim, and even if he could, he wouldn't, not in these waters. He needs to get to that lake, but maybe today is not that day.

"Mister, you're back." It's not a question. Jongin stands beside the bar stool, one palm outstretched waiting for the pennies that Yixing had indeed promised him. He puts two in the boy's hand and turns back to the bar in the only pub in this entire village. He'll need to save the rest of his coin for a room upstairs if he doesn't intend to sleep out in the open tonight.

He takes a swig of his ale, grimaces when it sloshes over the edge and runs down his chin, then almost takes a fright when he sees Jongin hasn't moved. He raises one eyebrow in question. "Yes?"

"Mister, did you find what you were looking for? Was the spirit there? Are you going back tomorrow?"

Patience, says every legend. Patience for the spirit, patience with people.

"You can't force it to show," his grandmother had said, her last dying words. "It'll show when it's ready. Like all people do."

"But is it a person? Or is it a thing?" he'd asked then, mesmerized like always. "And why must I find it?"

To this there'd been no answer, and to Jongin he speaks now. "I am."

"Mister, give me three pennies and this time I'll go with you."

"Why, what for?" Yixing asked, vaguely irked to be called mister so many times in one night. His father had been mister. His oldest brother had been mister. Yixing was no mister, just an accessory to a family that no longer called him their own. Just a boy really, fifteen years old and set adrift in the world. A corporeal spirit.

"I bet you didn't see the boat, mister. Did you see the boat?"

Yixing smiles. "I did see the boat."

Jongin's eyes brighten in shock and he visibly gulps. "Oh."

"Oh, is right." Yixing revels in his victory for a short half a minute.

Then, "I bet you though, it didn't move."

Three pennies and a day later, he approaches the lake with the kid by his side, shocked to see it from a different angle even though he swears he came up the same path as yesterday. Everything's off though, that's for sure. The hills are rotated, the tree in the island in the center of the lake leans at a different angle. The boat isn't there.

Jongin reads the surprise right off of his face. "Come on, mister," he says, tugging at the frayed edge of Yixing's traveling cloak. "It'll be around the bend, this time of day."

"What?" Yixing asks quietly, but he follows the boy anyways, wondering if he can even trust his eyes, his memory, or his guide's intentions. Spirits are tricky, this he knows.

He follows Jongin along the outline of the lake keeping close behind him. The fog shifts around them like a living entity, and he doesn't want to get lost or lose his guide. Sometimes the island in the center of the lake disappears, sometimes he can only see it for the pale glowing shape. Sometimes even the glow disappears behind the mists and Yixing grows afraid, but then it's there again, still waiting.

"Look, there it is." Jongin stops so abruptly Yixing almost runs into him. The boy is pointing a short distance away where a gnarled tree not unlike the one in the lake bends towards the water's edge. The stump of a fellow seedling sits before it, cut sharply as if by a saw. A third tree that was once perhaps include in the copse lays horizontally before the other, this one broken and bent form the wind, its leaves and branches now dead. It touches the water's edge and for the first time Yixing notices how the water ripples along the surface here. Just here, and nowhere else.

On the other side of the fallen tree sits the same boat that yesterday was in the center of the lake. A rope moors it to the tree stump, the oar rests against the live, gnarled tree.

"Mister, if you call it home, the ferryman will come. See?"

Yixing doesn't see. He doesn't understand what home means, or who he's supposed to be calling. There's no ferryman to speak of; Yixing has even heard that a ferryman existed. He's here to find the spirit, however, Jongin is staring at him expectantly. He feels silly calling for the ferryman, but he does it. And then he waits. Nothing happens except for a small gust of wind and it's not unlike the normal breeze.

Yixing sighs. "Maybe... maybe he didn't hear me." He thinks Jongin will like that excuse better than if Yixing insinuated there's probably not a ferryman.

"No, he'll hear you. He always does. Try again."

Yixing steels his shoulders towards the copse and calls again. "Ferryman?"

Jongin starts walking towards it, slowly, and Yixing follows close behind. There's another gust of wind, and this time it brings with it a wave of mist that obscures the land for a brief moment in time. He gasps aloud when fog clears. Beside the boat, very clearly, stands a man. He's almost a shadow, but as Yixing approaches the vision clears. It's definitely a man, the ferryman. He stands still, oar in his hand. Around his shoulders he wears a long robe that obscures most of his body. It's in the deepest shade of midnight blue. His face seems to glow, pale and smiling. A wide-brimmed hat dips at an angle. He frightens Yixing. He looks like all the pictures of death that his grandmother described to him. And yet, she was the one who told him to come here. He has to meet the spirit, and he's not entirely sure the ferryman isn't this spirit.

"You called? Please, get in. I will take you to the island."

Yixing hesitates for only a few seconds. Jongin doesn't move, but as Yixing approaches the boat, one foot placed gently inside the poorly made wooden structure, the ferryman clears his throat. "The boy too. You may come."

Yixing didn't expect this. He stares at the ferryman for a moment and then he perches in the center of the seat. It creaks under his weight but doesn't break. Jongin is less graceful as he climbs into the boat. He pointedly doesn't make eye contact with the ferryman, so Yixing follows his lead in this. The ferryman stands like a statue until they are in. His palms rest on the tip of the oar, his smile never changes. Yixing watches him covertly out of the side of his eye. He doesn't know how this is supposed to work. The island seems to be their destination, but he doesn't even know what he'll find there. Was he supposed to pay the ferryman for the trip? Why is Jongin coming along?

None of them speak. The ferryman only takes his place at the back of the boat and they set off. It's quiet, and chilly. The island still glows in the center of the lake, but despite how Yixing knows they're moving by the ripples in the otherwise still water, it never grows any closer.

"Nearly there," says the ferryman. His voice is smooth, friendly. Disturbing as well since Yixing can see very clearly that they're not almost there. He glances back once. The ferryman's smile is still trained on him. Yixing shivers and looks away, back to the island. He falls back in shock, Jongin pushing him back up right with his palms. The island, a second ago so far away, lays right in front of them. The boat eases onto the bank and stills. Yixing blinks, his eyes adjusting to the weak glowing light. He expects to see something different now. Maybe the reason why he's supposed to be here. Some clarification or enlightenment. Instead, there is nothing. He looks back at the ferryman who nods at him patiently.

"Go ahead. Step out on the island."

He can't shake off the feeling like this places may not actually exist, or if it's just a phantom mirage. Do his eyes deceive him, or is the island a lie? Will he sink into the lake and drown? The earth, however, is solid. It's moist and spongy, but it grows rockier after a couple more steps. The whole thing can't be longer than three times the length of the boat. It's not much wider either.

Neither the ferryman nor the boy follow him. Yixing treads lightly towards the gnarled tree, the source of the glowing light. It’s magical, this much he knows. But nothing else happens. No revelation, no miracle. Not an ounce of clarification. He’s cold, that’s all. And damp from the thick, heavy fog.

He glances at the ferryman, turning slowly. He and Jongin are staring at him, the boy more expectantly. The ferryman, however, is aware of Yixing’s befuddlement.

“You haven’t found it yet,” he says.

“Found what?” asks Yixing.

“Exactly.”

Something tugs from within his gut. He stumbles over and gasps, his breath from body, and the whole world swirls around him. It’s like a vortex, a trap of wind and energy, and nothingness. He tries to scream, but no sound comes out. His ears echo like of a faraway place, his eyes turned shut, the world into darkness.

It ends a moment later. Yixing chokes and gasps, but he’s on his hands and knees on solid earth once more.

“Mister? Mister, are you okay?” The boy sounds about as dazed as Yixing, but together he helps him stand up and get his bearings.

“What… what happened?”

Yixing’s head darts around, trying to make sense of what he’s seeing. They’re back on the shore, close to where the boat had been moored earlier, but it’s not there now. Neither is the ferryman. And neither is the island in the center of the lake. The hazy blueish glow is gone, replaced by normal gray fog. He can’t make out a single landmark that would place it.

“The island… it’s gone for now. Magic drained,” says Jongin sadly. “If you’re still going to look for whatever it is you’re looking for, you’ll have to come back again. When the island is back.”

Yixing shakes his head, still reeling from being spun magically from the center of the lake, to here. Perhaps he merely passed out and lost track of time.

“How… how do you know so much about the island?” he asks Jongin instead.

The boy shrugs. “Just saying what I’ve heard. My dad looked for something on it once. Years and years ago. But he says sometimes it takes a long time. And every fifth year he came back, still looking.”

“Did he ever find it?”

Jongin shrugs again. “Dunno. He didn’t say. But, I think he must have.”

Yixing hadn’t contemplated asking more people in the village about the lake, but perhaps now is a good time to ask around.

“Your dad. Would he mind if I talked with him a bit?”

“Ay, sure. He probably wouldn’t mind it. But he’s been dead since two years ago, so I don’t fancy he’ll talk back.”

Yixing leaves the village the next day. He leaves a few more pennies with Jongin, who asks if he’ll be back one day. This time it’s Yixing’s turn to shrug. Five years is a long time, and he’s not sure he believes the legend anyways. So what if there’s a spirit in that lake. Because if that’s what he’s looking for, then what is he supposed to ask it? And if it’s not, then why did he go there anyways? If Yixing doesn’t know what he’s looking for, what’ll be the purpose of returning again.

He returns home, but there’s nothing there for him. His dad has also passed away. His grandmother has been gone for ages. Yixing’s brother runs the farm now, and all the money. He side-eyes Yixing’s intentions and keeps him at arm’s length away, perhap worried that Yixing means to claim everything as his, or even a partial amount of land. There’s no future for him there, a fifteen year old young man, and nobody even calls him ‘Mister’.

He takes to wandering instead. At sixteen he relocates to a neighboring estate, doing odd jobs here and there. At seventeen he follows the work to another town a few days away. At eighteen he’s hauling cargo at the docks at the sea, and by nineteen he’s traveling from one city to the next with the merchants’ caravan. It’s piddling work, but he doesn’t hate it. It keeps his body agile and his mind focused.

He almost forgets about the lake and the glowing island and the ferryman and the boy. Not until he arrives in the dark of night to same place he’d been to five years before, and he recognizes it, almost in shock.

The pub is still open when he sets foot in the door. Nothing out of place, everything the same, just as his memory supplies him. He finds his contact for the delivery, and with that finally out of the way, he sits down at the bar, thinking about the lake.

Yixing isn’t expected back at the docks for a few more days due to how nice the weather was on the road. It made traveling easy, faster. He could… since he has time, go back there tomorrow.

A group of boys start laughing from a nearby table. Yixing turns his head at the ruckus, and does a double-take. In profile, he almost thinks that boy is… “Jongin?”

The boy turns at the sound of his name. It’s definitely him, Yixing realizes. He’s older now. Fifteen instead of ten, but there’s no mistaking him.

Jongin squints, trying to place him, Yixing thinks.

“Hang on a sec,” he tells his friends, and then he stalks towards Yixing. “I know you don’t I?”

Yixing smiles. “Before, you always called me mister.”

Jongin grins back, evidently pleased to see him. “It is you. I wondered if you’d come back.”

“Did you? I assure you I mostly forgot. It’s a coincidence I’m even here.”

But Jongin smirks. “A coincidence, you say? Not likely. Let me go with you. Tomorrow? Been so long, an outsider like you will never find the way again.”

This is probably true. Yixing smiles bashfully. “Fair enough. And how many pennies will you demand from me this time?”

“Pennies?” Jongin scoffs. “Buy me some ale and we’ll call it even. I’m a man now!”

Yixing continues to laugh, because Jongin insisting he’s a man only comes off like a boy aching to grow up fast. He’s not quite there yet, but then neither probably was Yixing when he was that age, just five years ago. Perhaps it’s all relative after all.

“My name is Yixing, by the way. Not sure you ever asked back then.”

“Yixing,” says Jongin, like he’s mulling over the word. “You’re right. I didn’t ask. You were just the guy with the coins. Come on, let’s drink!”

It takes them several hours to travel on foot. Jongin say it’s the only way to go, that carts mysteriously break, the axles on their wheels splintered, that horses go lame. Only man may enter this sacred space, and only by his own two feet.

He’s a lot more talkative this time, Jongin. Yixing listens to him prattle, mindless gossip about his friends, about the townspeople, about his neighbors and how they chided his father for years for believing in the magic of the lake.

“But they never saw the island. It was always hidden from them!” Jongin’s eyes are bright as he recounts their unbelief.

“Why does it hide itself from people?”

Jongin smiles. “Like I’ve told you, mister, it only shows itself to people who are searching. Who believe in it.”

Yixing doesn’t comment, doesn’t mention how he almost doesn’t believe either Jongin’s words or the myth about the lake. Why couldn’t his grandmother have been more specific? If Yixing is supposed to find something, shouldn’t he know what it is?

In the last five years, everything has become hazier, even his memories. Maybe he misunderstood her, maybe he missed something important. Maybe he dreamed up the whole episode and the ferryman with his teasing eyes but solemn stance.

But then they pass over over a hill and there, in the mist, he sees the lake.

It’s different, again. More trees line the banks of the lake, some young, some old. It’s only been five years, but the landscape appears to have aged at least fifty.

“What about you?” he asks.

Jongin looks at him, away from the shimmering water, from the island which they both can see.

“You can see it,” says Yixing. “So, what are you searching for?”

“Me?” Jongin’s eyebrows lift curiously. “I… don’t know. Nobody’s ever asked me that.”

Yixing sets pace and starts down the hill. “But you seem so knowledgeable. You have have some idea what this place is about?”

“I…” Again he hesitates, as if mulling over another thought entirely, and not the answer to Yixing’s question. “I… I don’t know.”

“Have you come here since the last time?”

Jongin quickly shakes his head. “I haven’t. I wonder why…”

This time Yixing doesn’t flinch when they come across the boat. “Ferryman?” He calls into the mist.

The copse looks exactly the same, one gnarled tree, one dead tree, one stump. For all the rest of the land is different, a young forest just about ringing the entirety of the lake, this little semblance of familiarity both calms Yixing and chills him to the bone.

“My friends, seekers,” says a voice. A whisper in the wind. But then mist swirls like before and the ferryman steps into their presence. From this world, or from another, Yixing doesn’t dare to ask. Instead, he wonders about the plurality. Friends, seekers. Is that what they are, together? Him and Jongin?

It’s on the tip of his tongue to ask. Instead, the ferryman holds up the oar and points towards the boat invitingly. “Please. I will take you.”

“To the island?” Yixing asks. A redundant question probably, but he needs to break the silence.

“Yes.”

Yixing climbs in, Jongin following, and they perch unsteadily on the seats. “Why are you always waiting for us? What’s your name?” Yixing continues to speak.

He gets no reply for a minute and he doesn’t look back to see if the ferryman is offended. Maybe these are the wrong questions. Maybe spirits don’t have names, or they don’t answer questions to mortal humans who doesn’t even know what they’re questing towards. Is he a spirit?

“An interesting question, actually,” the ferryman muses. He sounds grounded, more present in the here and now than he was before. “Nobody’s ever asked my name before. It’s Taeil. Or rather, I find I like that name.”

Softly behind Yixing’s back he hears Jongin echoing the name. “Taeil?”

“Do you know it, boy? The name?” asks the ferryman.

“No… no, but… maybe. I don’t remember where.”

It isn’t a very common name, Yixing knows. Not in these parts. Not for centuries more like.

“The beginning of names is the beginning of everything,” says the spirit. “You are on the right track.”

But not completely. Yixing hears his disappointment even if he doesn’t say it aloud. He closes his eyes for the remainder of the ride, knowing from before that the island isn’t something he can watch approaching. This time he shuts off his senses and waits. He hears the water as the boat passes through it, over it. He hears the oar as it dives and dips and lifts. He’s aware of Jongin breathing behind him, softly, expectantly.

Then the small boat runs upon murky ground and his eyes snap open.

He must be closer now, to knowing. Something that separates now from five years ago. A loose factor that Yixing grapples with in his mind. He stands up and the wobbles unsteadily. Jongin leans forward and steadies Yixing with a hand on his hip, and Yixing breathes evenly once, twice, before stepping over the rim of the boat and onto soggy ground.

“Have you found it yet?” asks the ferryman.

No, Yixing things, but he doesn’t say it aloud. He doesn’t want this to end so soon, to be torn into that vortex and deposited on dry land. Not before he’s had time to think, to ponder, maybe to pray. Grandmother, what would you have me look for? What did you want for me? Why me, and not my brother, why not my father?

“Jongin,” he says without turning. “Do you want to step onto here too?”

Jongin’s father, he said, had come before, seeking something. Something he maybe found. Is that the key? That every time he’s come here has been because of Jongin. Without the village boy he’d never have learned the way. He would never have found the ferryman. He would likely have gotten lost returning here today.

“Me?” says the boy. Is he a boy? Or more a man, like Yixing was when he first came this way.

“Yes. Look, there is something here.”

Yixing crouches down even as he hears Jongin standing up from the boat. His boots tread almost silently on the moist earth, muffled, lost in the atmosphere, in time. Like the entire island itself and the lake around it.

But not this flower.

“Look,” he says, when Jongin stands beside him. Three long purple petals, a sickly looking stalk. Leaves that are already wilting. He touches it with the tip of his finger, delicately and the petals quiver, as if they’re alive, more than just alive.

“What is it… how…?” Jongin whispers in awe. All by itself in the middle of a lake, the only flower of its kind.

“Have you seen it before? I don’t recognize the bloom.”

Jongin shakes his head, his eyes still drawn to the by chance magically placed flower.

Yixing glances back towards the boat, sees the ferryman waiting, standing up straight as if he’s weightless to affect to it. He’s smiling though, to see them there.

“Perhaps you are closer than I thought…” the spirit ponders, and his smile grows even more.

Moments later, Yixing and Jongin are hurled back onto the shore. Yixing swallows that familiar unsettling stomachache, like he wants to vomit except nothing comes up. This time he feels damp, from perspiration or from the fog. He rolls over and drags his hands through the dry earth, sees Jongin doing the same.

“Wow, that was interesting,” says the boy after a minute of them spent catching their breaths.

It’s only when they pull each other up to their feet and dust off their coats that Jongin points at something sticking out from the outermost pocket of Yixing’s coat.

It’s the flower, three pale purple petals wilting over the side, pulled out from the ground roots and all. He doesn’t remember taking it. In fact he’s absolutely sure he didn’t pull it out of the earth.

“The ferryman must have given it to you.”

“Did he?” Yixing stares at the bloom in his hand. It feels like it might disintegrate or wilt into nothingness.

“Jongin, you said the name was familiar to you. Do you remember it yet?”

“No.” And Jongin looks just as confused and sad as Yixing.

They return the village mostly in silence, each lost to their own thoughts. That night Yixing sleeps on the floor of Jongin’s cottage, wrapped in a blanket before an empty fireplace. He listens to the boy’s soft snores from the bed in the other corner of the room, probably his parents before they passed away, but now he’s all alone. In the morning he pays him several more pennies and eats the meager breakfast that Jongin prepares. Then they say their goodbyes and Yixing returns to the road, to his job, none the wiser except for a dying flower pressed solidly in between the leaves of his merchants’ book of records. And a name.

They don’t speak of it directly, but Yixing gets the feeling they intend to see each in five years. When Yixing comes back to try again.

Because to each of them, they’ve been given a mystery. Yixing, the flower. Jongin, Taeil's name.

Five years is a long time for Yixing, especially when he’s actually counting the days. This time there’s no question of him forgetting what happened on the island, or the ferryman, or Jongin. He shows the flower to every herbalist he meets, every alchemist, every doctor, every witch, whether they are legitimate or not. Nobody recognizes it. From north to south, east to west, everywhere in Yixing’s travels and even some places not on the map.

His last resort, is home. He hasn’t been back there since his brother made him aware of how unwelcome he was. But Yixing has no other place to look except in the house where it started, his quest. His grandmother’s quest. And with barely a month to before he’s promised himself to return to the lake, Yixing is out of options.

His family’s estate has changed, in the almost ten years since he was here. It’s run down and ragged. The crops look sick, shorter than in their father’s day. His brother has aged, looking older than his thirty-five years of age. Looking more like forty-five. He’s married now though. Yixing has a sister-in-law now, a nephew and a niece. Only the baby welcomes him home. She’s barely five months old and gurgles a lot, but everyone else including his new sister and her five year old son stare at him suspiciously. He wonders if they’ve poisoned the boy’s mind already, told him stories of their uncle who might return one day to kick them all out of their homes. As if Yixing had that right. As if Yixing even wanted to.

“I want to see grandmother’s chest,” he tells his brother solemnly.

“Why?” glares the man, this stranger who is family. “Nothing of value in it. We spent her coin years ago trying to keep the farm from going under. Sold her jewels too. If you think it’s an easy life out here, if you think it would fun to try and live like us peasants,” he spits, “then think again. Nothing in there you’ll want.”

Yixing finds himself in the barn loft staring into the box where once before his grandmother’s trinkets had a home. Heirlooms, mostly. Nothing valuable in itself, nothing like the jewels that his brother pretended they were. They were never a rich family. Not in gold at least.

Rich in history though, in lore.

He remembers his grandmother’s other tales, folk stories, fairies, ancestors who sounded like kings but probably weren’t.

The only thing left of her in this house are her journals. Those things at least weren’t worth selling off.

He gives his brother a small cloth of coin to pay for the candles he uses up in the night, pouring over her words, page by page. Inventory, anecdotes. The day the cow got loose and they had to chase it down to the neighbor’s property. A bad day, it turns out. The cow trampled through the farmer’s fields and damaged the crops. They had to pay a hefty fine and the cow too.

He almost falls asleep, the candle almost low, when he sees it. A doodle in the margins next to a column of numbers, how many eggs the hens laid that week, almost fifty years ago. Like an aside, an afterthought.

It’s a pencil drawing, no color, a rough estimate in fuzzy detail. But it’s his flower. The same slope of the petals, the same width of stalk. Even on paper it looks wilted.

Yixing brings the candle closer and stares it, light mixing with shadows, playing tricks with his eyesight.

Butterfly, his grandmother had written in a tiny script beneath the drawing. Butterfly. Not the name of the flower or where it was found. Not an answer to his question, a direction for his quest.

“Have you found it yet?” Taeil’s voice echoes in his mind, like an echo.

“Found what?” Yixing says again. “A butterfly flower?”

When he returns to the village a month later, he finds Jongin on the side of the road, smiling.

“Looks like you were waiting for me this time?” Yixing teases.

The boy is now definitely a man, taller than Yixing, muscular. Handsome, now that he’s out of his lanky teenage years.

Jongin grins anew and starts to walk alongside him, humming a local tune and singing.

“I’m always waiting at this spot at this time,

You will pass by this street with a smile.”

Then he bursts into laughter. “Just on my way into town actually.”

“Business in the countryside?” Yixing asks. “A girl perhaps?”

The song is a popular one that Yixing’s heard many a man sing aloud to the girl he’s been courting.

“Yes and no,” says Jongin simply. He starts in on a long explanation of how he works a series of handyman jobs on various farms in the country. Yixing lets him ramble, and it’s like no time has passed. Like they don’t have an agenda for the following day, now that Yixing’s here. A mystical agenda, and he wonders if Jongin has learned anything more about that name.

“Taeil.” He waits until dark after they’ve eaten their dinner and satisfied their stomachs. “You said you’d heard it before, that name?”

Jongin turns quiet. “Yes…”

Yixing waits for him to open up. It takes a few minutes.

“Yes, I dug around. Figured out finally where it comes from, but it still doesn’t make any sense to me.”

“And?”

“It was my grandfather’s name.”

He fills Yixing in for the rest of the night, backs up against the wall with a blanket over their knees. Even though they’ve only met now three times, with long gaps in between, it feels like they know each other. Like they’re friends. He’s watched him grow up, practically.

So it feels close, strangely intimate, to be leaning shoulder to shoulder with him now while Jongin tells him about his family. His father who was searching for something, his grandfather whom he barely remembers. He went by other names most of his life, not Taeil, which is why Jongin didn’t remember it. He had to ask around the village, piecing together stories from the elders about the strange little man who came here so many years before dragging a little boy who came barely up to his knee.

“They were outsiders, I suppose,” says Jongin, “but they blended in after a while. My father grew up here just like all the other boys who were born here. I don’t know when he started talking about the lake though. Perhaps my grandfather told him about it. I didn’t know him well. The only memory I have is when I was really little. He used to wear large, rounded spectacles on his face. I thought that was weird. None of the other old people had those. If their eyes went bad, they just dealt with it or were blind. My dad says he brought those with him from wherever they came from before, but he didn’t remember where that was.”

“But your dad went to lake, seeking something?”

“Yes. But it was before I was born.”

“And you think he found it?”

Jongin frowns. “I’m… not sure. I’ve been thinking about this for a long time now, five years of thinking. Going by the things he said, and by what the ferryman has said… I think now, it’s more that he knew what he was looking for, not what he found.”

“What do you mean?” Yixing asks.

Jongin shrugs and then softly laughs. “That’s the mystery, isn’t it?”

Now Yixing’s butterfly flower doesn’t seem the strangest thing of all. He mentions it in passing before they fall asleep.

They don’t about the name, Taeil, or Jongin’s grandfather until the next day. Yixing dreamed about the man, the ferryman, the spirit, the boatkeeper.

“Do you suppose he is… him?”

Yixing sidelines the question, hoping Jongin understands because he can’t quite bring himself to say it out loud.

“My grandfather?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t know. I’ve wondered about it… before you came. Maybe I should ask.” He laughs nervously.

This time it’s Jongin who is the more visibly nervous of the two, when they approach the copse of trees where the boat is moored.

Again, the entire landscape has changed. There’s a light rain, and the mist is the same, the island a blue-green glow peeking through the folds of fog. The young trees that surrounded the lake before are now a giant forest. Yixing had thought perhaps they went the wrong way, that the lake wouldn’t be there for them this time, that it was hiding itself. Jongin assured him otherwise.

“It changes each time I come.”

“You’ve come recently?”

“A few times,” he nods. “But the ferryman was never here for me. I even called him. I thought maybe…since… if… but he never showed.”

There was a barely visible path through the forest, not a long one.

“It’s the weather you know,” Jongin says when they emerge onto the alien landscape. Everything the same, but somehow not. Aside from the island and the copse, even the shoreline looks different.

“What do you mean?”

“The winter storms, the rain and the ice, the heat in the summer… in the village it just looks like weather and seasons changing. But out here, it falls differently. After every season it changes. Sometimes I think it won’t be here at all one day. Either the dust will sweep in from off the hills behind the trees and fill up the lake. Or maybe it will flood the whole valley. Look over there. See the mountaintop?”

Yixing looks and sees one peak that wasn’t there before. He gapes at it.

“Showed up last summer, I don’t know how. I don’t even wonder about it anymore. There’s also a stream that feeds in from it. I tried to follow it. I walked all the way around the eastern side of the lake trying to find the island, the boat, the ferryman. I found the stream instead. But I couldn’t get past it. I got lost every single time and found myself right where I started. Right… here.”

They stand before the boat, waiting, Yixing trying to regain his bearings. This will be the third time they’ve been here, and each time they get a little bit closer.

He opens his mouth to speak out the ferryman’s name. But then he sees it.

Right beside the boat is a single, purple butterfly. It rests on the stump, it’s delicate wings flexing in the mist.

“Jongin, look!”

“What is it?”

“The butterfly. It looks… it looks…”

“Like your flower,” Jongin answers for him.

They crouch down slowly to not scare it off. It doesn’t move, but they stare at it wonder. Then a breeze passes by and Yixing blinks. When he opens his eyes, it’s gone. The ferryman, however, is there. They didn’t even call his name.

“Are you ready this time?” he says.

Yixing stands up slowly, but Jongin is more hasty. He steps backwards and his jaw falls open. Yixing catches him by the elbow and helps steady him. He leaves his hand there when Jongin finally settles down and stands to his full height.

“You’re…”

The ferryman smiles, and Yixing watches as the whole image seems to shimmer in the wind.

“Come, into the boat, both of you.”

This time, when they reach the island, Yixing coaxes Jongin out with him right away. What mystery will they uncover this time? A flower, an insect? The ferryman’s identity? Is he really Jongin’s grandfather’s spirit, or was Jongin’s grandfather always a spirit? Or did Yixing drink too much mead last night and this is all a dream?

This time, when they reach the island, Yixing coaxes Jongin out with him right away. What mystery will they uncover this time? A flower, an insect? The ferryman’s identity? Is he really Jongin’s grandfather’s spirit, or was Jongin’s grandfather always a spirit? Or did Yixing drink too much mead last night and this is all a dream?

Yixing walks to towards the tree in the center of the island. He’s never made it this far before, always distracted by something, some thing, or some question. Some answer, he doesn’t know what. He touches the bark with the palm of his hand. It’s real, it’s solid. It smells like the moss which grows upon one side. He’s waiting for the question.

“Have you found it yet?”

Jongin stands by his side, staring at the tree, when Yixing cautiously says, “The answer to what I’m seeking? No, but I’m enjoying the quest.”

This time the ferryman asks the same thing of Jongin.

“And you?”

Jongin wavers and looks at him, mouth opening and closing. “I… I…” His voice fumbles and he looks to Yixing for help. Their eyes catch, a connection Yixing should be used to by now, but it catches him unawares. His breath hitches and it seems like the mists around them are swirling. Or maybe it’s the ground, or the lake itself. Both fall to their knees, overtaken by nausea and the familiar swell of their world being away. Jongin instinctively leans towards him and Yixing catches him in his arms, and it seems like the ferryman’s voice calls through the vortex, “You are closer yet…” before they find themselves in a tangle on the land.

“Do you have to go back so soon?” Jongin asks him that night. They lay side by side in Jongin’s bed, fighting sleep, fighting their thoughts.

“Yes,” says Yixing. He hears Jongin sigh. A minute later he amends it, saying, “Perhaps in couple days. I can delay that long.”

Who knows why that rule applies, but every time Yixing thinks about returning sooner, it never manages to happen. Either plans in the merchants guild he works for go awry and he must travel elsewhere to fix it, or the weather delays him, events turning elsewhere to things that need his attention. His every best intention is thwarted by nature itself.

He wants to solve this mystery, to learn his purpose, his grandmother’s purpose. He wants to know what the ferryman means, or what he is. It should be the number one thought each night before he goes to sleep.

Instead, he thinks of Jongin more often. He wonders what he’s doing, how his life is going. Is he keeping busy with his friends and his work. Will Yixing come back when the five years are up to find him married to a nice village girl, maybe with a child already or one on the way? Will he be too old suddenly for adventures with Yixing towards the mystical lake and the spirit and the mystery that alludes Yixing at every turn?

But then he thinks of how they spent those two days, Yixing working side by side with Jongin at his job so that they wouldn’t waste a minute of his and Yixing’s time together. They talked and laughed and joked and drank heartily when it was all finished. They shared more stories of their lives, and they didn’t talk about the lake. Jongin hugged him when he left, bone crushing, almost tearful. Yixing really didn’t want to leave. He felt like he was leaving a friend. Or maybe…

He returns later than he wanted, missing the usual season by five months. He wonders if Jongin has given up on him already, because the winter is in full swing, there’s snow in the air, and maybe he’s just too late for everything.

He knocks on his cottage door with a heavy, nervous heart. Two loud raps and he hears movement from inside. Then the door is squeaking open and Jongin’s face appears. Older, much more mature, his cheeks filled out and his lips are dry from the weather but he is just as inviting as ever.

“Yixing, you made it.” His expression is joyful, but his speech is not.

“I’m so sorry. I’m late. What is the matter?” Yixing says all at once, Jongin dragging him inside against the cold night weather.

Jongin doesn’t answer him until he’s satisfied Yixing isn’t frozen solid. He takes his damp, nearly frozen coat and lays it before the fire, the same as his boots and socks. Yixing has trampled through muck and frozen mud half the way here.

“Here, wear my clothes. You’ll die if you stay in those,” says Jongin, indicating a pile of fresh shirts and pants from an open cupboard. Yixing strips in front of the fire and hurriedly covers himself up with the warm, clean clothes. He sits down before the grate and warms his hands, still shivering, but feeling a little like he’s come home.

“I’m sorry,” he says again softly when Jongin sits beside him. He pushes a kettle over the fire to boil some water and promises a hot drink soon.

“You don’t have to apologize. I’m just… glad you’re here.” Again, that tinge of sadness.

“What’s happened?” Yixing asks directly. “Are you well? Is it the winter? I… I didn’t realize it would be so bad this time of year. You’re not nearly so far north-”

“It’s the lake,” says Jongin, interrupting him.

“W-what about it?”

Jongin sighs and begins his story. He went in the summer, later into the early autumn after Yixing didn’t come. “And it had changed again, you know, how it does. I was right you know… I was right.”

“About what?” he asks quietly.

“It’s… there was a spring flood. Bizarre, how it happened. Half of the trees were blown down from it, and the banks were so high. The… copse where the boat was moored was underwater. I saw it, the very tip of the tree. But no boat. And no…”

“No island?”

Jongin nods. “I don’t know what it will be like now. Probably frozen over. But I was too afraid to go again without you. I thought if you didn’t come soon, that maybe you wouldn’t ever return and…” His voice trails off.

Yixing winds an arm around Jongin’s shoulder and pulls him close. “I wouldn’t not return… Jongin, you know that.”

They have to wait three more days before setting off. A heavy snow falls in the night, blocking all roads in and out of the village. The best they can do is wade through knee-high snow banks to the pub in the center of town and drink ale with the other brave souls too restless to stay in their homes. During the days they help clear paths to and from the villagers’ homes and shops, and when the snow quits falling they trek even further out to the nearby countryside checking on homes and families and the widows who live out there. It keeps them busy and happy, and at night they curl up close to sleep because that’s the only way they can keep warm.

Then they depart. Heavy boots and thick woolen coats and hoods, rough leather gloves to keep them from freezing and two packs each on their backs filled with food and amenities in case they get lost in the snow.

The forest trees that weren’t knocked down by the flood, as Jongin had said, are larger, taller, thicker. But beyond that, they’re the only recognizable thing about the lake now.

It’s a winter wonderland, iced over and frozen sold.

“I don’t guess we even need a boat now,” Jongin says dully. They can easily walk right over the center of the lake.

“But the island…” Yixing mourns.

They try calling for the ferryman, just in case. He doesn’t come. So they tread lightly, carefully on the slick icy barrier. It takes them an hour, perhaps two, slipping and falling all the way, to get to where Yixing imagines the island would have been. Somewhere beneath the frozen, flooded valley, is where the magic happens. Where it begins, where’s it currently contained.

He asks, but the ferryman isn’t here to ask. “Have we found it? What we’re looking for?” Yixing laughs. So does Jongin.

Then he imagines he sees something beneath the surface of the ice. It’s… “an oar… Jongin, look.”

They kneel in the ice and try to peer underneath.

“Do you think, is it possible… to… dig it out?” Yixing asks.

“Maybe?”

Unless the ice is playing tricks with their minds, and that’s a good possibility, the oar isn’t more than a few inches beneath the surface of the ice, when the entire barrier is a good several feet deeper than that. They pull out a few tools and a small pick, begin chipping away carefully, delicately, one fleck of ice at a time. It’s slow work, and Yixing is chilled to the bone. He wishes they were back in Jongin’s cottage clinging tightly before a fire, but without this lake, they wouldn’t be here. They’d have never met. Without this lake, and this island, Yixing wouldn’t have any reason to return. He realizes, suddenly, how much he would miss it. Everything this place means to him. How much Jongin’s friendship means to him. Having a purpose, a quest, a thrill. And it’s all tied to the ferryman, and this oar.

They pull it much later, a frozen lump of wood but there’s no doubt it’s the same one.

“I suppose the boat was on the island when it was flooded,” Jongin muses.

“And then it all froze right where it was.”

“Where do you think the ferryman goes when he’s not here?” Jongin asks quietly while examining the oar. He turns it over and gasps. On the back handle is a small engraving, words, a name.

To Jongin.

“You still think he’s your grandfather’s spirit?” asks Yixing.

Tears are spilling onto Jongin’s cheeks. Yixing wants to wipe them away before they freeze right where they are. Jongin nods. “He must have been.”

“What do you think he wanted you to find then?”

Jongin doesn’t know. He stares at the slight engraving and runs his fingers across the indent of letters. “What about your grandmother?” he asks in return. “She sent you here as well.”

Yixing hums, takes the oar from Jongin’s hands and looks down at the words.

“Maybe she thought I would be lonely.”

“Why?” asks Jongin. “Were you? Are you?”

“I used to be,” he admits.

Yixing doesn’t leave for the rest of the winter. He doesn’t want to and he doesn’t have to. He’s only expected to return to his job in the spring, but by the time the first shoots of green pry up through the ground, he makes another decision. To stay.

Jongin kisses him every night. Why would he ever leave that?

They return once more to the lake when the weather grows warmer. It’s chilly but the ice is broken and melting away, small streams that flow outwards through dips in the hills that of course weren’t there before. One of them runs by the copse where the spirit used to wait.  They recognize the stump, the fallen tree, and the one that was alive. It looks almost petrified now without a hint of green. There is no boat. Jongin carries the oar they retrieved last winter and lays it up against the stump.

“An offering,” he says aloud.

But the ferryman doesn’t come.

Instead, a crisp wind blows down from the mountain, even taller now, its peaks sharp and narrow, and the mist that shrouded the lake swirls and convulses as if it’s alive. Yixing falls to his knees by the force of the gust, Jongin beside them and they huddle together until it dies down.

When he opens his eyes, the oar is back in Jongin’s hand, and the fog is gone. The entire valley is crisp and clear, the first time they’ve ever seen it that way.

“Jongin, look,” says Yixing, his eyes towards the center of the lake.

The island is visible, no glow, no light.

And the boat sits docilely in the water before them.

He lets Jongin steer them towards the island. Yixing keeps his eyes open, watches the small dry land appear slowly, steadily. Without the mist, without the magic, they reach it with trepidation in their hearts, wondering what they’ll find. Is there anything special about still left to be found, or are they even still searching anymore. Have they already found it, each other, the sparks of what will continue their fate.

There’s a single purple bloom on the island. On it rests a butterfly which flutters in the air when Yixing crouches beside it and lands on his finger. He turns around to show Jongin, smiling at the seemingly tiny dash of magic.

But Jongin is bent over behind the gnarled tree. When he stands up he’s wearing his grandfather’s wide-brimmed hat.

Another start, another generation. Another spirit. Spirits, rather. The two of them together.

The End.

Or maybe, I don't know, it's actually the beginning.