Immortal Water

by Norman Brian Van

  A voice from the present mirrors a voice from the past.

  He decides.

  “Ange, what do you know of the fountain of youth?”

  29

  This is the forest primeval.

  —LONGFELLOW

  Spring — The Past

  In the utter dark of a moonless night they groped toward the river mouth. The coastline was a tenebrous murk forbidding against the sky. Their oars, silent, damped in padded oarlocks, dipped efficiently to the muffled grunts of the tiller men, hauling the pinnaces forward against the current as it emptied into the sea.

  The river was wide here and except for the current they would not have recognised it. Eventually the sounds of scores of frogs and hooting owls told them they had moved inland. They kept to the middle away from the shoreline and worked their way cautiously upstream. Soon the river began to narrow and, as it did, a dusky daybreak foreshadowed the sunrise making the water slate grey. Mist appeared from the water to rise and conceal them. They could see with the growing light the tops of trees above the haze but down in the river all was a ghostly, thick fog. And as the morning began to burn off the mist, the mist dissipating in tenuous strands, they saw on the shoreline a black bird perched with its wings outspread to the air. As the vapours dispersed and revealed it, the boats slowed to observe.

  “Diving bird,” the woman said, smiling in recognition.

  “What is it doing?” Juan Ponce whispered.

  “It dries its wings in the air as you dry your clothes.”

  “A strange bird,” Juan Ponce replied.

  The humidity of the day came on fast and the men began to sweat at their oars. The riverbanks were overhung with huge trees shading the shoreline in dark, glassy pools. Beneath the trees was a tangle of foliage. The boatmen could see nothing of the land beyond them. The riverbanks concealed everything. They followed a bend in the river and, as they did, saw a gleaming, unexpected whiteness punctuating the interminable green. They moved closer, wary of this weird monolith which caught the sun and reflected its rays as though it were somehow alive.

  “Burial mound,” the woman said. “Very big. For a chief.”

  “It’s a tomb?” las Casas said, genuflecting fearfully as he did.

  “There are many. I told you my people build with shells. This is nothing compared to the city of Calos.”

  “This is a civilized culture,” las Casas murmured. “They build. These are not savages.”

  “You make your point, fray Bartolome,” Juan Ponce said. “But their organization makes them more dangerous. If they can build such as this, they can make an army.”

  “Jesu ... Mother of God, look at that!” the tiller man cried, his eyes wide with fear.

  “What?” Juan Ponce turned to him. “What do you see?”

  “Dragons!” His shaking hand pointed upriver and quickly he tried to turn the boat about. A threatening order prevented him.

  Lying on a pebbled beach just below the burial mound, and then across the river on the muddy bank, lay hundreds of antediluvian forms. Their bodies were as large as those of horses and covered with horny plates like armour, their long low bodies a mottled grey-green, their heads three feet long, all jaw, with huge protruding teeth and prominent nostrils at the end. Some of them floated in the water and would, to the unsuspecting, seem like drifting logs. They were huge, the size of a pinnace from their snouts to their tapering tails. A few of them moved from water to shore lazily, lizard-like; primordial.

  Then, for whatever reptilian reason, one of them began to hiss, opening its jaws to reveal huge incisors, each a knife of bone. Then it slammed its jaws shut and slithered into the water by the beach. And just as suddenly another of the creatures, already in the water, undulated toward the first. Their bodies seemed to swell and their plaited tails brandished high as they closed on each other and in that few moments Juan Ponce de Leon witnessed a violence he had never, in a life of war and massacre, could possibly have imagined.

  Their roaring was like a thunder and from their dilated nostrils poured vapour. The surface seethed as they writhed together, intertwined as they sank below the waves they had made. Mud boiled up from the bottom like a cauldron. They re-surfaced, their gigantic jaws clapping together and echoing into the forest. Their enormous tails swung in great cutting arcs. Then they sank again beneath the turbulence. And finally only one re-appeared making a dreadful grunt that resounded up and down the river.

  “They are dragons!” the tiller man shrieked. “This place is unholy. We must leave!”

  “Nonsense.” Juan Ponce glared down at the man.

  “These are truly the devil’s work,” las Casas remarked.

  “To go on we must pass through them,” the woman said.

  “Will they attack us?” Juan Ponce asked.

  “It is possible.”

  Sotomayor’s boat had come alongside.

  “The men are fearful, Don Juan,” he said. “Some of them think we approach the gateway to hell. I assume, however, we’re going ahead.”

  “We are.”

  “Then my boat volunteers to take the lead!” He glanced back at the cowering soldiers behind him, their love for Sotomayor somewhat allayed by his foolish bravado. Then he laughed. “If we must we will fight our way through! Christians against devil serpents!”

  “But no gunfire,” Juan Ponce said. “We don’t want it known we are here.”

  “Take the right fork,” the woman instructed. “The left is too shallow for these boats.”

  “You remember this?” Juan Ponce said.

  “I have travelled this river many times on my way to the sacred country.”

  The alligators allowed their passage, glinting at them like Satan’s spawn.

  In the afternoon the sky lowered and rain came in a downpour. They heard it in the distance as it moved through the forest toward them. Like drums, like ten thousand drums marching closer, and when it reached them the sky seemed to empty. Grey teeming rain. Its intensity veiled them. The rain flowed in rivers from the brims of their morions and clattered against their armour and settled in ponds in the bottoms of the boats. Finally Juan Ponce signalled to make for the shore.

  They found a pebbled beach at a bend in the river and landed there, overturning the boats to serve as shelters. And as soon as they had, the rain stopped. In its wake, in the clearing air, Juan Ponce walked to the tip of the gravel peninsula and gazed upstream. Here the river narrowed even more. It seemed as though the air itself was green, tinged by the emerald dark of the forest. The stillness awed him.

  He motioned for the woman to join him. He noticed she wore the ornaments he’d seen when she first came to him, after Mantanca. On her breast lay a large, carved medallion of shell and more beaded shells encircled her neck. In civilization she would appear savage. Here, in this primal place, she fit.

  “How much further?” he asked.

  “The river grows shallow after this,” she responded, “good only for canoes.”

  “We have no canoes.”

  “Then we walk.”

  “Through that?” He pointed at the tangled bank.

  “The spirits make their sacred land difficult. Only the brave can go there.”

  “Sotomayor!” Juan Ponce turned away from the woman. “This is as good a place as any to make the base camp. The water approaches are easily guarded; the boats can make a landward wall. You agree?”

  “Of course. It’s suitable. And what of us?”

  “In the morning we set off as planned. The men will remain here with friar Bartolome.”

  “He’ll insist on coming.”

  “And he will be refused. I’ll explain to him if the Calusa appear it will be here where the men will make noise and attract them. He can barter his Christ with them then.”

  “And you, you will lead us?” Sotomayor turned to the woman.

  “A short journey from here, but a hard one,” she said, and she smiled strangely.

  I use this scrap of parchment in
the half light of a green, scowling world. My old eyes can barely discern these scratchings but now, on the cusp of discovery, I must end my journal.

  Here in the heart of the wild I discard all worldly things. I have quelled las Casas. Even the zealot is afraid of this place and seems only too willing to remain with the men while I and the witch and my friend journey on.

  In the morning we will march into the morass of what she calls ‘the sacred’. I anticipate the way will be hard, but hard has never stopped me. I will take this as I have other places. I will own it. I will again own my life. My new life. From the water. So close.

  That night mosquitoes descended in clouds making the camp a perdition of sleepless torment. Nearby the grunts of alligators added fear to the men’s tribulation. And noises from the trees would set them staring fitfully into the dark. Their camp was an inky blackness unmitigated by fire; for fear of discovery they dared not expose themselves with light. So they ate cold dried tongue with biscuit and slapped interminably at insects while all around them forest creatures peering through the dark observed the intruders.

  And some of those creatures were human.

  30

  None would live past years again, Yet all hope pleasure in what yet remain; And from the dregs of life think to receive What the first sprightly running could not give.

  —DRYDEN

  Spring — The Present

  “So, do you think I’m crazy?”

  Ross Porter ends his story. Angela has not moved for an hour as she listened to his convoluted account. At this moment Ross cannot fathom how she feels. Her face is a mask, her eyes green and depthless as the sea. She sits with her back to the apartment window. Afternoon sunlight streams in to illumine her. She almost becomes the light for an instant.

  “All because of that dream I’ve had,” he says, struggling to continue. “It’s why I came back. I know it’s not logical but I think there’s a connection. At first I didn’t recognise it, then I fought it and now, well, now I’m resolved. I’ve found no answers in the research but I never really expected to. And I can’t talk to anyone about this. You’re the first person I’ve actually told the whole thing to.”

  For a moment the girl does not respond. She stares out through the apartment window into the light. Ross knows it has been an intense, disturbing hour for her. His quixotic tale has frightened yet fascinated her; those jade eyes clouding over with each new revelation until they have become opaque. Yet when he’d tried to stop, fearful of yet another rejection, she had beckoned him on.

  “You really believe in this, don’t you?” she murmurs.

  “You’d like me to leave?” Ross responds, ready for ridicule.

  “No. I ... It’s just so overwhelming.”

  “I’ll give you that,” he says, laughing hoarsely.

  “I mean, I know there are things we can’t explain, things we aren’t conscious of or can’t grasp, even other dimensions. Everyone’s heard the fountain legend but no one ever gave it credence.”

  “No one does, that’s true.”

  “But if it is true, if it does exist, why haven’t we heard of it? Surely in all this time ...”

  “The Calusa died from disease, Angela: smallpox mainly, like so many other tribes. A plague that killed most of them, I imagine. And with them went their culture. So no one knows much about it. Perhaps this water has healing properties, or maybe it simply prolongs the lives of the healthy. There was mention of a sacred water in Spanish chronicles. That’s what I’ve got to go on.”

  “So you have no idea where this might be?”

  “None. But it must be somewhere here. Why would Ponce de Leon come back to a place where he knew he’d meet resistance?”

  “That historian ...”

  “Bush.”

  “Yeah. She told you it was about better harbours?”

  “Yes, but why, later on, did the Spanish build their capitol at St. Augustine? The Atlantic side: to protect the Gulf Stream.”

  “And you know he landed here?”

  “Not exactly. Even she admitted his second voyage isn’t clearly documented. But it had to be near a large concentration of Calusa; otherwise, how could he and his troops have been defeated? They were conquistadors, armed and trained and experienced, the best fighters in the world at that time, quite capable of victory; unless there were so many against them they didn’t stand a chance.”

  “So this, you think, is the logical choice?”

  “There’s not a lot of logic. I know so little of this area ...”

  “That’s why you wanted the top-maps?”

  “Well, they’re something.”

  “The maps can’t show you what you’re looking for.”

  “It could be anywhere,” Ross mutters despairingly.

  She is quiet again, studying his face. It is the drawn, lined face of a man who has felt too much, lost too much, given too much to this obsessive search. He no longer looks like the man who came into the library. He is older now, somehow, though so little time has passed since then. His face is filled with the trepidation that she might ridicule him, send him packing, call him a desperate old man. She would never do that.

  “Have you thought any more about my guiding you?” she asks again.

  “Are you certain you want to?” He almost cannot believe her.

  “I’ve got three more days at the library. While I’m doing that you could get what we’ll need, maybe plot a search grid on the maps.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “This is just the thing for me. Whatever happens I’ll have lots of experience when we’re done. Or, perhaps I’ll have no need of a job in the end.” She smiles wryly. “Oh, it might seem a bit mad ...”

  “You’re telling me?” He laughs again. She hears relief and fixation at the same time. It does not trouble her. She is accustomed to the years of her parents and their friends. They could be manic about things yet still, they were kind and loving. She craves this adventure.

  “I’ve got time,” she replies. “So why not? I can’t even imagine the fountain exists but why not give you the chance to look? We can search for places where nobody goes and I might find some great routes for eco-tourists. It wouldn’t hurt my chances with outfitters.”

  “I’ll pay for everything; whatever we need. Just give me a list. Ange, I can’t thank you enough.”

  They have tea to toast their new partnership, then Ross leaves with a list Angela has given him. He will spend the next few days shopping. He walks east, down Periwinkle toward his hotel. The sun is setting behind him.

  He is calm within the dream now, having grown accustomed to it. The horrors of before: the heat, the black water, the brambles and grasping vines, those faces and their laughter are now simply part of the passage he must endure to find an end. We humans somehow adapt to things, even the most dreadful. He ignores his clothing, even shucks off his jacket as he struggles along in his wingtip shoes. For there is hope beckoning him. Now, as never before. There is faith in reaching the unknowable terminus of this claustrophobic path. Even the voice: “Don’t go in there, Ross, don’t go in ...” has softened to mere suggestion.

  And he knows that voice now.

  Their search begins. Angela is a wonder. She falls into the spirit with youthful vigour. For the next two weeks they drive, boat, and hike the area as far south as Bonita Springs to as far north as North Port. They do not travel known roads. Instead they search in such places as Myakka River State Park, or Cecil M. Webb Wildlife preserve. They visit Pine Island often, hoping for some clue from the Randell Centre, some Calusa titbit they might discover where others would not suspect. Ange selects obscure markings on the maps, old trails leading nowhere specific. And each time they come upon some possibility they stop and search. They wander through late spring in Florida and Ross marvels at the blooming flowers and thickening foliage as the hot weather and the rains arrive. Sprays of poinsettia blossom crimson among the deep greens of vines. Wildflowers speckle the roadsides and riverba
nks with a host of colour and life. The abundance of rebirth encourages him. He takes it as a sign, a metaphor of his vision. It is a law of nature. Regeneration. And if it is so common then there must be hope.

  Angela takes him places he could never have found on his own. She works hard, searching her memory to recall cloaked lanes and pathways. They come upon hidden places so feral Ross hardly believes they are real. It is a primordial world at once forbidding and seductive: a world of crystal ponds and meadows abundant with flowers and trees stretching skyward, of clear pools shaded beneath cool ferns and blossoming orchids. They glimpse rare birds like the hot pink of roseate spoonbills, or green herons perched motionless on branches by streams, or the sudden beauty of snowy egrets stalking their prey with patient wading steps.

  Often they camp in the wild. Angela, hiking boots and long, slim legs, prepares campfire dinners. She is good at this, having done it so often. As they spend time together, he comes to think of her as a kind of daughter. He will not go beyond this. Not after Darlene. Not even in his tent at night, fleeting visions of that healthy, robust young body so active and full of life passing through his mind; he will not abuse this gift. In the evenings they talk across their campfires. Angela believes in natural spirits, animism. She knows all things have souls. Trees, stones, even water.

  “It’s not the way we think of a soul,” she explains, “but a life force. You can feel it around us, can’t you? My parents believed in it. My dad would take us, mom and me and some other friends, out into the bush for what he called spiritual regeneration. Oh, there were drugs back then but he used only natural ones: marijuana, peyote, that kind of thing. He’d read a lot of Carlos Castenada. He still thinks of himself as a medicine man.”

  “He thought beyond logic,” Ross says, feeling a bond with a man he has never met. “In a way, Ange, you’re far ahead of me. It’s taken me so long to realize. I kind of wish I’d had your childhood.”