The Siren of Lake Louise
Epigraph
Only a very wicked or conceited man, About to sink somewhere in mid-Atlantic, Could think Poseidon’s frown was meant for him in person, But it is only human to believe The little lady of the glacier lake has fallen In love with the rare bather whom she drowns. --“Bucolics. IV Lakes,” WH Auden
The Siren of Lake Louise
I was a wallflower at the Chateau NISH Dance, when I saw this gorgeous blonde bearing down on me.
At the New Improved Sadie Hawkins Dance, anyone could ask anyone to dance. A girl could ask a boy, a girl could ask a girl, a boy could ask a boy. A boy could even ask a girl. You could say “No,” of course. But it was expected, if you showed up at the NISH, that you were open to a dance with any sort of person.
If this blonde asked me for a dance, “No” wasn’t on the cards.
She stepped up to me and took my hand. “Lou,” she said.
“No,” I said disappointed. “Wrong number. I’m not Lou.”
“I know,” she laughed. “I’m Lou. Will you dance with me, Not Lou?”
“Oh, Hell, yeah!“ I said. “Ah, pardon me,” I blushed. “That just slipped out.”
The music started. Laughing again, she took my other hand and led me out on the floor. It was a schottische. Anyone can schottische, but you can’t carry on a conversation.
After, she said, “Thank you for the dance, Not Lou.”
“Happy to be ‘Not Lou’ for you all night, but my name is Phoenix.”
She made a little bow and said, “Nice to meet you, Phoenix.”
“And your name is—let me guess—Lou?” I said.
“Louise, actually. Lou for short.”
“Are you also staying here?”
“Here” was the Chateau Lake Louise, a grand old hotel on the east shore of Lake Louise in Banff National Park. I was there for the summer. Bloody expensive it was, two thousand a night, but my folks have money to burn.
“No, I’m a local. I live here in Lake Louise.”
Besides being the name of the lake, Lake Louise is the name of the nearby small town.
We danced two more dances, then left the NISH to get a meal. By the end of the evening, I was already gone, gone, gone… completely in love. How she felt I didn’t know. I’ve always been lousy at figuring that out. We parted with a handshake, but on the plus side, we exchanged phone numbers and agreed to meet for lunch the next day.
Well, you can guess what happened next. Oldest story in the world—we fell in love. At least, I fell deeper in love with her. She had to know it. She was no fool, and she was good at reading people. I was sure she knew what my puppy-dog eyes meant.
I still didn’t know how she felt about me. Dances aside, we never got past that parting handshake. And she had never taken me to her home.
This pleasantly doubtful situation continued until the middle of August.
“I have to go back to school in two weeks,” I told her.
Was I imagining things, or did that light a little fire in her eyes?
“Where is school?” she asked.
“Toronto.”
She took my hand and said, “I don’t want you to go!”
“Whoa!” I thought. “I wasn’t expecting that.”
“You could visit me.”
“What, in Toronto?”
“Why not?”
“I can’t leave here.”
“Why not? Is it money?” I said. “Because if that’s the only problem…”
“No, not that. Phoenix, can I show you something?”
“Sure.”
“Follow me. It’s a bit of a hike.”
She set off on the Lakeshore Trail. It runs southwest along the lakeshore five km before turning east to go up into the hills. Louise didn’t turn east at the end of the trail, though. She kept on along the Lake. The going was rougher off the trail, but not bad. After another half a kilometer, there was a small wooden dock.
“What do you think of my home, Phoenix?”
I looked all around, thinking there must be a cottage on the mountainside nearby. Or did she live on a boat that docked here? But there was nothing.
“Where?” I said intelligently.
“Phoenix, do you remember when I said I live here in Lake Louise?”
“Yes, of course,” I answered. “You meant the town, no?”
“I knew you would think that,” she answered. “So that was a little dishonest of me.”
“But you can’t possibly live in the Lake, not literally.”
“A human could not.”
“Oh, come on, Louise!” I said, helplessly.
“Let me show you,” she said.
She took off her jacket, shirt, and slacks. She stood before me in a light bathing suit. I gasped. August thought it was, it was not bathing suit weather here in the mountains.
Then to my shock, she ran out on the dock and dived off the end into the Lake. Lake Louise is glacier-fed. The temperature of the water never rises more than a degree or two above freezing. Occasional hardy souls might take a dip in the Lake for a dare, but no one goes for a swim.
Looking entirely at ease, she swam back to float there with her elbows on the end of the dock. I walked out, then stretched out, belly on the dock, so that I was looking right into her eyes.
“You see, Phoenix. I am not like you. I truly live in the Lake. In fact, I am the Lake. I can no more visit you in Toronto than I can transport the Lake to Toronto.”
“But,” I puzzled, “that’s not quite true. You can walk into town. You can come to the Chateau and dance!”
“Yes, but I can still feel the Lake from the Chateau.”
“But, it’s only a matter of degree, right,” I said, eager. “Why, if you can eat lunch with me two km away from the Lake, why can’t you eat lunch with me in Toronto, 3,000 km away from the Lake? It can’t just be having water near, because Lake Ontario is right there!”
“Ontario has its own siren. He will not sustain me.”
“Can you not take sustenance from me, instead?” I asked. “I am not a lake, but I’m mostly water.”
“Only if you bind yourself to me.”
“How do I do that?”
“Oh, Phoenix,” she answered. “You’ve read the fairy tales. It’s a kiss—always a kiss.”
I kissed her lips.
I have never been so cold in my life. My body’s warmth was drawn out through that kiss. A wave of drowsiness swept over me as my brain shut down. My heart stopped beating. My last conscious feeling was her taking my shoulders in her hands, drawing me into the Lake.
Phoenix, you wondered if I was in love with you. I was, sweetheart, as deeply in love with you as you were with me.
I was here thousands of years before First Nations peoples walked into the Rocky Mountains. They called me Lake of the Little Fishes. Over the years I took many of their most beautiful boys and girls into my embrace.
I loved every one of them.
Phoenix, I am so sorry about the handshakes. It was as hard for me as it was for you. But you know now how it works for me. I get one kiss, and that is the end.
And the courtship is sweet—so sweet.
Afterword
This story was inspired by these lines from WH Auden’s Bucolics.
Only a very wicked or conceited man,
About to sink somewhere in mid-Atlantic,
Could think Poseidon’s frown was meant for him in person,
But it is only human to believe
The little lady of the glacier lake has fallen
In love with the rare bather whom she drowns.
--“Bucolics. IV Lakes,” WH Auden
The words “glacier lake” will always remind me of one of the world’s most beautiful lakes, Lake Louise in Canada’s Banff National Park.
The cover is a cycle graph of the elementary abelian group E27. Aside from the identity element, E27 has only elements of order 3, thus 13 subgroups of order 3. In a cycle graph each of these looks like a pair of dancers connected to the identity in the center. I designated one of these pairs as Louise and Phoenix—they are the pair of larger vertexes in the lower left. The colors are a phase portrait of f(z).
…where louise and phoenix are the centers of the corresponding vertexes.
Thanks to xtrole , Jaenette , and Yaroslav Zolotnikov for helpful comments.
Stand By Me, cover by Stephen Wilson Jr
well I adore this. No actually, this might have changed my life a little bit. I love authors who put so much thought into their work, and I love stories with lovely endings even more. Keep writing!