The Pool
Ellie was not sure if she had gone mad. She knew that she had experienced something magical, but she had no proof and there was nobody that she could speak to about her new life. It was certain that things were over with her boyfriend. Nothing he could do would ever compete with her Otherworldly lovers. Now she was single, she felt free, though she was struggling to come to terms with living in a world where magic really was hiding in the old and forgotten places of the world. She was struggling more with her desperate desire to find more of the creatures that lived in the Otherworld. Every weekend she went out into the woods, but so far she had found no more strangeness. It was good for her spirit to walk in nature, but it did not satisfy her weirder urges. She would get home and masturbate in frustration, making herself cum over and over, but never quite finding true satisfaction.
It would not be long and autumn would come to an end. She could not imagine finding the spirits of nature in winter. Surely they would vanish when the leaves were all gone from the trees. That was just supposition, of course. She knew nothing about how the magic worked or what rules the Otherworld might follow. Belladonna had told her to find old places.
On the internet, she had read about a pleasant walk to an old pool in the woods, a place that was not magnificent enough to attract tourists but might reward a rambler who sought quiet. It was a grey and uninspiring Saturday, so she thought she might as well try. It would be disappointing if she could not find a path into the Otherworld, but she would, at least, have something to do.
Although the walk to the pool was not well marked, Ellie did not struggle to find her way. Since she had become a keen walker, she found it easier to trace paths through the woods. The trees were almost bare now, the ground underfoot crunched with dead leaves. Ellie liked days like this when the sun was shining. Today, though, there was only a bland greyness overhead. It did not seem like a time for magic.
There was no bird song for her to listen to as she walked, though she realized that, distantly, she could hear the trickling, laughing sound of running water. The path was leading her closer to the sound and, eventually, she found a small brook. It was really nothing impressive, almost a drainage ditch. She felt cheated. She had come to find magic and only discovered a muddy channel that was almost covered by brambles. Nevertheless, she walked on, following the path upstream. She wondered if the pool was actually a spring, the source of this unimpressive stream.
The path went on, rising a little. There were thick oak roots that formed steps, leading her upwards and around the broad trunk of an ancient tree. The pool revealed itself amongst the dead leaves, fungi and brown bracken. Ellie sighed. She had hoped for a magical lake, the sort of place that she could imagine King Arthur finding the Lady and her sword. This pool was not much more than a huge puddle, smelling of decay and autumnal rot. The ground was boggy and, no doubt, there were springs here, but Ellie could not sense the magic of the Wodwo or Belladonna.
She frowned and concentrated on the flat, dull water. The pool reflected dead trees and a grey sky. If anything magical lived here, Ellie imagined it would be something that looked like a drowned corpse and stank of stagnation. This felt like a pool where children might search for tadpoles and find only choking death in the clinging mud.
A bubble popped on the surface of the pond. At first Ellie imagined a fish, though she doubted this small pool could support fish. Perhaps it was just something decaying under the water, a bubble of noxious gas rising from the muck. Ellie frowned as she imagined something white and bloated rising out of the mud and decay.
To her horror, Ellie realized that she was not imagining the white shape in the water. Something was rising up through the dark. She told herself it was a forgotten football, draped in weed. That lie inside her mind did not last. It was not a football, it was a white face with large black eyes and thick black lips. The face might be feminine, though it was certainly not human. A monster was rising up to the surface of the pool, a creature that was something of a fish, something of a frog and something of a human corpse. The hair was black and lank, like tangled weed. As the monster broke the surface, she smiled impossibly widely, showing a mouth full of emerald green shark teeth.
The monster rose higher, showing no regard for the laws of human physics. It was naked and pale, the skin mostly white, mottled with patches of green and blue veins. The large hands were webbed and she had scales at her neck. Her huge breasts hung low on the fat belly, the areolae and nipples a dark, blackish green.
Ellie staggered backwards. Although she had grown to love the attentions of the Wodwo, it had scared her initially. This was different. The monster in the pond was not just frightening, it was grotesque. The thought of it desiring her was too much.
"You have come to me in the winter," said the monster. Its voice bubbled unpleasantly, like a person choking. "You see me like this. You would call me Jenny Greenteeth, the one that drowns the unwary. You see me as a monster, don't you, magician?"
Ellie could not speak. She backed further from the pond, hoping that this creature could not escape from the water.
The monster gave a wet chuckle. "You will learn, in time, magician, that appearances mean very little in this Otherworld. Long ago, in the summer, there were worshippers here, not superstitious peasants. The ones that worshipped called me Sulis. To them, I was not a monster, I was a goddess. Can't you imagine me that way? Is your sight too clouded by your mundane perceptions? Are magicians really so weak now?"
