Ahuizotl

Chapter 1

This lake has been my home for as long as the gods have existed. I was created for them, as a messenger. “The Snatcher” is the name on the tongues of the uninitiated. The fear I bring is older than their villages, older than any of the new languages. The water’s memory is long; so is mine.

Most days pass in the slow rhythm of currents and silt, the pulse of fish, the drifting songs of reeds. But sometimes—rarely—the lake stirs with a different kind of presence. A brightness. A soul that hums like a harp chord struck by lightning.

That is how I sensed her.

She came to the water’s edge at dusk, when the sky was a fruity mixture of blue, red, and orange. Her steps were hesitant, but not fearful. She carried a woven basket of herbs and a knife at her hip, though she did not touch it. Her hair was dark and heavy with the day’s heat, and her eyes held the shimmer of someone who had lost more than she could bear.

Humans come to the lake for many reasons. Many come during the day, picnic nearby when the lake is less dark and murky. Only a few come because the lake calls them.

I rose just enough for my tail-hand to break the surface. A ripple, nothing more. A greeting.

She knelt, her knees making indentations in the soft sandy loam that rimmed the edge of my lake.

“Are you there?” she whispered.

Her voice trembled, but not with fear. With… curiosity? A longing tone coated her voice.

I drifted closer, silent as moonlight. She leaned forward, searching the water for an answer she did not expect to find. Humans rarely see me unless I choose to be seen. But she… she looked with the eyes of someone who already believed.

Her breath caught as my head surfaced—slick fur, pointed ears, eyes reflecting the last of the sun. She did not scream. She did not run. She stared, as if she had been waiting for me.

“You’re real,” she said. I blinked slowly, and she giggled, a sound that was like a siren call to my ears. “Of course, you’re real. I apologize, but humans need to say such things to convince ourselves.”

“What do you want?” she asked.

I tilted my head. Humans always assume I want something from them. They never imagined I might be curious.

Her hand hovered over the water.

“Take me… may I go with you?” She whispered.

I froze. No human had ever asked that.

At the sight of me, they usually beg for my mercy, for the gods to have mercy on them, or they scream for release. But this woman—this bright, aching soul—asked for the lake. For me.

“Why?” I asked, though my voice was not a voice. It was a vibration through the water, a pulse she felt in her bones.

She closed her eyes. “Because there is nothing left for me on land.”

The lake stirred around us. I cocked my head as the reeds swooshed in the water’s edge. Then I felt it. The gods listened, but they did not mark her.

I could have taken her then. One swift pull of my tail-hand, one breathless plunge. But she was not marked by the rain god. She was not chosen for death.

Yet she had chosen me.

“Come,” I said.

She opened her eyes, startled.

“You… you’ll take me?”

Floating on my back like an otter, I extended my tail-hand toward her. She hesitated only a heartbeat before placing her palm against mine. Her skin was warm. Mine was cold. The contact sent a shock through both of us. I offered my front hands, and she took them, letting my tail go.

Then I pulled her under.

Chapter 2

Humans think drowning is violent. They imagine thrashing as the pressure to breathe becomes greater than the idea of not breathing. They imagine their lungs on fire as the last breath of oxygen is forced out, and they envision the darkness of death.

Submerging with a willing human is a new experience, and I am pleased when the water softens and folds around them like a second skin, easing the breath from their lungs, replacing it with something older, something the gods wove into the world before air existed.

She let herself sink into my arms—my real arms, not the tail-hand that humans fear. I guided her deeper, past the reeds, past the sunlit shallows, into the cool blue where the lake begins to dream.

Her eyes were open, and I watched her as she calmly took in our journey. She watched everything. The silver flash of fish as they swam in and out of the hydrilla, catching the moonlight reflected on their scales. She looked at me with wonder.

“You’re beautiful,” she said, though her voice was only bubbles. My heart thumped and extra beat. I had never been called that.

I led her to the cavern beneath the lake, the place where the water glows with the memories of those I have taken. The walls shimmered with faint blue light, like veins of trapped lightning.

She touched the stone. “It’s warm.”

“It remembers,” I told her.

“What does it remember?”

“Everything.”

She turned to me, her hair floating around her like dark kelp. “Will it remember me?”

“If you stay.”

She drifted closer. “Can I?”

I studied her. Humans are fragile. Their bodies are not made for the deep. But her soul—her soul was already half-water. She had come to the lake because she belonged to it.

“It’s a choice only you can decide,” I said. “Life on the shores, or life below. You cannot have both.”

She looked up toward the wavering surface far above us.

Then she looked at me.

“I choose below.”

Chapter 3

The gods do not grant such a choice lightly. But they listened to her story and to her desire to become more than what she was. She needed to become more than what the loss of her children defined her as.

The water around us thickened, swirling with pale light. I explained I would have to let go as the transformation took place.

“Will you wait for me? I nodded and let go.

She gasped as the swirling water wrapped around her chest, her throat, her mouth. Her lungs convulsed, then stilled. Her skin shimmered, taking on the faint iridescence of fish scales. Her fingers lengthened, webbing forming between them. Her heartbeat slowed to match the rhythm of the lake.

She floated in front of me, suspended in the glow.

“Am I dying?” she asked. I shook my head vehemently.

“No,” I said. “You are becoming a new lifeform. Tlaloc, the rain god, has deemed it so. You will become part of the lake, part of Tlaloque culture and lore. No one has ever asked before. At least no one who is as pure as you.”

Her eyes widened as she realized she could breathe. Truly breathe. The water flowed through her as easily as air once had.

She laughed—a sound like bubbles.

It was the most beautiful sound I had ever heard.

“What am I now? Will I have a creature name?” she asked.

“You’re alive, and only time will tell,” I said.

She reached out and touched my cheek.

Her fingers were cool now, like mine.

“Will you stay with me?” she asked.

I had never been asked that either.

“I will,” I said.

Chapter 4

Days passed, though time moves differently underwater. She learned to swim with the fish, to listen to the currents, to read the shifting moods of the lake. She learned the names of the stones, the songs of the reeds, the whispers of the gods.

She followed me through the tunnels beneath the lake, through the glowing caverns, through the forests of kelp that swayed like dancers. She asked intelligent questions—endless, curious, bright. She was interested in my perspective, my knowledge, and it made me feel bolder in the way only companionship can,

My tail-hand confused humans; they waffled between their fear of my physical anomaly and their curiosity. She held it without hesitation.

“You’re not the monster of lore, although you look very similar to the description my grandmother gave of the ahuizotl,” she told me once.

“My creator made me to be perfect for my purpose,” I replied.

“And what is that?”

“A collector of souls marked by Tlaloc, the rain god.”

She frowned, her eyebrows dipping down above her nose. “Will Tlaloc ever make you collect mine?” I frowned now, too, my ears drooping at the thought. When I spoke, it was with a voice that made bigger bubbles that popped quicker than usual.

“Only if you ask.” My voice broke, the bubbles bursting as they came out of my mouth.

She smiled warmly, then tilted her head to the side.

“Not yet, maybe never, since I have never felt such peace and contentment before I came to you.” That made me smile, too.

One night, the lake roared with the fury of the rain god. Lightning split the sky above, and the water churned with restless energy. I felt the summons before I heard it. A marked soul was near. A death had been chosen.

I turned to her, taking her hands in mine as I used my tail-hand to push off the bottom of the lake.

“I must go.”

She nodded. “I’ll come with you.” I shook my head in disagreement.

“No. It is dangerous.”

“So am I now.” I let go of her and swam away toward the surface. Being late to collect on the gods’ mark would not be tolerated. I had no time to argue with my friend. She followed anyway, and I realized her presence was necessary. She had become more than a friend; she was a partner in my journey.

We rose toward the surface, where the storm raged. A man stood at the water’s edge, soaked, trembling, calling a name that was not hers. He was marked with sorrow, with guilt, with the kind of grief that sinks deeper than any lake.

The man wore Tlaloc’s mark. I surfaced slowly, keeping my tail-hand underwater as I observed the situation. When he saw me, he screamed.

She surfaced beside me, the motion causing the man to do a double-take before stumbling backward and falling on his arse. He stared at her, horrified.

“Chala?” he choked. “You’re dead. You’ve been gone for months. I saw you drown. I followed you to the shore that night, but I wasn’t quick enough to save you.”

“I didn’t drown in your dream; you saw me being set free of all the pain. Set free of you,” she said softly. “I chose.”

He stood on shaking legs, not coming any closer to the edge of the lake. “What have you become?” He asked.

She looked at me. Then she looked at him.

“Alive,” she said.

He turned to run.

The gods do not like it when their chosen flee.

I reached for him with my tail-hand, but a gentle touch on my face caused me to pause.

“Wait.”

“Tlaloc has placed his mark on him; I cannot disobey my purpose,” I said, calmer than I felt.

“He’s experiencing human heartbreak; I can help him move on.” I nod once, slowly, and sink lower in the lake but not out of view.

“I lost you. I came here for the same fate,” The marked human whispered.

“You did lose me, but not in the way you think. I didn’t leave you, I left this harsh reality.”

She touched his cheek. Her hand left a faint shimmer of lake-light on his skin.

“I am not of this realm anymore, Tanzi,” she said. “You must free your thoughts of me, or the gods will deem you unfit to remain here.”

He closed his eyes, and tears streamed over the lake-light palm print. And for the first time, he did let her go.

When he opened them again, the mark was gone. The gods had released him. She returned to me, her expression soft.

“How… how did you spare him?” I asked.

“I freed his heart; he no longer desires me or my presence, and that means he no longer wants to take his own life,” she corrected.

I looked at her, this woman who had chosen the lake, chosen me, chosen life in a world that was never meant for her.

“You are changing into an amazing creature,” I said.

“And you already were an amazing creature,” she replied.

Chapter 5

Stories of the ahuizotl have been passed down through generations. They still whisper of the creature with the hand at the end of its tail, the monster that drags people into the deep.

But now they tell another story too. Of a woman who lives beneath the lake. A woman with shimmering skin and webbed fingers. A woman who walks between worlds, who speaks to the gods, who chooses mercy when the lake chooses death.

They call her The Silver Lady, a descriptive moniker of her argent flowing robes illuminated by moonlight.

They leave offerings for her—flowers, shells, whispered prayers. I watch her when she examines the gifts and considers the prayers. Sometimes she answers. Sometimes she does not. But always she returns to the cavern. To me.

And together, we swim through the glowing caverns, through the dreaming currents, through the endless memory of the water.

She chose the lake. She chose me. And I, a creature of the lake, collector of souls, a myth, chose her in return. The water remembers everything. And now, it remembers us.