The Drowned Star of Jezioro Czarne

In the summer I turned fourteen, my family and I traveled to the mountains of southern Poland, to a lake called Jezioro Czarne. My father had been bringing me there since I was a child, to fish with his old friends and their children. I had never liked it much; the water was always cold and dark, and the surrounding pines seemed to swallow the light. But that year, I had other reasons to be distracted.

I had just broken up with my first boyfriend, a boy named Kuba, who had given me a silver pendant shaped like a five-pointed star within a circle. He said it was a family heirloom, a symbol of protection, but I never asked what it protected against. I wore it every day, even when I slept, and the feel of the cool metal against my collarbone had become as familiar as my own heartbeat.

On the third day of our trip, a mist crept over the lake, turning the water into a mirror of grey. My father and his friends were arguing about the best fishing spot, and I stood at the railing of the boat, bored. Then, one of the boys—I think his name was Tomasz—decided to push me. I lost my footing and tumbled over the side, plunging into the black water.

The cold hit me like a fist. I flailed, sputtering, and when I clambered back onto the boat, my hand instinctively went to my neck. The chain was gone. I remember the exact feeling: the absence of the pendant, the sudden lightness, the panic that surged through me. I dove back into the water, but the lake was deep, and the bottom was nothing but silt and weeds, hiding whatever it had claimed.

That night, I couldn’t sleep. The cabin we rented was too warm, and the air smelled of pine and damp. I lay in my cot, listening to the wind, and I felt a strange, cold weight on my chest, as if the pendant were still there, pressing down. I dismissed it as grief, but when I looked down, my skin was unmarked.

The next day, we went out on the lake again, but the fishing seemed to have turned sour. The fish had stopped biting, and the water was unnaturally still. My father joked that the lake had been cursed, but his laughter was hollow. I saw him glance at the water with a flicker of unease.

At noon, Tomasz pointed to something floating near the boat. It was a bloated, silver fish, but its scales shimmered with a pattern I didn’t recognize. It was shaped vaguely like a star, with a dark hole in the center. No one else seemed to notice, but I couldn’t take my eyes off it.

That evening, as the sky turned a bruised purple, I heard a voice from the lake. It was indistinct, carried on the wind, but it seemed to call my name—not my full name, but the nickname only Kuba had used. I froze, my skin prickling. I ran to the shore, but the water was empty, the surface like polished glass.

Over the next few days, the pendant became a constant presence in my mind. I would catch glimpses of it out of the corner of my eye—in the water, in the reflection of the cabin windows—but whenever I looked directly, it was gone. My father noticed my distraction, but I couldn’t explain it. I felt like something was trying to get back to me, and I was terrified that if I ignored it, it would find me anyway.

On the last night of the trip, I woke to a sound like a stone being dropped into still water. I sat up, and the cabin was dark, the others fast asleep. The moonlight cast a silver path across the floor, leading to the door. Against my better judgment, I followed it outside, down to the shore.

The lake was perfectly calm, and in the center, something glinted. I waded into the water up to my knees, then to my waist, my nightgown clinging to me. The glinting object seemed to move farther away each time I reached for it, until the water was up to my chest, and the bottom gave way beneath my feet.

I sank into the blackness, and as I did, I saw the pendant resting on a bed of smooth stones, exactly where I had lost it. I reached out, and my fingers closed around the cold metal. At the same moment, something else closed around my ankle—something with a grip like iron, pulling me deeper.

I tried to scream, but water filled my lungs. The pendant was warm in my hand, pulsing like a second heart. And then, in the darkness, I saw a shape, not human, but also not alien: it was made of lake water and shadow, and it wore a crown of silt. It spoke to me, not with words, but with pure understanding: it had been waiting for me, and now that I had taken the star, it could finally rise.

I woke on the shore at dawn, coughing up water, the pendant clutched in my hand. My father found me and asked what I had done. I couldn’t tell him. I only knew that the lake had claimed something that day, and it had given me the pendant back as a tether. And now, I can feel it pulling, even when I touch the metal.

I haven’t taken it off since, but I know it’s not a symbol of protection. It’s a symbol of a contract. And somewhere in the dark water of Jezioro Czarne, something waits for me to return, to fulfill the bargain I made when I was fourteen—a bargain I still don’t fully understand.