The Glass Creek Remedy

My grandmother used to say that our blood carried the river’s memory, that we were born with the current in our veins. I never understood that until I was nine, the summer my family moved to the old house on Glass Creek. The name came from the water itself, clear and still as a window pane, but underneath it, you could see the silver bones of fish that never swam away.

We were a family of women who could see things—shadows that moved against the wind, the weight of a room before you stepped in. Mama called it ‘the sight,’ but she never trusted it. She said it was a curse, a tear in the fabric that let the cold in. So when I started talking about the girl with wet hair who sat on my windowsill, Mama scrubbed the window with vinegar and salt, and hung a horseshoe above the crib. But the girl stayed, and she learned my name.

Dahlia was her name, or that’s what she wrote in the frost on the pane. She had eyes like river stones, and her voice came to me not through my ears but through the floorboards, humming a tune that sounded like a lullaby turned backwards. She told me stories of a time when Glass Creek was a road, a road that led to the old mill before the dam broke. She said the mill had five floors, and the top floor held the grain that was never ground, and the grain sang to the water every night. I believed her because I could hear the singing too, a low drone that made my teeth ache.

Aunt Laurel came to stay that fall, after Uncle Ray died. She was the one who practiced, the one who kept the old ways. She brought her bundles of sage and a copper bowl, and she burned things in the yard until the smoke turned the sky grey. When she saw me talking to the window, she didn’t yell. She knelt down and looked me straight in the eye. Her pupils were so dark they swallowed the light. She said, ‘You must not answer her questions, girl. She is not a playmate. She is a fisher.’ I didn’t understand, but I nodded, and I stopped speaking to Dahlia for three days.

On the fourth night, I woke to the sound of rain, but it wasn’t raining. The ceiling dripped a steady tick-tock, and the girl was standing at the foot of my bed, holding a glass jar. Inside the jar, there was a small whirlpool, spinning and spinning, and at its center, a tiny silver fish that didn’t move. She held it up to my face and smiled. Her teeth were not straight. Some were missing, and in the gaps, I saw more water, clear and alive. She said, ‘See what I can do? I can keep you safe. I can keep your whole family safe. Just let me inside.’

I almost said yes. My chest felt warm, and my head felt light, and I had a sudden vision of my mother laughing in a yellow kitchen, of Aunt Laurel reading a book without flinching, of my little brother, Ben, sleeping without night terrors. But then I saw Dahlia’s reflection in the jar. She was not a girl. She was an old woman, with skin like the bark of a sycamore and eyes that were not stones but pits of water, and there was a hook embedded in her shoulder, trailing a line of silver string. I screamed, and she vanished. The jar fell and shattered, and the water spread on the floor, and in the water, I saw my own face, but upside down, and it was crying.

Aunt Laurel burst in. She didn’t ask what I saw. She grabbed my arm and dragged me into the kitchen, where the stove was still burning even though it was summer. She took a coal from the fire and pressed it into my palm. I yelped, but she held my hand over the sink, and the cold water turned the coal black. She wrapped a bandage around my hand and said, ‘She will not let go, not once she has a name. You must give her something else. A piece of you that you do not need.’ I didn’t know what that meant, but the next morning, I woke up unable to whistle. I used to whistle all the time, bird songs, radio tunes, but now my lips made no sound. And every night, from beneath my bed, I heard a soft whistling, and it was not me.

Winter came, and Glass Creek froze over. The window of my room faced the creek, and I could see Dahlia’s silhouette skating on the ice, but she left no marks. My mother noticed I stopped talking about her, but she also noticed that the kitchen knives were always dull, and that the sugar turned to salt overnight. She knew. She just didn’t want to know.

One night, Aunt Laurel took me to the creek. The ice was thick enough to walk on. She carried an iron lantern with a flame that burned blue. She stopped at the center, where the water was deepest, and she knelt down and placed her hand flat on the ice. She told me to do the same. We stayed there until my knees hurt, and I could see through the ice a shape moving below—a shadow that was not a fish, not a log. It was the shape of a woman, but long and twisted, and her hair floated like weeds, and her eyes were the only bright things, glowing like the lantern but from under the water.

I asked Aunt Laurel, ‘What is she?’ Aunt Laurel looked at me, and her face was old, older than I had ever seen. She said, ‘She is not a she, and she is not a it. She is a bargain that was made a hundred years ago, and you are the one who must end it. But to do that, you must give her something that you value more than your own life.’ I didn’t know what that was. I was only nine.

Spring came, and the ice broke up. The creek ran again, and the singing under my floorboards stopped. I thought it was over. I began to smile, and I forgot about Dahlia. I spent my afternoons skipping stones on the water, and I even whistled a little, though the notes were rough. Then one day, I saw Ben, my little brother, standing at the edge of the creek, talking to the water. He was holding a small glass jar, and inside the jar, there was a whirlpool, and at the center, a tiny silver fish.

I ran to him, but I was too late. He looked up at me, and his eyes were not his. They were river stones, and he smiled with my missing teeth. He said, ‘I have a new friend. Her name is Dahlia. She says she wants to meet you properly.’

Aunt Laurel left that same week. She said she had done all she could, and that the creek would take what it was owed. I understood then what she meant. The blood had to be paid. But I was not going to let it be Ben. So that night, I went down to the creek by myself, and I stood where the water ran deepest. I held my mother’s locket in my hand, the one with her picture and my father’s, both of them smiling. I felt the cold creep up my ankles, up my knees, up my chest. I opened my mouth to speak the words that Dahlia had taught me, the ones that meant ‘I accept.’ But before the water closed over my head, I saw Aunt Laurel on the bank, holding a lantern. The flame was not blue—it was white, like the sun. She threw something into the water. It made a splash, and the water began to churn. And in the churn, I saw Dahlia’s face, and it was not angry. It was weeping, and it was leaving.

I woke up on the bank, coughing water. Aunt Laurel was gone. The locket was in my hand, but the pictures were faded, blank. And from that day on, I could not dream. No night visions, no sleep stories. But I could hear the creek singing, and I knew that somewhere, a girl with wet hair was still waiting, but she was not in the water. She was in me. And every time I look at a mirror, I see her shadow, and she is smiling with my teeth. The Glass Creek Remedy did not cure me. It gave me a companion for life.