20 CREATIVE NONFICTION held the moment and my breath as tiny fi ngers began to pull back the green curtain. My Grandma called, I turned away, I turned back, the fairy was gone. I returned to the fi eld with air of smoke and fresh grass, with the sound of popping wood and fl agpole clinking. But the next morning I went back, I built a house of sticks and moss, lined a garden path of stream pebbles, and set a feast of almonds and raspberries in acorn bowls. 47° 28' 39.55" N, 11° 4' 47.9" E I saw a mermaid in the lake of Garmisch-Partenkirchen. While parents sat at round tables through day-long lectures, the caretakers boarded the children on yellow buses and granted a trip to the mermaid lagoon if we behaved. They lined us at the fence overlooking Rießersee Lake with tugs at coats and nags in the ears of little boys who got too close to the edge. They told us to look for the tip of the mermaid’s tail. She’s there by the rock, they promised. Look, don’t you see the ripples in the water there? Shouts and laughter and cheers from everyone but me. I followed chapped fi ngers pointing, took my fur-lined hood down, squinted against the sun shining off the snowy cliffs, but boarded the bus again without a glimpse of her. Putting my hands over my ears, letting a tear fall freely, glaring out the gritty window, I let the frame’s cold metal seep into the skin of my arm as I leaned as far as I could from the outroar of children chattering about mermaids. They never saw her. The caretakers made it up. But there—a shadow!
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