The Girl and the Golem
“You want us to swim?” Gareth asked. He regarded the dark lake water lapping at the dock with disdain. Slimy clouds of algae glittered just below its murky surface.
Gareth, along with several other campers, stood in a line on the dock awaiting their fate. Most were in their first year of mandatory camp. At sixteen, Gareth was at least two years older than most of the first-year campers. His tall, skinny frame towered over many of the fourteen-year-old boys he was forced to bunk with. Gareth had sighed when he first entered the long wooden cabin. Why hadn’t the camp administration placed him in with campers his own age? He found the insult to the injury humiliating.
“Yes,” replied the all too perky camp counselor. “I want you to jump in and swim, with the kickboards of course. This is Beginner’s Swimming. Nothing too drastic your first time.” She had the chipper smile of one who never needs caffeine.
Garth studied her bouncing blond ponytail. It swung like the tail of an excitable dog. She wore a shorty wetsuit revealing well-tanned arms and legs. Gareth couldn’t help thinking how his own pale skin glowed in the unfiltered mountain air. One of the side effects of staying away from polite society for the past two years. He wished he’d packed a wetsuit for this little foray into Lake Algae instead of swim trunks.
“What was your name again?” he asked.
“Tiffany.” Her perky voice popped off the placid water’s surface.
“Of course, it is,” he said looking back at the lake. “Well, Tiffany, what are we supposed to do about breathing?”
To Gareth’s left, another of the campers snorted, but Tiffany didn’t seem to notice.
“Oh, well, you won’t be going under the surface. Not yet anyhow. That’s tomorrow’s lesson.” Tiffany turned serious, her beauty queen smile gone. “But when you do, you’ll hold your breath.”
“Do what?” Gareth leaned toward Tiffany as if she’d spoken a foreign language.
“Hold it. Like this.” Tiffany demonstrated this by taking a deep breath, her apple-round cheeks puffing wide.
Gareth suppressed the urge to smack her face with both hands, releasing the deluge of captive air. “I guess I’m just not understanding the point of all of this. Half of us can cast some sort of spell that will allow us to breathe under the water, and others can just walk across the surface or even fly. Swimming is a moot point.”
Tiffany exhaled in a huff. “Because it freaks out the humans. They know magic exists in the world now, but most don’t want to see it. ‘I don’t mind it, I just don’t want it flaunted in my face’ mentality.”
Camp Steiner was named after its founder, Sydney Steiner, however, the campers dubbed it, ‘Human Training Camp’ or HTC for short. Here, the magical population learned how to interact with the human population. Gareth had studied the history of Earth’s magical evolution but still couldn’t understand why magical and non-magical people had decided to live together. If the two populations had remained apart, then this whole training thing wouldn’t be necessary. Beginner’s Swimming wouldn’t be necessary.
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