Breakfast was red onions and ground oat and rye blended with curdled goat’s milk. The small man washed it down with cool water. As he stood up his right knee cracked loudly. It had been doing so since he accidentally struck a sharp rock under water almost a year ago. Though he could still run as fast as ever without any pain, the sound worried him. Didn’t he have special protection, the kind that enjoyed only the Predestined Ones whose mission in life was to see what no ordinary mortals could see ? And yet....

He slapped his muscular thighs, his calves, his buttocks, rubbed his lower back, his firm biceps, his forearms and his chest. Taking a tall vase, he poured some pine-scented water into his washing bowl and rinsed his full black beard and long hair with it.

Time to go to the Singing Pool.

The small man abandoned his makeshift camp in a thicket of Daphnia bushes and waded upstream in the cool shallow water. It was the third day away from his people’s settlement. Before the sun had set today he would return there. Predestined or not, he belonged to his settlement ; his place was firstly with his fellow farmers and hunters.

He strode uphill for about 400 metres until he reached the stream’s source, the milky blue waters of the Singing Pool. As usual in the morning, it was silent. It appeared to be asleep, although the man could sense rather than detect its consciousness. It was a good 6 metres wide and vaguely hemispherical in form, and looked knee-deep. In actual fact, it was one and a half metres to the bottom. The deception resulted from the pool’s murkiness as well as from the surroundings : the Singing Pool lay at the entrance of the Palace of Seeing sited behind a 30-metre tall gap in the mountainside that revealed a vaulted chamber which framed and dwarfed the pool. The gap resembled 2 circular cuts, one atop the other, a narrow neck joining them. Children grew up hearing the story of how the new-born sun and moon had been expelled by their father the mountain at this very spot ; the adults knew that that was nonsense, that the gap was actually a supernatural sign that only the Predestined Ones could interpret.

The small man stepped through the gap into the Palace of Seeing and gazed at the water’s surface. “Joy for the tongue, strength for the flesh, youth for the heart, queen of all waters, have compassion this day, I pray you.” Nothing. After a few minutes, he chose one of the wider flat rocks near the pool’s edge and sat cross-legged to watch and wait.

No breeze stirred outside the earth-coloured palace, no shadow moved across its dark walls. Birds chirped away in the trees or flitted in and out of the warm rays of the growing sun, but none took notice of the small man nor cared to investigate the silent cavern’s niches.

Less than half an hour after sitting down, the man stood up again. Nothing. He, a Predestined One, privy to visions that would destroy the souls of ordinary humans, had seen nothing for three days. The man’s heart suddenly fell under an immense sadness. Had the spirit decided to leave him after all ?

He undid his goatskin loincloth, his sole piece of clothing, and slipped it into a hole in the uneven wall. Going along the edge of the pool, he stopped at about a metre from the far wall. Peering into the depths, he saw only a pale reflection of himself, the details shrouded in milky shadow. Closing his eyes, he took a deep breath, then exhaled, willing the spirit of distress out of his heart. He opened his dark brown eyes, gazing at the pool’s surface until quietly, magically, the murkiness evanesced, and the icy face of the source’s guardian nymph was revealed. The man fell naked into the pool.

Photo of Actun Tunichil Muknal (Belize), edited, taken from here.