In the Deep

[extrapenguin]

On AO3
Thanks to sixth-light for betaing!
Summary: Peter and Nightingale receive complaints of a lake and go camping in the vicinity.
Part of the Folly Camping Trip Challenge

I fumbled with the tent poles again. This time, I even managed to kick the tarp around with my foot, so I had to straighten that, too.

I wasn't exactly sure what the hell we were supposed to be doing. I chose to remedy the situation by asking Nightingale, who was at the Jag. I, unfortunately, was in the middle of a field, attempting to set up an archaic tent, while the Jag was parked a good half kilometer away on the side of the road.

As luck would have it, Nightingale appeared, arms laden with mysterious equipment hopefully related to camping. (I'd never been camping, so I had no bloody clue whatsoever.) At least, I hoped it was Nightingale. Could've been anyone in a suit, what with the amount of gear in his arms.

“Um, sir?” I asked when he got closer. Maybe now he wouldn't brush off my inquiry with a “Later, Peter”. That had become beyond frustrating after the third attempt.

Nightingale emerged from behind the stack of Things he'd just set down. “Yes?” he answered.

“Now that we're here, could you please tell me why?”

He paused to catch his breath. “There have been … incidents in this area. I was alerted to the fact, and the incidents seem to all have happened to campers near the lake. The two victims are both convinced that “aliens” are behind the encounters.”

Well, that was pretty convincing. “What were the encounters like?”

“The victims were both camping alone. On different nights, three days apart, they woke up after dark, felt a compulsion to exit their tent, and were greeted by the most beautiful woman imaginable. Their descriptions differ, so they were probably under a glamour at the time. They followed the woman towards the lake until a brick wall suddenly appeared in front of them. In sudden confusion, one tried shouting for the woman for some time while the other simply went back to her tent. Both mentioned “weird alien singing” for some time before the wall appeared.” After that, Nightingale had to pause for breath. He looked at my abysmal efforts at putting the tent together, sighed, and began working not-actual magic on the components. (If it had been actual magic, I could have chalked my failure up to not knowing the forma. Alas.) I wondered whether the tent had IKEA-style assembly instructions.

“So, if both of the attempted victims were alone, how do you know it'll target us?” I asked. “Maybe it only targets lone campers?”

“If nothing happens this night, I have a separate tent that you can set up, oh, four hundred yards from this one. We're camped a mere three hundred yards from the lake, which is closer than the other two were.” Nightingale was making rapid work of the tent. He reached the two-person part and cheated using impello. I felt slightly passed-over and slightly relieved. “I also asked Molly to pack for a two nights' stay.” Yay. More mystery sandwiches.

Leaving Nightingale to his tent, I went for a short walk to the lakeshore. The ground was damp, as was usual to England, and the sky was gray. The lake itself was smallish and looked shallow. It was remarkably non-overgrown, and reflected the overcast weather condition. There was a house on the opposite side of the lake, maybe fifty meters from the shore. Around the roughly circular lake, it'd be about three hundred meters' walk to the point where I stood. It checked out with the diameter being just shy of two hundred meters. I decided to walk back to where Nightingale was.

 

We had some peanut butter and pickle sandwiches (made with some sort of rye blend bread) before we went to sleep in the tent. In my sleeping bag (set atop a bedroll for maximum softness) I noticed that the canvas scent of the tent was pretty much identical with the one I associated with Nightingale. I entertained some idle thoughts about the whole Ettersberg fiasco – and Thomas “so sorry, was that your tiger tank?” Nightingale doing his thing to the aforementioned tiger tanks – but soon enough I was asleep.

 

Beverley was splashing around naked like the river goddess she was. I grinned. Treating her to a beach holiday had been a good call. I walked from the shade towards the warm ocean where she smiled invitingly.

“Peter!” Nightingale said.

I woke up, still in the damp English countryside, Nightingale shaking me awake. I groaned and clambered out of my sleeping bag. Nightingale already had his shoes on.

“So, it's only targeting you, sir?” I asked when I'd tied my laces.

“You don't feel a compulsion to go outside? Good”, he said, relieved.

We stepped out, where we were greeted by a thin white man in his thirties, with glasses, a round face, and somewhat auburn-ish light brown hair. He was around one-seventy five, somewhat shorter than Nightingale, and clutched a notebook to his chest. The illusion was very detailed, as opposed to generic prettiness, so it was probably based on a memory.

“Hi, Thomas”, it said in a surprisingly nerdy voice.

“David?” Nightingale asked. I'd been right.

“Sorry to have left you. Now, I have some things I'd like to discuss – I think I've made a breakthrough with magical industrialisation. Come discuss it while we walk?” “David” smiled invitingly. Nightingale nodded and made to follow. I tried not to panic and failed miserably.

I heard singing. It did sound alien. In fact, it was the most alien language I'd heard. It was in a woman's voice, and she was singing in trochaic quadrameter.

Nightingale had already taken a few steps towards the lake. Think quick, Peter , I told myself. Break its hold on Nightingale. I blasted a fireball at the illusion. It dodged. Welp.

“Uh, Thomas, what is your … associate doing?” it asked.

Thankfully, Nightingale seemed to have regained his caution. He, too, looked towards the singing woman. She was approaching rapidly.

I cast a werelight and saw the most painfully pale woman I'd seen in my life. She seemed to be riding on some sort of elevated piece of moving turf, and stopped. She paused in her song and switched melodies.

“Painu veteen, Vetehinen
Palaa luokse veden väen
Autuaille antamille
Mene valtakuntaan Ahdin!”

The illusion of David Mellenby began to disintegrate gradually while she sang and, as she sang the last line, it was jerked back to the lake with an inhuman scream. It splashed when it hit the water, though not as much as something with the mass of a real body would have. I discreetly sighed in relief.

“Good evening, Miss, ah...” Nightingale began, still looking somewhat shaken. Personally, I would've wanted to use “Good night”, but apparently that was a synonym of “Good-bye”.

“Aino Taikanen.”

“So, you've been making the brick walls to prevent the campers from walking in?” I asked. I was nearly salivating at the thought of getting to discuss comparative magic.

“Yes. It's easier than stopping the vetehinen”, she said, with the accent of someone who hadn't quite figured out that English vowels were not meant to be pronounced. “You are the magic authorities?”

“Yes. I'm DCI Thomas Nightingale, and this is my apprentice, PC Peter Grant.” Nightingale had gained some of his composure back, and stood a bit taller, looking good in his suit.

“I am tietäjä Aino Taikanen. When we felt the vetehinen move away from Finland, I was assigned to follow it and prevent deaths.” Her w's and v's were practically identical and halfway between how they were supposed to be pronounced. “Had we known that you hadn't died back in the fifties, we would have told you.”

“Is it possible to forcibly relocate it?” Nightingale asked.

I feared he'd overestimated her vocabulary, but Taikanen did answer: “No, not really. The spirits of the dead do as they do. Only Ahti could order it to move. In Finland, that is. I do not know how it would work here.”

“Who or what is Ahti?” I asked.

“He is an extremely powerful man who controls all Finnish water. All Finno-Ugric water, he's got power over in Russia, too. And Estonia, probably.” She looked a bit wary. “The local religion held him as a god.”

The genius loci of an entire country's dihydrogen monoxide? I made a mental note to ask Nightingale for permission to exchange notes.

“How about placing ‘no trespassing’ signs around the lake to prevent more potential victims from approaching?” I asked.

“That would be a good idea”, Nightingale said.

Taikanen looked at me like I was insane. “You can do that? Isn't all land that's not a garden supposed to be for everyone's use?”

“Yes, we can do that here”, I said.

Taikanen looked slightly doubtful, but nodded. “I'll do it tomorrow. Ah – are you still The Folly? And live in the same place?”

“Yes”, Nightingale said. “What's the Finnish organisation?”

“We're called the Tietäjistö. We pretend we're a small religion. We teach anyone who wants to join. Some of us are second-generation. We're based in Toijala; it's a small place that we've said is the neutral ground between Helsinki, Turku and Tampere. The Sámi have their own organisation.” She messed up the pronunciation of ‘organisation’. “I'll send our address to you. We'll be in touch. Goodbye”, she said, and began singing, surfing away on a moving swelling of grass.

 

Nightingale left the flap open when we clambered into the tent. He stared out at the dark clouds. I wondered how long it'd take him to say what he wanted to say and whether I'd need to prompt him.

“So”, he began with a sigh, no prompting required. “I was prepared for whatever Earthly beauty it may have thrown at me. I was not prepared to see my, ah, dear friend David. I apologise for my oversight. Nice thinking with the fireball, by the way.”

“Thank you.” Nightingale looked like he needed some reassurance. I had no idea how to give it to him. I settled on placing my hand on his shoulder.

He placed his other hand atop mine. “I still miss him.” There wasn't really anything I could say to that.

We stayed awake for a while, participating in an awkward yet necessary moment of physical intimacy, before Nightingale closed the flap and we went to sleep. What with the midnight wake-up and spotty sleep afterwards, I was forced to write the next day off completely. Thankfully, Nightingale had gotten enough shut-eye to get us and the Jag safely back to the Folly.