Autistic Fairy tale series - The Black Lake

There is said to be a lake in the depths of Wales, a lake so dark that it would pull you in until your thoughts disintegrated and scattered across the watery universe. People had heard tales about the lake, that it had been tested and they couldn’t find the bottom of it. It is surrounded by dark walls of rock, and guards secrets close to its elusive heart.

Winter, Llyn Dulyn by Charles Potter (1832–1907)

The fish, they say, never kept if you caught one – they were thin and long with large heads. You just wouldn’t believe it unless you saw it with your own eyes.

People told of voices, cries that would ring across the water and echo round the hills. The Welshmen who had fished there would have their nighttime sleep disturbed, suddenly afraid as they recalled the lake, as if someone had walked across their grave. Bitterly scared they were, and not afraid to admit it.

VIEW VIDEO OF THE BLACK LAKE

But within this tale is another tale. Of a boy so spellbound by its mysteries, that he had built up a strange collection in a ramshackle chicken coop. A collection of seemingly meaningless, twisted fragments – a museum of bullet-scarred fuselages, the bits and pieces of aircraft from the war that had never made it home.

You who read this, you may have been there on that day when the plane wheels were pulled from the watery grave. Or maybe it was you who saw the bloated face of the poor chap lying on the stretcher, as bodies from the German planes were brought down from the wreckage.

And why this is being said now, all these years later? Well. Isn’t there something so magical about the boy collector? Does he still walk the edges of the lake excitedly finding remnants to add to his collection? Does he still sit and look through his discoveries with reverence and love to invite people to see them? If you recognise in your heart a calling to this – the joy of a curious cabinet, the collection of pebbles, the records so lovingly kept, the excitement of discovering a vintage book which then becomes an object of joy just to look at and not even read… then maybe this story is an invitation to lean into it all the more.

The revisiting of this tale is something of a joy, because this place that you are reading right now is in itself a lake with no bottom. And in it are strange fish, treasured collections, tales of hope, birding while running and battles raging to be fought.

I invite you to come to the lake, take your fishing rod and cast it out to find what you would like to collect.