Thermocline

They whisper about it now, but we used to have magic. That state of newness that only water can provide, that was real, honest magic. Magic came from water. We ruined it. Magic doesn’t exist anymore. End of story. It should have been the end. But there are whispers.

Large bodies of water go through a process called turnover, I explain to a lecture hall full of overwhelmed freshmen. It makes the water different temperatures, rising and falling within the lake.

The middle zone is thermocline, I valiantly impart on them, the middle zone is change incarnate.

Fresh snow crunches under my feet as I trudge towards West Lake Okoboji. It’s beautiful in winter, frozen solid with ice fishermen spotting the surface. It’s also, just barely, deep enough to test my hypothesis.

The thing about turnover is that it only goes so deep. Under the thermocline is the hypolimnion, the under-lake. The water doesn’t shift, doesn’t cycle up to the surface, and doesn’t change like the water of the epilimnion does.

I pay an ice fisherman $25 to let me use his shack for an hour. He makes me promise to call him if he gets any bites. I wait for him to disappear before I attach the amulet to the fishing line and drop it into the water. It hisses as it disappears into the depths.

The fishing line goes taut right before the ice fractures and the earth begins to quake. Some things never change.