The spring was so cold it sent a shiver through my arm into the rest of me. My gasp made Roy and Bella laugh. Perhaps they were simply acknowledging a similar experience, but their united response displeased me so much that I held my hand in the stream for several seconds, determined not to flinch. When the face below me started mouthing – my reflection, distorted by ripples jittering with brilliance – I felt I could easily begin to hear a voice in the breathless rush of water, the incessant chatter of the pool. I took a handful from the spring and brought it to my mouth.

Some of it went in. Some trickled down my arm, and the remainder splashed my chest. At once I felt as if all the heat had been snatched from my body, departing with a convulsive shiver. The violent chill seemed to fasten on my brain, gathering around it like ice. As I blinked my eyes clear of the moisture that had filled them, Roy said “Are you getting it, dad?”

Either the chill was lessening or I’d become acclimatised. It appeared to have lent my perceptions a clarity that wasn’t far from painful. The insistently glittering water and the misty shafts of light had grown so intense I had to look away, only to notice mist hovering beneath the treetops, like a cloud that had descended almost to the earth. I realised I could hear no birds, just the endless monologue of the spring. It grew louder, at least in my ears, and set about forming words – a crass ram meant he. “Aqua Sacramenti,” I said more or less aloud.

“You’re hearing him, Patrick.”

“I’m hearing what I may have expected to hear. The name was on the atlas.” Just as defensively I said “Why would anyone want to call themselves that?”

“They get their names from their powers. That one means mystery of water.”

I would rather Bella had said so, not my son, but no doubt she had previously told him, unless he’d read it in some book his mother ought to disapprove of. Now that I’d heard the name I couldn’t stop doing so. It sounded hungry for acknowledgment, and I told myself it was nothing but a sound. “Are we staying here much longer?” I said.

“Is it affecting you too much, Patrick? Trust me, you’ll get used.”

I waited for Bella to complete the phrase, but had to assume she thought this was unnecessary. “I want to be sure I’m fit to drive,” I said.

“Let’s just remember Thelma and we’ll go.”

She took a glass jar out of her bag and handed Roy the lid. “You call that remembering,” I said.

“It’s what she did.”