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Lake Stopno has been a lake since the times when mammoths walked the earth, but now, thanks in large to global warming and those who deny it, it had dried out. The beavers, in recent years more prominent than ever (to the dismay of local farmers) had to be evacuated. That in itself was a rather lousy affair, and the people of the village did not hide their snide remarks about what a terrible job the mayor was doing – as always. He was, after all, the same man who just the year before lost his mind and decreed all fences in his constituency be painted green.

The job of finding the pesky animals before they were all killed by the drought came to Adam, a man in his forties, who did not have a wife (this was unusual) but did have a dog with one ear and a limp. Adam, too, had a limp. They complimented one another well.

That day, as requested by the mayor himself, Adam strolled the crusted, dried ground which should have been, but was not, covered in water. The heat was annoying the dog, as were the flies, who came to this newly exposed land in search of death - as flies usually do.

Algae was abundant in Lake Stopno. You could not wade far into the water, when it was still there, not without getting your ankles tangled in its slimy, cold fingers. It was tall, Adam could see now, taller than expected, as tall as wheat in the field nearby where the village teenagers could often be found hiding with their cheap vodka. A stream ran through the field, now dried up like the lake, and Adam remembered the summer when he was seventeen and Paulina Osocka, the prettiest girl around, went swimming in it in nothing but her underwear. He thought he would marry her, then, but she married the butcher, and they had four daughters now, each as pretty as their mother.

Lake Stopno smelled.

It never did, usually, and the village was proud, usually, of their lake. They were named after it, even. Stopno, county Zlotow, in Greater Poland, with the lake said to be one of the five cleanest in Europe. Now however, the water was gone, and all that remained was the fish, dried under the hot August sun, dead for days and rotting. And the smell of the rot, and the fish, and the dying algae filled the air so completely Adam knew it would never go away. It would drift through the village, embed itself into the woods around it, into foundations of houses, and it would stay there. In five years, Adam knew, the village would be abandoned.

Still, Adam walked, and so did the dog, and it would be hard to say which of them was more unhappy for it. The beavers, however, had to be found. So they searched.

She lay, the nameless one, just there, in the algae, where he wouldn't have even seen her if he had not kicked a pebble just so, if it had not hit her arm, and if it had not made a sound he would dream of for days, and years, to come. It was the sound of opening a bottle of homemade apple wine, the cork coming out too fast and squishy, and the liquid sloshing around, but unmistakably solid at the same time. That's how she sounded.

Adam could have thought she was asleep – he often said so to others, and to himself, even though it was a lie. He liked to think that she was peaceful in death, that she'd found a quiet, a calm amongst the algae, with the fish all around joining her in it. He often thought of her, although not on purpose, and he would never admit it – but still he thought of her as the goddess of the Lake, and once she died, the Lake followed.

The truth, however, was different. She was not asleep, and it was clear, in the way her body lay, in the way the algae lay upon it, in the way the dog recoiled as if understanding the sight before Adam quite could. But there was not a second of mistake. There was a certainty in her death, a permanence in it, a solidity so unlike what's found in life, which is fleeting, and fickle. She was constant.

The body, and how Adam found it, the story of it, circulated the village quickly, and although Adam could not quite understand how it happened (he, after all, only told the mayor, who told the police) he soon found himself, rather than the outcast, the centre of attention. Suddenly, dinner invitations were pouring in from all corners. "No reason, Adam, why would we need an occasion to invite an old friend over?" or "Basia made pierogi, and you know what she's like, we have enough to feed all of Zlotow now." Adam didn't know what Basia was like, having only seen her in passing on the street before. The village of Stopno had only one street, with houses on one side and the forest on the other– it was difficult to miss each other, but his neighbours often tried to.

For a week Adam did not need to cook for himself, instead eating with each of his neighbours one after the other. They even let his dog into their houses, which was unusual to say the least. Dogs were not welcome indoors. As the week went on, however, and with each retelling of the story, he found himself missing his solitude. The story wasn't very exciting – he was simply looking for the beavers, then there she was. He wondered why his neighbours didn't just go and see her for themselves. She was just across the road, with only the flimsy POLICE – DO NOT CROSS tape surrounding the lake to stop them. Instead, they seemed to prefer to stay inside their houses and listen to him say it again and again, like a tv soap with a repeating storyline.

It wasn't long until rumours spread through the village. Just like the smell of the dying lake, they implanted themselves in the lives of the people, rooted under their fingernails, wove into their hair. Unravelled day by day into progressively stranger tales. Adam was soon faced with the most bizarre– is it true the skeleton is Princess Anastasia? He dismissed it, of course, as nonsense: she's not a skeleton, he'd say, she's not been there that long, he'd say. What would Anastasia even be doing here? But his neighbours wouldn't listen, wholly convinced he was barred from speaking the truth by some secret Russian military organisation.

Adam decided he had enough.

He walked back to the lake, the dog following closely. He had a job to finish, even though the mayor told him not to bother. "You have more important things to do now, Adam," the mayor said, "you take your time and talk to the police. Somebody else will take care of the beavers." But nobody did. In the commotion they were forgotten.

The body was still there, and his steps lead him to it by a memory of their own. Nobody knew who the girl was, nobody had claimed her, and nobody waited for her retrieval. She was not a priority, in this small town with one police car to the county, and the forensic unit from the city 90 km away would not be coming down any time soon.

Adam sat on the dried sand, next to her, and the dog laid down next to him. They stayed in silence, the three of them, and watched the sun set through the trees.

Adam felt at peace. It was better company, his one eared, unnamed dog, and a dead, unnamed girl, than all the sudden new friends he had in the village. These here, they let him sit quietly and listen to the sounds of waking nightlife. They didn't want him to speak of things which didn't happen, of mysteries which weren't all that mysterious at all.

He wondered about the girl. She wore a yellow dress, the colour faded from the water. He wondered how long she had been there, tried not to think of her as she was now, but rather as she was before. He wondered what her name was. It must have been a nice one, but a simple one, too – Ela maybe, same as his mum. That would have fit her well. There were flowers on the dress, pink and blue. Her hair was bright, like the wheat in the fields surrounding the village.

The night fell around them softly. Stars emerged, one by one, the brightest ones first. Adam knew he came there to do a job, an important one at that, but for the first time in his life he allowed himself to take a moment. To breathe slowly and deeply. He watched as the moonlight skimmed her skin, the darkness removing the unnatural hue it donned during day time. For a moment he could forget that he was sitting on the lake bed. He could forget she was dead, and that he was old, and that his life was nothing what he thought it would be. For just a moment he could see it anew. And she was right there, with him.

Morning came all at once, with bird songs and blinding heat. Adam decided it was time. He bid the girl goodbye, telling her he wouldn't come again, and that he was sorry, then left to search for the beavers. The forest surrounding Lake Stopno was quiet, and he feared what he'd find a week into the drought.

The beavers, as beavers do, had moved on by themselves.