Originally published in 2015 in Drunken Boat, “Lettie from the Ocean” is irreverent fan fiction by Caroline Wilkinson that responds to Neil Gaiman’s novel, The Ocean at the End of the Lane. In Gaiman’s novel, the nameless male narrator is saved from evil forces as a boy by his childhood friend, Lettie Hempstock. While the narrator ultimately moves on to an adult life, Lettie must stay at home to heal from the injuries she sustained during her heroic act. She specifically resides in a pond behind her mother’s house.
As an adult, the narrator, who forgets Lettie’s sacrifice, is drawn back to the Hempstock home. There, Hettie, who it turns out was never a real, fragile child, speaks to the fully human narrator from the pond. She corrects his erroneous understanding of her fate. (The narrator remembers her as having moved to Australia.) He has no reason to feel either guilty or obligated to Hettie since she is not a human being but rather a magical, ageless creature. The pond in which she lives, furthermore, turns out to be an ocean.
Lettie is drawing you back too, reader. She would like to speak to you. She is calling from a phone that, like the pond behind her mother’s home, is an ocean. You can pick up below.
All images from Albertus Seba’s Cabinet of Natural Curiosities.