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The Fountain of Youth

Once upon a time, the conquistador Juan Ponce de León was searching for the Fountain of Youth.

He had dragged his men through the wilds of Florida. They trekked through the palm fronds and among the orange trees and rattlesnakes for days, months, years, searching for the mysterious fountain. At first, the band of explorers set out hopeful that they could return home to Spain and live, young and healthy and radiant, forever. But as the years wore on, they became embittered of this quest.

“I don’t know which soothsaying village idiot you listened to in Caparra,” one of Ponce de León’s commanders cried to him, “but there is obviously no Fountain of Youth. We have searched for years and seen nothing!”

A soldier chimed in, chuckling bitterly, “Perhaps after all those years as a squire, he actually thinks this is some ‘heroic quest.’” He looked up at his commander. “Too many storybooks?” The others laughed uproariously.

Ponce de León swiveled backward on his horse and glared at them. “You insubordinate children — whom I have the great misfortune of having to call ‘soldiers,’” he grumbled, “I know it is real! And we will search, or we will die!” The glint of madness in his eyes did not go unnoticed.

This caused several of the men to blanch. “Por favor, we were only joking,” said one of them, trembling. “We do not want to die in this sweltering hell! The Fountain is not real. The King has knowingly sent you on a fruitless quest, to get rid of you. We don’t need a Fountain of Youth, we need a Fountain of Life — we are sick, we are being bitten by these strange and deadly insects, we are fainting in this heat and falling dead in the mud.” He wept bitterly. “Let us sail home.”

But Ponce de León refused. And so, they marched on through the swamps.

On the tenth year of their journey, they came upon the place where Ponce de León was told the fountain could be found. It was quiet, and then he heard…could that be the gushing and gurgling of water? “Do you hear that?” he exclaimed, breathless. He pulled back the Spanish moss, and before him lay a small waterfall, rippling on into a little pool, gleaming in the sun.

And by the pool sat two women, one young and one very old who looked weak and sick. But the weak, sick, old woman’s face betrayed no misery. In fact, she looked serene. The younger woman said something to the older woman which Ponce de León could not hear, and they both laughed and warmly embraced one another.

Then, the young woman dipped a little ladle into the pool, scooped up some of the water, and lowered it into the old woman’s mouth. And Ponce de León could not believe what he saw next: in front of his eyes, the old woman’s wrinkles disappeared, her hair darkened from gray to black, and her face shone like the stars.

“I have found it!” he exclaimed, with tears in his eyes. Without delay, he ordered each of his men to fill as many containers of the fountain’s water as they possibly could and to bring them to his tent. Then, as the two women looked shocked and alarmed at this oncoming of dozens of soldiers by the pool, Ponce de León ran up to them.

“Señoras,” he said, bowing a little. “What is this magical fountain? I have seen a miracle today. Please let me give you anything you wish, in return for some of this water.”

The women looked bewildered and terrified, saw Ponce de León’s dagger on his belt, and said something that he did not understand. Then, they ran.

But it mattered not. Ponce de León was too happy to care, as he saw his tent being filled with pot after pot of the rejuvenating water. He knew, though, that he would want to take his first drink from the actual fountain itself. So, when his men were asleep that night, he quietly made his way out to the pool.

Moonlight shone faintly on the pool, the water gleaming like a pearl. He beheld the reflection of his face, haggard and worn with age, and breathed deeply with anticipation.

Then, he lowered his hands to the pool, cupped the water, lifted his hands to his lips, and drank.

He stared at his face in the pool.

And waited.

And waited.

And waited.

Nothing.

His face did not change.

He still looked worn, weary, ragged.

In a word, he still looked…old.

Ponce de León felt his stomach drop into the pool, the mirror image of the moon hanging on his heart like an anvil. His breath shook. His tears mingled with the water beneath him, on his face and on the reflection of his face.

He sobbed. “What have I done to be so unworthy?”

Then, he heard a clear voice like a bell from the water. It spoke back to him and said simply, “This water is no different than any other water.”

Ponce de León did not understand the meaning of this. “How could the water be no different? I saw a woman today! She appeared twenty years younger than she was, after drinking this water. She was gleaming. And you are speaking! You have the voice of a siren. This is clearly magic water.”

“No, it is not,” said the pool. “This is the same as the water you have drank every day for all of your life. It does not create youth. You were always young. You are always young. You were always old, and you are always old, too. The same is true of the women you saw today.”

“But then why did I see youth and health in the face of an old, sick woman?” Ponce de León asked, bewildered.

The voice in the water laughed at him. “What do you think youth is?” Ponce de León heard the bemusement in the clear voice, and it frustrated him. He did not know the answer, and so he stammered, unsure.

The water quieted. “What do you lack? For what did you send a hundred men out into the swamps and lakes? For what did you separate them from their families? For what did they die, buried in the mud as a grave, robbed of their lifeblood by mosquitoes?”

Ponce de León saw the water dance between the moon and felt his heart quiver along with it. “I wanted another chance,” he whispered, “I wanted…time.”

He thought he heard the water sigh. It breathed a small wave of ripples out from the center. “Time,” it said. “And so you have spent many years looking for more years. You have cost many men the entirety of their years, for the merest chance that you could have more years.”

“I will tell you the secret of the old woman,” the fountain continued, “I do not show you anything in yourself that you did not choose to see. You could see yourself as youthful. You could see yourself as haggard. The age does not matter. It is you, not the passage of time, who have etched cynicism and misery and desperate longing on your face for years and searched for me, believing that I would bring you youth again. I have brought you nothing, and I can bring you nothing. I do not exist to make you young. I only exist so that you may see that youth has always been yours to find. That is the only magic afoot here.”

Ponce de León was quiet, at that, for he did not know what to say. The voice filled the silence for him, instead. He looked on, amazed, as he saw the waters of the pool clear away his reflection and instead ripple into an image on its surface — a little boy, glowing and ruddy-faced, playing in a field.

“Who is this boy?” asked the voice in the water.

Ponce de León felt his voice choke in his throat. “Me,” he replied.

“Do you think this boy wastes away in this moment you are seeing, dreaming of a way to remain as young as he is forever?”

At this, Ponce de León held his head in his hands and wept with remorse into the water. “No,” he said, and his voice quivered, “I remember playing in the fields, forgetting that time existed at all.” He looked longingly upon the pool. That boy was gone, and what Ponce de León wouldn’t do now to have him back. To lay, content, in a meadow in Santervás de Campos, troubled by nothing but his best guesses at the shapes of the clouds above him. He knew that boy so well, and yet, as he looked upon his face now, the child seemed to him like a stranger. Ponce de León grieved that he would never know that moment again, except in his memories.

“Yes,” the water said approvingly, “exactly. He is young. Are you truly young? Have you forgotten time? Or has time wrought vines of iron around your every thought? Are you held captive to a clock?”

All was still.

“I have wasted so much of my life,” he said in a broken, defeated voice, “grasping at that boy’s youth, which has since slipped away from me. There is nothing left now. I have nothing left.”

“On the contrary,” said the water, “You have everything left. You are here, are you not? This is a moment. This, right now, is time, which you have so desperately sought.”

The pool rippled as it laughed knowingly, and it cleared away the image of the boy, returning to its placid blue. “People like you are funny,” the voice said, “It is as though you spend all of your lives searching for a fruit whose seeds you actually carry in your pocket every day. But you forget that the seeds are in your pocket, and so you never stop to plant them.”

“But,” it continued, “I will show you how to plant them. Forget your quest for a moment and tell me simply, where are you right now?”

Ponce de León mumbled, “I called this place La Florida, and so that is where I suppose I am.”

“No,” said the water, “try again. Where are you right now? What is here? What surrounds you? Leave no detail out.”

He looked around, somewhat bewildered, as though shaking off sleep. “I am sitting by a pool. It is clear and blue and kissed by the moon, who sees her face in the watery mirror and smiles. I am speaking with you, and I do not know who you are. But I know that you have a voice like a crystal bell, a laugh like chimes or glass, and that you seem to possess great wisdom. There is a willow tree across the pool, lazily dipping her finger of leaves into the water. And I am surrounded by flowers in the grass, of every color, and their bulbs are neither closed nor cautious, but they open their hearts to the sky.”

And as he pondered this, he felt a certain calm come over him. He was just…there. It was only one moment, but it seemed to hold within it the entirety of time. He didn’t need to think wistfully of tomorrow or of yesterday, for they were both there with him, in that moment, right then.

The water bubbled with effervescent delight. “Now, you see what youth is.”

The pool began to swirl in a frenetic spiral, twisting round and round like a kaleidoscope. And from its depths, there suddenly bloomed out of the surface of the water a delicate, red hibiscus flower. It was filled, as a cup, with water from the pool.

“Juan Ponce de León, you may drink.”

His voice choked, “Even me?”

There seemed to be a faint smile in the voice of the water, “Even you.”

He gratefully raised the flower to his lips and drank. But he didn’t need to look at his reflection in the pool. He no longer cared what he saw there, for he knew he saw it within himself, spreading brightly from tongue to heart to fingertips.

And so, after his long search, Ponce de León gave every bucket of water he had taken from the fountain to his men instead, along with all of his possessions, and let them go home to their villages and their families, at last.

“You have come all this way looking for this water, and now that you have it, you give it all to us?” one of his soldiers asked, puzzled. “Why?”

Ponce de León smiled. “I have what I came for.”

Then, he fell asleep in the golden afternoon light, felt the sun on his face, and lost himself in the rustle of the palms and the smell of the magnolias.

And he lived happily ever after.

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