The fog that morning was not just a blanket. It was a doorway.

A girl named Awenasa walked to the place where the two arms of Keuka meet. Reeds clicked softly in the small wind. She had followed neat mink tracks to the shore. Her feet knew this path by heart.

Then she heard it. Three low laughs from the fog. "Huh-huh-huh."

The sound was old and kind. It was the sound of a dock that had seen many summers.

Two soft lights rose from the mist. They were not lanterns. They were eyes. Between them, a green-gold head slid out of the water.

Awenasa did not run. Her heart pounded like a drum, but she stayed. She knelt and let the fog curl around her.

"Are you peaceful?" she asked.

The creature dipped his head so gently the fog hardly moved. "I am Karl," he said. His name sounded like water rolling a smooth stone.

"I am Awenasa," she answered. "My grandmother says this place holds two names. Keuka means canoe landing. O-go-ya-ga is the high ridge between the arms. The lake keeps both names without spilling either one."

Karl's eyes warmed. "Lakes are good at holding," he said.

They met like that for seven dawns, before the first cooking fires rose and voices filled the shore.

Each morning, Awenasa brought a gift you could give a lake without taking from it—once a loop of reeds tied with milkweed floss, once a heron's dropped feather, once a stone worn thin in the middle. Each morning, Karl brought something she could not carry in her hands: knowing.

"This is spring," he said one gray morning, lifting water that matched the fog. "This is summer," he said another day, when the lake shone bottle-green. "Autumn is bronze," he told her under flying geese. "Winter is glass." He said the words softly, as if they were secret names.

When she dragged a finger through the surface, his glowing wake followed. Tiny bright marks chased her hand like minnows learning to write. She laughed. He laughed back, deep and soft.

One morning, Awenasa pointed to the place where the lake narrows and runs off toward Seneca.

"Can you make the outlet quiet?" she asked.

"A little," Karl said. "The outlet carries news to another lake. News does not like to be slowed."

Awenasa nodded. Her family used that fast water to turn wheels and grind corn. Her grandmother liked to say, "This lake sits high. What is lifted must fall." Awenasa felt that truth settle into her bones.

On the eighth morning, there was no fog. A thin pink line brushed the hills. A hawk rode the wind above O-go-ya-ga. Awenasa came with a small basket wrapped in cloth.

Inside were three little loaves of bread.

"Two loaves is only half a thank-you," her grandmother had said. "Three is just right."

Karl rose where Awenasa had once slipped on a soft shelf of mud. He was longer now, as if the lake itself had stretched him.

"You have grown," she said.

"You too," he answered. "Your lake-words are better."

They moved along the shore together, Awenasa on land and Karl in the water. Dragonflies stitched blue lines above the reeds. From far away came a song and the steady thump of a pestle. The world felt full and quiet at the same time.

"Do you keep the lake?" Karl asked.

Awenasa thought of seeds and soil, of fires set on purpose to keep wild fires small, of fish taken with care. "We tend it," she said. "Like a garden. We plant corn, beans, and squash so they help one another. We fish in turn. We burn brush before rain so new plants can grow. The lake keeps us, so we thank it and care for it."

Karl felt something rise in his chest, as deep as the cold places where trout glide. "Then share a promise with me," he said. "We keep the lake, and the lake keeps us."

The words sat on her tongue like a new berry. Sweet. Serious. She swallowed them.

"Yes," Awenasa said. "A promise."

She cupped water in her hands and let it fall back. Karl flicked his tail and rang a soft note in the shallows. The lake shivered with joy. The promise sank down into stones and roots.

From that day on, the lake had a keeper, and the keeper had his first friend.