Water (9 page)

ordinary face lit up with gentleness and humour and intelligence.

“
I
wished to say thank you,” said the sea-prince, and Jenny looked at him blankly, feeling that

they were still speaking simultaneously, although she had said nothing more aloud.

He smiled again at her puzzled look. “I was born after my father’s curse was laid on this harbour,

and I grew up knowing that my father was weighed down by some sorrow that grew heavier each

year; but I did not know what it was, for neither my father nor my mother nor any of the court

would tell me. My parents would not because they would not, arid their people would not

because my parents forbade them, and they loved my parents enough to obey, no matter how

much I teased them. But my father told me the story at last, just these few short weeks ago, with

the breaking of the curse when he let you go free—And I have not been able to put the thought of

you out of my mind since, and so I determined to meet you if I could.

“But could I? I have been haunting this bridge lately as closely as it has been haunted in all the

long years of the curse; and very lonely I have found it too. Not even the fish come into this

harbour voluntarily, and my horse once tore his bridle free where I had tied him, and ran home,

which he has never done; and my favourite hound will howl, however often I tell him to be still.

I thought perhaps I was deluding myself, that there was no purpose in my coming here; but I

could not believe this, I felt sure that you would have to come here again, you would come here

at last.” He took a deep breath, and she noticed that there was a slight hissing or rattling in his

breathing, but she forgot this at once because he smiled again as he looked at her. “You
did

come,” he said, and sounded as delighted as a boy who has just had his first pony ride.

She felt more ashamed of herself than ever. “I told myself that I wanted to thank your father for

sparing me, but when I got here I thought that that was not the reason I had come at all.” She

went on slowly: “I have dreamed of a land under the water, and of a people who live there, with

silver-blue horses and grey-green hounds, and fish that nest in the trees. I have dreamed of this

every night since I stood on this bridge, and your father set me on my horse and told me to ride

home to my parents.”

He looked surprised. “That I cannot explain; I do not know of anything like that happening

before. Although it is true that we have stories saying that you of your shore-bound land and us

of ours were once the same people, and lived as neighbours and friends, and not merely fellow

merchants, with no bonds of kindness, in the way that ended so badly for us all. And I know

there are people among us who dream of the land, as you have dreamed of the sea, but I have

always thought it was just a kind of longing, a wish for adventure, or an escape from something

that troubles them.” But Jenny turned away at his last words, and “Forgive me,” he said at once.

“My parents have long tried to school me in thinking before I speak, and say that I will be a

disastrous king if I do not learn better manners. I have talked to you too much in my head, you

see, these last weeks, waiting for you; I did not tell anyone about wishing to meet you. I think my

father and all his people want nothing about this harbour to be part of their lives, not even a

memory of its existence. And now I can’t stop talking.

“Your dreams, whatever their cause, are true ones, although there are lands in other parts of the

sea where the horses and hounds are sunset-red or spotted brown and black and green, and some

where people have fishes’ tails instead of legs, and speak a language we do not know.” His voice

did not have the deep, fierce echo of his father’s, and although his accent was strange to Jenny’s

ears, like his father’s, the son’s voice had a merriness to it, like bubbling water, and the faint

rattle of his breathing only made it more like, and more charming.

He told her stories of the sea-lands he had visited till it was time for each of them to go home. “I

am glad I came,” said Jenny, without thinking; and the sea-prince said at once, “Will you come

again?”

“Yes,” she said, still without thinking.

“Tomorrow?” he said, hopefully.

She had to think then, if only to consider if she could escape for another afternoon; and she

thought she could, and she thought not at all about her motivations. “Yes,” she said.

This time she meant to watch him, but when the wave rose up over the bridge, the light from the

setting sun upon the shining sleek water blinded her, and she shut her eyes; and when she opened

them again, he was gone, and there was only a little pool on the bridge to show that anything had

happened. If there had been anyone there to wonder, it would have seemed very strange, for

there was no wind to whip a wave up over the bridge’s side like that, and leave a pool on its

broken surface.

It was not till she was riding home that she remembered that she did not know his name.

And she rode back to the bridge the next afternoon at the same time, and by now she was aware

that she was not thinking about her motivations, but she only noted this and continued not to

think. And there was someone on the bridge already, waiting for her, and he no longer looked at

all like his father the king, but only like himself. He stood up at her approach, and walked off the

bridge to meet her, and all the thoughts she was not thinking briefly overwhelmed her, and she

stayed in her saddle a moment longer, fearing to climb down out of the safety of her own world

and into a strange one. But he put his hand on her stirrup and his other hand to her mare’s bridle,

and Flora dropped her nose and let him do it, which was not her habit with strangers, even the

ordinary, dry, flat-skinned, clothed sort. And so Jenny stepped down and faced him, and he

smiled the smile that lit up his ordinary face with gentleness and humour and intelligence.

“What is your name?” she said.

“Dreiad,” he replied.

They met many afternoons after that, and her parents only noticed that she seemed to be growing

rosy with health again, and were willing to let her mysterious absences go unquestioned. And

perhaps his parents felt similarly willing to let their son pursue whatever it was that so manifestly

made him happy.

Dreiad told Jenny more stories of the lands under the sea, and she told him about her parents’

farm, and what she could of the lands beyond them, for she had travelled little. She had only

been to the city where her relatives lived once—it was a two-day journey from the farm—when

she was still quite small, and her chief memories were of how tall the strange eerie creatures with

black iron claws for feet, which her parents told her were lampposts, looked to her, taller than

trees, with the great glowing, flickering globes set on their summits; and how enormous the

kerbstones were she had to step up and down on from the road. There were no kerbs on country

lanes.

At first she had supposed that since Dreiad could breathe air as she did, he was as free of the land

as she was and only chose to live in the water, and was shy about telling him the things she

knew, when he could see for himself and draw his own conclusions. But he told her it was not so.

“I cannot go even so far from the sea as visit your farm myself,” he said. “I cannot let the landair dry my skin or I will die.” And, several times during the course of any one of their afternoon

conversations, he did wade back into the water and splash himself all over.

It had occurred to them both that being thrown up on the bridge by a wave was a little

spectacular for everyday use, especially if they wished to keep their meetings a secret. The

harbour itself was avoided by everyone, but there were many people going about their business

not so far from all view of it that Jenny and Dreiad could be sure no one would notice anything

worth investigating. Jenny felt that small dazzling daily rainbows on the haunted bridge might

well arouse curiosity. So now they met on the sea-shore, some distance from the bridge, and

usefully around a curve at the mouth of the harbour where in three generations of disuse a young

wood had grown up. Behind it there was a small meadow where Jenny tethered Flora, and

Gruoch tried out various trees for sleeping in the shade of.

Jenny grew accustomed to Dreiad’s strange, ripply, silvery skin; it was much like fish-scales,

although not quite like, and she had seen fish rarely enough in her life, and never thought of their

scales as pleasant or unpleasant to look upon. But she found Dreiad, as the days passed, very

pleasant to look at, and she forgot that he was scaly, and damp, and remembered only that his

smile made him beautiful. As they grew to know more about each other, their differences

became both more dear to them, and more shocking. They teased each about the language they

shared, that (Jenny said) land-people had taken with them as they adapted to life in the sea; that

(Dreiad said) land-people had learned to use even in the unforgiving air, which constantly dried

out the mouth and throat and lungs, which even land-people acknowledged had to be kept moist.

The idea of dairy cows was absurd to Dreiad: “Milk is for baby creatures! Your mother suckled

you, did she not? And then stopped as you grew bigger. Cow milk is for baby cows!” She

brought him a piece of cheese, but although he tasted it, he made a wry face and was not

converted. But Jenny found the green juice that the sea-people ordinarily drank, which was some

decoction made of underwater grass, too terrible even to sip at.

They rarely touched, for his skin was clammy on hers, and hers uncomfortably hot to him; and

when they realised they had fallen in love with each other, this became a sorrow to them, and

they teased each other less about sea and land, and their conversations grew awkward. Jenny’s

parents began to worry about her again, for she looked a little less rosy and a little more haggard,

and they wondered if perhaps Robert had waylaid her sometime during her absences from the

farm, and was attempting to win her back. They asked her about this, but she said “No, no”

impatiently, and with that they chose to be content for a little longer.

It did happen occasionally that Jenny and Dreiad could not meet for a day or two; their lives had

been full and busy before they met, and squeezing several secret hours every day from their

normal occupations was not possible. Neither made any protest when the other said that they

could not meet the next day, but they always parted sadly on those days, and Jenny, at least,

began to ride home pondering how what had begun might end, and yet not willing to ponder. For

the moment his company was enough and more than enough, in the way of lovers; but she knew

the time was coming when this would no longer be true, because he was of the sea and she was

of the land, and she knew that even the thinking of it made that time grow closer. Dreiad had

never said that he loved her, any more than she had ever said she loved him; but she knew that he

did, because there was so much in each of their natures that reflected the other, in a way that was

new and strange and wonderful. And nothing at all like her days with Robert had been. Nothing

at all. Nothing. Nothing.

It was an afternoon when Dreiad had told her with an odd suppressed excitement that he could

not meet her the next day. She had begun to ask him what his excitement was about, and he had

begun to put her off—and so she stopped asking; but as a result they looked at each other with

embarrassment and had not known how to pick up their conversation again. Even with the

knowledge of having hurt her, Dreiad could not quite hide his excitement, whatever it was; and

this hurt her too, that there should be something that gave him such pleasure that he could not tell

her of. And as a result she began to doubt herself, to doubt the truth of his unspoken love; after

all, she had believed—for much longer than she had known Dreiad—that Robert had loved her,

and he had filled her ears with the telling of it besides.

It cannot end in any way but unhappiness, she thought. He will marry a sea-princess, for his

parents need an heir; and I am not even a land-princess. I suppose, when the harvest is over, we

will go to the city, as we were to do last year, and they will find me a nice young man to marry.

The idea was so bleak, she could only look at it glancingly. But they were right about Robert; I

should have listened to them—I should have let them speak. They will be able to find me

someone who is kind, and keeps his promises, and I will listen to their advice. It will not be a bad

life.

She drew on reserves she did not know she had, for she had never had cause to learn to put

herself aside to be bright and merry for someone she cared about. But after they parted, for all

that Dreiad had looked long into her eyes before he walked back into the sea again, and promised

as eagerly as he had ever promised to meet her the day after tomorrow, she went home very

unhappy.

She did not even hear the approaching hoofbeats, nor had she paid attention to Gruoch’s sudden

look of interest and warning. When she did hear them, and knew it was too late to turn aside, she