Page 19 of A Magic Deep & Drowning

She gave a pout. “I want to feel that I am more than just another item in a long list of business meetings and transactions. I want to be the center of your attention. Don’t I deserve as much?”

Hendrik’s mouth worked, opening and closing like a fish, his eyes darting across the room where her father was still watching them. “But surely you understand that I must work! It is important, yes, but dear one, so are you. If I am to provide for you and keep you comfortable, then I must attend to business. Surely you know this from your father?”

She glossed over his very reasonable points, ignoring that he was speaking far more eloquently than she had ever heard him before. “No woman in her right mind could stand for such treatment.”

She was both startled and repulsed by the ease of the lies that slipped from her lips, and their effectiveness. While she didn’t love Hendrik and the thought of lying with him as a wife made her stomach clench, he was a good man and didn’t deserve to be treated with such cruelty.He kills gentle creatures at sea,Clara reminded herself. Your dowry would help him kill more, and you in turn would eat off plates bought with that money, sleep under fine silk blankets bought with that money.She thought of the whale’s lifeless eye, the last emotion it held one of profoundsadness. How would that whale look at her if it had known that she was party to its demise?

With a clammy hand, Hendrik drew her further back out of the doorway, out of her father’s line of sight. “I was going to wait to give this to you until our wedding day, but perhaps you should have it now.” He fumbled in his coat pocket and produced a little velvet box. When he opened it, a ruby necklace on a golden chain winked back at her.

She had thought she couldn’t feel any lower about her behavior, but she was wrong. “You oughtn’t to have done that,” she murmured, accepting the jewel.

Hendrik cleared his throat and rubbed the back of his neck. He was back to being the shy, awkward man he had been the first time she met him. He couldn’t meet her gaze. “Clearly,” he mumbled. “I... I hope you will keep it, regardless of your feelings toward me. If you’ll excuse me.”

He bobbed an awkward bow, and then spun on his heel and stalked back to where her father sat, engrossed in his papers. Clara watched him, her stomach in knots, the ruby sitting cold and heavy in her hand.

“A fine mess you’ve made of that!” Clara jumped at the sound of Nela’s hiss. “Just wait until your mother hears about this.”

Clara shrugged, trying to appear unbothered. But she couldn’t stop staring at the sad slump of Hendrik’s shoulders as he endeavored to carry on with her father.

The nightmares came again that night.

This time there was another sound, a new sound. Something banging, scraping at the window. Something that was not confined to her overwrought imagination. Sitting up, Clara gripped the edge of the blanket. The scraping came again, harsher, like a branch caught in the wind. But there were no trees outside her window. Perhaps it was the magpie,come to herald another visit from Maurits. The possibility propelled her, and she swung her legs out of bed, pushing aside the heavy bed curtain. Padding across the floor, she crept closer to the window, where thick raindrops splattered down. Curling her fingers around the cold stone of the casement, she slowly leaned closer to the glass, squinting to see past the heavy rain.

Nothing. No magpie, no Maurits.

Pushing down the spark of hope that she had felt, she was just turning to hurry back to bed, when there was an unmistakableslamfrom the window. Spinning, she came face-to-face with the bloated visage of her childhood friend.

The scream that tore from her throat could have woken the dead. Fenna’s skin was saggy and puckered, like the white flesh of a fungus, her eyes empty sockets. Her lips hung torn, as if her last worldly sound had been an endless wail. Clara took a stumbling step back. Fenna rose a clawlike hand to pound on the glass, an eldritch screech piercing the night.

And then in an instant, she was gone.

Clara’s first instinct was to call for Helma, but she stopped short, cold panic spreading down her spine. Helma was gone. Who else would believe her? Could she even believe herself? It was late and stormy, dark. It could have been anything, a trick of the fleeting moonlight. Her heart was beating painfully, her mouth dry and sour. As she lay back down and forced herself to close her eyes, she knew that she had seen her long-dead friend, and that Fenna, dead though she might have been, was not at rest.

Interstitial

They are called will-o’-the-wisps in some places, but in Friesland we know them as Nachtlampken. You may see them upon the road at night, or hovering about the stones in a cemetery. Like the widde juvven, their preferred homes are swamps and grave mounds, and they appear as luminous figures holding lanterns aloft. Many a fool has been drawn to their lamps, thinking to find the treasure that the Nachtlampken are said to guard. But these fools are not rewarded with treasure or indeed any other earthly thing. They find only a watery grave and an eternity of torment.

Chapter Thirteen

The storm left a rift of disturbance, leaves and petals, branches scattered about the carefully manicured lawn. From her window, Clara watched as Piet stooped to collect the debris and gather it in his cart. Did he know that his daughter still walked these grounds? Did Fenna ever pay him visits as she had Clara the night before?

Trailed by Nela, Clara made a pretense of taking some air and slowly walked along the garden under her window. There was no indication that anyone had been there the night before. No footprints in the soft earth, no shred of clothing snagged on one of the thorny rose branches.

Clara looked up long enough from her investigation to see a circle of maids standing around something in the courtyard. Glad to turn her mind from the gruesome memory of Fenna’s visit, she hurried in their direction.

“What’s this?” she asked, joining them.

Inka turned at her voice. “Found this dog in the kitchen, helping himself to some beef, tucking in like a little prince.” She took up her broom and gave the pup a light tap on his side with it. “Out with you, shoo!”

“He’s too beautiful to turn out,” Lysbeth said wistfully as she crouched down with her hand out to him.

The dog was indeed striking, with a downy coat of thick white fur and eyes like chips of emerald.

“Beautiful or not,” Inka said briskly, “I won’t have mongrels nosing about the food and making a mess. He must be sent away.”

The dog had found his way to Clara’s side, and was gazing up at her with naked adoration. There was something familiar about the creature, and suddenly she remembered Hendrik’s promise.

“No need to turn him out,” she said, taking the sweet face in her hands. “He’s a gift from Mr. Edema. He said he was going to bring me a dog, only I didn’t realize it would be so soon.” It seemed that Clara’s rudeness had not been enough to deter Hendrik from bestowing another gift on her after the ruby necklace.

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