Page 75 of A Magic Deep & Drowning

“Fenna has been here with me these thirteen years, content and safe. What you saw was no more than a nightmare, perhaps a manifestation of your own guilt.”

As she spoke, one of the lights separated itself from the rest and drifted toward Clara like a feather on the breeze. As it descended, it grew until a glowing silhouette of a young girl appeared.

“Fenna?”

She stood before Clara, and though she was more lightthan line, Clara could make out her crooked front tooth, her plaits of red hair, and the wooden clogs on her feet. She looked just as she had that morning all those years ago when they had played by the canal. Clara reached out to touch her friend, but her hand passed through the light, leaving her skin tingling and warm. “Fenna! Wait!”

Then the spirit was running ahead, laughing, until she was no more than a dot of light again, swirling and dancing.

Clara stood for a long moment, breathing in the salt and brine, watching the orb until she could no longer distinguish it from the rest. Somewhere up there must have been a little boy named Frits, hardly more than a baby when he had been taken. How could she grieve someone she had never met, never known? But she found herself overcome with a bitter sorrow that she had been robbed of her brother, someone who might have made her childhood a little less cold and lonely.

“So,” the queen said, her voice softly cutting into her thoughts, “will you forgive my son for the part he played in taking the children?”

Clara finally turned away from the lights. “Did he know what their fate was? Or like the burghers, did he too think they were going to their death?”

“You have seen my gentle son. Do you think that he would agree if they were to die?”

“No,” Clara said quietly. “No, I do not think he would.” Clara had pledged to Maurits that she trusted him, and now she felt some last lingering vestige of hurt and wondering lifted from her heart. He was innocent, truly innocent.

“You will meet them again, someday,” the queen continued. “Moon willing, we all shall. And until then, you can rest knowing that they are safe and living in a world more beautiful than you could possibly imagine.”

The tears that sprang to Clara’s eyes took her by surprise. Hadn’t she shed enough tears for her friend, for the brothershe had never known? She had thought them gone, an end to a chapter she would never revisit. In the march of life, they had left her near the beginning, and she had accepted that she would never see them again. But life was not a straight line to be traversed; it was a never-ending, all-encompassing journey that would take her full circle to the ones she loved, again and again.

“You still have your wish,” the queen said gently.

“But how?” Clara asked, letting the last of her tears dry on her cheeks. “I wished for the children.”

“You wished for something that was already fulfilled, and so I granted you one more in its place.”

“Then you could grant Maurits his dearest desire. You could give him what he wants.”

“This is true. But I have spent my life teaching and managing my son, to his great displeasure. If I am not to meddle in his affairs, then he must learn to solve his own problems. If you want to grant him his full powers, then you are at leisure to use your own wish to do so.”

“Very well,” Clara said. The moon had slid behind a cloud, and the only light came from the gentle glow of the children’s spirits dancing on the cave walls. “There is one thing I would ask of you, though it is not a wish.”

The queen inclined her head slightly in invitation to continue.

“Your blessing, for Maurits and me.”

“You do not need my blessing,” the queen said, her brow rising slightly.

“But I want it all the same. Your blessing, and your word that you will not interfere with our lives.”

The queen held Clara in her unflinching gaze for what felt like an eternity. “You are not who I would have chosen for my son,” she said at last. “If you want me to be glad that he has taken for his mate a human, and one that has brought so muchtrouble at that, then no, I cannot say that I am glad. But, it is his life, and his choice. He is my son.” There was a brittleness in the word that gave way to something almost tender underneath. “He is my son,” she repeated, “and I would see him happy. If you are what makes him happy, then so be it.”

It was not the blessing that Clara might have hoped for, but even she understood what it must have cost the once-great queen to give. So she bowed her head and gave her thanks.

“What of you?” Clara asked, her curiosity making her grow bold. “What will you do now that there is no kingdom to rule?”

The queen looked surprised. “Why, do I need a throne to fulfill my duties to my kingdom? Do I need a crown and a staff? For all his faults, perhaps Thade’s biggest folly was that he saw his reign through the same lens as the humans see their own dynasty on land. The Water Kingdom is not a land to be taken in hand and ruled over. We are merely stewards, guests passing through. I need no castle, no divine mandate to rule. The dire whales know this,” she continued. “Maurits may think that they acted because of a bargain he struck, but they knew that so long as I was on the throne that the Water Kingdom would not expand, would not disrupt the precarious balance. It was Thade’s brief and disastrous rule that brought them out and forced them into action.”

She considered the pearl ring on her finger. “To thrive, the kingdom must work in balance with those from the land and air so that such disasters are never repeated. There can be no more children harmed in the name of progress.”

Silence settled in the cave once more. There was no reason to linger, no more that the queen could offer her, so without a backward glance, Clara left behind the eternal children, and their queen with no kingdom.

Chapter Forty-Five

Maurits was waiting for Clara on a rock near the shore, a warm blanket and dry shoes in his hands. He helped dry her, tenderly, and then whistled. A moment later, a white horse emerged from the dunes, shaking its mane in greeting.

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