Page 5 of A Magic Deep & Drowning

It was all Clara could do to keep her feet moving, to keep herself upright so that her mother’s grip didn’t tear her ear right off. This was before Clara had learned the little tricks to save some of her dignity, the little jabs she could get in at her mother. This was when she was still small and afraid and desperate to win her mother’s approval.

Katrina brought her to a skidding halt in front of a great cabinet. It had always stood in the hall, an Oriental design of cranes and twisty lilies carved into the heavy doors, brought back by her father from some faraway land before she was born.

“In,” her mother commanded, wrenching the doors open and giving Clara a shove. A moment later, the doors slammed shut behind her, and Clara was left in darkness with her heaving breath and a pressing heaviness. The clicking of shoes on tile grew quieter.

“Mother!” She pounded on the doors until her palms smarted.

Was the air always so close, or was it a product of the dream? Had her breath really come out so hitched and panicked that it felt like she was dying? The darkness was thick and hot, heavy.

Wake up. Wake up.

But she couldn’t wake up, not yet. Not until the worst part was over, and it was only just now beginning. The part of the dream where she realized that she was not alone in the cabinet, that something was sharing the tiny space with her.

Dripping water echoed through the cabinet as if it were a cave, theslurpingsound heavy and wet as it came closer.

With a body-shuddering gasp Clara flew up from the bed, awake, blessedly awake. She wasn’t in the cabinet in the hall, and there weren’t invisible little fingers poking at her, disembodied voices whispering. There weren’t slippery tendrils ofsomethingwrapping around her legs, pulling her down down down.

Chapter Four

The sky that greeted Clara the next morning was gray, a hue that appeared so frequently, it might as well have been permanently imprinted in the sky. It neither promised rain nor sun, just simply sat reticent and apathetic over the never-ending fields and fens.

Shaking the last of the dream from her head, Clara washed and dressed. At least when she dreamed of the drowning she was able to see her friend’s face, a bright gift wrapped in darkness. But when she dreamed of the cabinet, all that it left her with was a lingering feeling of foreboding.

In anticipation of her betrothed’s visit, Clara had gone out to the garden with a basket on her elbow to collect flowers. Great blue-and-white vases of blooms already graced the rooms and halls of the house, but it would be charming to present her suitor with a bouquet handpicked by herself. Her mother had grudgingly agreed.

At the edge of the canal dainty bluebells clustered around the trees like little jewels. They weren’t as showy as the roses and tulips her father cultivated, but they had a rustic charm that Clara thought might please Hendrik. If he was as successful a man as her father said he was, then he could have exotic hothouse flowers whenever he wanted.

Clara bent to work, plucking up the blooms, for once indifferent to what her father would say about her raiding hisgarden. What would Hendrik be like? Would he be old and stiff, pinching snuff out of a little ivory box and watching her with watery yellow eyes? Or would he be young with a fair complexion, broad-shouldered, and tall? Would he have a clever wit and a quick tongue like Fenna had had, able to make her laugh despite her occasional dark moods? It didn’t matter, of course, only that he wanted to marry her and take her away from here. She had never given much thought to men before, all of them taking on a rather abstract form in her mind of “someday.” Someday she would marry one, someday one would take her away. Someday, she would be a wife, a mother, a grandmother.

“Gathering flowers for your sweetheart?”

Clara snapped upright, petals falling from her hands at the unexpected intrusion. “Oh!” she said, catching her breath as her gaze alighted on the lithe form of a young man, standing in his boat with his arms propped on the oar. The delivery man, from the previous day. There was knowing in his eyes as he watched her, a mocking edge to his question. She was, after all, in her good morning dress and her hair elaborately braided and arranged under a lace cap for Hendrik’s visit; there was no mistaking her as a kitchen maid this time. She flushed a little. “You startled me.”

He hopped ashore and pulled up his boat, throwing the line around an obliging tree trunk. Clara took an involuntary step back. Before yesterday, she’d never been alone with a man—even her spinet lessons with her teacher were supervised by Helma. If her parents knew that she was speaking with not just a man, but a man of his class, she would be punished, severely. Yet she couldn’t seem to tear herself away.

“It’s the hands that give you away,” he said nodding at the flowers clasped in her fingers. “Maids don’t have soft pink hands, or pretty dresses that cost a king’s ransom.”

Clara couldn’t help the blush that stole over her cheeks at his words. “I might not be a maid, but you aren’t a fishmonger.”

“Oh?” The man leaned against the tree, his arms folded, long legs crossed at the ankles. Of course he wasn’t a fishmonger, she could see that now. He was altogether too beautiful, too well-dressed in fitted breeches and buff coat. “Inka says that we get our fish from Mr. Tadema, and that he only has the one man who does deliveries.”

“Aha, so I have been found out.”

He didn’t say anything else, and Clara found herself impatient, and a little cross at having been deceived. If he knew who she was now, why wasn’t he treating her with the deference she was owed? “Well? Who are you?”

He beckoned her closer with a crooked finger, and despite her annoyance, Clara found herself powerless to stop from moving toward him. He leaned down a little. “Do you promise not to tell?”

She nodded. She was close enough that she could see the marble smoothness of his skin, the swirling blues and greens of his tidal-pool eyes. “I work for Mr. Hendrik Edema.”

Clara gave him a long look, her heart beating a little faster at the mention of her betrothed. “Why did you come to give us fish then?”

He lowered his voice further, obliging Clara to lean in even more. He smelled divine, like a fresh sea breeze. “My master bid me come and see the woman to whom he would be married. He wanted me to see you without the benefit of pretenses and chaperones, and know if she was as fair as she was rumored to be.”

Her breath caught in her throat, and even though she knew he was baiting her with his statement, she couldn’t help herself. “Well?” she said. “What will you tell him?”

“Oh, well, I couldn’t divulge my findings—it would be a breach of confidence.”

At Clara’s dismayed expression, he laughed. The sound of it filled the copse with music, and a few birds sang in response “Very well. I told him that she is beautiful beyond comparison, and that if he did not marry her quickly, some other lucky man may very well try to lay claim to her hand.”

---