Page 70 of A Magic Deep & Drowning

A gust of wind blew through the copse, scattering the sunlight like stained glass through the leaves. Clara craned her head up to try to see whatever Helma was seeing. But there was nothing there, only dancing leaves.

And then Clara looked back down, and had her first look at the Queen of the Trees.

Except, it wasn’t the first.

“Tryn?”

The old woman was smaller than Clara remembered, but carried herself with a regal bearing, twigs and grass in her long, gray hair. On her head sat a crown of twisted willow branches, and in one hand she carried a gnarled staff of yew. Her other hand she held out to Clara, and some instinct propelled Clara forward to offer a kiss on the wrinkled skin.

“There now, she is not half so wild as you always said,” Tryn told Helma with a triumphant smile.

“A cap for your new grandson,” Helma said as she handed Tryn the cap that she had been knitting all those months ago. “I wish him health and every happiness.”

Tryn accepted the cap with a bow of her head, and it disappeared into some fathomless pocket in her shapeless smock.

Rising, Clara turned toward Helma. “Tryn is your sister?”

“Did you think I would let you wander off into the world without a friend, someone to watch over you?”

Clara opened her mouth, shut it again. Turned back to Tryn. “You are an Old One?”

When Tryn laughed, it was the sound of wind through branches. “Oh, yes. I am the oldest of the Old Ones. Queen of the Trees. The mist maidens and widde juvven all serve the forest under me.”

“And Jan is... king?” Clara looked about, expecting him to likewise appear out of the leaves themselves.

A toothy smile split the old woman’s face. “I’m sure he likes to think so,” she said with a long-suffering huff. “He is my companion.”

Clara could barely make sense of it. “Do you really live on a farm? Was it all for the sake of a lesson?”

Helma made a little sound in the back of her throat, but Tryn shot her a stern look. “What you call a lesson, I call love. My sister has always loved you, and so I love you too, child. It was our honor to be there for you in the dark. That which is learned from experience is far more ingrained than that which is lectured by an elder. Ask any child in the nursery. You only needed the opportunity of experience, and because I love you, I gave you that opportunity. As for where I live—” Tryn gestured to the trees around them. “I am not bound to one place or another. Only, I do not care for the city, with its cobbles and polluted canals.”

“Care for it you might not, but I’ve still got to bring her back before nightfall,” Helma told her sister. “There might not be a bounty on her head any longer, but I won’t have her catching cold once the sun goes down.”

“Always a worrier,” Tryn said with a wink at Clara. “But she is right. I am glad that we have met again, Clara. Now that the Water Kingdom has fallen, there will be a council of all the Old Ones, from land, water, and air. No more decisionsbeing made by a single king or queen that will affect all of us. Thade would have never agreed with me, but humans ought to be at the table. An emissary between the lands, perhaps.” Tryn smiled broadly, her eyes creasing. “It grows dark, and I will not keep my sister from discharging her pledge to keep you safe. Goodbye, Clara. I expect that I will be seeing you again. I do hope the wishes were of some use.”

Chapter Forty-Three

Time passed easily on land. Clara painted and studied with Alida during the days, read books, and visited the guild. But in the evenings she found herself wandering by the canals that she had once so feared. Helma drifted in and out of her life, sometimes staying for weeks at Alida’s studio only to disappear for days before returning. And though she was never certain where her friend went, Clara knew that she saw only a sliver of the world around her, that there were some things she would never understand.

Nights were filled with dreams, both good and bad, of the water. Sometimes she was being pulled by unseen hands to her death beneath the waves. Other times, she was in an idyllic grotto, lit by blooming algae and softened with seaweed. Maurits was beside her, and she was tucked perfectly up against his body. But whenever she tried to look to see if he had legs or a tail, the dream would scatter like a school of startled fish, and she would awaken, warm, but alone.

Clara pulled her heavy shawl tighter against the bite of the November evening. Workers were hurrying home before the city gates closed, and everywhere there was a sense of camaraderie as the people of Amsterdam congregated in the squares to gossip and buy hot drinks while children ran and played in the evening’s dying light.

“Clara van Wieren.”

The voice hissed through the bare trees along the canals, seemed to reverberate from the cobbles beneath her feet. Clara froze, the sounds of the city fading around her.

A dark head broke the water’s surface, then another head and another. A whole school of nix, pale shoulders and dark hair in the canal. The red eyes of the nix closest to the edge found Clara and bade her come closer. Ignoring the startled murmurs of the passersby, Clara rushed to the edge of the canal and dropped to her knees. She had never seen a nix before other than Neese, and certainly not a male. Helma had always told her that they were dangerous and would lure humans to their watery grave, but she knew better now. If these creatures had sought her out, it was for a reason.

“Neese bids you to come with us. It is the prince.”

The nix, unlike the basilisks, at least did not mince words or speak in riddles. Without a blink of hesitation, Clara peeled off her jacket and unfastened her shoes, then slipped down into the canal. She did not bother asking leave, instead just holding out her arms so that a nixie could grasp her and swim fast and smooth with her. The bite of water was frigid and sharp, but she hardly felt it.

It is the prince.She thought she would never hear those words again. He couldn’t possibly be alive, could he? She told herself to temper her expectations, but as they left the city behind and emerged into the harbor, her heart was beating painfully fast, her blood hot.

The nix took her past the docks, but instead of heading deeper into the sea, they hugged the coast until they came to a sandy beach outside of the city, dark buildings dotted against the falling dusk in the distance.

Clara was only confused for a moment, for as soon as they found their footing and brought her onto the shore, she caught sight of Neese’s hunched back, a curtain of long black hair falling in front of her face. The nixie was crouched oversomething, rocking slowly on her heels. “Tend to our prince,” the nixie with whom Clara had been riding told her by way of a farewell. “We need him well. Tend to him and your debt to the basilisks and all water creatures shall be erased.” The other nix disappeared back into the water, leaving Clara dripping and cold as she ran the rest of the distance to Neese.

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