Water Page 6

  But as she stood hesitating on the bank, looking at the stones of the bridge but not daring to set foot upon them, the water below the bridge boiled up as it had done once before. This time the sun was sliding down the sky but nowhere near setting, and the long rays of afternoon set the wave on fire, and rainbows fell from every drop of water.

  The wave did not wet her nor her horse nor her hound this time, and when it drained away again, a different sea-man stood on the bridge. He looked very much like the sea-man she had seen before, but not so much that she did not recognise the one from the other; this one was younger and plainer and had no bitterness in him.

  She said before she could stop herself: “You are the sea-king’s son.” She said it as he was saying: “You must be Jenny.”

  “Yes,” they said, again simultaneously, and both smiled; and each saw how the other’s rather 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, and 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 land-air 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 ignored them, keeping her face resolutely down, determined to pass without acknowledging the rider whomever it was. But this proved impossible, for a once-familiar hand reached out and seized her mare’s bridle, and Robert swung his horse around to walk next to hers, clumsily, for he was still holding her rein, and his leg ground against hers in the saddle. It was a heavyish blow, and his stirrup leather pinched her calf above her low riding boots and beneath the thin cloth of her skirt; but that was not the reason she cringed away from it, sending such a message to her sensitive mare that Flora curvetted away, fighting the strange hand on her rein, and threatening to kick. Robert had to let go.

  By the time Jenny had her mare under control again, she realised there was no point in running away, although this had been her first thought. Gruoch was moving in that painstaking, measured way that a hound expecting the command Go! moves, and while Jenny did not believe that even with such a command her gentle bitch would leap for Robert, she was careful to keep her own gestures placid. She patted her mare’s neck, but Flora was no fool, and did not drop her head, but kept her neck and ears stiffly upright, and pranced where she stood.

  “Jenny,” said Robert, and all of his twenty years’ experience of playing to his audience was in his voice. No one could have stuffed the two syllables of her name more full of anguish.

  How could I ever not have known? she thought. She risked a glance at his face, and saw anguish beautifully arranged there too. It was a splendid performance, but it neither moved nor amused her. She felt low, and stupid, and humiliated.

  “Forgive me,” he said. He was already a little dismayed by her unresponsiveness. He was so accustomed to being able to get what he wanted by careful handling and dazzlingly distracting displays of charm that he had forgotten that some people are simpler in their habits and more straightforward in their reactions. Since there was a little real anguish in him—although it was about the loss of the farm more than about the careless error that appeared to have lost him her—he felt that he was expressing genuine pain.

  That, at least, was easy enough to answer. “No,” she said, and turned Flora’s head; but he thought he knew what the roles were, now, and he kicked his own horse to block her passage. Flora reared, not liking any of this at all, and spun around twice on her hocks, and Robert would have liked to do something heroic, but he was not much of a horseman. Jenny brought her mare down alone, and the effort steadied her, and she realised she was going to have to hear Robert out. She would not enjoy it, but she could bear it.

  She was not interested in his explanations of a momentary madness, of the depth of his real passion for her, of how his—aberration—was in fact caused by the agony of the delay of their wedding; here she actually curled her lip, and he hastened on. He even shed tears, and she watched, fascinated in spite of herself. He called her cruel, first still in anguish, and then, as he realised he was getting nowhere, in anger. How dare she set her paltry will against his? She wasn’t even pretty.

  He exhausted himself at last, and she risked letting Flora go forward. The mare danced sideways as they passed Robert’s horse, but he had run out of drama, and let them go. She wanted to put Flora to the gallop as soon as they were clear of him, but she was afraid that he would read in this a flight worth pursuing; and so she let her mare break only into a trot, and worked to keep it leisurely, although Flora fussed at the bit, and her ears lay back. Gruoch loped casually beside her.

  She never saw Robert again.

  She went to bed early that night, but there was little rest for her in the long continuous dreams of the land under the sea; and now she was seeing her sea-prince arm in arm, as lovers should be, with a sea-princess, who had golden-green hair that lay in curls behind her, suspended on the silvery, ripply water that was their air. She saw them kiss, and she thought her heart would break; and it had broken once already. She did not know if she could recover, this second time, so soon after the first. She woke in cold, grey dawn, imagining her prince telling her of his betrothed, she the land-girl of whom he was so fond, just like a sister to him. He would offer to let her meet the sea-princess, and the sea-princess, who had a good heart, would ask that Jenny be godmother to their first child.

  She almost did not go to meet Dreiad the next day, but she had promised, and they had never yet broken promise to each other; and what she feared had nothing to do with promises. So she went, but she knew that her eyes were shadowed, and that smiling made her face hurt, and she did not know what she could give him as an excuse, for she had promised herself that she would not tell him the truth. If he was happy, she wanted him to be happy with no hindrance from her. She did not think of telling him of the meeting with Robert as a reason for her depression of spirits, for she had forgotten it herself.