He waited hidden in the undergrowth for three days and nights. Then he heard the horses, the bugles, the barking hounds. Suddenly the forest was filled with gold and laughter, uniforms and silken dresses. They carried ornate cages for the birds, huge baskets filled with exotic foods Tom had never smelled or tasted.
He was so hungry that he nearly crawled out of hiding to steal some food, but he stopped himself by imagining his sister sitting in a wet cold cave enduring the kisses of the Waterman.
The King of Albion had three daughters. The eldest two were famous for their beauty and wit, but the youngest, Portia, was all silence and had never turned a man’s head. She looked like one of the larks the princesses caught — her hair was as plain as their brown feathers, and she gazed at the world as if she was hiding a beautiful song inside her chest.
Tom felt sorry for her, but he would catch her like she and her sisters caught the birds. Then he would make everyone believe that the Waterman had captured her. The King could afford to pay a dozen hunters to find his daughter, and they would locate the Waterman’s swampy pond and save Anna instead.
It was easier to catch her than he had thought.
As soon as her sisters spread their silk dresses on the dewy grass to eat and drink the wine and flirt with the soldiers, Portia rode off on her own, her face dark with boredom and irritation. The others didn’t even notice she was gone, for she was the youngest. The plain one. The invisible princess.
She tried to scream when Tom pulled her off the horse. But he pressed a piece of his sister’s velvet, soaked with the yellow flower potion, over her nose and lips, until she slept in his arms like a child.
He faked the steps of a huge Waterman by widening his own tracks. Then he bound the princess with the rope and rode away with her on her horse, the scent of her brown hair in his face.
Her father’s soldiers never came after him.
No one missed the invisible princess.
They were used to her disappearances.
~ ~ ~
The small cottage Tom shared with his sister seemed not the right place for a princess. So he decided to hide her in an abandoned hunting lodge, whose owner had been killed in the wars against Lotheraine.
She didn’t wake up for quite a while. Tom was already beginning to worry that he had made the brew too strong.
He didn’t dare listen for her heart beat, as he couldn’t help but notice her breasts were far more beautiful than her sisters’. So he put his finger on her lips to feel for her breath.
She was still alive.
He hadn’t slept for three days, so he lay down next to her, and was soon sleeping as soundly as the princess.
It was dark when he woke. Portia was sitting on his chest, holding his own knife to his throat.
“Why me?” she growled.
“You fool of a peasant. Why didn’t you grab one of my sisters?”
She pressed the knife so angrily against his throat that he was afraid it would cut through at any moment.
“You were the easiest to catch,” he managed to say. It was difficult to talk with the knife at his throat and her weight on his chest.
“Well, you’re as thick as a brick,” she hissed. “My father would have paid far more for any of my sisters!”
“I don’t care,” Tom snapped. “I didn’t do it for ransom.”
The pressure on the knife eased a little.
“Really?”
She climbed off his chest.
Then she just sat and listened as Tom told her haltingly about his plan.
“I was right,” she said after he finished. “You are a fool, and your sister is doomed. Yes, my father will in the end hire some hunters to find me. But he will waste a week haggling over their fee because he hates to part with any of his gold. One week with a Waterman — your sister will have lost her mind before they find her.”
Tom got to his feet, though he was not sure he was permitted to stand in her presence. She was, after all, a princess.
“You say your father would leave you for a week with a man who abducted you?”
She eyed him from head to toe. “I don’t think you are quite as disgusting as a Waterman.”
She said it very calmly. As if she was describing the color of his hair. Then she fell silent. For a long time.
“My father’s brother hunted them,” she finally said. “A woman he loved was taken by a Waterman. He had one stuffed and mounted in the hall of his castle. When we went to his banquets, my sisters would get so sick from the stories he told that they had to leave the table.”
Her voice was almost as dark as a boy’s.
“You need an egg from a Swamp Woman’s black hen.”
“What for?” Tom asked.
“To breathe underwater. Can you swim?”
He nodded.
A Swamp Woman. They were almost as dangerous as Watermen.
“I can’t rescue her alone,” he said. “It’s impossible.”
She was still looking at him. “I once saw a girl who’d been caught by a Waterman,” she said. “She couldn’t speak, and she could no longer bear the sunlight. It burned her skin like fire.”
She turned and walked toward the door.
Grab her, Tom! She is the only chance your sister has!
But he couldn’t.
She pushed open the heavy door, slowly, without hurry, and was gone.
Tom sat down on the dusty tiles, cracked by the rain and cold that seeped through the broken windows, and felt tears running down his cheeks. Tears of grief for his sister. Tears of shame about what he had done.
The door opened again.
Tom wiped the tears from his face.
Portia walked over to him. Her dress was as dirty as a peasant’s by now, but she didn’t seem to care. She dropped a clasp in his lap. It was covered with pearls and diamonds.
“Swamp women love shiny things.”
Tom stared at the clasp.
“I will help you,” she said. “For your sister.”
The Swamp Woman’s hut was guarded by swarms of mosquitoes and will-o-the-wisps, but she called them back when Portia held up the clasp. She snatched the shiny trinket with her gnarled hands and in return gave them two eggs with shells as black as the hens scraping for worms outside her hut.
Portia tore some fabric from the bottom of her dress and wrapped the eggs in it. “I keep tripping over it anyway,” she said.
Then they went to find the pond of the Waterman.
Portia’s horse carried them as if they were one.
~ ~ ~
The pond where they finally found the large footprints was surrounded by high reeds. They hid and waited. Watermen leave their caves at night to hunt for treasure, and the sky was already dark.
After two hours Tom thought the creature would never emerge. Then suddenly a head surfaced from the muddy waters. Six eyes. Scaled skin. Yet the body that waded ashore resembled that of a human man. He was covered in mud and algae, which he washed off before putting on some human clothes he had hidden among the roots of a tree. Watermen found the loot they placed at their captives’ feet in houses, churches, palaces, and in the hollow trees where Thumblings kept their treasures. Watermen even dared to rob Ogres. They were fearless. So much so that the King of Lotheraine retained some of them as his bodyguards.
The Waterman disappeared into the night as silently as a cat. Tom broke the black egg and drank it.
“I’ll come with you,” said Portia. But they needed to save the second egg for Anna, so she could swim up to the surface. And Tom was relieved. The princess had done enough, and he was by now as worried about her as he was about his sister. He wished Portia back to the safety of her father’s castle. But she wouldn’t leave. She told him she would watch from
the shore and throw a stone into the pond if the Waterman returned.
The water was murky and cold. But thanks to the Swamp Woman’s egg, Tom could breathe like a fish. He had to search for a long while before he found the entrance of the cave. The rocks surrounding the narrow opening were covered in Waterman scales.
Tom swam through.
When he surfaced he saw his sister sitting on the moss covered rocks. Anna stared at him through empty eyes. The Waterman had surrounded her with piles of treasure — golden plates, candelabra, rings and necklaces.
Tom had to shake her and call her name over and over before the terror gave way to lucidity, and then tears. He broke the second egg and made her drink it. Then he took her in his arms and swam with her to the pond’s surface.
The princess was waiting for them in the reeds. She wrapped Anna in her velvet cloak and fed her some of the food that her father’s servants had stuffed into her saddle bags.
Tom couldn’t take his eyes off Portia.
There was only one thought in his weary head: that he was a peasant and she was a princess, and that once this was all over he would never see her again.
The thought hurt so much...
He looked at the sky. It was still dark.
“Stay with her, please,” he said. “I will be back soon.”
Then he stepped into the water before either of them could stop him.
~ ~ ~
The King’s daughter watched, frozen, as Tom’s dark hair disappeared beneath the pond’s surface. His lungs would burst without the Swamp Woman’s egg. And dawn was approaching.
Gold.
It made fools of kings and peasants alike. Portia tried to remember the endless nights, when her father’s drunken brother had told his stories about the Watermen. So many nights. So many stories. But oh so many years had passed since she had heard them.
Anna suddenly lifted her head and turned around with alarm. Yes, Portia heard them too, and pressed her hand on the girl’s lips. Steps, as if from a huge animal. But it wasn’t an animal, she was sure.
The steps came closer as Tom’s sister shivered in her arms.
Run! Forget him. Forget them both!
He had drowned by now anyway.
Oh that hollow-headed fool of a peasant.
Her father had many names for his kind. Hollow-heads. Dirt grubbers. Worms. He had many names for his poorest subjects. As many as he had for his dogs — only those names were more affectionate.
She stared at the pond’s surface as if her eyes could bring Tom back, but the water was as calm as a mirror’s surface.
She missed his face.
~ ~ ~
Tom’s lungs seared as if the Waterman were clawing through them. The effect of the Swamp Woman’s egg was wearing off, but he managed to reach the cave. He was alive. And the gold in front of him could have filled a King’s treasure chamber.
He stuffed as much as he could into the sack that once held the seed for his fields. Rings, coins, necklaces, golden goblets — until he could barely lift his loot.
~ ~ ~
Of course. How could she have forgotten the Waterman?
He appeared at the pond’s bank like a creature from her darkest dreams. Portia hid Anna under the cloak and then crept to her horse.
The Waterman took his clothes off and slathered his skin with water and mud. He paused once to quickly look around, but his six eyes saw neither Portia nor the cloak that hid his escaped captive amongst the dense reeds. Finally he picked up the sack with his loot and waded, with a pleased sigh, into the water. New presents for the girl in his cave.
Hurry, Portia!
She pulled her knife from the saddle bags but her trembling fingers were searching for something else.
~ ~ ~
Tom saw the dark silhouette above him, just as he was sure he’d make it back to the surface.
Six eyes stared down at him.
Dead...
... He was a dead man.
The Waterman swam towards him as swiftly as an eel. And Tom’s lungs ached as though they might burst at any moment.
~ ~ ~
There it was !
The light of dawn caught the gold. It was just a hunting bugle, but it would have to do. Portia tripped over a tree root as she clambered towards the edge of the pond. Her hands sank deep into the damp mud. She filled her lungs and lowered the bugle until it touched the water’s surface.
“Trumpets, drums, loud sounds… they really don’t like those!” Her uncle’s voice was but a murmur from beyond the shrouds of time.
Portia put her lips to the golden mouthpiece.
~ ~ ~
The claws sliced into his arm like razors.
He saw his blood swirling through the water.
But the Waterman suddenly pressed his hands to his ears.
The water was trembling like the flank of an ox, and the Waterman’s mouth opened in a silent scream. Tom saw a glint of gold above him. And a hand reaching down for him.
The Waterman was writhing in agony, his arms clutching his head, trying to escape down into his cave.
But Tom swam towards the hand.
It pulled him ashore.
Pressed the water from his lungs.
“Fool!” Portia grabbed him by the shoulders and shook him.
Where was his sister?
Tom’s eyes found her, as pale as the morning sky, sitting on the princess’s horse.
“Get up! Come on. He will come after us as soon as he recovers!”
Portia wouldn’t look at him.
Tom pressed the wet sack of treasure to his aching chest.
“For gold,” she said, her voice hoarse with disgust.
How could she understand? Raised as she was in gold-embroidered dresses?
Tom grabbed the horse’s reins. “It’s for you,” he said as he dragged the horse under the trees. His sleeve was red with blood. But he had his sister. And the gold.
“For me?” Her voice sounded as cold and confused as it had when she held the knife to his throat.
“Yes.”
She stared into his tired face, and suddenly she understood.
And she smiled.
Three days later, Tom went to her father’s castle. He was dressed in the clothes of a peasant, but he covered the marble tiles in front of the throne with the Waterman’s treasures. Then he asked the King for his daughter’s hand in marriage.
The MirrorWorld Anthology Page 4