A Veil of Water

The river ran backward on the day the Queen vanished. For almost a week, headwater springs funneled tiny creeks back into the ground. Waterfalls shot upward like fountains. The wide delta at the mouth pulled salty brine up the channel and into the farmland furrows. This was to be expected. The Queen had been teaching the river for years, coaxing it along irrigation ditches and showing it new, secret flowpaths where it could spill over banks to fill secluded glens bedecked with fog and fireflies or marshes full of syncopated frog song. Like any pet, well-trained and faithful, it had loved her unquestioningly. When she left, the reverse flow was an attempt to pull back time- a deep, keening inhalation of boundless, immortal grief.

When the magic ones left- and they always left- there would be an echo, a reverberation of loss through the element that they controlled. It wasn’t this bad, usually. But she had stayed so much longer than most. The village had thought perhaps she would stay forever. The King had put his heart and hands into trying to ensure it. He was not supposed to love her- she was a duty, a right of passage after all. But her flowing green hair, her laugh like tiny bubbles, her aura of stillness and depth were like a riptide. He never had a chance.

Every member of the royal family was required, before settling down, to take a magic one as a first spouse and bear a child with them. Though no formal contract existed between the two groups, a suitor with powers would always appear in the month that each royal family member crested adulthood. The element that each controlled would vary; however, it always seemed to match a need that the kingdom had not anticipated. Wind whisperers would blow storms far away from the coastline. Lava men would sing islands into existence along the horizon. Plant charmers would sprout new fruit and vegetable species from nothing. The magic ones would not stay more than a year or two. The newly born royal family member would remain. Though the royals rarely showed power themselves, it only took a generation for a bit of each power to appear in the village children. Nobody quite understood how.

This King was different. Most princes and princesses had already had their interlude and married again by the time they took the throne. This particular King had been an orphan since he was eight. He had been raised by regents and hounded by ambitious cousins willing to take over if he abdicated. His childhood had consisted of diplomacy with warring neighbors, strategies for helping starving villagers and intense schooling to keep up with the adults. He had no dalliances, few friends and a heavy sense of responsibility when the water woman came into his life. She was the first person in a long time who enjoyed his company without asking for a thing.

The courtship lasted a day and nuptials were quick and informal. The whole thing was done in less than a week. The kingdom expected her to act as the others had and be separate, to use her powers to teach the landscape how to live better with people while the King stayed inside to rule. Instead, he began to follow his new bride. She introduced him to the river, taught him the names of the marsh plants and kissed him among a serenade of spring peepers. He could think of little else.

When the Queen grew round with child, she began to spend more time walking alone and whispering to the river. Despite his fit physique, the King could not keep up on these jaunts, and neither could the guards he sent to protect her, to watch her. The thicket along the bank would bend away, clearing a path as she traveled. Moments later, it would resume the shape of a thorny wooden wall, leaving any observers behind.

This caused the King to worry. He peppered her with comments, mentioning how she could stay and all the things that he could give her if she did. With each new enticement, his wife would give a half-smile and stand on her toes to give him a small kiss on each cheek. If he was sitting, she would kiss his forehead and stroke his hair. She never spoke a word in response.

The King sought advice from the crone, who lived in a cottage in a damp hollow near the village. She was the only person who seemed to know anything about the magic ones. She told him of a place just a few days’ trek away, where a waterfall fish could be seen swimming up and down the cascade. If you could catch the fish, she said, and threaten its life, it would grant any wish that you wanted if you spared it.

The journey began the next day- the Queen was given an excuse of official business, and he left her to her walks along the river. He went alone, napping under the trees when he was tired and cooking his own food when he was hungry.

The waterfall fish was right where the crone had said. The golden creature emitted its own soft light, which made a halo it as it glided along the vertical sheet of water. Following her instructions, he began to weave a net from the reeds along the bank. As he searched for the strongest plants, he noticed a small puddle on the far edge of the floodplain. Three tiny golden fish were stranded, unable to return across the dried landscape to the river.

He used the partially woven net to gently transport the fish to the main channel, letting them go in a calm pool where they would not be rushed downstream. As soon as they swam to safety, the waterfall fish surfaced from beneath the water.

You have saved my children, the fish said, and for that, I owe you a debt. First, I will give you some advice. The person who sent you here is not a friend. If you had threatened me with violence, I would have granted your fondest wish- but it would have been your undoing. Instead, I will grant it in a way that may still offer sorrow, but it will ultimately end in joy.

The King hesitated when it came time to make his request. He had never asked the Queen how she would feel about staying, and he felt uncomfortable making this wish for himself. But his child needed a mother. He himself had grown up without parents and spent many nights wishing for a mother’s love. With that on his mind, he wished that his wife and child could stay together for a lifetime.

When the prince was born, the fish was true to her word and the Queen did not leave. She doted on her son, teaching him how to speak to the waters, the wind, the trees and stars and animals. The boy was very talented at listening, and the natural world began sharing secrets about both hidden and future things. By age seven, the child had learned everything that his instructors had to teach him. The King began searching outside the kingdom to find him new instructors. The boy developed an uncanny knack for knowing exactly what would happen next in the short term. At times, he would share some unsettling predictions about the longer-term future of the villagers. He was never proven wrong.

Mother, father and son found daily joy in one another. The King and prince would walk together every night. When they did, the King would mention how grateful he was that they were together as a family. The boy would then tell him that it would be that way until the moon turned green. Since this had never happened, the King saw it as his son’s peculiar way of saying forever.

Soon after the boy’s eighth birthday, the Queen became ill. She moved into a different tower of the castle and turned away everyone but her son. Only he was allowed to bring food in or to see her. The King pleaded, but she refused to unbolt the door for him or the court physicians. This continued for months. Every day, the King would ask his son if he had done something wrong, if there was anything he could do to help. The boy told him that it just wasn’t time.

The winter was especially fierce that year; night after night, whiteout blizzards and ice storms alternated across the kingdom. Livestock that couldn’t fit in village homes were brought into the castle to stay warm. The water in the wells froze and the servants had to drop flaming torches into the basin to gather a bucketful. One night, in the middle of a fierce windstorm, the prince sought the King and finally asked him for help.

He told him that the Queen needed an herb that could be found growing along the sunny entrance of a cave along the mountain pass. Hot springs bubbled in the cave’s interior, keeping it warm enough for plants to grow year-round. For it to work, though, the plant must only touch the King’s hands.

He left at dawn, following his best wayfinder through a wall of white. The mountain path was too treacherous for a horse, so they walked. While the herb was plentiful and easy to collect once they got there, the storms did not subside on the journey there or back. The King was gone nearly a month.

On the return trip, he clutched the herbs beneath his winter cloak to protect them from the weather. Every so often, he would stick his hand beneath the thick woolen fabric to ensure they were still there. At last, the King and the wayfinder crested the last hill, looking down on the castle and kingdom below. Behind the valley, a full, emerald-green moon began to rise. The King began to run.

When he got to the Queen’s tower, her chamber door was open. Both she and the prince were gone. In their place, three newborn babies slept in matching bassinets, with a nursemaid caring for each. On a table nearby was a note, written in his son’s scrawling handwriting:

One will rule.

One will bring magic to the kingdom to stay.

One will change everything.