The Nymphs of Alpheia

The river ran backwards on the day the Queen vanished.

Nora witnessed it herself.

Hushed voices and frantic footsteps roused her from her sleep in the early morning hours of that day. The glow of candlelight danced along the bottom edge of her bedroom door. Nora's heart leaped and lodged itself into her throat. Sharp whispers poked holes in Nora's resolve as she jumped from her bed and swung open the door. The unruly curls of her ginger brown hair bounced against her warm cheeks. The Queen's lady and the late King's advisor turned at Nora's unexpected appearance.

"What's going on?" Nora asked.

With the look of a startled hare, Mavis blinked, her large green eyes speckled with concern.

"Nothing to worry about, dear. Why don't you get back to bed?"

At seventeen, Nora was too old to be a naive child. She slid a glance to Alden. The lines on his stony face were indiscernible, even in the shadows of his flickering candle.

"I'm not a child anymore, Mavis."

Mavis sheepishly looked down at her feet as her lips parted. Before she could utter a word, Alden spoke with the precision of a perfectly nocked arrow.

"Your mother is missing, Eleanor."

The use of her full name struck Nora's chest with force. Nora stared at Alden as the words eluded her tongue, the weight of the situation falling heavily on her small shoulders. Alden never addressed her as Eleanor, knowing full well that Nora thought it was too old-fashioned and proper, even for the Princess of Alpheia. And she would wince when some of the staff called her Ellie, her childhood nickname.

Her mother was known to have trouble sleeping, roaming the labyrinth of the manor's halls at all hours of the night like a mouse searching for a shred of cheese. Nora often thought of her mother as a night creature, someone drawn out by the wonder of the darkness and the beauty of the silence when the rest of the world was asleep. Nora shared that quality with her mother, suffering bouts of her own wandering insomnia.

But her mother's night wandering became increasingly troubling in the weeks following her father's tragic death. Nora couldn't help but notice her mother's disheveled appearance during the day; the subtle misplaced golden strands in her braids, the frantic look in her ice blue eyes, the recurring twitch in one corner of her thin lips.

But her mother would never leave the manor in the middle of the night. Not like this. Not in the middle of the Deep Frost.

Mavis nervously filled the silence with her chatter as the three of them stood unmoving in the hall.

"Nora, you know your mother hasn't been the same since...since the passing of your father. It's been heart wrenching to watch poor Queen Astrid fall into this pit of despair without her Everett..."

Mavis's words barely landed on Nora's ears. Of course, Alpheia hasn't been the same without its king, and as King Everett's wife and daughter, both Astrid and Nora had taken it the hardest.

The trembling cadence of Mavis's rambling faded into the background of Nora's mind as something pulled Nora back into her bedroom across the cold stone floor to the window. Pale moonlight spilled into the darkness giving the snow a blue glow and the stars sparkled in the water of the river to the west.

The river.

Without another thought, Nora scrambled for her heavy surcoat and shoved her bare feet into the sheepskin boots standing at attention at the foot of her bed. Nora ran into the hall, bypassing the stunned looks from both Mavis and Alden in her wake. Alden's calls echoed in waves down the hall as Nora made her way to her mother's bedroom.

"Nora! Nora! Where are you going?"

Even without the candlelight, Nora sensed the chaos in her mother's room. Yet, she was drawn to the large mahogany wardrobe at the far corner of the room, where her mother kept her most decorated gowns. The doors of the wardrobe had been left open, gowns pushed aside. Holding her breath, Nora pressed her palm against the back panel and pushed until it gave way. She carefully stepped into the wardrobe and swung the panel open wide enough for her to sneak through. It was a task that had been much easier as a child, but Nora still managed to fit, and she suspected her mother had as well.

Nora replaced the panel behind her and cautiously descended the steep spiral staircase leading down to the back of the manor. With her pulse in her ears, she reached the bottom and shoved open the wooden door.

The air hit her like a wall of ice and Nora instinctively drew her arm up to her face as a shield. In the snow in front of her, she could make out the faint trail of footprints.

"Princess Nora! You shouldn't be out here!"

Nora sprinted, ignoring the shouts from the guards standing at their posts around the perimeter. Her heart pounded at the same pace as her feet and her eyes burned in the bitterness of the cold and the bite of the northern winds. Her breath materialized in desperate puffs in the frigid air as she came to a halt at the river.

The Ferrallura River was near frozen, its flow torpid. Delicate footprints traced the riverside in the fresh powdered snow until they stopped abruptly. Time slowed as Nora stood on the edge of the water, watching reflections shimmer in the wrong direction.

Even beneath her wool surcoat, the hairs on Nora's arms stood on end. Nora closed her eyes, the wind whipping around her, but it wasn't the cold she felt. It was her mother.

The magnetic pull from above was unlike anything else she had ever experienced before.

"Take me with you," Nora whispered to the stars, to her mother.

As Nora opened her eyes, colors danced in the sky, swirling above her head. She watched with wonder as the ribbons of emerald and cerulean threaded through the constellations. With an outstretched hand, the ribbons wrapped gently around Nora's wrist, lacing up her forearm, lifting her as a graceful ballerina.