Robin McKinley - Water

“I care for no risk,” Jenny said, and realised that she meant it; at this moment she could have slain a dragon, defied any number of sea-kings and their curses. “What is this risk?”

“You must believe that I love you,” he said, gravely, looking at her.

She laughed. “Do you love me?” These words had never passed between them before: the fact that they could not touch each other felt as if it precluded such words, negated the feelings behind them—till now, till just now, when he had told her that he loved her, when he had told her that he had learned of a way that she might visit his underwater country. And yet she knew that she was still of the land; if she stayed in his arms for long, much as she wished to be there, she would grow cold and faint; already she felt colder than she had, despite the warmth of joy.

“Yes,” he said, and while he tried to say it solemnly, his eyes lit up with the excitement she had taught herself to fear. “I love you.”

“Then I believe you,” she said, joyously.

And he kissed her.

His kiss was cool, and damp, like his skin; but when he dropped his arms from around her and took her hand, it did not feel so cool or so damp as it had done only a moment before. He led her down, into the water, and her wet clothes bound her legs, and she paused: and Gruoch had leaped in after her, drenching them both with spray, and she felt the drops pour down over her face and found them refreshing. Gruoch thrust her nose into Jenny’s hand and shivered; and Jenny stroked her head and said, “You must wait for me here, little one, for I will return”; and she knelt down in the cold sea-water and looked deep into her bitch’s eyes, and she could see Gruoch giving up whatever it was she needed to give up, as a good dog will do for the person it loves, and Jenny stood up again while Gruoch waded back to the shore. She looked over her shoulder then, but Jenny pointed away, and the tall hound trotted to where Flora stood tied in the shade of a tree, happy to browse over the summer grass without care till her lady returned and set her saddle on her back and asked her something she understood. Jenny watched Gruoch lie down—back obediently to the shore—and then she turned again to Dreiad, and put her hand in his, and walked deeper and deeper into the sea, till the water closed over her head.

She gave a great gasp, and felt the cold water rush into her lungs; but she did not drown. And they walked down the shoaling sea-bottom to the centre of the harbour, which was very deep indeed, and her hair drifted up from her head, and her clothes swirled around her, and she found that they chafed her, and then she felt Dreiad’s hands on her, loosening them. For a moment she fought him, but he did not realise it, for he thought she was only fighting the constriction of her useless clothing; and then she understood what he was doing, and shed her clothes willingly, and found she was the same neutral, hairless, faceted, silvery color that he was beneath her clothes, here, as she was, under the sea, for such was the magic of the kiss of the sea-man who loved her.

He took her clothes carefully from her, for if they had been set adrift they would have been taken by the water eddies, and tossed and tangled here and there; and he folded them, deftly, in a way she could not have done, under water as she now was, and laid them on the sea-bed, and put a rock on them. “We will find them for you when I take you back,” he said, “for you will need them again then; and we do not want to lose them, or have them wash ashore and be found by someone who recognises them.”

And he took her down into the deeps of the sea, and taught her how to choose walking on the sea-bottom or swimming like a fish, and how what on land were merely lungs for the taking in and pushing out of air now became a kind of swim-bladder that she could adjust as she chose, although the effort of it was strange to her, and her chest hurt afterward, as a strained muscle does when it performs some feat beyond its strength. And he took her to the great palace where his parents lived, and they made her welcome, and it turned out that she was less of a surprise to them than either she or Dreiad expected, for the sea-king had noticed the direction his son took when he set off on his mysterious absences; and the story had got back to him as well of his son’s search for the old sea-woman who knew many tales of things and many charms that had made the tales possible, and while he did not know what Dreiad had asked her, he had guessed at what it might have been, and he had guessed right.

And Jenny went riding on the tall slender-legged sea-horses with the foamy manes, and chased fishes like hares through the bowing trees behind grey-green hounds; and he introduced her to his cousins, who were sea-princesses with great curls of golden-green hair that lay behind them on the silvery water that was their air. And also they rode to visit the old sea-woman who had told Dreiad of the charm to permit Jenny to visit under the sea; and the two women were delighted with each other, and found each other easy to talk to; the sea-woman reminded Jenny of her mother and her mother’s friends, and the conversations they had, of cooking and midwifery and the doings of their neighbours.

And her prince took her back up to the land, where her horse and her hound awaited her, and kissed her once more, and she was an ordinary land-person again, dressed in dripping-wet clothes; and she had a tricky time of it, that night, getting herself back indoors and dry before her parents saw her.

The next day they did it better, and after he kissed her, she waited till the itchiness of her clothing grew unbearable, and she undressed on the beach as a silvery sea-person, and tucked her clothes into the empty saddlebag she had thoughtfully hung to her mare’s saddle that day, that no one might notice anything amiss, did anyone notice a horse and a hound near this haunted harbour-shore where no one came. And Gruoch watched from under the tree where Flora was tied, and did not try to stop Jenny walking into the sea this second day; but she greeted her again anxiously when she came out.

On the third day, Jenny said to her sea-prince, “If I kiss you, can I bring you to my parents’ farm, and introduce you to them?”

His smile lit up his face even more wonderfully than it had before, and he said, “Yes, if you love me.”

She laughed, and kissed him, and gave him the clothes that she had borrowed from the back of her father’s cupboard, and there then stood before her a tall young man with big long-fingered hands that stuck out too far from the ends of his sleeves, and a nice, ordinary, kind, open face. And she took him home.

She decided that the only thing she could tell her parents was the truth; for however much they would wish not to believe her, they would believe her because she was their daughter, and so she could take them down to the shore after she told them the story they would not want to believe, and they could see her prince turn silvery, and walk into the water, and they would believe her then because they had to.

And so this is what Jenny and Dreiad did; and her parents did not want to believe them, but they did accompany the two of them to the shore, and saw them kiss, and saw the silveriness break out first across the forehead of the young man with the open honest face, whom they had liked at once, and watched it creep down his cheeks, and then across the backs of his hands under the too-short sleeves; and they saw him undress, and walk into the water till the surface of it closed over his head. And they believed, because they had no choice.

But it was only the two of them who could come and go in each other’s worlds, for it was only the two of them who loved each other in the way to bring out the charm. But both sets of parents knew what was before them in their children’s eyes, and were not surprised when Jenny and her prince came to each of them in turn and asked permission to marry. Neither parents would have wished their child to marry someone of so distant a country that none of their family or people could visit it; but both sets of parents loved their only children deeply, and would not stand in the way of their happiness: and the two families met on the shore of the harbour, and liked each other, and that was a help, for they found themselves supporting each other’s feelings as they would have done for good friends in the ordinary way of things; and thus found that their feelings were much alike. And on that same shore Jenny and Dreiad were married, and began dividing their time between land and sea.