Wet Magic

That going to the seaside was the very beginning of everything⁠—only it seemed as though it were going to be a beginning without an end, like the roads on the Sussex downs which look like roads and then look like paths, and then turn into sheep tracks, and then are just grass and furze bushes and tottergrass and harebells and rabbits and chalk.

The children had been counting the days to The Day. Bernard indeed had made a calendar on a piece of cardboard that had once been the bottom of the box in which his new white sandshoes came home. He marked the divisions of the weeks quite neatly in red ink, and the days were numbered in blue ink, and every day he crossed off one of those numbers with a piece of green chalk he happened to have left out of a penny box. Mavis had washed and ironed all the dolls’ clothes at least a fortnight before The Day. This was thoughtful and farsighted of her, of course, but it was a little trying to Kathleen, who was much younger and who would have preferred to go on playing with her dolls in their dirtier and more familiar state.

“Now, France,” she called. And Francis came slowly with his thumb in The Water Babies. It was nearly dark by now, but Mavis had lighted the four dollhouse candles in the gilt candlesticks and set them on the table around the aquarium.

“Look through the side,” she said; “isn’t it ripping?”

“Why,” said Francis slowly, “you’ve got water in it⁠—and real anemones! Where on earth⁠ ⁠… ?”

“Not real,” said Mavis. “I wish they were; they’re only dahlias. But it does look pretty, doesn’t it?”

“It’s like Fairyland,” said Kathleen, and Bernard added, “I am glad you bought it.”

“It just shows what it will be like when we do get the sea creatures,” said Mavis. “Oh, Francis, you do like it, don’t you?”

“Oh, I like it all right,” he answered, pressing his nose against the thick glass, “but I wanted it to be waving weeds and mysterious wetness like the Sabrina picture.”

The other three glanced at the picture which hung over the mantelpiece⁠—Sabrina and the water nymphs, drifting along among the waterweeds and water lilies. There were words under the picture, and Francis dreamily began to say them:

Mavis stopped and took hold of her brother’s arm to steady him; and as she did so both children plainly heard a voice that was not the voice of either of them. It was the sweetest voice in the world they thought, and it said:

“Save her. We die in captivity.”

Francis looked down and had a sort of sudden sight of something white and brown and green that moved and went quickly down under the stone on which Mavis was standing. There was nothing now holding his foot.

“I say,” he said, on a deep breath of awe and wonder, “did you hear that?”

“Of course, I heard it.”

“We couldn’t both have fancied it,” he said, “I wish it had told us who to save, and where, and how⁠—”

“Whose do you think that voice was?” Mavis asked softly.

“The Mermaid’s,” said Francis, “who else’s could it have been?”

“Then the magic’s really begun⁠—”

“Mermaids aren’t magic,” he said, “anymore than flying fishes or giraffes are.”

So once again⁠—

“ ‘Sabrina fair, Listen where thou art sitting, Under the glassie, cool, translucent wave⁠—’ ”

He got no further. There was a heaving and stirring of the seaweed and fish tail, something gleamed white, through the brown something white parted the seaweed, two white hands parted it, and a face came to the surface of the rather dirty water and⁠—there was no doubt about it⁠—spoke.

“ ‘Translucent wave,’ indeed!” was what the face said. “I wonder you’re not ashamed to speak the invocation over a miserable cistern like this. What do you want?”

Brown hair and seaweed still veiled most of the face, but all the children, who, after their first start back had pressed close to the tank again, could see that the face looked exceedingly cross.

“We want,” said Francis in a voice that would tremble though he told himself again and again that he was not a baby and wasn’t going to behave like one⁠—“we want to help you.”

“Help me? You?” She raised herself a little more in the tank and looked contemptuously at them. “Why, don’t you know that I am mistress of all water magic? I can raise a storm that will sweep away this horrible place and my detestable captors and you with them, and carry me on the back of a great wave down to the depths of the sea.”

“Then why on earth don’t you?” Bernard asked.

“Well, I was thinking about it,” she said, a little awkwardly, “when you interrupted with your spells. Well, you’ve called and I’ve answered⁠—now tell me what I can do for you.”