Stolen Princess

30. Mother

The next thing I know, I'm underwater. It's cold, dark - I can't see anything, but I know better than to open my mouth for a gulp of air. I pray Sam is somehow safe, as I fight arms and legs for my bearings... I can't tell which way is the surface.

Deerhling, deerhling, here again.

We did so like you little friend.

Which is up, the witch is down...

careful now or else you'll drown.

Begin again, but still won't win.

We'll let you pass with your life,

but this is just the first of strife.

The water spirits' voices are cold and thin in my head, and I whip about in the water trying to find their source, but I can't. Suddenly the water around me changes, moves past me and I'm sailing up and up and up until - I break the surface, landing hard against a muddy bank.

It's foggy, but I can see the moat behind me as I drag myself up the bank from the water full of murderous little rhyming spirits. I shudder at the memory of their voices in my head again. There's a gray stone wall on the opposite side of the moat, but the fog is so dense I can't see the top of that wall or very far in any other direction for that matter. I heave myself into a sitting position as I catch my breath, and a bright patch of orange flits into my lap.

"Sam!" I breathe in relief, giving him a welcoming pet. He's dry as the desert and I can't help but laugh at the almost bored way he's cleaning one paw just now,

"Where are we?" I muse absently to my companion. He leaps off of me, and takes off towards my right, into the dense fog once more. I hurry after him, nearly slipping in the thick mud in my haste.

The fog closes in like a blanket, nearly smothering... nothing like the fog I've ever experienced in my father's kingdom or the dark Shadow Forest. This fog seems almost... like it's watching, pressing me forward and backward if I stand still for any amount of time. As if it will dump me back into the moat full of water spirits if I'm not careful.

But Sam's bright orange tail acts as my guide through the gray world around me, and without warning, I realize the mud beneath my feet has turned to a wooden drawbridge instead. Now when I glance up, I can see the vague outline of a castle, turrets flying upwards into the sky, some lower to the ground reveal run-down green shingled roofing with holes that gape like wounds.

I feel the fog pull at me once more, and instead of wondering much more, I take the next step forward, and the next and the next. I've lost sight of Sam again, but at least now I'm in a castle. The fog doesn't reach all the way down into this part of the outer courtyard. But it looks like it's been long abandoned.

There are no people, no livestock... not even your common scavenger from the forest looking for leftovers. It feels a bit like a graveyard instead, a ruin... a tomb. The courtyard ends at another stone archway, this one with a portcullis that stands up. I eye it warily as I pass underneath, my hands already reaching for the knives at my wrists. Something feels awful about this fog, this castle...

"So you're here at last... I'm not surprised they made you wait the longest."

I know that voice.

Before I can even register the words, recognition hits me so solidly in the chest that I stop midstep.

"Enedina?"

"Oh hello, my dove."

The fog seems to lift as if clawing hands drawing a breath, and there she is, standing on the stairs that enter into the castle. She looks the same as always... her blonde hair and ageless skin. But somethings different this time... somethings... missing... and then I realize, she's not smiling. Not even a little.