The Codex Lacrimae: The Book of Tears

Chapter 3: Fossegrim and Strömkarlen

I should have heeded the girl's warning.

The waves of the river crashed upon Aurelius, knocking the breath from him. An unseen force pulled him in, but too little air remained in his lungs. He panicked and slashed out with the hatchet. Whatever held him released its grip immediately. He scrambled back to the shallows and looked about.

The river roiled with strömkarlen and nixies.

He couldn't have known then, but never before in the history of the Nine Worlds had so many of the elementals gathered in one place. They emerged vertically from the river's surface in so vast a multitude that Aurelius couldn't see the opposite bank. Male and female, the entities' nude forms were shaped like gigantic human bodies but entirely liquid, with only the merest pools of shadow where eyes, noses, and mouths should be.

They spoke and sang to him, their collective frustration at his escape sounding like the thunderous roar of a hundred waterfalls laced with an entrancing chorus of masculine and feminine pleas.

The air thrummed with magical energy, and as he backed away, he saw that his hatchet had cleaved through the arms of two of the four beings who'd grabbed him. When water flowed around their cuts, the slashes disappeared and the limbs reformed. The clamor of the male creatures intensified while the songs of the females became more plaintive and alluring. Each time a being arose, the river receded to allow more substance for creating it. Liquid hands clutched his ankles and began to drag him toward the watery horde. He again hacked downward with the hatchet, severing the wrists of all those gripping him. More screams erupted from the nearing strömkarlen as he stumbled onto shore.

The girl stood next to him, her quarterstaff raised and warm hand lightly touching the underside of his arm.

"We've to get out of here," she said as they retreated from the bellowing creatures.

"D'accordo," Aurelius agreed. "By the way, you were correct about the water."

"You think?" The girl replied sarcastically. "Let's back away a bit further, and then I'll get us over to that tree where the prisoner is."

"How?" Aurelius asked. "I was going to use those boulders, but we can't get near them."

The strömkarlen and nixies were seemingly everywhere in the river, but none left the boundary of the bank to pursue the young people. Both Aurelius and Clarinda halted at the entrance to the glade where they could observe the frustrated water creatures without risking even a splash from them.

Then the nixies moved to the front, singing in harmonies that soothed and completely overwhelmed the storm-water crashing of their male brethren. The sirens' music, ancient and melodic, affected Aurelius with the promise of returning him to times and lands long thought lost. Hypnotized, he took a tentative step forward, a group of nixies beckoning to him, and watched, amazed, as the face of one of the elementals took the face of his younger sister, Constanza, who he'd last seen five summers ago when he'd set sail for the Levant.

She's ... what? Thirteen now? Is this what little Constanza looks like these days?

The girl beside him slapped him hard in the face.

Stung, Aurelius turned from the nixies, partly angry that his view of the present-day Constanza melted away as the sprite dove back into the crowded river, but mostly relieved that his newfound companion had saved him from stepping forward any farther.

"They're water elementals," Clarinda shouted, "like sirens of the deep. If you listen to them too long, you'll walk into the water and drown!"

Music remained in the air, but it changed dramatically. The strains of a fiddle pierced the water elementals singing and roaring.