Long ago, along a long, languid river that snaked and rolled through the little town of Lilygrove, a young woman lay on the broad riverbank. Her hair streamed in the water like river weed, dark as that bank and the silt below, combed and plaited by the caressing fingers of the river’s flow. It sang to her, the river. It crooned sweetly, bubbling the current of a lullaby that poured through her, a river through her soul. Here she was born beneath the rhythms of time, borne on the river like a little leaf, spinning, spinning, until her river-blue eyes opened upon a hushed blue sky and smiled into the winter sun. There she lay upon the riverbank. And there she found her shape.
There she woke. For a time she simply watched, curious fingers raised to dewy cheeks, eyes wide with wonder at the lily-white woman reflected in the river. More than once she plunged her face deep into the otherworld below. Always, she surfaced gasping. No matter how wistful her gaze, she could not return to that otherworld.
Alone, she was, for moons and suns, the passing of so many dusks and dawns, watching always the long, languid river on its journey to the sea. And yet, she was never truly alone. The men and women of Lilygrove supped on the river’s waters, carrying it in shouldered buckets to little farms and little homes. Their children laughed and swam in it. Bargemen rode and battled it. Others keened and wept into it. But there was one weeper who tugged at her, the same pull of the river on her heart.
At first, she did little more than watch and listen. The riverbank made whispers of the weeper’s tears as their hands cupped the water, then smashed it into waves. Sometimes, the weeper sent items into the river. Folded paper boats that drifted and twirled on tiny currents. Some soaked through and sank beneath the water; others sailed onward to the distant sea.
Sometimes, not just boats, but words carried over the water. Trembling questions called out to the river, questions it was never meant to answer. Why? The weeper asked. Why do you take and not return?
Those broken pleas drew her nearer and nearer until, one summer night, at the base of a bridge wreathed in moss and slippered in lilies, she found a woman hunched on the riverbank. The woman’s silt dark braid was frayed and streaked grey, a pendulum swaying, swaying with the tremor of her shoulders. Her weathered hands shook as she folded a small paper boat. She sniffled, drew a sleeve across her nose, then set the craft onto the water. Hands cupped over her heart, she began to pray.
“Oh Lirienna, blessed river. Deliver my child in peace. I know not what world lies beyond, but I hope it is one you can love, Lor.”
The river listened. The river watched. This woman called to her, had called to her for many moons, so clearly she could deny it no more than the wind could cease to blow. Quietly, sure as the river flows, she strode upon the lily bank toward the weeping woman. Her heart thrummed in time with each step, with the pulse of the river, with the wet sobs muffled behind clenched fingers.
“Lor. Lor, my girl. I would’ve let you go. If only I had known. If only I—” On that plea she choked, her voice as watery and tattered as a sunken paper boat. The old woman’s grief was as sand in her throat, a grit abrading her every breath. The river lapped at the bank, reaching onto land as she knelt and laid a lily-white hand on the woman’s back.
The old woman started and stumbled away, brown eyes round as a full moon. They narrowed, then flew wide again, and her lips pulled into a tenuous, trembling smile.
“Lorelei?”
Lorelei? She knew that name. Felt the smiling warmth of it in the giggling bubbles of a whisper pressed to the current. Almost like a breath against her face. A name lovingly called from across the way.
“No.” The woman’s smile frayed, then snapped. “No, you’re not my Lor!” Her voice frayed with it, cut on the glass of her ragged shout. The woman scrambled to her feet. “She’s gone! You’re not her! You’re—!”
Cold as winter ice. Hotter than a wildfire. The old woman’s doleful eyes drove stakes into her chest. She withdrew her hand from the old woman, clenching it against the roaring of her heart. The water drew back from the bank; where it once was, white lilies lay limp on the weedy black silt. The old woman’s face twisted, the coiling of a rope, the strangling of mourning roots enshrouding a grave.
“You’re a river glim! A dark thing!” Her eyes burned black like smoldering coals, and she lunged toward the river. “You beguiled my Lor!”
The river surged from its banks as she toppled back beneath the force of the old woman’s scrabbling hands. A wave of water caught her, then rushed around her to push the old woman away. The old woman fell in a dripping, moaning heap. Her eyes wrenched up, so wide they might split the skin on her skull.
“Sun take you, glim! Take you as you took my sweet Lorelei!” Her voice shattered into a whimper. She picked herself up and fled from the river.
Lorelei.
It echoed in her head, rounding and rounding, as the river set her gently upon the bank. That name. It was a dance of stories, of memories she could only just recall.
Like Lorelei’s dance.
She could see her now, from a time before her waking, brown hair and brown eyes as dark and rich as river silt. As a little girl, Lorelei had spun upon the riverbank, lily-white feet bare and splashing, laughter flowing from her lips. Year after year, the girl returned every dusk and every dawn to dance along the languid river. She walked. She spoke. She told stories of Lilygrove: stories of chores that put aches in her bones; of the market gossip she heard while minding her mother’s wools; of the boys who teased her; of the men they had become; but most of all, stories of the troupe that, one sanguine spring, had traveled through the little town of Lilygrove. There had been singers and storytellers and puppeteers. There had been dancers. Soon she would leave with them to travel the world, she once said, and she would never need leave the river for long, for all people followed the river roads.
Lorelei.
She lay upon the riverbank, the warm currents braiding ribbons of green weed into her streaming hair. Lorelei had laid like this often in the seasons following the troupe’s departure, her fingers gentle on the water’s surface, though her eyes were dark and distant. Oh, how beautiful she had been, as radiant as moonlight dancing across the water, even as her tears fell like glittering stars to melt into the river. She spoke seldom of her little town and told fewer stories; those she told were of the fulling vats, of the quiet man her mother chose—the man who drove a barge south to the sea and left her all alone. She no longer laughed, skin warmed and bared to the summer sun. She no longer danced, pink-cheeked and breath steaming, beneath the autumn moon.
Lorelei had been the one to speak to her. The one to lie upon her banks. The one to give voice to her heart and heart to her dream of a day where she would dance upon a far riverbank with a traveling troupe’s songs and stories guiding her feet. The one who walked into the Lirienna to breathe deep the otherworld below the water. It was beneath that winter moon that Lorelei had left this world behind.
Her Lorelei.
Oh, how she loved that woman. Loved her so fiercely, so sweetly that she had lifted Lorelei from the dark silt floor to carry her breathless body on the currents. The river had held her in shapeless arms, kissed her still fingers and cold, lily-white cheeks. Against her lips the river had whispered promises of more tomorrows, had crooned a quickening, bubbling lullaby: be born beneath the rhythm of time, borne on the river’s current like a little, spinning leaf. But her Lorelei was a little paper boat, scuttled and sodden, dissolved, always to be one with the water. Taken. Taken from her, never to return.
She spun Lorelei in one last dance beneath that winter moon, then returned her body to the land. Lorelei’s silt dark hair streamed like weed into the water. There a woman lay upon the broad riverbank of a long, languid river. There the river had found her shape. There she woke. Lirienna opened river-blue eyes upon a hushed blue sky and smiled into that winter sun.