The prince squinted up at me like I wasn’t making sense. “What are you talking about?”
“You’ve never heard of those animals?”
“No.”
“Big lizards that live in the water and can bite a man’s arm off?” I used my arms to mimic a gator’s bite.
“Gods, man,” he said with horror. “Hydris would never allow such a creature to exist in his court.”
“Hydris is the Spring prince?”
“Yes.”
Hydris and Flurris. Cute.
“So you can control what does and doesn’t exist in your court?”
“Yes.” He paused before adding a reluctant, “to a degree.”
“Uh-huh. I’m going to take that to mean that you can decide whether to have wolves but not whether to grow corn in a blizzard.”
“We had wolves, but my people needed the animals they hunted.”
Now I was the horrified one. “You killed them all?”
“No! They merely sleep in their dens. When webreak the curse and there is plenty for all again, I will wake them.”
“Oh. Okay. Why not domesticate them?”
“We would still have to feed them. And they would cease being wolves.”
“Huh. Good point.”
Badru and Giselle came over with a few others. “Are you going in then?” Giselle asked with a wary glance at the water.
“Yeah, I am.”
I undressed, not sure if I was being brave or stupid. The water was already there, so it couldn’t form suddenly and take me out. Also, I knew how to swim. Hopefully better than a horse did.
In just my undershirt and loose shorts, I was reminded of how cold it was on this side. And being that it was spring on the other side and not summer, the water might also be cold. “I’ll be as quick as I can,” I said to myself as much as everyone else.
The people on the other side seemed to have got on board with me coming over as one of them held a tarp of some kind and another held a rope.
A felt fingers brush the back of my hand and looked down to find Flurry had touched me. There was pink blooming on his cheeks and he wouldn’t look me in the eyes, but he said, “Good luck, Milo.”
Oh, the way that bolstered me up. I strutted toward the barrier and very confidently pushed my hand through. The barrier gave with a rubbery sort of resistance, and I just went for it, diving through it and into the water.
It was fucking brisk, like I’d thought it might be. Not at all wanting to linger, I started a quick breaststroke toward shore. I could hear the people ahead of me cheering me on.
Suddenly, it felt like something was pulling me back. I did an awkward bend to try and see if someone had literally grabbed my ankle. In doing that, though, I came to a stop and now it felt like I was sinking. I couldn’t stay at the surface. Treading water wasn’t working. When I lunged forward to start swimming again, I couldn’t get my feet up behind me.
“I’m being pulled under!” I hollered to the people watching on the shore.
One man started kicking off his shoes and taking off his shirt. I kept trying to reach them, but I was stuck in place and the water was up to my chin now.
Oh, god, the water was stopping me from making it to shore the same way it had stopped that poor horse. The fucking water was trying to drown me!
“No,” I snarled and redoubled my efforts. I wasn’t going to die in some fairytale land with nightmare water. “Fuckyou!”
