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Wreaths of flowers are tucked around her arms. They brush like silk against her skin, fluttering with movement and breeze like wings of butterflies. Their scent is a cloud around her. She breathes, and the flowers are all she knows. She does not want to remember the rest.
Her father’s death. Her prince’s cruelty. Her gentle suspicions. Things she can not say. Things she must not even whisper. Court life is not a kindly thing. It would have been better if father had kept her in the country away from all this cruelty. There is no one left who she might confide in.
But enough. She sucks in another long breath, and languorously the perfume of the flowers floats upwards once more. She cannot bear her own mind. Cannot bear what grows within her. Poisonous and treacherous her entire body seems to be. She was not strong enough to save him from his own madness; her own is a fouler thing, and she feels it clinging to her like a moss, like sap, like rot. She claws at her arms, but she cannot scrape it off. Angry red marks cling to her pale skin. They are striking things; she cannot help but to stare at them. And she realizes belatedly that she is sobbing. Her throat is tight and tender. Her lungs stiffened and tense. She would scream if she did not distract herself, and she must.
She hums as she grazes through the fields, half remembered thing from her childhood, hymns. They do not lighten her spirit. She prays, too, and yet nothing changes. Every saint must have turned away from her. She is a sinful, wretched creature, perhaps that is why God has abandoned her. All the while, every treasonous step drags her closer to the bright river glinting in the distance. There is not much further to go. She is sick of the pastures and fields. They smell of honeyed grass and the sun’s heat. She does not delight in it. She can take no pleasure in it. The sun burns down upon her, pierces her eyes, sees her, knows her most secret shame. She feels its burning sight press through her pale dress.
She spins her wreathes between her fingertips. She’s made them with such care. Every flower had a purpose, had a name, had a meaning. And they are all dead now. Lovely, pretty things, she’d plucked them and now they are dead. Nothing pleasant ever lasted. Her mother had been like a flower. She missed her more than ever now. If anyone might have understood, it would be her mother.
She stops humming, stops mumbling half-forgotten lyrics.
She stumbles through the grass and collapses at the edge of the river. Her wreathes she casts aside. The river is a magnificent thing. The waters are slow and dark and deep as night. She brushes her hand through its stream, and the chill bites into her fingers. A proud willow looms above her and the river. Its leaves are silver and green and gleaming. Tender boughs sway with the breeze, and she is oddly calm now cupped inside of the willows shade. Everything is quiet here and none may see her and her madness. She sucks in a breath. And her exhalation is a shaking, tremulous thing.
She runs her hands through the weeds around her. Tugs up grass from the earth and examines pale, ghostly roots. Dark brown dirt sprinkles onto her dress with the movement. She does not wince as she might have once. There are flowers, too, around the river. Daisies, cheery and familiar bob with the wind. Nettles, so sinister and wickedly purple. Asphodel, pale, pretty, and yet dismal still. Crowflowers. Long purples. Columbines. Carnations.
She turns away from the sight, gazes upon her own hands. Her nails are brimmed with dirt and her hands darkened by her clawing at the earth. They are much changed.
There are rocks besides her. Round blue things half tucked beneath moss and grass; she grips them in her hand. They are solid and real and cold. Their weight is pleasant, and she rubs at one until the crusty moss crumbles off. The rock is a dusty, pale sort blue but also almost green. She tosses it in the river, and it splashes with an ominous sort of clunk. The ripples spread out, and she fixes her gaze to the concentric stirring of the waters.
Her eyes still sting. Her throat still feels raw. She claws out another, this one less smooth, more jagged and angular and polishes it between her dirtied hands. She tosses it in and more circles ripple out.
She closes her eyes and wraps her arms around her skirt, presses her forehead to her knees. She would stay here forever if she could.
Her eyes flash open. She could. She knows exactly how she could. What would it matter? One last sin before death? There is saltwater sliding down her face. The heat almost burns.
There is birdsong in the distance, some little thrush singing.
She pinches the embroidery on her skirt, dirties the pale flowers with her fingertips, ruins it. She does not think it much matters, not anymore. She sighs and lays on her back. Fixes her eyes upwards to the willow’s leaves, to the bright spaces in between that hint at the sky.
Another splash. But she did not throw a stone, did not even shift enough to send pebbles cascading downwards.
She jerks upright. She thought she’s been alone, thought she’d escaped the prying gazes of the courtiers, the pitying whispers of servants.
She hears disturbed waters before she sights the man.
He is tall and pale and smooth. His hair is long and golden and his face fine and comely like something one might see in a painting. He is also entirely naked. She scrambles up and then backwards, away, presses at the neckline of her dress as though that would save her modesty.
There is a root extended from the earth. The willow was ancient with its sorrows, and she trips before she can manage to get very far. He comes to the very edge of the river but does not step from its waters. The waters seethes and splashes around him with every step.
She cannot look away from the sight of him. Her hands are pressed into the dusty silt of the earth. Her skirt is rumpled and gracelessly cast over her.
His hair is wet, pressed against his scalp. Trickling water seems to drip from it. The moment is still and gripping. She is petrified, like an animal frozen with fear.
She had not seen him bathing, would not have stayed if she had. Her cheeks burn. Her eyes are still wet from her tears.
He is the first to speak, and his words seem to suffuse the space.
“The stone you cast into the river struck me.” His voice is gentle, soft. He does not seem angry as he should.
A hysterical little laugh escapes from her mouth before she can stop it.
He holds out his hand, and there it is. Smooth and turquoise and round. The first one. It is much darker now, soaked with river water.
“Would you like it back?”
“No,” she says, “Keep it if you like.” She keep her eyes latched dutifully to his face, does not allow them to slip. “I should apologize. I did not see you. Were you swimming underwater?”
He shakes his head slowly.
Something flips in her stomach. “Did I—” Her voice cracks halfway through the question. “Did I hurt you?”
“No.” He is looking at her strangely, like she is the odd one. But he is the one standing bare at the edge of the river staring at her.
“Were you bathing, then?”
“No.” His face is angular and sharp. His lips flutter like two mauve petals.
“But then, then why are you here?”
Something shifts across his face. Sorrow. And for a moment it is like staring at her own reflection. Agonies upon agonies. Her heart aches, and her eyes sting once more. She blinks several times determined not to let it begin again.
His eyes are wide and dark and glinting like the river water itself. “I am the sea king, and all waters belong to me. I was passing through this river to return to my coral palace deep within the sea.”
Before, she might have flinched. Before she might have cowered. There is no fear. There is only an odd sort of curiosity remaining. “Are you a spirit then?” Her words sound strange and dreamlike and distant.
“I am myself. I have lived for hundreds of years. I am as flesh as you are.”
She was dreaming, or she was madder than she thought, or better yet he was real. She shifts forward, adjusts her skirt, meets his eyes.
“What is it like at the bottom of the sea?”
He smiles, a small uncertain thing. His teeth flash like lustrous pearls.
“It is lonely sometimes, but still very beautiful. The sun shines bright and clear through the water and the light is only ever gentle on your skin. There are water plants that tangle like great green ribbons and fish every color imaginable; they glint like living jewels when they swim. The sunlight will hit the surface and scatter like crystal flame around you.
She sighs and rests her cheek on her palm.
“I’d like to see it. It is sad I shan’t.”
“You could, if you like,” the sea king says.
“It’s impossible,” she said. “I’d die. Humans can’t stay underwater for very long at all. They’d drown.”
He laughed, fluid and leaping, and reached out his hand. “I could take you into the depths without harming you. And I could show you things more wonderful than you can possibly imagine now.”
She had stood, taken a few delicate steps past her floral wreathes, stretched her own hand outward to take his. A bee buzzed past. She halted and lowered her hand.
“I can’t,” she said too immediately. “I shouldn’t,” she revised.
He sighed. Eyes sharp upon her face. “Does your heart belong to another? I will not take you if it does. It would torture the both of us.”
She turned away slightly, lowered her eyes.
“I was deceived by reckless love. But it has withered and decayed. And I--” Her throat felt tight. She choked out the rest, “I do not know.”
She stared at the silt beneath her, stared at the dark waters teasing the riverbed, and stared at the cool damp hand that had reached out and cupped her face with a motion too swift to stop. His other had gripped her wrist, had pulled her nearer.
“Would you miss this place? Would you long for it?”
His hands were warm, and he smelled clean and wet and fresh like the riverbed. There was a scent of something green about him.
“No,” she murmured.
His grip tightened.
Her eyes flicked back to his face. There was a small, gentle smile pressed on it. “Take off your shoes. It’s easier without them.”
…
And so Ophelia did wade into the brine of the river, though her lovely garlands she left on the shore, and it is said that Ophelia must have drowned somewhere beneath the silvery willow beyond pasture and glen.
Her madness, her distress, her garments heavy with their drink.
They must have dragged her down.
Yet her body still has not been found.