Lilophea, the Bride of the Sea King

“And you want me to give him a love letter.”

“It is not a love letter. I want him to do me a favor and find out something for me.”

“Well, all right,” the peacock took both envelopes in its beak and finally flew away.

Lilophea waited until his trail had gone cold outside the window, and then she rushed to measure the jewelry. Bracelets, necklaces, rings, beads – she strung a whole row of them on herself. How beautifully the pearls had transformed her outfit. She became like a sea queen. The twisted-frame mirror on the wall even flattered her. It showed not an ordinary princess, but as if a goddess from the depths of the ocean.

In five minutes Lilophea managed to try on everything but the intricate pearl pendants, with their many pendants and drops that must fall on her forehead. There was only room on her head for one piece of jewelry – a crown. For some reason she liked it best. As soon as the crown of the sea pressed on her forehead again, a succession of visions akin to daydreams came back into her mind. All these dreams were of an underwater kingdom, of water flowing between lilies and of incredible underwater creatures.

She even closed her eyelids with pleasure. It seemed to her that the mirror had become a waterfall. All she had to do was stretch out her hand and touch the stream. There was something sparkling in the water. They were pebbles of some kind, colorful as a rainbow. The waterfall runs down the rocks and flows into the river. Unusual creatures with green curls and pearls instead of noses float in the river. A tender music spreads over the water flow. The melody is mesmerizing, depriving you of your ability to think straight. Lilothea walks forward and sees the one who is playing. The musician wears a heavy crown with pendants of coral. It is made in the shape of gills. So unusual! He also has gilded wings in his back. They grow straight out of the bluish skin. Or is it the clothes he’s wearing that are azure? She wants to touch him with her hand, but she does not dare. He turns around himself. The musical instrument that made such marvelous sounds turns out to be nothing more than a shell into which he blew like a horn. Out of the shell pours sparkling water. What she thought were wings and crowns are actually gills. They grow right out of his skin. He is not human!

Lilophea awoke when the blue hand closed around her wrist. The peacock had interfered again.

“Don’t sleep, silly,” yelled the Seneschal, who had already delivered the letters and returned. “You might not wake up at all.”

“And I don’t want to!” Why had he plucked her from such a beautiful vision? Yes, it was a little scary, but it felt good, too. How to go back to that dream? The mirror on the wall still reflected a waterfall of iridescent pebbles, but the musician was no longer on the shore. Soon that vision, too, faded like an illusion.

The peacock was already busily packing the jewels back into the casket.

“We must throw it all back into the sea!”

“Don’t dare!” Lilophea shouted at him.

“You will fall asleep in your wonderful crown and what shall I do? I will be thrown out of the palace or given as a snack to the ambassadors.”

“You’ll go back to the great sorceress you served.”

“You know how far it is! And it’s dangerous without an escort. The first privateers like your friend will catch me and sell me into slavery.”

He complained as a merchant who was anxious to have his goods shipped by sea, or as an old courtier who feared he would set sail for a long journey to see his family far off in the world. And this is all coming from a bird! Seneschal must be repeating, like a parrot, what he has heard from his former masters. He wouldn’t have thought of it himself with his tiny peacock head.

“Your old mistress must not have loved you too much to try to bring you back. With her great charms, all she could do was wave her magic wand if she missed you.”

“Oh, what do you know?” The peacock brushed her off.

Lilophea suspected that he had been taken from his old duty station in a cage and with his beak tied up, because he was boring his mistress with his chatter.

I wonder how quickly he would bore her herself to the point where she would start begging her father to sell him? Lilophea was usually patient. She wasn’t easily driven out of her mind. But even she was beginning to think about giving the chatterbox to Morrin.

“By the way, your handsome caper is already hanging around the gallery waiting for you,” the peacock for some reason decided to report this only now, and not immediately when he flew in. “Indeed, a handsome fellow, and what is phenomenal these days, polite!”

“Which gallery is it?” Lilophea was worried. “There are many in the palace.”

“That one is overlooking the sea. There’s only one. All the others face the gardens or the inner courtyards.”

“Thank you for telling me now. You could have waited another hour for him to leave.”

“He won’t,” said Seneschal defiantly. “The boy is very much in love with you. I’m even beginning to respect you, seeing how cleverly you keep young men on the hook.”

“Stop talking!”

“He not only thanked me, he even bowed to me to thank me for delivering your letter to him,” said Seneschal.

Let him talk, Lilophea decided. As long as he keeps his beak shut in front of Morrin. After all, it is from him she can ask about all the secrets of the sea and whether or not there really are unusual creatures living underwater. Morrin spends so much time swimming that he must surely know about them.

Danger from the Sea

A coral necklace was scarlet on the edge of a large marble amphora, from which water flowed in a fountain. Who had left it here? Was it one of the ladies of the court? Lilophea was so insatiably tempted to take it for herself that she couldn’t help herself. The coral felt good on her fingers. It felt as if they had just been taken out of the water. Not surprising, considering that there was a fountain flowing nearby. There were many in the palace, both in the garden and in the corridors, one even in the throne room. It was because of the heat. In a large island nation, surrounded on all sides by the sea, it is perpetually hot. The ambassadors called it a paradisiacal climate, but many locals disagreed with that definition. Yes, there were plenty of palm trees, fruit, and warm lakes to bathe in, but for the sake of grain and cloth, it was necessary to conduct lively trade with overseas powers. Often this was not entirely convenient, and the heat exhausted the inhabitants. A quarter of the treasury was spent on the fountains that were set up in all the streets. The capital even began to be called the City of Fountains after them. Most of them, though, were in the king’s park and palace. Round, cone-shaped, oval, large and small, in the shape of shells, amphorae and spheres, or with sculptures of nymphs pouring water – in general all shapes, kinds and sizes.

Her father recently hinted at the council that he had created so many water portals to his country for nothing. How can a fountain be called a portal? Lilothea knew nothing of politics, so her father’s speeches often seemed rather strange to her. One thing she did know, she’d seen enough of the fountains to know that no one had ever forgotten the necklaces on them.

“Put it back!” The seneschal was already flying after her like an annoying duenna. “You can’t touch things that someone has forgotten.”

“It was just left here for all comers.”

“Dream on, princess!”

“Well, anything can happen,” Lilophea went through the beads like a rosary. The orange and red corals came in all shapes and sizes, just like the fountains in Aquilania.

“Drop it!” The peacock was clearly nervous. “If someone left things behind on purpose, it might be for witchcraft purposes.”

“I don’t believe in witchcraft,” she said, and was instantly struck down as she recalled the marvelous dream of the unearthly creature playing by the waterfall.

“I’m waiting for you… at the bottom of the sea,” his voice echoed in the murmuring of the water. Did the peacock hear it?

The seneschal grudgingly turned his nose up at the fountains and flapped his wings very aggressively.

“When things are thrown about like that, provided they are not old and unwanted, they want to do bad things,” he explained businesslike. “I wonder if you have a rival at Court who went to the witch doctor and told her to put on the necklace and make you ugly by wearing it.”

“And how did she know that I would walk down this corridor without someone else taking the necklace before me?”

“A fool would know. Your father’s office is next door. Only those closest to him go in here.”

“You can’t take a joke.”

“But your rivals, knowing your passion for shiny things, know what to lure you to.”

“One of them would like to go to the harem instead of me,” she joked again.

“What if they do?” The peacock replied seriously.

“They say there’s enough room in harems for everyone.”

“But there is competition there, too.”

“You’ll tell me later,” Lilophea wished she could cover his beak with her fingers. The peacock was flying too high under the arabesques of the ceiling and crackling about very unpleasant things.

“Don’t start talking about the harem and life in it again if you want to remain my friend,” she asked. Then the peacock understood and nodded. There, even he can be negotiated with. One has only to beat for pity.