Thomelisa Taken, Pt XI

(For tonight's entry I ran into a problem with my source material.  I generally try to take what Andersen has written, and make it reasonably "realistic"- researching what kinds of toads might actually be found in the faux-Southern-Denmark climate I'm setting the story in, the actual migration patterns of swifts, etc- to sort of ground things.  But sometimes there are straight-up contradictions that need to be resolved.  Andersen talks about the Toad Mother and her son having put Thumbelina on a lily pad in the middle of a stream- but in researching lilies, I discovered that they just don't grow in the middle of streams; their roots are floating, so they'd be washed away by the current.  They do, however, grow in ponds, which meant I had to dive down a rabbit hole of how ponds and streams interact to come up with a reasonable reconciliation.  Which I have not yet done to the point that satisfies me, but hey- just keep writing!  That's what rewrites are for...)

***

And just like that, my relief vanished.

“Let me see if I understand you,” I said quietly.  “You’re saying that my daughter hasn’t necessarily escaped at all- she just isn’t where you left her.”

Ofrse, not fooled by my even tone, realized her mistake immediately.  “Please Skovy, please don’t-”

“Show me the stalk,” I said.  “And I may consider leaving him in one piece.”  She nodded her head jerkily.

“This way,” she croaked, and led me slightly downstream from the so-called stateroom I’d plucked her son from, to a place where a large pond had been formed.

“It gets surprisingly deep,” she said.  “You may need to swim.  Perhaps if you-”

“I can swim with one hand just fine, thank you,” I said. “Show me.”

Ofrse slipped easily into the water, and I shrugged off my pack, then followed.  She swam immediately, but for me, even as short as I was, the was only to my knees.  I felt the current of the stream tug briefly at my trousers, but was soon past it, and into the wide, still pond.  It was here that the bottom dipped further still, until I was wading up to my thighs, then hips, and finally my chest.  Invisible plants tangled and clutched at my ankles, so I shook them off and began to swim, keeping my head above the water- and Ofrse’s son clutched carefully in my left hand.

Ofrse led me to the middle of the pond, near a large cluster of lilypads.  They were a dark and glossy green in the midday sun, and a few sported waxy-looking flowers of deep salmon, blushing peach, or pale yellow.  It would have been enchanting, under any other circumstance.

Ofrse clambored up onto a particularly large lily pad, and I paused where I was, letting my feet settle back down in the silt.  “There,” she said.  “Just to your left.  That is where the pad was.  We chose one far enough away from the others that it would… that it would act like a little island for her.”

An island, I thought to myself, so that she couldn’t run along the tops of the other pads to the shore, and freedom. Nevermind that it would have put her on the wrong shore- away from home.  But Elisa would have had no way of knowing that.  This would be like a foreign country to her.  She would not have made her break for freedom until she’d had a better plan than “get in the water and start swimming”.

“Who chewed the stalk?”  I asked at last.  Had they sought to free her, or simply to take her?

“I don’t know,” Ofrse said.  I squeezed her son and he let out a strangled croak.

“I don't’ know!  I swear I don’t know!” she cried, and I noticed her aura begin to build again.

“I believe you,” I said, and relaxed my grip.  “But that means I must find someone who does.”

The toad in my hand began to squirm again, patting at my fingers with one webbed forefoot, and flinging the other out spasmodically.  I frowned.  I hadn’t squeezed him hard enough to do damage…

“He wants you to look in the water!” Ofrse shrieked.  “He wants you to look down!”

I obliged him- and saw the faintest glimmer of a fin disappear beneath the shadows cast by the lilypads.