Drowning is not scary.

Not anymore.

It was scary the first time, the night when I saw the abyss in her eyes.

I reached for her in the biting cold of the lake, helplessly spreading my arms. I refused to believe what was happening even in the last moments of my life. I was still hoping that it was a terrible mistake or a joke, that she would reach out and pull me out of the water since the muddy shore was so close. She would hold me tight and calm me down seeing how wet and scared I was. She would kiss me on the forehead and would explain everything. She was always so good at explaining things. But instead, she jabbed me in the chest with her staff, the dark waters consumed me and the silhouette of my goddess against the huge moon disappeared in the blackness of the pond. Before the lake swallowed me, the entirety of our brief acquaintance flashed before my eyes…

***

The first time I saw her was in the forest. A stranger was picking mushrooms and herbs under tree stumps and deadwood. I would never pick those mushrooms, and the herbs she chose were quite odd, but that was not what caught my attention.

Her royal posture. Her majestic gait. Her commanding eyes. How did she find herself here amidst these rotting stumps and poisonous mushrooms?

It seemed that even the woodlands were admiring its wonderful guest. Birds fell silent as she walked. Small woodland creatures stood still. Even the breeze, playing with leaves and tops of grass, seemed to calm down around her, as if being amazed by her divine beauty. I stood still as well, hidden in the grass under a big bush, I sure knew how to hide well when I needed to. Or, so I thought, before that meeting.

“You don’t need to hide. Come out,” she said in a low velvet voice, without looking back as she kept shuffling withered leaves with her staff. Not expecting this, I was startled and came out, obeying her orders.

“Are you alone here, little one?” asked the stranger, as she turned around.

Only then did I remember my brothers who were hard at work mining diamonds and gold. I hated working in the mine and my brothers were well aware of it. I always spoke the truth even when I did not want it. Sometimes the truth was against me, but there was nothing I could do with it. And I could not keep silent. And sometimes the knowledge appeared out of nowhere. I was enveloped by a wave of enlightenment and there was no doubt of it being true. So I would always voice the next new thought right away. Later on, my fantasies, as my brothers used to call them, turned out to be true. These tricks often caused me troubles, my brothers considered me an odd bird, but they loved me, so they tolerated both my tricks and my unwillingness to work.

“So, you are alone,” she inferred with no answer needed. “As I understand, you are the same little one who never lies and gets in trouble over it?” added the stranger with a hint of a smile.

I cast down my eyes, feeling ridiculous and pathetic under her piercing gaze. Somehow, she knew much more about me than I expected. No one ever cared for my ‘enlightenments,’ but now...

“I need your truth, and especially your fantasies,” she declared in sudden seriousness, and I forgot everything under the hypnotic gaze of her fathomless black eyes. “Come with me and you will feel needed.”

I could not believe my luck. Finally, my whims would be of use to someone! And not just someone, but… I could not think straight and my heart was pounding out of my chest.

Apparently she understood everything from the stupidly joyful expression on my face. She smiled with her eyes and then, without saying another word, walked away. There was nothing left for me to do other than trot along, dying of happiness. A few days later, I had completely forgotten who I was and where I came from…

***

“Look, baby. You are doing very well. Almost perfect. Try again,” she said softly.

I tried hard to wrinkle my eyebrows and imagine what I had been asked about. The palace of our king – where I had never been – a little girl with snow white skin, and the queen, her mother, standing near her.

For several weeks, we had been coming to the shores of this tiny forest lake. This perfectly oval lake was quite far from my lady’s castle, set upon one of the forest covered hills.

An astonishing thing was that the mirror-like lake surface was perfectly visible from the window of her room. When we were up in her castle, I loved to climb up on a stool and admire the mirror lake for a long time. My lady often took me to the pond at nights, always telling me to concentrate on the young princess and her mother, the queen. Meanwhile, she quickly murmured strange, foreign words behind me. I followed her command without question, as if I were spellbound. I never thought of my brothers.

Autumn was close to an end. Leaves were almost gone. The forest was almost silent. The air was still and frigid, as if frightened by the first night frost that would leave behind a thin web of ice on the lake surface in the morning.

My lady said that in a few days the Sun would approach the ‘royal’ thirteenth degree of Scorpio, the degree of merging life and death. She said I was fully prepared and just needed to wait for the right moment to liberate the mother queen. After that, she said, my fate would forever change, as would those of the king, the little girl, and my lady’s. I did not understand much, but I trusted my lady, therefore I was ready to do anything.

That night we headed back to the lake. I could not shake the feeling that this was the last time I would see it. I could foresee the future pretty often, quite often for many days ahead, sometimes in separate episodes or momentary flashes. Yet now all these flashes were taking place before this mysterious thirteenth degree. My ‘fantasies’ did not show me what would happen after it, there was a void and it made me a bit cautious. Had my magical gift of foresight left me?

But beside my lady I felt like I was drugged by a magical potion. I could not have any thoughts anymore and I simply did what was asked of me, finding peace in it.

The full moon came out of the clouds, painting the forest path white with streaks between the tree’s shadows. I began to think that we were not walking at night, instead it felt like broad daylight, only the light was dim and cold for some reason.

Finally, there was a lake behind the bushes. Its still, black surface seemed like a bottomless abyss.

“Go ahead, little one,” the lady said, gently pushing me towards my usual spot. “You are ready, and the time has come. Now we need the queen,” she declared.

I closed my eyes, like I always did, and pictured myself in the palace, in the luxurious royal bedroom. She started her monotonous chant. This time the lines were curt, sometimes her hoarse voice sounded like a beast growl. Finally, my lady cried something sharply. That very moment, the woman I saw in the royal bedroom, began to gasp. Suddenly she sat up in bed, clutching her throat and opened her eyes wide. She tried to gasp for the air like a fish, then went limp and fell on her side.

The man sleeping next to her jumped up and rushed towards her. He grabbed the queen by the shoulders and pulled her up, but she slumped back and а black trickle eased down from the corner of her mouth to her chin.

That same moment the growl behind my back transformed into deafening, screeching laughter, that made my hair rise and a wave of chills run down the back of my neck.

It dawned on me that my lady had just murdered the queen with my help.

I turned around suddenly. At that moment, she pushed me into the lake with unearthly strength. During the fall, which felt like an eternity, I caught a glimpse of the black abyss in her eyes.

… I reached for her in the sizzling cold of the lake, helplessly spreading my arms, I refused to believe what was happening even in the last moments of my life. I was still hoping that it was a terrible mistake or a joke, that she would reach out and pull me out of water since the muddy shore was so close. But instead, she jabbed me in the chest with her staff, the dark waters consumed me and the silhouette of my goddess against the huge moon disappeared in the blackness of the pond.

***

Where am I? What happened to me? Why haven’t I drowned? Or have I drowned?

I was still underwater, although the water was no longer icy. And now I was not sinking. Rather I was rising towards the surface where it seemed to be a bright, sunny day. The water was wonderfully lucid, and the surface was perfectly smooth. Unbelievably smooth. I approached the surface, drawing closer and closer, when it dawned on me that I was standing vertically, which meant… the surface of the water was also vertical!

But how was that possible?

There was no time to figure it out. My nose, eyes, and mouth felt the surface and the next moment, I saw… the room of my mistress! My eyes didn’t fall on the ceiling decorations like one would expect when emerging face up, but rather on the window. That very same window through which I had loved to admire the forest lake. Without thinking, I looked at the familiar meadow. But there was no lake. Instead, there was a yellow-grassed ravine and the remnants of reeds. It was early autumn.

But it had been November!

So almost a year had passed? Or ten years? What was happening to me?

I tried to move, but I could not. I could not even turn my head, I was trapped in this lucid substance, like a fly in amber. All I could do was silently move my lips and roll my eyes above the surface.

It appeared that I was in the middle of the bedroom.

But there had been nothing before!

“Amazing.” I heard a familiar velvety voice behind me. “Simply amazing. It is high time to visit the palace and meet the widower and his wonderful daughter.”

My lady appeared in front of me, as beautiful as she ever was. With her eyes locked on me, she slightly tilted her head to one side, then to the other, fixed her hair and ran her fingers down her cheek. It was as if she didn’t see me but rather… her reflection! The lady smiled with her eyes and said, “Magic Mirror in my hand, who is the fairest in the land?”

As if obeying her order, I immediately closed my eyes and a kaleidoscope of faces flickered through my mind – they were men’s, women’s, children’s faces. There were lots and lots of them. The faces disappeared and there was only one image left, the face of my lady.

There still was no one more beautiful than her and in a strange glassy voice I said, “You, my Goddess, are the fairest in the land.”

She grinned and waved her hand.

I quickly sank back into the depth of the mirror.

The echoes of that damned night came back to me. Before drifting away, for some reason I remembered my dwarf brothers. A brief moment was enough for me to see those dear faces one after another.

Doc. Grumpy. Happy. Bashful. Sneezy. Sleepy. Dopey.

Once upon a time, there was an eighth one, the youngest of you all – Dreamy. And then there were seven.

Drowning is not scary.

Not anymore.