And the very air vibrated to the voices of a thousand and more frogs.
ChuMana draped herself along one of the fallen columns. She might have been sunning but for the lack of sun. Her face was neither relaxed nor severe, neither satisfied nor discontent. It was a complete blank. She listened without interest to the songs of the frogs, all mournful and hectic with a smattering of sullen “Graaaups!” thrown in for emphasis.
ChuMana was mistress of this demesne, and she understood every word of the songs being croaked around her. Frogs have limited interests (there were a few toads scattered about too, whose interests were more limited still). They tended to harp on the same theme:
“Kiss me. Graaaup! Kiss me. Graaaup!”
It was a bit monotonous. Yet ChuMana’s mental state remained tranquil. As life was, so it should remain. Consistency was the chief end of all aims—a steady, forever sameness.
Thunder rumbled overhead, threatening yet unlikely to follow through with its threat. ChuMana did not smile, nor did she frown. She merely slid a little farther along her column, stretching herself out to a glorious extent. The nearest frogs shuddered and ceased singing when this movement caught their blinking, bulbous eyes. But they quickly forgot what they’d seen and resumed their song: “Kiss me. Graaup!”
No one, ChuMana thought, had a collection to rival hers.
The thought had scarcely passed the innermost recesses of her mind—so deep inside that it was more a warm vagueness than actual thought—when the shudder came.
It was a shudder like an earthquake through the air. Someone pushed at the threads of enchantment that every Faerie queen spins on the borders of her demesne. Whoever pushed, pushed hard. ChuMana slowly raised her head and focused her lidless eyes on the direction from which this assault came. Her movements were as gentle as marsh weeds waving underwater.
Another push. Another shudder.
Then she heard it, on the edge of her lands. Someone called in a voice that burst like sunlight into the gloom. “Oi! ChuMana, m’dear! Are you about, then?”
“Viper’s bite!”
Her equilibrium shattered. The sameness broke into shivering pieces. Muscles beneath ChuMana’s skin quivered as, in a single, fluid movement, she slipped from her column and submerged herself in the swamp murk. She swam with uncommon grace, gliding her great bulk between scrag-grass, hillock, and column bases while innumerable frogs fled before her, still singing after kisses. She followed the shuddering that shook her enchantments with every inward step the intruder took.
She knew who it was.
She herself had given him entrance to her world long ago. Memories flooded back, unwanted visions that had no place in this heavy, languorous place of dampness and forlorn song.
How his singing had charmed her! She should have let him taste her poison, but instead, she had fallen for his song, the little devil! And when he left her demesne, oh, how she had sighed for his return! Monster. Bewitcher. What a fool she had been to leave the safety of her swamp and pursue him into the wild Wood.
The water was black before her eyes, but she followed her nose and that sixth sense of magic that led her unquestioningly forward. The Mistress of the Swamp hissed out curses as she swam. Then she smelled that familiar scent. A scent associated with bindings, with slavery.
The poet. Her savior.
Eanrin stood up to his knees in mud, cursing the heavy sky above him. Whenever he tried to step on what appeared to be a patch of solid ground, it turned out to be no more than an illusion, and he sank once more, oozing mud slurping at his sandals and soaking the edge of his cloak, all this while burdened with the weight of the mortal girl slung over his shoulder. Her long hair trailed down his back, the endmost tendrils collecting swamp refuse behind him.
“Sweet ChuMana!” Eanrin called, unaware of the serpent’s proximity. “Do be nice and come greet your old friend!” He swore again, lifting one foot and shaking it, then obliged to put it back in the water before he could lift and shake the other. What a muck he was becoming!
“ChuMana, Lumé smite you, do come out. I have no wish to venture any farther into your demesne; no more than you wish to have me! But you owe me, and you know it. Don’t think you can thwart the laws of Faerie. I’ve come to demand my dues, and I won’t leave until I’ve seen—mrrrreeeowl!”