Part 1 (1/2)

WATER SONG.

A Retelling of ”The Frog Prince”

BY SUZANNE WEYN.

”Why am I crying? I'll tell you. My golden ball fell down the well, and I've lost it now forever.”

”I will help you,” said the frog. ”But what will you give me if I bring back your plaything?”

-”The Frog Prince,” by the Brothers.

Grimm, as retold by Naomi Lewis.

”... British forces continued to push the Germans back a few hundred yards at a time toward the high ridge at Pa.s.schendaele. The Germans fought back with mustard gas, a notoriously slow-acting chemical agent that maimed or killed enemy soldiers via severe blisters on the skin or internally if breathed... . The British reached Pa.s.schendaele on October 12 during a driving rain that turned the landscape to impenetrable mud.”

-World War I, History SparkNotes.

Breathe. Just breathe.

-”Breathe (2AM),” Anna Nalick.

PROLOGUE.

Belgium, April 1915.

”What a fool I was!” Emma Winthrop muttered, furious at herself as she stared down at Lloyd Pennington's handsome face in the photo in her opened locket. She sat on a stone wall outside her family's estate with the two halves of the locket open in her hand. When the locket lay open like it did now, it resembled an orange that had been cut in two with its halves side by side. When closed, it was a perfect golden ball worn on a slender gold chain.

She had taken this photograph of him herself and placed it inside her locket. At the time, it had seemed wildly sophisticated to carry a picture of a good-looking boyfriend-one she'd often sneaked out to meet after dark. Back at the Hamps.h.i.+re Girls' Boarding School she used to kiss the photo of Lloyd each night before shutting off her lamp in the dormitory room she shared with four other girls.

The locket had originally belonged to her great-great-grandmother and had been handed down to her great-grandmother and then to her grandmother and to her mother, who had given it to her. Sometimes it annoyed her when she slept, its round surface digging into her chest, but not even that could compel her to remove it. Back then she'd wanted Lloyd's picture beside her heart at every moment.

How she'd missed him! Dreamed of the day they would be together again. All these months the thought of him had been her only consolation.

And then, yesterday, she'd received a letter from him. A farmer friend of Claudine, the housekeeper, had brought it by. Mail was so rare these days. Hardly any got through enemy lines. She hadn't received word from anyone back in London for nearly five months.

Trembling, nearly weeping tears of joy, she'd ripped the letter open.

But his words slowly filled her with stunned coldness. He'd said that rumors were spreading that her mother had run away from her father, had gone home to her family estate, taking Emma along with her. It was causing quite the scandal in their social circle. No one expected this shocking news from such a socially prominent and respectable family. As a result, his own parents had strongly expressed their wishes that he break off his relations.h.i.+p with Emma. While this pained him, he understood their point. He had to think of his parents and their place in society. He had to consider his future law career and his possible political future, as well.

Finally, he got to his point: It was perhaps better if they didn't see each other anymore.

He apologized for telling her this in a letter. He'd have preferred to tell her in person, but since she was now right on the Western Front of the Great War he hadn't any idea when she planned on returning.

In conclusion, he hoped Emma would understand. It was regrettable, but one had to be realistic and deal with society on its own terms. It was the way of the world, after all.

She remembered his words as she continued gazing down at his photo. How she'd adored him! Now she couldn't stand to see Lloyd smirking at her for one more second! The smile she'd once found so irresistibly attractive now seemed merely smug and self-satisfied.

She swore under her breath in French, a habit she'd picked up in the girls' dormitory at the Hamps.h.i.+re School. ”You imbecile!” she snarled at his picture. ”My mother hasn't run away. She hasn't returned home because she's dead!”

Snapping the two halves of the golden ball shut, Emma hopped from the wall and strode purposefully to the old stone well several yards away. ”To h.e.l.l with you, Lloyd Pennington, you lying two-face!” she shouted as she hurled the locket. She'd always had a strong throwing arm and acute aim. As intended, the locket sailed into the well.

CHAPTER ONE.

The Glowing Green Sky.

Emma looked up sharply when the German plane appeared. The sunset of pink and gold filtering into the room had drawn her to the high, arched window. The brilliant quality of the light, so vibrant and yet still, poised between day and night, filled her with a quiet sadness.

But the unexpected appearance of the plane jolted her from her melancholy, diverting her into a state of hyperattentiveness.

Sometimes a lone plane like this was only spying on the Allied troops, reporting back their numbers and position in the field. At least that was what she'd read in the newspapers. In minutes, though, another plane appeared over the rolling fields below, first as a dot in the sky and then slowly coming into clearer focus. She could just barely make out the high whine of the planes' propellers.

Two planes was not a good sign. It meant they were bombers, not reconnaissance planes. These fighter planes always showed up first, and the strategy seemed to be to bomb from above before attacking with ground troops.

Emma sighed bitterly. It was amazing how much she'd learned about war these last few months. Back at the Hamps.h.i.+re School when she had studied art, music, mathematics, English literature, German, French, and Latin, she'd never have suspected that months later she would become a student of war.

Nothing was more important than war now. In fact, everything else seemed almost ridiculously irrelevant. Back in London she'd pored over the papers, which were full of the war-troop locations; whether they were winning or losing; what nations had joined the fight.

In Belgium she'd learned about war firsthand, seen much more than she'd ever expected or wanted to know. She'd seen things she longed to forget.

Had her parents really thought the Great War wouldn't touch them; that she and her mother could safely visit their family estate in Belgium? How shortsighted that decision now seemed; though back in early September of 1914, her father had been certain all the fighting would be concentrated on the Russian border-the Eastern Front-and Belgium's neutrality would be respected.

He couldn't have been more wrong.

The insectlike buzz of the plane grew louder. Surely they weren't going to bombard the village of Ypres again. What could possibly be left there that hadn't already been blasted into rubble?

Lately she drifted from one empty day to another here in the huge, rambling estate with only old Claudine and Willem, the manor's caretaker couple, there to help her. Thank G.o.d they'd stayed on. If they'd left, Emma knew she wouldn't have been able to cope at all.

She'd been stuck there for nearly seven months, since last September. The seventeenth-century manor house sat right on the line between the Allied French, English, Dutch, Canadian, and Belgian troops and the enemy, the Austrians and Germans. Both sides had dug in to filthy trenches on either side of the fighting. She was right on what had come to be known as the Western Front of the Great War.

The mansion sat on several miles of elevated cliff known as The Ridge. It gave her a perfect view of the trench-torn fields below. It was just like her to be stuck in the thick of things, right smack in the middle of trouble. Only, unlike the schoolgirl mischief she'd gotten into back at the Hamps.h.i.+re School, this was a mess to end all messes-a disaster on a worldwide scale. Some people said it was the end of the world.

It felt like the end of the world.

She and her mother should have gone home right away, but then a week later, the German hydrogen vessels, the zeppelins, flew over England and dropped missiles. No one had expected that!