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“My darling, Clara.” Queen Maren sat atop a jagged rock at the opening of the cave, the moonlight behind her throwing her

into an even more ethereal glow. The Water Kingdom may have no longer required a ruler, but she was still very much a queen,

and Clara felt her legs shake as she instinctively bowed low.

“I was wondering when you would come to pay your respects.”

“I thought... Maurits thought you dead.”

The queen’s sharp eyes momentarily went hazy.

“My son thought I was dead, did he? He ought to have known better.” She tipped her head back and laughed.

“As if a dire whale would be enough to topple me. You find me alive and powerful as ever. Did you think the water would reject its rightful queen? Thade might have taken the throne, and the dire whales dismantled my court, but I am the water, and so long as the moon sits in the sky, I shall be in every pulling tide, every traveling current.”

The queen was not telling the entire truth. If the dire whales had spared her, it was not because she was powerful or they

harbored some deep respect for her. There had been a deal made, some other bargain struck, though Clara could not begin to

think of what it might be.

She doubted that the queen would tell her, so instead she asked, “And Thade?” The memory of Thade facing off against the dire

whale was still sharp in her mind, the awful moan, the creaking jaw.

The lingering smile vanished from the queen’s lips. “My poor, troubled son. He was always so headstrong, so quick to be moved

to passion. And can you blame him? He could see far and clearly, and felt every injustice in the world like a stone on his

shoulders.” A cloud passed over the moon, shifting the light, and the queen shook off the mist that had filled her eyes. “But

you did not come to talk to me about that son. Tell me, Clara, why have you sought an audience with me? Surely you have your

every heart’s desire now that you are granted leave to live. I see you on land, painting and living a life of freedom. I see

you on the beach, wrapped around my son as if you were the only two beings in the world.”

Clara knew she would not have another chance. She swallowed, the memory of Maurits’s heart beating under her ear strengthening

her resolve.

“You know what I want,” she said, her voice only breaking a little at the end.

“Of course I do. But what I do not understand is why you come to me for it. You have a wish in your possession. You do not need me to make it come true.”

The wish burned in her pocket, begging to be used, to release its magic. Maurits would have his form returned to him, and

they could live on land together as man and wife. Her fingers itched to curl around the stone.

“How happy you could be,” Queen Maren crooned.

Clara withdrew her hand from her pocket. She shook her head. “No, I will not use my wish on that.”

The queen did not so much as blink, but Clara thought she saw a flicker of surprise behind those shrewd eyes.

“There is something else that I want. I wish... I wish for the lost children to find peace, wherever they may be, and whatever

that may look like.”

It was a dangerous wish. It did not ask a specific thing, and the magic could twist and distort her words into something she

did not mean. But her intention was pure, and that was all that she could offer.

“I might have told you that such a wish was unneeded. You had only to look around you, and you would see for yourself that

the children do not need your help, never needed it.”

“I don’t understand.”

With a little tsk , Queen Maren bid Clara follow her outstretched finger which was pointing at the ceiling of the cave. The shimmering lights

had returned, illuminating the cave in a soft green glow.

“I am a mother, Clara,” the queen said, her voice the gentlest Clara had ever heard it. “A mother first, and a queen second.

Did you truly think I would harm children?”

“I... I don’t understand.”

“Children, whether born of man or egg, on land or water, belong to the world. To kill a child would be the gravest of crimes. The burghers might have thought they were sending the children to their deaths and justified it with their greed and progress, but I would never allow such a thing.”

A strange feeling—not quite hope, but close, began to spread through Clara.

“I told you, children deserve a world of beauty, an eternal childhood where there is no fear or pain. I gave them that.” She

lifted a long arm draped with seaweed and gestured again to the damp walls of the cave.

Clara followed her line of sight. Then, slowly, the lights began to shift, losing their indistinct haze, and separating into

glowing orbs.

Voices. A thousand voices of children began to ring through the cave. Some were laughing, some excitedly chattering in lisping

tones that overlapped each other. Clara’s neck grew stiff as she watched the orbs dancing and playing, transforming the cave

into something cozy and warm.

She turned back to the queen. “But they are not alive then, not truly.”

“You have a very narrow, human understanding of what it is to live,” the queen told her.

“But I saw Fenna,” Clara protested. “She appeared at my window, a terrible vision of pain and rot.”

The queen tilted her head. “And you believe what your eyes told you?”

“I heard her as well.”

“Fenna has been here with me these thirteen years, content and safe. What you saw was no more than a nightmare, perhaps a

manifestation of your own guilt.”

As she spoke, one of the lights separated itself from the rest and drifted toward Clara like a feather on the breeze. As it

descended, it grew until a glowing silhouette of a young girl appeared.

“Fenna?”

She stood before Clara, and though she was more light than line, Clara could make out her crooked front tooth, her plaits of red hair, and the wooden clogs on her feet.

She looked just as she had that morning all those years ago when they had played by the canal.

Clara reached out to touch her friend, but her hand passed through the light, leaving her skin tingling and warm. “Fenna! Wait!”

Then the spirit was running ahead, laughing, until she was no more than a dot of light again, swirling and dancing.

Clara stood for a long moment, breathing in the salt and brine, watching the orb until she could no longer distinguish it

from the rest. Somewhere up there must have been a little boy named Frits, hardly more than a baby when he had been taken.

How could she grieve someone she had never met, never known? But she found herself overcome with a bitter sorrow that she

had been robbed of her brother, someone who might have made her childhood a little less cold and lonely.

“So,” the queen said, her voice softly cutting into her thoughts, “will you forgive my son for the part he played in taking

the children?”

Clara finally turned away from the lights. “Did he know what their fate was? Or like the burghers, did he too think they were

going to their death?”

“You have seen my gentle son. Do you think that he would agree if they were to die?”

“No,” Clara said quietly. “No, I do not think he would.” Clara had pledged to Maurits that she trusted him, and now she felt

some last lingering vestige of hurt and wondering lifted from her heart. He was innocent, truly innocent.

“You will meet them again, someday,” the queen continued. “Moon willing, we all shall. And until then, you can rest knowing

that they are safe and living in a world more beautiful than you could possibly imagine.”

The tears that sprang to Clara’s eyes took her by surprise.

Hadn’t she shed enough tears for her friend, for the brother she had never known?

She had thought them gone, an end to a chapter she would never revisit.

In the march of life, they had left her near the beginning, and she had accepted that she would never see them again.

But life was not a straight line to be traversed; it was a never-ending, all-encompassing journey that would take her full circle to the ones she loved, again and again.

“You still have your wish,” the queen said gently.

“But how?” Clara asked, letting the last of her tears dry on her cheeks. “I wished for the children.”

“You wished for something that was already fulfilled, and so I granted you one more in its place.”

“Then you could grant Maurits his dearest desire. You could give him what he wants.”

“This is true. But I have spent my life teaching and managing my son, to his great displeasure. If I am not to meddle in his

affairs, then he must learn to solve his own problems. If you want to grant him his full powers, then you are at leisure to

use your own wish to do so.”

“Very well,” Clara said. The moon had slid behind a cloud, and the only light came from the gentle glow of the children’s

spirits dancing on the cave walls. “There is one thing I would ask of you, though it is not a wish.”

The queen inclined her head slightly in invitation to continue.

“Your blessing, for Maurits and me.”

“You do not need my blessing,” the queen said, her brow rising slightly.

“But I want it all the same. Your blessing, and your word that you will not interfere with our lives.”

The queen held Clara in her unflinching gaze for what felt like an eternity.

“You are not who I would have chosen for my son,” she said at last. “If you want me to be glad that he has taken for his mate a human, and one that has brought so much trouble at that, then no, I cannot say that I am glad. But, it is his life, and his choice. He is my son.” There was a brittleness in the word that gave way to something almost tender underneath.

“He is my son,” she repeated, “and I would see him happy. If you are what makes him happy, then so be it.”

It was not the blessing that Clara might have hoped for, but even she understood what it must have cost the once-great queen

to give. So she bowed her head and gave her thanks.

“What of you?” Clara asked, her curiosity making her grow bold. “What will you do now that there is no kingdom to rule?”

The queen looked surprised. “Why, do I need a throne to fulfill my duties to my kingdom? Do I need a crown and a staff? For

all his faults, perhaps Thade’s biggest folly was that he saw his reign through the same lens as the humans see their own

dynasty on land. The Water Kingdom is not a land to be taken in hand and ruled over. We are merely stewards, guests passing

through. I need no castle, no divine mandate to rule. The dire whales know this,” she continued. “Maurits may think that they

acted because of a bargain he struck, but they knew that so long as I was on the throne that the Water Kingdom would not expand,

would not disrupt the precarious balance. It was Thade’s brief and disastrous rule that brought them out and forced them into

action.”

She considered the pearl ring on her finger. “To thrive, the kingdom must work in balance with those from the land and air

so that such disasters are never repeated. There can be no more children harmed in the name of progress.”

Silence settled in the cave once more. There was no reason to linger, no more that the queen could offer her, so without a

backward glance, Clara left behind the eternal children, and their queen with no kingdom.