Wet Magic

“I do really think we ought to go,” said Mavis again.

There were farewells to be said – a very loving farewell to the Princesses, a very friendly one to the fortunate Ulfin, and then a little party left the Palace quietly and for the last time made the journey to the quiet Iswater where the King of Merland had so long professed Conchology.

Arrived at this spot the King spoke to the King and Queen of the Under Folk.

“Swallow this charm,” he said, “in equal shares – then rise to the surface of the lake and say the charm which I perceive the Earth children have taught you as we came along. The rest will be easy and beautiful. We shall never forget you, and your hearts will remember us, though your minds must forget. Farewell.”

The King and Queen rose through the waters and disappeared.

Next moment a strong attraction like that which needles feel for magnets drew the children from the side of the Mer King. They shut their eyes, and when they opened them they were on dry land in a wood by a lake – and Francis had a ginger beer bottle in his hand. The King and Queen of the Under Folk must have said at once the charm to recall the children to earth.

“It works more slowly on land, the Astrologer said,” Reuben remarked. “Before we drink and forget everything I want to tell you that I think you’ve all been real bricks to me. And if you don’t mind, I’ll take off these girls’ things.”

He did, appearing in shirt and knickerbockers.

“Good-bye,” he said, shaking hands with everyone.

“But aren’t you coming home with us?”

“No,” he said, “the Astrologer told me the first man and woman I should see on land would be my long-lost Father and Mother, and I was to go straight to them with my little shirt and my little shoe that I’ve kept all this time, the ones that were mine when I was a stolen baby, and they’d know me and I should belong to them. But I hope we’ll meet again some day. Good-bye, and thank you. It was ripping being General of the Sea Urchins.”

With that they drank each a draught from the ginger beer bottle, and then, making haste to act before the oblivion-cup should blot out with other things the Astrologer’s advice, Reuben went out of the wood into the sunshine and across a green turf. They saw him speak to a man and a woman in blue bathing dresses who seemed to have been swimming in the lake and now were resting on the marble steps that led down to it. He held out the little shirt and the little shoe, and they held their hands out to him. And as they turned the children saw that their faces were the faces of the King and Queen of the Under Folk, only now not sad anymore, but radiant with happiness, because they had found their son again.

“Of course,” said Francis, “there isn’t any time in the other world. I expect they were swimming and just dived, and all that happened to them just in the minute they were underwater.”

“And Reuben is really their long-lost heir?”

“They seemed to think so. I expect he’s exactly like an ancestor or something, and you know how the Queen took to him from the first.”

And then the oblivion-cup took effect – and they forgot, and forgot forever, the wonderful world that they had known underseas, and Sabrina fair and the circus and the Mermaid whom they had rescued.

But Reuben, curiously enough, they did not forget: they went home to tea with a pleasant story for their father and mother of a Spangled Boy at the circus who had run away and found his father and mother.

And two days after a motor stopped at their gate and Reuben got out.

“I say,” he said, “I’ve found my father and mother, and we’ve come to thank you for the plum pie and things. Did you ever get the plate and spoon out of the bush? Come and see my father and mother,” he ended proudly.

The children went, and looked once more in the faces of the King and Queen of the Under Folk, but now they did not know those faces, which seemed to them only the faces of some very nice strangers.

“I think Reuben’s jolly lucky, don’t you?” said Mavis.

“Yes,” said Bernard.

“So do I,” said Cathay.

“I wish Aunt Enid had let me bring the aquarium,” said Francis.

“Never mind,” said Mavis, “it will be something to live for when we come back from the sea, and everything is beastly.”

And it was.