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pure mother-of-pearl, that gleamed iridescently underwater. A school of small
blue fish shot toward them through the water, or air, or whatever it was that
surrounded them, and went into a sort of elaborate dance around the
golden-haired girl.
"Oh, you!" said the girl to them playfully, "you knew I'd be right back. I've
brought the most beautiful man in the world. And he's going to stay with us
forever and ever. Won't that be wonderful?"
It occurred to Jim that it might have been nice if she had stopped to consult
him about staying down where he was now, forever and ever. He could see
drawbacks that could make this far from the most wonderful thing to happen to
him.
Aside from everything else he had things to do up on land. Not that the girl
wasn't breathtakingly lovely. Jim had thought once upon a time that Danielle
was possibly the most beautiful woman he had ever seen in his life. But this
little creature radiated something beyond ordinary beauty. He could no more
keep himself from being attracted to her than he could release her grip on his
wrist that had brought him down here.
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The girl was still talking to her small fish.
"I would never leave you for any real length of time, you know that," she was
telling them. "Leave my dear little ones? Never! You know I love you and
everything in this lake and the lake itself. It's just that I couldn't resist
this magnificent man I found up on the bank. You can't blame me for that, can
you?"
By this time they were well within the palace-like structure, entering a room
walled with mother-of-pearl and draped, padded, and furnished with
gossamerlike fabrics in all shades of blue andgreen, that seemed to shimmer in
the underwater light. The chairs were not chairs so much as large, soft,
multicolored lounging platforms. But the central piece of furniture in the
room if it could be called furniture was a great, opulent structure, like a
round bed with no head- or footboard, but with mounds of fluffy pillows piled
high at one point on the edge of it.
It was to these pillows that the girl towed Jim. He could not be sure whether
they were actually walking now, or floating, swimming, or simply skimming
through this strange, water-colored, breathable atmosphere. At any rate they
came eventually to rest against the pillow piles. Here she released Jim, so
that he sank into the pillows. They were softer than anything he had ever
touched before, so that he went half out of sight into them, in a semi-propped
up, stretched-out position.
"Now," said the golden-haired girl, sitting down cross-legged on the surface
of the bed or perhaps just a few inches above it it was hard for Jim to tell.
Although the water-air atmosphere that surrounded them seemed transparent,
there was a sort of shimmer to everything that made exact details uncertain.
"What would my dearest love like first?"
"Well, er, if you don't mind," said Jim, "some explanations."
She looked at him, her mouth in a perfect O of astonishment.
"Explanations?"
"Yes," said Jim, "I mean,it's nice of you to call me the handsomest man in
the world. But anybody knows I'm not. In fact if anything I'm one of the& "
He searched for a word.
"One of the most unhandsomest you're likely to meet."
"Why, you are not!" said the girl. "But, even if you were, I'd still love you
just the same, with the same great passion. I am a person of great passions,
you know."
"I see," said Jim.
"Indeed, yes," said the girl earnestly. "All we elementals actually there's
only just a few of us but all of us, in any case are beings of great, great
passion!"
"Oh, I believe you," said Jim.
"Yes." She sighed softly. "Foolish people call us water fairies. But that's
just because they don't understand the difference between a mere water fairy
and an elemental. An elemental is something far, far finer than a mere water
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fairy. Water fairies are merely fairies that live in the water. They have a
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