ONCE UPON 24 TIMES: STORY XVI

Story the Sixteenth:
Princess of Swords (Page of Swords)
Thumbellina

The Lay of Victoria and the Näkki

Victoria.
Like the Queen of the UK in the nineteenth century.
Or rather like the tropical water-lilies who were named after that Queen.
Under the glassy roof of the greenhouse's right wing, she sleeps on a leaf in the Victoria regia pond.
The guard on duty found her in the evening, at nightfall,
curled up in a Victoria regia calyx, when the flower was open.
A little ondine, or freshwater mermaid, the size of the guards' own forearms.
In the daytime, she hides from the eyes of muggles
under one of the leaves that gave her her name, and bubbles with the koi.

(Whisked away by scientists -cryptozoologists- to the State Laboratories outside Gothenburg. The "swallow" is here a kelpie/näkki, whom she similarly rescues and nurses back to health upon hearing the heartbeat. In the end, she swims up the Göta River to Lake Vänern)