He pushed aside some bushes, and there were the horses, waiting patiently, pulling up the few blades of grass they could find. Grass had a hard time growing where there was so little direct sunlight.
"What are we going to find here? It's a forest " Leopold asked incredulously. "There's no one out here!"
"That's where you are wrong, and that is why we'll find something. It's a forest. It's The Tra — " He stopped himself from saying "The Tradition" in time. "It's the way things work. Forests are full of magical things. The bigger the forest, and the more powerful the kingdom's Godmother is, the more magical things will be in it."
Leopold took up his horse's reins and fitted one boot into the stirrup. "Well if we find that frog who says he's a Prince in here, I am not bringing him back. I refuse to add to the competition."
They mounted, Siegfried cheerfully, Leopold impatiently, and Siegfried led the way deeper in.
They passed by the ruins of a cottage; it had once been carved and painted in a manner that was like nothing he had ever seen before. The door was off its hinges and on the ground, there were holes in the roof, and most of the trim had fallen off. They went inside and looked it over curiously, but could find nothing to tell who had lived there or what had happened to her. Her, Siegfried was fairly sure, because of the tattered remains of black dresses and skirts in a chest. Whoever it was had done a lot of baking, for there was an outsize oven in the yard. Maybe that accounted for why what was left of the walls and roof looked like a fancy wedding cake. It almost looked as if something else had been fastened over the wood, but whatever it had been was long gone.
"That place's almost morbidly cheerful," Leopold noted, as they left the cottage behind. "I think if I lived in a house that looked like you could eat yourself sick on it, I'd have to kill myself after a while." The path emerged from the woods and came out beside a pond. "Maybe that's what happened to the owner. She couldn't stand it anymore and jumped into her own oven. And why would you need a cottage to look like that out where no one could see it but you, anyway?"
"Maybe she used to be a baker in the city," Siegfried suggested.
If the cottage had been morbidly cheerful, this pond was just morbid. Despite the fact that the sun was high in the sky, there was no sign of sunlight here — it might have been twilight, not almost noon. It was surrounded by weeping willows that dripped their boughs morosely into the water, and a mist hung over most of the open area and wreathed in among the trees. The surface was covered with lily pads, but there were no lily flowers among the flat green leaves.
There was also no sound. Not a frog, not a bird, not even the plop of a fish.
Siegfried sensed something that he didn't like about the place. Something dark and dangerous. His skin began to crawl, and he felt the distinct urge to get away from there as quickly as he could.
And at that moment, the mist on the far side parted to reveal a beautiful, golden-haired girl, sitting with her legs dangling in the water, combing out her tresses. Except for the hair, she was absolutely nude. That was when Siegfried recognized exactly what the peril was.
"Now that's more like — " Leopold exclaimed, his eyes lighting up.
And Siegfried grabbed his friend's horse's reins, pulling them out of Leopold's hands, and spurred his own horse, plunging both of them into the green-scented forest gloom again. They needed to get away from there fast. Before she saw them and started singing.
"Siegfried!" Leopold snatched in vain for the reins, his face going red with anger. "Siegfried, what are you doing? What's wrong with you? That was a woman back there!"
"No it wasn't," Siegfried said shortly.
"Of course it was! I saw her with my — " Abruptly, Leopold remembered where he was, in the midst of a forest full of magic, and his mouth shut with a snap. Siegfried looked back at him, saw his face change and allowed the horses to slow. "If it wasn't a woman, then what was it?"
"That was a Nixie," Siegfried told him severely. "They're water spirits. They sing, and they like to take human lovers."
"They do?" Leopold grabbed for the reins again, eager to get back to the sensuous, nude spirit.
"They like to take them underwater." Siegfried held on to the reins and waited for that to sink in.
"They like to...oh. Um."
"So unless you've suddenly gotten the ability to breathe underwater..." He let go of the reins.
Leopold gathered them up again with a sigh.
"So far, we haven't found anything I could take to Rosamund," Leopold grumbled. "Can we go back to the city now?"