The Little Water Sprite

by Otfried Preussler

  The women collected dry reeds and lit a fire. Then they hung a battered pot over the flames and made broth in it. The children ran to and fro between the green houses, some playing hide-and-seek, some just scuffling about, but all of them making a tremendous noise. The men sat a little to one side in the sun, smoking short pipes and telling stories.

  After the meal one of the men fetched the big, hairy dog who had run behind the last house with a ring through his nose. The man tapped a small drum with his fingers, and the big dog got up on his hind legs and danced. He looked very funny shuffling about, growling all the time. When he had danced for a bit he was allowed a rest and got a lump of sugar as a reward. Then he had to get up on his hind legs and dance again.

  Up in the old willow tree the little Water Sprite was fascinated by the strange men and their big dog. He once thought he heard his father calling, but he took no notice. He stayed where he was without answering.

  The sun was low in the sky by the time the strange men caught their horses and harnessed them to the little green houses again. The women and children climbed in, the big dog was put on his chain, there were shouts of “Gee-up!” and then the houses trundled back to the road and away again.

  The little Water Sprite watched until they had disappeared behind the hill. Suddenly he noticed that he was very tired.

  “Where have you been hiding all this time?” Mother Water Sprite asked when he got home. But before he could think of an answer, she struck her hands together in horror and cried, “You look terrible! Why, you’ve got your feet all dry!”

  The little Water Sprite looked at his feet. Had they really got dry while he sat so long in the old willow tree, in the sun and the wind? Oh, he felt so miserable – everything was going round and round in front of his eyes.

  “Take your boots off this minute,” Mother scolded him. “Don’t you know you’ll be ill if you get dry feet? Why didn’t you come home at the right time? Come on now, it’s bed for you! Quick march!”

  She hustled the little Water Sprite into bed and wrapped a wet cloth round his feet. The little Water Sprite closed his eyes and fell fast asleep.

  When Father Water Sprite came home, Mother said, “You really should have warned him that a water sprite can’t stay out in the air all day! How was the poor boy supposed to know? If he becomes ill now it’s all your fault.”

  Father Water Sprite rubbed his chin awkwardly and murmured, “Well, well. Let’s wait and see if he really does become ill first. After all, a water-sprite boy who never comes home with dry feet is not a true water-sprite boy.”

  Rain, Where Are You?

  As a punishment, the little Water Sprite had to stay at home for a few days. It was no use begging and praying.

  “If only I’d really become ill!” he thought crossly. “But I didn’t even catch a cold. Mother is far, far too fussy. If she had her way, I wouldn’t be allowed out again at all.” And he gazed longingly out of the windows of the Water Sprites’ house.

  At last, after almost a week, Father Water Sprite said, “I’ve put in a good word for you with your mother, my boy. It’s raining up above today, so I’ll let you go out again. But you must promise to come home in time.”

  “Oh yes, I promise!” cried the little Water Sprite eagerly. He put his boots on at once. “I really won’t get my feet dry again.”

  “You’d find it hard to get them dry today,” said Father Water Sprite. “The rain will see that you keep wet today.”

  “Rain?” asked the little Water Sprite. “Who’s that.

  “Well, you see, the rain is our best friend,” Father Water Sprite told him. “If it weren’t for the rain there soon wouldn’t be a single water sprite left in the world.”

  “Why not?” The little Water Sprite wanted to hear more, but then he heard his mother coming.

  “It’s time I went out,” he thought, “better make myself scarce quickly.”

  And so he did. Whoosh! he was outside and shooting round the corner of the water sprites’ house. What fun it was darting through the water again! He felt as though he’d been sitting indoors for ages and ages. From sheer joy and full of high spirits, he swam right across the pond and then back again. The terrified fish shrank aside, mud swirled up, waterweeds waved about behind him, and the mussels snapped their shells together in fright.

  “There!” cried the little Water Sprite when he’d let off steam. “Now up to the top.”

  He climbed up, very slowly, because he was out of breath. The water round him grew warmer and brighter. “Eyes shut!” he thought, “or the sun will dazzle me again.” When he came to the surface he opened his eyes cautiously. But the usual painful, glaring light was not there to meet him.

  The sun was nowhere to be seen. The sky was veiled in cloud, and all round the little Water Sprite masses of tiny stones were falling into the water from overhead, as if someone were scattering handfuls of sand over the pond. Every time one of these little stones fell into the water it splashed, and there were so many little stones pattering down that the splashing never stopped.

  The little Water Sprite held his hands out flat to try and catch some of the little stones. He soon discovered that they were really waterdrops. That was great fun, because they tickled him. Sometimes a drop hit him right on the nose, and he thought that was particularly funny.

  All at once he remembered the rain. Rain – his father had told him Rain was their best friend. He ought to go and say good morning to him at once. And thinking Rain was a kind of water sprite or some such thing he decided to go and look for him. “I expect he’s sitting up on the bank somewhere,” he said to himself.

  But when the little Water Sprite climbed on land he got a big surprise. All the things that were usually dry had turned wonderfully wet today – the grass and the stones, the path and the bushes, the flowers, the field, the shrubs. The leaves of the old willow tree were dripping wet, water ran down its trunk, and the bark was dark and shiny.

  The little Water Sprite took a deep breath. How good the air smelt today – it smelt of damp earth, and rotting wood, and plants and wet leaves. It was nice and cool, too. There was a great rushing sound going on all the time. “I wish it was always like this,” thought the little Water Sprite. “I like it this way.”

  Then he thought, “Well, my feet certainly won’t get dry today – no, danger of that. But where can the Rain be hiding?”

  The little Water Sprite looked round him on the bank, but there was no one to be seen, not a sign of life, no one at all. All he could do was creep in among the dripping bushes in case the Rain might have hidden himself there. But however hard he looked, he couldn’t find him – he wasn’t among the bushes, and he wasn’t in the reeds. He decided to try shouting.

  “Hi!” he called through his cupped hands. “Hi, Rain, where are you?”

  He pricked up his ears and listened. But there was no answer, nothing but the rushing sound going on round him.

  Then there came a splashing noise from the pond. It was the noise of someone climbing out of the water.

  “It’s the Rain!” thought the little Water Sprite. “It must be the Rain.”

  He turned round.

  But then was greatly disappointed. It was only his own father, just climbing up the bank in front of him.

  “What on earth are you doing there?” asked Father Water Sprite.

  “What am I doing?” said the little Water Sprite sadly. “I’ve been looking for the Rain. And now I’m calling him, but he won’t answer. I think he must have gone away.”

  The Water Sprite couldn’t help laughing. “Looking for the Rain, are you? Why, you’re standing in the middle of the rain all the time! And that comes,” he added with a grin, “that comes of not waiting for your father to finish what he’s saying.”

  The Wooden Box

  In summer men from the village, big ones and small ones, came to swim in the mill-pond almost every day. It upset Cyprian the carp a lot; he thought they should have stayed at home. But
the little Water Sprite liked to hide in the undergrowth on the bank and watch them bathing.

  Not one of them could swim very well, these men. Some swam like frogs. Others could only do dog-paddle. And they all kept their heads above water while they swam. It was funny to see their red faces puffing and blowing as they swam round the mill-pond.

  From underneath, the swimmers looked even funnier. When the little Water Sprite swam under and turned on his back he could see them floundering overhead like clumsy shadows, standing out against the sunlit surface of the pond. It amused the little Water Sprite to watch their legs and arms threshing frantically about – even so, they only got on very slowly.

  One day, when he was lying on his back in the mud gazing up at the men, a fat black thing suddenly passed overhead. He had never seen it before. The thing swam away over him like a huge fish, but it had no fins or tail. He couldn’t make out how it managed to swim without moving itself. “I must investigate this,” he thought.

  The little Water Sprite swam to the bank and surfaced. Then he saw that this strange thing was a long wooden box. A man was sitting in it. The man was the miller. He had a long stick in each hand, and he was using the sticks to row the wooden box over the pond.

  The little Water Sprite realized that he had already seen the box quite often. In fact, it usually lay in the reeds, and till today he had taken it for some kind of water trough. But now he knew that you could move about on the water in it.

  “Not a bad idea at all,” thought the little Water Sprite. He noticed how the miller moved the two sticks. “I must remember that,” he told himself. For as soon as he had the chance he meant to try a voyage in the wooden box himself.

  About the middle of the next day, when all the men were having dinner in their houses, it seemed a good time.

  The box lay in its usual place in the reeds. It was tied up, but that didn’t matter. The little Water Sprite ­couldn’t actually untie the knot, but he simply pulled the stake out of the muddy bank, tucked it under his arm and climbed in the box.

  But where were the two sticks that the miller had used for rowing? They were nowhere to be seen. The miller must have taken them away with him. It was too bad! How was he to row across the pond if he hadn’t got the sticks?

  The little Water Sprite thought it over for some time. Then he took the stake and tried to row with that. But that didn’t work. He sat down on the side of the box at the back, drove the stake into the shallow water and with its help pushed off once or twice.

  The wooden box thrust its way clumsily through the reeds. The stalks whispered and rattled as they bent aside. After a few pushes the box reached open water. But here the mill-pond was deeper, and soon the little Water Sprite couldn’t touch the bottom. The stake was too short.

  “This is a fine thing!” thought the little Water Sprite angrily. “What use is the box if I can’t get any further? I’ll go and find a longer stick on the bank.”

  He was just about to jump in the water and swim back when he noticed that the box was not standing quite still. A light breeze from the land was blowing over the pond and pushing it gently along. The little Water Sprite was delighted. He ran to the front of the box and leant over the side. “I must see what the mill-pond looks like from on top!” he thought, full of curiosity. “Wonder if I can see old Cyprian down there? Or our house?”

  But however hard he looked, he saw only the blue sky mirrored in the water, the pointed end of the wooden box, and above the point, the head of a water-sprite boy.

  “Yah!” said the little Water Sprite, poking out his tongue at the boy in the water. He wondered what it would be like to have a brother. To make up for not having one he made faces at his own reflection. It was a good game. He must go on another voyage in this wooden box some time soon.

  “Hey there, you young scoundrel!” a voice shouted suddenly from the bank. “Who said you could go gadding about the pond in my boat? Come back this minute!”

  “The miller!” thought the little Water Sprite. He would have to dive in.

  He plunged head first into the pond. As he jumped he rocked the wooden box so that water sloshed in. He was so frightened that he swam right to the bottom of the mill-pond and lay flat on the ground.

  But in a little while curiosity got the better of him again. “How will the miller get his box back?” he wondered. “Shall I go and have a look? I’ll just poke my nose out for a moment, but I won’t let the miller see me …”

  The little Water Sprite swam to the bushes on the bank. In the shelter of their twigs he put his head out of the water. He saw the miller standing on the bank, wringing his hands and calling for help.

  “Help!” he cried. “Help! A little boy has fallen in the water! Help, help!”

  The miller’s boys came running at his cries.

  “Fetch poles!” the miller gasped. “A child has just fallen into the water! He was tipped out of the boat! Quick, quick – hurry, or he’ll be drowned!”

  One of the lads ran back to the mill, the other two waded into the water and pulled the wooden box to land. When the first boy came back with poles all four of them got in the box and went out on the pond.

  The boys searched the bottom with their poles. The miller wiped the sweat from his brow with his handkerchief.

  “Oh dear, oh dear!” he groaned. “Poor boy – he fell in before my very eyes. Oh dear, what a terrible thing!”

  “Who was it?” asked the miller’s boys.

  “I don’t know,” said the miller. “It all happened so quickly. Poor boy! He wore a red cap and yellow boots, if I remember rightly. But what’s the good of talking? We must find him – try again!”

  “Just try!” thought the little Water Sprite gleefully. “Just try! That’ll teach the miller to not let other people use his wooden box!”

  The Sliding Game

  At the lower end of the mill-pond there was a sluice. The sluice had a gate made of wooden beams. When the miller turned an iron handle above this gate it rose inch by inch out of the water. If he turned the other way, then the gate sank inch by inch back into the water.

  “The miller lets out through this gate just the amount of water he needs to drive his mill,” Father Water Sprite had explained to his son. “The sluice gate is important to us. If it weren’t for the gate we should soon be left high and dry.”

  Cyprian the carp was always extremely careful not to go too near the sluice. “Much too dangerous for me,” he confessed. “If the water streaming under, that gate gets hold of you, you’re done for. It sweeps you along whatever you do.”

  “Nonsense!” the little Water Sprite contradicted him one day. “If you’re clever enough it can’t hurt you. What will you give me if I let myself float along with the current?”

  “You wouldn’t do that!” cried Cyprian, alarmed. “You don’t mean it? Float along with the current?”

  “Why not?” said the little Water Sprite. “Do you think I’m afraid? Watch out – here goes!”

  To his friend’s utter terror, he swam straight towards the sluice gate, which was half open. When he felt that he was in the current he let himself drift.

  Poor old Cyprian – all his fins stood on end. “Come back! Come back!” he cried in great distress. “Are you mad, boy?”

  In his dismay he swam after the little Water Sprite and very nearly got caught by the current too. By a piece of luck he just managed to hold back in time.

  “Poor boy, poor boy!” he bubbled miserably behind the little Water Sprite. “His high spirits will be the death of him, poor boy – doesn’t realize what he’s doing!”

  However, the little Water Sprite had a fairly good idea. Unlike Cyprian, he knew the mill-pond from inside and out. Hadn’t he often been exploring up on the bank?

  He knew that behind the sluice gate there was a narrow, open trough with wooden floor and sides. The water shot under the gate and sped down this channel to the mill, where it disappeared with a roar through a wooden partition.

 
; The little Water Sprite didn’t know what would happen if the water swept him along into the mill, and he ­didn’t intend to try.

  He only meant to give his friend Cyprian a bit of a fright. “When I reach the gate,” he thought, “I’ll put my arms out quickly and hold on. Then I can climb comfortably up to the bank and have a good laugh. I’d be a fool if I really let myself get swept away – too dangerous even for me.”

  So while good old Cyprian was quite beside himself with terror for the little Water Sprite, the little Water Sprite was just playing a trick on him.

  Faster and faster the water streamed towards the open gate. The faster it went the better the little Water Sprite liked it. The current swept round him, tugging like a strong wind at his coat and the green hair showing under his pointed cap.

  Watch out – mustn’t go past the gate …

  There it was!

  The little Water Sprite reached out and grabbed the lowest beam. “Got it!” he thought.

  But the beam was much too slippery with the slimy weeds growing on it – it felt like it had been smeared all over with soap.

  The little Water Sprite couldn’t stop. He swept on. He shot under the sluice gate feet first, on his back, through into the wooden trough.

  “Hang on!” he told himself. “Hang on!”

  But what use was that? None at all. It was no use thinking, “If only I’d listened to Cyprian!” either – that wouldn’t help him.

  The little Water Sprite slid along the mill-race like a fish.

  A few green shadows whisked by – they were trees. Some white blurs rushed past overhead – they were clouds. Far away he could hear the roar of the water plunging into the mill, behind the wooden partition.