It was once, on these islands...
...that deep within the Glades there lived a tribe of sisters, the rusalka, eternally young maidens who dragged men down to dance with them in the deep. The wildest groves and stillest ponds they filled with the most beautiful songs on this or any Plane-- that is, if we are to believe the lucky few who evaded their grasp and lived to tell the tale.
One day, a young Lord pursuing game found himself lost, deep, deep among the mangrove trees. And a wandering rusalka saw him from the deep. She thought at first to hunt him… but something awoke in her. Love, perhaps. Maybe even… a soul.
The lovesick rusalka flew immediately-- to the darkest corners of the swamp, under the oldest, most haggard tree… for there she knew she would find Jezibaba, the Voice-Catcher, Queen of the Hags. She told Jezibaba of her love for the young Lord, and Jezibaba cackled. She offered a deal:
“There is no place for a rusalka in the mortal realms. But if you truly believe you belong there with your so-called love, then I shall make you a mortal girl. Simply trade me your voice, and swear never to return to the glades you call home. For there is no place in the realm of the Hag for a mortal girl, either.”
The rusalka agrees, the deal is done, and the next thing she knows she awakes on the shore, near the mansion of the young Lord. But it was not to be. For bewitched as the Lord is by her beauty, he is already betrothed to a fair princess from a distant land. The rusalka-- if you will call her that which she no longer is-- used every trick she knew to tempt the Lord into her arms. But in losing her voice, she had lost her power. She had caught his eye, but never won his lasting love.
Finally, the night before the royal wedding was to occur, she killed the foreign princess and ran, out of instinct and grief, to the glades from whence she came. As her pact with Jezibaba waned, her mortal body began to waste away and fall apart.
I cannot say I know what caused the Lord to chase her. Vengeance? Confusion? Perhaps-- some twisted form of love? But chase her he did, nearly to the edge of Jezibaba’s swamp. The Queen of the Hags appeared in a flash of lightning, barring the rusalka from going further. She held out a dagger.
“You regret having wished for his world? Kill him, then, if you want this life back. Kill him, kill him if you want to live!”
Whatever flicker, whatever spark of a soul she nearly gained cries out in anguish as she takes the dagger. She embraces her Lord, draws him into a kiss, and drives the knife through his back and into his heart. And as he dies, that mortal soul leaves her body and vanishes, alongside his, into the planes beyond. She sinks into the swamp, once again becoming the beautiful, soulless rusalka that she always was.
They say she and her sisters haunt the glades to this day. And if you listen closely on nights when the moon is bright, you may hear the wordless, keening wail of the lone rusalka who dared to dream of dancing in the mortal realm.
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