Tádik stood on the black-violet Daugava’s riverbank, a flower crown clutched to his chest.

A hopeful speck in woven, birchbark shoes, deep in a moonlit Baltic forest making the most of the brief bloom of summer. Rustling and croaking, trilling and growing, spreading and calling. Reaching into the thin podzolic soil like it had real potential, like it was the blackest mulch.

And Tádik, likewise, was an optimist. And he’d done all the Midsummer things right, besides.

Kept his stomping feet on trail and off the dense carpets of wild strawberries. Bowed to all the burial mounds he passed, lush summer grass covering their swelling bellies like a hide. Wove a worthy Midsummer crown, soft with yellow daisies and white linden, heavy with oak leaves, and emanating a halo of heady, honeysuckle green.

In fact, Tádik reckoned, the only thing he’d failed to manage were his own expectations. He’d spent weeks searching for that black-eyed girl, that cloak thief. All for naught. But, if he couldn’t find love on Midsummer night, then when?

***

Undiné heard Dinner before she saw it.

Midsummer was always good hunting for a näkk. When tender peasant girls, all rosy cheeks and yearning hearts, offered flowers to starlit lakes and rivers. Asking the wild, northern currents to set them on a course toward their true love.

The silly, lovesick girls. Nothing but trouble waited in a river at night, thought Undiné as she listened to Dinner’s eager, heavy, juicy tread. Then sank to the river bottom, to lie in wait.

Dinner stepped into the Daugava’s shallows, stirring a silky cloud of silt.

Slender, slinking strands of water milfoil wrapped themselves round Dinner’s meaty ankles.

Dinner offered a flower crown to the river and it floated straight into Undiné’s waiting arms.

She grinned like a pike.

This was her favorite part, the shouts, the squirts, the flailing knees and elbows that would erupt when Dinner understood the situation. An antidote to all the aquatic equanimity. Everything cool and slow and same and easy. A taste of the riverbank, with its prickly sticks and chips of granite, and exciting, unexpected happenings. Of land, where a näkk was as soft and vulnerable as any silly girl. Not that Undiné had ever been.

She began to rise.

The top of her head broke the surface first, slick and sable as the pelt of a ring seal. Then forehead, brows, and button nose. Her throat and clavicle, delicate as a wren’s—

“—You!”

Caught on the back foot by the food, Undiné popped out of the water.

A big blonde dummy was staring straight at her. His eyes slid down. Then up. He flushed.

Undiné covered her breasts with a forearm, his flowers forgotten in the other.

The dummy, familiar as an itch, ripped his shirt off in a single motion, like a flag, and slapped a square hand over his eyes.

“Here— !” He thrust the garment at her.

Undiné alighted to the safety of a sweeping bough.

He tried a blind step in her direction.

Undiné tensed, the water milfoils tensed.

Outrageously nimble for someone who left such a strong impression of an oversize and well-adjusted family dog, he managed to toss her his shirt before he fell.

***

The black-eyed girl, the cloak-thieving woman of Tádik’s dreams, lay draped across a furrowed arm of alder. Clad in his too large shirt and one foot flicking half-moons in the river. Like a small and irritable cat.

He waded to her against the slurring water.

She ignored him. Fiddling with the flower crown instead, her color high.

After a good soak, the summer greenery stood taut and fresh and fragrant.  

He waited, cursing his jangling nerves and two left feet and, Tádik hoped, radiating beatific patience and his good intentions.

“Take it,” the girl finally lilted at him from her perch. “Take it back. And leave, before you snag a näkk’s attention.”

She leaned to set the flowers on his head.

The fabric slipped, the neckline gaped—

Tádik spun away, blushing so intensely it was a wonder that the river didn’t turn to smoke.

She scoffed.

Tádik cringed, but reached backwards, toward her, anyway. “Come on,” he said. “If we stay in too long, we’ll both grow cold. And pruny.”

After a moment’s hesitation, the old bough creaked, and two moon-pale arms hugged Tádik’s throat and shoulders.

***

He carried Undiné piggyback onto the shore.

Wet as he was, his skin still smelled like hay and sunlight, his hair like linden, and, when he set her on the itchy grass, she trembled with terror and with wonder and with the sudden overabundance of all these warm-dry-rough-terrestrial things. 

He noticed and misunderstood. Slid closer. Then wrapped hot palms around her feet, set them in his lap, and began to knead.

“You know,” he said, eyes resolutely on his work. “I used to think that no good came from a night-dark river. But here you are. Again.”

“Last time, I stole your cloak,” Undiné reminded him, her hard, river-pebble heart hammering, overwhelmed by the blunt half-moons of his nails, the rolling points of knuckle, the scrape of callouses— 

“It’s only fair. Last time, I stole a look,” he admitted, ears blazing once again. “A long one.”

Undiné, too bold for words, lifted a shaky foot and used it to tip his chin up. “Tell me your name.”

He swallowed.

Distant giggling and singing floated by them on the summer breeze.

She froze.

He turned to look. “Girls?”

“Girls.” Undiné stared, aghast, at his thumbs, her toes, the profile of his sunburned nose. “Silly, lovesick girls.”

Then pressed despairing, chilly palms to her own pink cheeks, slipped from his grasp, and melted back into the clear, mineral-cold of the great Daugava.