Elfess

Her case was heard, but no sentence pronounced; for each elf was dying of anxiety to claim her as his elfess.

They were not mermaids, but almost like them. These water elfesses wore skirts of seaweed woven so that it looked like beautiful green cloth, and this covered their bodies, so that when they came ut^([sic]) of the water and sat on the shore their bodies did not show and no one saw they were like mermaids.

“What prophecy?” I asked, somewhat aggrieved because I remembered the one made by the old elfess that I was to be doomed by a cruel lie.

“No! I mean their fathers were men, and their mothers were elfesses!”