The Thames Prince
by Jennifer Oliver
part 1
The Thames Prince was as ancient as the river itself, a manifestation of history’s whispers made flesh. Time had etched its mark upon his countenance, bestowing him with an aura of wisdom and an otherworldly grace, though his greyish skin was dappled in glimmers of glass and fragments, a patchwork of slivers: knives, bone handles, broaches, crockery, each a relic of long-forgotten events and human lives.
Pollution, the humans called the relics. Trash, the Thames Prince thought. Things unwanted and unloved.
To a human eye, he would be a haunting tableau, nothing like the being he once was. The mosaic of discarded memories upon his body, an eerie reminder of his role as the custodian and repository of humanity’s transient existence.
Millennia ago, it didn’t seem like much of a punishment to exist here with the mortals. In 4500 B.C., they drank from and cooked with his beautiful waters, and he was proud of his work and of these fragile young things using the river to survive as long as they could.
But as centuries drifted into the past and the city grew and expanded around him, it became harder and harder to protect the river. The constant thrum of human technology sometimes made it difficult to focus or even remember why he was here.
London had its own ebb and flow, which shifted with the wants and needs of its inhabitants. The Thames Prince witnessed the birth and demise of empires, the rise and fall of kings and queens. His waters had played host to a grand pageantry of coronations, the vibrant chaos of floating markets and ice fairs, not to mention all manner of whispered intrigue and shadowed alleyway dealings.
The metropolis could be beautiful, but his waters became sullied by a sickly film, a toxic membrane that clung tenaciously to its surface. Litter was an unholy offering to the river’s despair, lining its once-pristine banks. Discarded wrappers, broken bottles and abandoned remnants of humanity’s transgressions.
Evelyn Kingston picked her way down the shadowed bank, her satchel tucked under her arm. Sounds of a pub party floated on the chill air, drunken voices revelling after a local football match. Evelyn’s left foot slipped on a flattened plastic bottle, and she swore under her breath.
She had always been driven by her love for the natural world and a keen desire to protect it, passed down from her mother and father, both of them environmental activists in their day. When Evelyn was small, she spent many evenings — and sometimes overnights — with her aunt Paula while Mum and Dad went to Greenpeace meetings to help organise campaigns.
Banner drops, occupations and blockades weren’t really Evelyn’s style. As she grew up, she instead poured all of her energy into learning about ecosystems, biodiversity and the interconnectedness of all living things, squirrelled away in the library at school on free periods.
It seemed only natural to go into Environmental Science, eventually specialising in Water Engineering, though it had not been without obstacles. Evelyn wanted to effect change; she hadn’t expected bureaucracy to make it so damn difficult and disheartening.
Well, her parents would be proud of her now, if they could see her skidding down the dark bank, picking her way across litter and mud.
Something twitched in the river in the dim light.
Regaining her footing, she made it to the river’s edge and opened her satchel, taking out her pH metre and leaning down toward the surface of the water.
From the corner of her eye, she saw that sudden twitch of the river again. Evelyn paused, the back of her neck prickling.
Just get the samples and get out of here. She would have to use the lab tonight; there was no way she could conduct her analysis while her co-workers were around in case someone asked why she was testing new samples. Most of them knew her background and knew that she felt strongly about the state of the Thames but, unlike her, they didn’t see the point in trying to go up against the administrative procedures and regulations surrounding self-driven study. Plus it just didn’t look good, highlighting how little had been done about pollution in London’s main waterway.
She had just finished securing the third sample when a splash sounded nearby. It was far too purposeful to be a trick of her mind. She glanced quickly in its direction and could have swore she saw something glittering in the dim light of the moon just poking from behind the clouds.
Glass... and... eyes.
Evelyn yelped and sprung backward, slipping onto her butt. Adrenaline rushed through her, a heady mix of fear and excitement.
When she was able to gather herself and hear her own thoughts again above her racing heart, she looked back to the place where she’d seen the eyes, but could not find them.
She whispered, “I heard fairytales about you when I was studying for my degree. Mostly drunk post-pub stories, people thinking they saw a merman in the river.”
But the creature, whatever it was, had slipped beneath the black water out of sight. After a moment, Evelyn wondered if she had hallucinated the whole thing.
“Jesus, I need more sleep.” She packed away her samples and hitched her satchel under her arm again. But, as she headed back up the bank, she couldn’t shake off the feeling that she was being watched.
It had been centuries since the Thames Prince had revealed himself to a mortal. Once upon a time he would do so occasionally, to entertain himself, but humans had grown less superstitious over time, and now were more likely to try and kill him.
This mortal, though, felt different. There was something in the careful way she collected a small amount of the river, cradling the little plastic tubes to her chest before placing them with care in her bag. It was odd for a scientist to be at the river alone late at night. Usually, those who came to test the Prince’s waters came in small groups and always during the day.
Before she had even left the riverbank, the Thames Prince decided that he would wait for her to return.
As the days passed, his interest in this unusual human only grew. He listened to the conversations that took place on the banks, but they were never about the river, and they were never the woman.
Until one evening, as the air above had reached its coldest peak, she came back. This time the Thames Prince didn’t hesitate. “What are you doing with my water?”
She jumped again, but did not fall backward as she had before. For a long time, the woman squinted at him through the shadows. “Are you real?”
“I am as real as the river,” he said, matter-of-factly. “So, yes. What is your name?”
“E-Evelyn,” she said. “And I wasn’t doing anything bad with your water, I promise.”
He tilted his chin, begging her to go on.
“I’m a water engineer. I was just getting some samples the other night for testing.”
“I can tell you what is in the river, without you having to test it.”
“I’m sure you can,” she said with a little breathy laugh. “But I need it for my analysis, so that I can take it to my superiors and show them how dirty it is.” She stopped and looked at him with concern, as if afraid she had offended him.
He lifted a hand out of the water and waved away her worries. “Why do you care so much?” he asked.
Evelyn stared at him for a moment, as if she still couldn’t quite believe he was speaking to her. Then her mouth pulled up into a far-away smile. “I always remember playing in the woods near our house as a child. The only thing that made noise were the birds and the sounds of the tree branches clacking. It was like they were talking to me.”
The Thames Prince tilted his chin, considering this. He was not one for the land, but the land beneath the river was connected to the land above so he could understand Evelyn’s reasoning.
“There was this stream that wound through the woods. I loved it, I used to paddle there all the time and collect stoneflies and water beetles.” Her shoulder fell slightly. “I went back after university, and the stream was all but gone and there was just all this rubbish there. My parents said kids partied in the woods and dumped their litter. I hated that.”
“It seems we have something in common,” the Thames Prince said. “What do you hope to achieve with your relics?” He gestured toward her bag.
“Oh, these? Well, I’m putting together an outline for a scheme to preserve the water quality better. These aren’t relics, more like tools. They help me understand the state of the river right now, and then I can look at where we can improve it.”
“People have tried that before,” the Thames Prince said, recalling the scientists who had come before her.
Evelyn tilted her head slightly. “Yes, well, those people aren’t me. If I can gather enough technical data and outline a project, I might be able to get some funding. Then I can put together a team of my colleagues and develop a new system for filtering out some of the waste that’s dumped in here.”
“You will need a lot of people for that,” the Prince said.
“That’s the beauty of my proposal. I want to develop machines that will do most of the hard work for us. We just need to science it; you know, figure out how to build those machines.”
“Prototypes,” he said.
“Yes!” She seemed pleased. “How do you know so much?”
“I listen,” he said. “I’ve had plenty of time to learn.”
“Right.”
Time slipping away was not a concept the Thames Prince was familiar with until now.
Eventually, they heard a gaggle of people loudly making their way along the riverbank.
“Damn,” Evelyn said. “I should go.”
The Thames Prince didn’t need to ask her if she would come back. He knew that she would and, as he slipped silently below the water, he saw her cast one last glance his way.
* * *
“We use spectrophotometers to measure the concentration of a substance in a solution. That’s where we look at the transmission of light through the water. It gives us a lot of insights into different contaminations.”
Evelyn didn’t know what it was about this strange creature, but he always seemed interested in her conversations, even when they drifted into the scientific. This uncanny being out of time and space, hanging on her every word, sent a little thrill through her, though deep down she knew that his interest was born from a desire to save his river from getting any more polluted.
That common goal was fast forming a connection between them. The Thames Prince even offered suggestions, although half of the time Evelyn didn’t understand what he spoke of: strange magical methods that were far beyond her or anything available to science.
One evening, she ventured to ask him about himself, something he had spoken very little of in their conversations about the city.
“I get the impression you’ve been here a long time,” she said. He had drifted closer, so close that she thought she might be able to touch him if she stretched her arm out, brush her fingertips across the little splinters of glass that adorned his skin, stroke his long black hair interwoven with strands of river grass. She dared not touch him though, afraid she might shatter this incredible dream.
“In many ways,” the Thames Prince said, in his peculiar voice that sounded like music playing underwater, “I am the river, and the river is me. I was sent here to nurture its growth. Many rivers in your world are tended to by my kind, ushered through the ages.”
“So you landed a pretty big gig, then, getting the Thames.”
His broad, greyish shoulders shuddered, and she realised that he had laughed soundlessly. She couldn’t stop her smile. “You must have seen some things...”
“Oh, yes,” he said darkly. “Many things. Let me tell you of something that isn’t so far back in your history to be unfamiliar to you. This city once burned all around me. I felt the heat of the flames lick my cheeks when I dared to surface. It dried the water on my skin. It fried the ends of my hair. I thought that London would be lost forever. That it would burn to ashes, and all would have to start again.”
“The Great Fire,” she breathed.
He nodded. “People flung themselves into the river. I carried them down into the depths, kept their bones safe. It is another facet of my task. Ferry the drowned.”
Evelyn hadn’t considered that. A chill shivered through her.
“My river provided them water to douse the fires, but it also mirrored those malevolent flames, casting them back in reflection. The smoke eventually covered everything, and people struggled to gather enough water. I watched houses crumble to black on the banks and scatter into my water.”
They both remained silent for a long time.
Copyright © 2024 by Jennifer Oliver
