The Drowned Bride: Tales of what the water keeps

By Laurie David

Every generation, Zarechye gives the millpond a bride. This year the bride has read the deed.

In the river country, water keeps its bargains to the letter. For seven generations the village of Zarechye has paid for dry fields and a turning mill with its daughters, and called it a wedding. Now the week of the drowned has come round again. The mist is on the meadows, the drowned brides are singing in the birches, and Marya Tikhonova has found a word in the deed that the village would rather she had not.

The Drowned Bride sets the Brothers Grimm's "The Nix of the Mill-Pond" beside Scottish and Russian tellings of the same promise, then turns it into a complete adventure for fifth edition: seven nights, four haunted places, a wedding that must be argued rather than won with a sword, and endings that follow the party home.

Inside

The Grimm tale and three more tellings of the same promiseA seven-night adventure for characters of levels 3 to 6Rusalki, the vodyanoy, the drowned, and their Old RulesBargains, riddles, and three gifts with conditionsAn atlas, twelve riddle cards, and the deed itself

A 186-page full-color book: a labelled two-page map of the river country, a cutaway of the four places, a gallery of fifteen silhouette portraits, the seven-night clock across two pages, and every handout printed on period paper.

A dark fairy tale for adult tables. It contains drowning, coerced betrothal, and the drowned dead.

Once & Never, Tale One. Once upon a time. Never after.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: B0HLD1TM9S
• ISBN13: 9798177753539
• Release Date: September 2026
• Publisher: Independently Published
• Length: 188 Pages
• Weight: 1.02 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 7.0" x 10.0"