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Joining water sprites like Huske on the women’s team are a handful of veterans who thought they were done swimming five years ago.

Deakin’s book begins with an ecstatic moat swim in summer rain, amid “water sprites springing up on tiptoe like bright pins over the surface.”

On their backs are figures representing the arts, figures that look like water sprites.

The Rheinmaidens: Three water sprites, variously depicted as mermaids or Esther Williams clones, who guard the magical gold of the river Rhine, which confers power on anyone willing to renounce love for it.

In it, a water sprite offers a poor miller fantastic wealth, but tricks him into promising her his newborn son.