Text in English & German. The beautiful Lau, the heroine of Eduard Morikes story, is only half a water spirit – her mother was a human woman, and her father was a water nix of royal blood. She has thin webs between her toes, but apart from this she is not externally different to a human being. Because she cannot laugh and can bear only dead children, her husband, the Donaunix, sends her to the Blautopf lake.