The Water Witch (7 page)

I
came to on the forest floor, face in the mud, the rush of water in my ears.
Drowned
, I thought. I tried to move, but I couldn’t feel anything but the mud against my face. Every bone in my body felt as though it had been ground to dust.

“There she is!” said a familiar female voice.

At least my ears worked. Or was I imagining voices? They came and went on the shrieking wind and amid gusts of rain.

“She’s in the ravine,” I heard, and then, “She’ll drown if we don’t get to her right away.”

Drown? Hadn’t I already? I felt water pooling under my cheek. I could taste it—it tasted like mud and grass and it smelled like rain. It had reached my nose. If I didn’t move, I
would
drown.

I tried to turn my head, but something seemed to have happened to my spinal cord. Lorelei. That’s what had happened to me. That bitch undine had raised a storm in Faerie that had slammed through the door. The storm followed me into this world. Had anything else followed me? All I remembered was
Liam tackling Lorelei to give me time to escape. Had he been able to restrain her—or had she killed him?

Something hot slid down my nose. Tears mingling with the rain and mud. Liam had sacrificed himself so I could get away. But it had all been for nothing. My neck was broken. I was paralyzed. I might as well drown in this two-inch-deep mud puddle.

“Is she alive? Can you see if she’s breathing?”

The voices were closer. I felt the vibrations of footsteps against my cheek—but nowhere else. I
was
paralyzed. That bitch had turned me into a vegetable. Before I died I ought to at least attempt to tell them about Lorelei—warn them that she was trying to come through the door …

I opened my eyes, seeing only the tangle of my own wet, mud-caked hair. Then soft, cool hands brushed the hair away.

“Callie? Can you hear me?”

Soheila’s warm amber eyes were so close I felt I could fall into them. I’d seen that color before … I tried to move my lips, but only swallowed mud.

She cupped her hands and scooped water out of the pool collecting around my face. She used a dampened bandanna to clean the mud from my face.

“Lore … lei,” I managed when I could work my lips. “… Raised storm … might have … followed.”

Soheila muttered something in Farsi that I suspected might have been a worse epithet than the one I’d given Lorelei. “I might have known it was her. All the undines are quite good at weather, and she’s one of the most powerful.” Out of the corner of my eye, I saw her turn her head. “It
was
Lorelei,” she said to someone behind her.

“That nasty bit of baggage,” Diana said. “I don’t suppose she cares how many poor innocent animals will lose their homes in this storm.”

“We have a worse problem than that,” Liz said before lowering her voice and whispering something I couldn’t catch.

“It’s my neck,” I said. “It’s … broken … isn’t it?”

Soheila paused in scooping water to cup my face with her hand and bend down so I could see her eyes. That color … it was Aelvesgold. Her eyes were the color of Faerie light. “I’m afraid so, Callie, but don’t give up. There are things we can do.” She looked up, but not before I saw a tear fall from her eye.

“I know a knitting spell,” Diana said. “Of course we’d have to set the bone in the right position …”

“I have some experience with that from the days I drove an ambulance in the war,” Liz said. I wondered which war.

“And I can summon a wind to cushion her spine while we manipulate it …”

“I’ll need needles,” Diana said. “And yarn.”

Needles? Yarn? Was Diana truly planning to knit me a new spine? From within, laughter unexpectedly began to erupt, but all three women instantly quieted me.

“You mustn’t move, Cailleach,” Liz said in her sternest schoolmistress voice. “Diana and I will get what we need and be back as soon as we can. Soheila, stay with Callie and keep bailing the water away from her mouth. We won’t be long.”

I would have liked to turn to say good-bye, but could not. I had a horrible feeling I would never see either woman again.

“Hey,” I said to Soheila after the other women had left, “how good is this knitting trick of Diana’s?”

“Pretty good. She heals animal bones all the time with it. And you know what a devoted knitter she is.”

“Yeah, she made me a sweater last Christmas …” With a lumpy-looking deer on the front and one arm shorter than the other, I recalled. “Soheila, promise me something?”

“Yes, Callie?”

“If it looks like I’m going to wind up looking like Igor, could you just snap my neck instead?”

“Don’t talk like that, Callie. You won’t wind up looking like Igor, but even if you did, wouldn’t it be better than dying?”

I sighed. My breath made ripples in the water that Soheila was so valiantly scooping away. My friends were doing their best to save me. This wasn’t the time to indulge in self-pity, but I couldn’t help wondering who would miss me if I died here in the mud. Liz and Diana had each other and Soheila had lived for centuries watching her human loved ones die before her. What was one more? I didn’t have children, and although I knew my students cared about me, I didn’t flatter myself that I was essential to their lives. Even Nicky Ballard, whom I’d saved from a family curse a few months ago, was doing so well on her own that she’d gone away to a study abroad program in Scotland. My childhood friend Annie would be heartbroken, but she had her girlfriend, Maxine. My grandmother Adelaide would probably think I had gotten what was coming to me, dying in the mud from a foolish attempt to help Faerotrash—as she and her club members at the Grove derisively referred to the fey.

And Liam?

I’d just made love to him and he’d saved my life today, but when he’d asked, I couldn’t tell him I loved him. If I couldn’t say it then, would I ever? If I couldn’t, we’d never be together. So what would it matter to him if I were dead?

“It’s not like there’d be anyone to really miss me,” I said.

Soheila lay down beside me in the mud so that her face was level with mine. “My dear, why set your life at such a low value?”

“I don’t … it’s just that …” I was going to tell her that I was afraid I’d never love anyone, but I realized in time that it
was a tactless thing to say to Soheila, who had selflessly renounced any chance at love. Still, I wondered if it were true. When Paul, my boyfriend of the last six years, had broken up with me last summer he’d said that he’d felt for a long time that I didn’t love him. He was right. I had kept a piece of myself apart. Maybe I’d been keeping that piece of myself separate and protected since the day I had learned that my parents were dead. And today, just when I thought I might be able to tell Liam I loved him, I felt an iron band squeezing my heart—as if even the
possibility
of loving someone was so frightening my body had revolted. What was wrong with me? Was I ever going to be able to love someone?

I had no time to ponder that question, though, because Liz and Diana returned, both of them sopping wet and out of breath. Diana plopped herself down in the mud puddle, a colorful quilted bag in her lap. Liz moved behind me. I felt her hands slide on either side of my neck, gentle but firm. For some reason I recalled the first time I’d shaken Liz’s hand, at my job interview. I’d been surprised at how firm her handshake was and thought to myself that beneath her pink Chanel suit beat the heart of a steel-willed administrator. Little did I know then that those steel hands would someday be around my neck. I tried to distract myself from the thought of what she was about to do by watching Diana. From the quilted bag, she had taken out two long knitting needles. I thought they had unusually sharp points. Then she took out a skein of bright pink wool.

“Sorry,” she said. “It was the only color I had enough of.”

“What … exactly … are you going to do … with it?”

“Knit your spinal cord together, of course. I have to make the first stitch at the exact moment Liz realigns the bones. Oh my, but is it a knit or a purl? I don’t remember.”

“Knit, I should think,” Soheila remarked. She’d gotten up
and knelt behind me. I heard her voice close to my ear, but if she was touching me I couldn’t feel it.

“I think so, too. Hold on. I’ve got to cast on with an objective correlative spell.”

“Isn’t that a literary term?” I asked. “Are you going to deconstruct my spine next?”

Diana blinked her large Bambi eyes at me and I instantly regretted my sarcasm. “It’s the basis for most magic. It’s also called sympathetic magic. I’m going to create a correlation between your spinal cord and the yarn so that whatever I do to the yarn creates the same effect on your spinal cord. Are you ready?”

To have my spine turned into yarn?
I thought groggily. I supposed it couldn’t make it worse. I told her I was.

Diana nodded and, leaning forward, plucked a hair from my head. She laid the copper strand along a length of the pink wool and made a slipknot while reciting the words
“Vice versa, topsy turvy, arsy versy.”

She slipped a needle through the knot. I felt a slight tug at the base of my neck. Diana positioned the second needle tip inside the loop and looked up.

“This may pinch a little,” Liz warned.

“Iuncta hals-bein …”
The three women chanted in unison. I missed hearing the rest of the knitting spell because of the extreme pain and screaming. I did hear a crack that sounded like a gunshot. I lost consciousness. When I came to, I lay flat on the ground staring up at three concerned faces.

“Callie, can you wiggle your toes?”

I wiggled my toes … and fingers … and then, tentatively, stretched my arms and legs. I felt … pretty good. My back felt as if I’d just had it aligned by a chiropractor. Still, I was just a bit … 
woolly
.

I looked down at the bundle of knitting clutched in Diana’s hand. She’d knitted about two inches of a skinny scarf.

“The woozy feeling will go away when I cast off,” Diana assured me. “But it will take me a few days to finish it. Don’t worry, I’ll keep it safe.”

The pile of bright pink wool in her hand was sympathetically connected to my spine. I just had to hope she didn’t drop any stitches.

“Thank you,” I said to Diana, and then, turning to Soheila and Liz, “Thank you all. You saved my life.”

“We endangered it in the first place,” Liz said, surreptitiously wiping water from her face. It was still raining too hard to tell if it was a tear. “And soon we’ll all be in danger of pneumonia if we don’t get someplace dry. This storm doesn’t look like it’s ending anytime soon.”

“I must have really ticked off Lorelei,” I said as Liz and Diana each took one of my arms to help me walk. I really didn’t need any help, but there was no telling them that. Besides, it made it easier to be heard over the sound of the rain and our Wellies squelching in the mud. Soheila walked ahead, clearing wind-fallen branches and whole tree trunks with gusty waves of her hand.

As we made our way through the honeysuckle thicket, I told Liz and Diana everything that had transpired in Faerie—except for the part where I made love to Liam. I did tell them, however, how he’d twice saved my life.

“It does sound rather as if he’s trying to make amends,” Diana said in her usually generous manner.

“But it might be just a ploy to gain your sympathy, Callie,” Liz added in a sterner tone. “Incubi are extremely manipulative,” she whispered, presumably so Soheila wouldn’t hear. Soheila could probably hear the slightest whisper carried on
the wind, but she seemed preoccupied with the mayhem surrounding us. The storm had knocked down dozens of trees. The last time I’d seen this kind of destruction had been when I’d tried to banish the incubus and he’d retaliated by raising a tsunami-sized wind. Liam had been born that night out of my ambivalence and inability to wholeheartedly banish him.

I brushed away a tear and Diana patted my arm. I saw her exchange a concerned look with Liz, and the women lapsed into a silence that felt weighted by the disaster of my love affair with Liam. I wasn’t able to muster the will to speak until we were nearly back at my house.

“What are we going to do about the undines? Lorelei might be crazy, but they’re not all like her. The young one I helped—the one who called herself Raspberry—was very sweet. If the Grove convinces IMP to close the door, they’ll become extinct. Do you think there’s any chance at all that we could convince them the door needs to stay open?”

“I’m afraid that this stormy temper tantrum of Lorelei’s will just convince IMP that the door should be closed,” Liz said. “I’ll contact the other members of the governing board and see if I can get a feel for how they’ll vote, but I think we should concentrate on figuring out how to keep the door open should the Grove and IMP vote to close it.”

“I’m the doorkeeper. I should be able to keep the door open.”

I saw Liz and Diana exchange a look over my head.

“Yes, you should …” Liz began uneasily. “It’s just that your power seems rather … unstable …” Liz’s voice died away as we reached my backyard. I looked up to see what had made her pause. My house’s roof, which Brock had been coming to fix, was in even worse shape than before. A dozen more tiles were missing and the gutter had been dragged off. Damn that Lorelei! She’d probably cost me another thousand in
home repair and cost Brock a day’s work. His ladder lay on the ground … which was odd, because Brock took meticulous care of his equipment and tools. As I crossed the yard I tripped over something in the grass. A hammer. Brock’s hammer, hand-forged in the fires of Muspelheim and imbued with magical powers. He’d never leave it in the rain to rust … unless …

Soheila gasped just as I looked up. Around the corner of the house, she knelt beside Brock in the grass, searched for a pulse in his neck, and then shook her head. I wasn’t the only victim of Lorelei’s fury. Brock Olsen had been thrown from the roof and killed.

S
oheila ran a hand over Brock’s broad forehead and short-cropped hair. His face might have been handsome if not for the many scars and craters in his skin. Looking at him, I realized how little I knew about him. He was a Norse demigod, a blacksmith to the gods who had once forged their weapons and crafted jewels for their human conquests. More recently, he and his brother Ike ran a gardening shop, Valhalla, outside of town, and he did odd jobs and handyman work for me. Although he wasn’t particularly talkative, I’d found his presence in the house comforting when I was working and had grown to greatly appreciate his quiet, patient manner.