Page 14 of The Water Witch (Fairwick Chronicles 2)

FIVE

Icame 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, Iwoulddrown.

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 wasLiam 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. Iwasparalyzed. 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. “ItwasLorelei,” 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?”

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