Page 8 of The Water Witch (Fairwick Chronicles 2)

THREE

The water was ice cold. The shock of it pushed all the air from my lungs and turned my limbs into useless sticks. Unable to resist the undine’s grip on my arm as she pulled me into the center of the pool, I sank like a stone before we were both sucked into the whirlpool of revolving undines.

When we were eleven, my friend Annie dared me to ride the Whirl-a-Gig at the Feast of San Gennaro festival in Manhattan’s Little Italy. It was a rusty metal drum that looked like a cake tin and it had reduced my insides to batter when it spun. This was ten times worse and the hand I clutched wasn’t Annie’s: it was the cold, gelatinous fish hand of an alien creature. Still, I held on tightly as the whirlpool whipped me in circles. I tried to look into the creature’s eyes to discover why she had dragged me into their mad dance. Her eyes were full of a manic glee that would have chilled me if I hadn’t been already frozen to the bone. Up close, their mossy green was variegated with veins of gold and chips of silver mica. They gleamed like marbles of polished agate. Looking into them was like staring into somethingelemental: the night sky or the center of an exploding atom. Cold, indifferent, and beautiful,they sucked me into their depths as surely as the whirlpool pulled me to the bottom.

As I stared into her eyes, my head was full of a high-pitched hum that crowded out every other thought. It was like trying to study with your college roommate blasting heavy metal.

Turn it down!I screamed inside my head.

The sound went up, reached a pitch that sizzled my neurons, and then, just when I thought I was about to have an aneurism, it abruptly ceased. The undine who held my hand smiled. The cacophony inside my head evolved into something like music—a cross between Enya and the Pixies. It was the song I’d heard before, above the water, the “Who will we love?” song, only it had acquired another verse.

We’ll go if you go, we’ll go if you go, the undines sang.

Go where?I asked.

To Faerie, Faerie, Faerie. We don’t want to go alone.

But you’ve got one another.

At this they returned to their first line:

We’ll go if you go, we’ll go if you go.

I had a feeling that they could keep up this argument a lot longer than I could—certainly longer than I had breath, which, come to think of it, I should have run out of already. At the frantic thought that I should already have drowned, my undine companion squeezed me close and pressed her cold lips against mine. I was so startled I let her force my lips apart. Her breath tasted like watercress and tunafish…and something improbably fruity and sweet—as if she’d applied raspberry lip gloss after lunch.

Razzzberry?A voice inside my head inquired.Lip gloss?

An image of a hand holding out a red berry bloomed in my head. A misty blue sky beyond…no, not misty…I was seeing the hand through a film of water. Then the film shatteredand I felt sunlight warm on my cold skin. A nearly unbearable sweetness swelled on my tongue.

Mmmm…razzzberry, the voice cooed inside my head. The sweetness was on both our tongues, filling my mouth, my throat, my lungs…then her lips, no longer cold, left mine, and I was staring once again into those cold green eyes…only now I thought I saw a spark of humanity or individuality among the mica chips and gold veins.

We’ll go if you go, she said as clearly as if the words had been spoken instead of sung inside my brain. Her eyes shifted and I followed her gaze to the bottom of the pool, where the chink of gold light lay like sunken treasure. It was the passage to Faerie. I had only to will it open. I had only toneedit to open. Just looking at the light now was making it grow. I felt myself being pulled toward it. The undines, seeing the growing light, had begun to swim toward it, as if attracted by a shiny bauble. I was pulled in their wake, all the while feeling undiluted desire thrumming through the swarm.

To Faerie, Faerie, Faerie…

We’ll go if you go.

They urged me on, excited at the prospect of bringing a prize to show their sisters when they arrived.

Oh, what the hell, I thought,let’s go to Faerie. I’d like another glimpse of it…and I could always get back. After all, I was the doorkeeper.

Ianuam sprengja!I shouted as we plunged toward the bottom of the pool where the light was spreading, yielding to the desire in my voice.

Ianuam sprengja!The undines mimicked.What the hell!

We shot through a wall of light that fizzled with electricity. I felt like I’d been electrocuted, but the undines liked it.What the hell! What the hell!they chanted.We’re going to Faerie!

But rather than emerging into Faerie we were plunged into utter darkness. The undines went suddenly quiet, like a group of chattering schoolgirls silenced by the entrance of a stern principal. I couldn’t see them but I felt their slim shapes slipping ever closer to me. The one who’d dragged me into the pool still held my hand, but now she seemed to be holding on to it for reassurance.

Uh oh, I thought,we’ve strayed into the Borderlands.

The name sent waves of terror skittering through their hive mind. Vestigial images, encoded into their DNA, flitted through the flock, gaining gruesomeness as they passed from one to another. Skeletons and decaying bodies with crawfish and slugs crawling out of hollow eye sockets, black slimy eels that swallowed their prey whole, sharp-fanged zombie beavers…

Zombie beavers?

Yes!The undines shrieked back at me as one.Zombie beavers! Everyone knows that dead beavers come back in the Borderlands as zombies!

In a flash, a wealth of urban legend was transmitted to me about these mythical (I hoped) creatures. As a folklorist I was fascinated by the mingling of real-life threat (the beavers snacked on the undines when they were only fingerlings) and the universal love of teenagers for zombie stories. As someone currently swimming in the dark, I could only hope that zombie beavers were no more real than that story about the Hook Man.

---