Page 15 of The Water Witch (Fairwick Chronicles 2)

“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 itwas 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 thepossibilityof 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 upand 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.

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