Page 24 of The Water Witch (Fairwick Chronicles 2)

NINE

Well, I really messed that up, I thought as I pulled out of the Olsens’ driveway. How could I have lost myself so completely that I injured Ann? But that’s what had happened: that first rush of power had felt like a flame rushing through my veins, burning a path to those strange images of caves and stone circles and that mysterious figure holding the curved knife. That last image had felt somehow…intimate. And terrifying. I shuddered, tasting fear in my mouth. I forced my mind away from the moment, back to the sunlit country road in front of me, the old stone bridge and the sign announcing the Undine…

“Shit!” I swore, turning into the same driveway for the second time today. I had been so busy reliving the circle that I’d gone back the wrong way again.

I wrenched the gear stick into reverse and backed directly into a pothole. I could hear the undercarriage of my less-than-a-year-old Fit grating against gravel. I looked warily toward the house, sure the sound would have aroused the owner, but the house kept still in its enchanted silence. I looked back overmy shoulder…and was blinded by a flash of gold sunlight just as I’d been last time…

Only last time the sun had been on the east side of the house, now it was low over the west side. What, then, was making that flash of light? I tried staring directly into the glare but couldn’t see anything. Oddly, I found that I didn’tmindstaring into that blinding light. In fact, the longer I looked into it, the more reluctant I was to drive away. The trill of moving water and the wind chimes beckoned me to stay. I tore my eyes away and looked back at the house. Still quiet. Even the smoke had vanished. Maybe I’d imagined it before, and the cabin really was abandoned.

I put the car in park and turned off the ignition. Without the noise of the engine, the rush of water filled the air—a soothing sound that could lull a person to sleep. And yet I felt wide awake. The light from the water had recharged me, much like the energy of the circle.

I got out of the car, closing the door as quietly as I could, and walked down to the water, following a stone staircase that had been set into the steep bank. The riverside had been shored up by beautiful stone walls. Crystals and round river stones were set between square blocks of granite. Someone had gone to a lot of trouble to make the river accessible from the house, but judging from the layers of moss and wildflowers growing between the rocks, the work had been done a long time ago. Unlike the house, though, which was suffering signs of decay and neglect, the stone walls and stairs were lovingly—if eccentrically—maintained. Pots of fragrant herbs lined the steps and small clay figures and candles sat in niches inside the walls. At the bottom of the steps was a rustic bench made of twisted birch branches. I ran my hand along the wood, which had been polished to the smoothness of bone, until my fingers grazed something carved into the seatback—apair of initials intertwined in a heart:L & Q. The initials were nearly as smooth as the rest of the wood, worn down by someone’s touch.

I looked from the bench toward the stream. The flash of gold was still there, a bright spot under the water refracted a hundred times into gold waves by the moving water. Staring into it, I felt the warmth I had when lying under the willow tree with Liam in Faerie, the release I’d felt when the circle had joined hands and the gold light had moved through us. Both were moments when I’d been exposed to Aelvesgold, and Soheila had said that they sometimes found traces of Aelvesgold in the Undine.

Well, there was only one way to find out. I took off my sandals and waded into the stream. It was cold but, given the heat of the day, not unpleasantly so. The bottom was covered with wide, mossy stones, not, thankfully, gooey mud. I carefully inched forward, exploring the surface of the rocky bottom with my toes, trying not to think about snakes. The current wrapped around my ankles, then my calves, like silk scarves seductively pulling me deeper into the water.

I stood a foot or so from the source of the gold light. It was so strong that I was now sure that it was Aelvesgold. The circle needed Aelvesgold to cure Brock…I needed it to gain enough power to keep the door open. And, after all, it was my fault the circle had wasted their last reserve of the stuff.

I took another step forward…and noticed the water was warmer. Looking down, I saw that I was standing in a small pool of amber water. I wriggled my toes, which had gone a little numb in the cold water, and felt the warm current moving up my legs, spreading a delicious sensation of well-being throughout my body. It was like getting a foot massage while drinking a champagne cocktail. I squatted down, not caring that the water soaked the hem of my dress, and reached myhand into the core of the gold light. For all I knew I might have been sticking my hand into a bear trap, but I no longer cared. The light was tingling in my veins, fizzing my nerve endings, and massaging the pleasure centers in my brain. This felt almost as good as when I’d made love to Liam under the willow tree in Faerie yesterday. Maybe if I could grab whatever was making this light, I wouldn’t missthatquite so much.

My fingers wrapped around something round and hard. It was half sunken in the mud, but I pulled it out with a satisfyingplock. I dimly recalled Liz saying that Aelvesgold could be dangerous to handle, but I couldn’t stop myself. Lifting the stone out of the water, I cradled it in the palm of my hand. It fit perfectly, like an egg in a nest. It was, in fact, egg-shaped and golden—like the proverbial golden goose egg—and glowed as if it were on fire. It didn’t hurt me.

Because you were meant to have it.

The voice in my head didn’t sound entirely like my own. But I agreed completely. I was meant to possess this stone. I started to slip it into my pocket…and heard the click of metal behind me.

“That’s not yours to take,” a low, gravelly voice growled. “Stand up slowly and hand her over.”

I stood up as slowly as I could, gripping the stone hard in my fist. I had images of throwing it at my assailant to knock them out and then grabbing the stone back and running. The person behind me waswrong. The stonewasmine to take.

But, as I surmised from the cold metal rod pressing between my shoulder blades, the person behind me had a gun.

I turned around, expecting some hillbilly he-man in hunting camo, but found instead a woman the size of a fourth-grader with a face like a shriveled apple and a rifle more than half her size held in crabbed and trembling hands.

“I was only taking a stone,” I said, in the slow, gentle tones I’d use to calm a nervous animal.

“Thief! Trespasser!” she snapped back. “Hand her over, I say.” She nudged my right hand—still curled around the stone—with her rifle. She held the rifle in her left hand, balancing it against her hip. Without the right hand to steady it, the rifle shook like a leaf in the wind. In fact, all eighty or so pounds of the frail, elderly woman were shaking like aspen leaves. One good shove…

What was I thinking? She was an old woman and she was right. Iwastrespassing and the stone, no matter how much it felt like it belonged to me—didn’t.

I held out my arm, the stone heavy in my hand, and started to step toward her so that she wouldn’t have to move closer to me. I didn’t like the idea of her tripping and shooting me by accident. When I stepped forward my foot landed on a slick surface below the water. My balance wavered, my arms pin-wheeled in the air, and then the sky was whirling above me. My last thought was that I really ought to use my arms to brace my fall, but that would mean letting go of the stone, and I wasn’t willing to do that.

When I came to, I was lying on damp green moss, looking up into a kaleidoscope of waving lights. Bright flashes darted over my head. Fish, I thought, strangely bright tropical fish for an inland river. Imustbe in Faerie.

But then my vision cleared and I noticed that the bright flashing lights were pieces of tin and glass hanging from strings. The damp green moss was an ancient settee which smelled like cat pee. I tried to sit up and my head began to pound. I touched the back of my head and found a hard knot the size and shape of a goose egg…

Or of the Aelvesgold stone.

“It’s here,” a voice said. “You held on to it when you went down. Damned thing would have gotten you drowned if I hadn’t dragged you out of the river. That’s what it does to you, the Aelvesgold. You only had it in your hand a minute and you’d have been willing to crack your head open and drown in the river rather than let it go. Here, put this on your fool head.”

The woman handed me a piece of flannel wrapped around a chunk of ice. I placed it gingerly against the bump and looked at her. She sat in a rocking chair in front of a woodstove, limned in murky light that turned her silver hair greenish gold. In the shadowy light, her face looked younger than it had outside. She was wearing a red wool cardigan appliquéd with snowmen over a plaid flannel shirt over red long johns and a long wool skirt. A heavy outfit for a summer day, but then old people were often cold. Plastic sheeting was taped over most of the windows to keep out drafts and a fire was roaring in the woodstove. The room itself looked like it was melting. Long strips of wallpaper hung from the walls, revealing multiple layers of floral patterns. Plaster was curling off the ceiling, and the wide plank floorboards were buckled and wavy. There was a scrabbling noise coming from the ceiling that I suspected might be mice.

“You dragged me out of the water?” I asked.

“Couldn’t let you drown, even if you were trying to steal my Aelvestone.”

Aelvestone. I liked the sound of that. I looked around the room for it.

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