The Water Witch Read Online Free PDF Page B

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.
    They have hooks?
buzzed the undines in thrilled and horrified voices.
    No, no
, I assured them.
That’s only a story … we just have to stay together and find our way out. I see a light ahead
.
    Now that my eyes had adjusted I made out a number of lights ahead, although none as bright as the chink of light I’dseen at the bottom of the pool. Where had that light gone? As I led the undines toward a faint green glow, I wondered if that other shimmery light had been a trick to lure us into this netherworld.
Or maybe
, a sly voice inside my head suggested,
you
wanted
to go here because it’s where
he
is
. Suppressing the thought—and hoping that my companions hadn’t heard it—I swam toward the light.
    Nearer to the dim glow, I saw what happened to those who had been left in the watery Borderlands. A tangle of bleached white limbs littered the bottom of the pool, so crowded together it was difficult to make out what sort of creatures they had been in life. I made out human limbs and faces, but also fishtails and deer antlers, bird wings and … heaven help us … beaver claws. No matter what their shape, all their flesh had been bleached white and emitted a pale greenish glow, like some kind of radioactive decay. A fine luminescent mist rose off them that I thought at first was light until I noticed that it was clinging to my hand.
    I tried to rub a greenish slime off on my arm—the undine was still gripping my other hand—but it only spread. It crept up my arm. I tried to pull my hand away from the undine so I could get the stuff off me but our hands seemed welded together. Turning to her, I saw that she was also covered in the chalky green silt. Her face was frozen in a silent scream of horror. Only her moss green eyes remained and the silt was seeping over them … except that it wasn’t silt. In the glow she gave off I saw that the dust was actually composed of tiny creatures knitting together some kind of hard shell. All around us the undines, coated with the nacreous shells, were sinking onto the body heap. I heard the undines’ terrified cries in my head as they sank—one hit the bottom and cracked in two, half her face falling away—but even worse, I heard the tiny minds of the shell creatures. Once they sealed my limbs insidea shiny hard carapace that bore my shape, they would feast on my flesh.
Slowly
. They enjoyed a feast of live human flesh … 
Mmmm, even better than undine
 … and they intended to make it last.
    I heard a silent scream inside my head and knew it was the undine whose hand I held. She was still alive under the chalky carapace, but soon wouldn’t be. I felt her consciousness flicker …
    Raspberry
, I said silently to her.
Remember the taste of raspberry
. Then I squeezed her hand and directed my energy toward the hard shell encasing her. If a spell worked for opening doors, maybe it could break other barriers.
Ianuam sprengja!
I commanded.
    The shell burst into a million brittle shards.
    Swim up!
I screamed to her and to the rest of the undines.
Shake it off!
    I tried to swim upward but my limbs were weak. Already the shell creatures were regathering on my skin. I made one last desperate stroke upward … and felt something grab my hand. Above was a dark swirl, some other predator, perhaps come to tussle over my bones with the shell creatures. But this creature was at least pulling me toward bright gold that looked like sunlight. Anything was better than spending the next hundred years as the shell creatures’ live snack.
    I called out the opening spell again to break the shell