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a will of their own. When I cut them, they were pulpy and they oozed what looked like that white glop in milkweed. The water was so roiled from our struggles—me, the horse, the woman, the vines—I couldn't even tell if there were a bunch of separate plants or whether all the vines were attached to some central stalk. But they were all around the woman and she was flailing about. I had to be careful not to strike her. Under the water, her face and her fair hair had a greenish tinge.
    I could hear my friends calling out encouragement, and there was splashing as some of them waded into the stream. Grabbing hold of the shoulder of the woman's dress, I started to drag her up out of the water.
    Her hair and face, which had looked green under the water, were
still
green. And the vines ... I couldn't tear my gaze from the vines. They were growing from her body. She smiled, showing what seemed to be hundreds of tiny, sharp teeth, stained pink as though she'd been eating ... as though she'd been eating...
    Before I could bring myself to finish that thought, she kicked my legs out from under me. The water closed over my head, cutting off sound, isolating me.
    I could hear the blood pumping through my arteries and the roar of the water pressing against my ears. Keeping my mouth and nose shut I tried to figure out which way was up. But the woman—the creature—was hanging onto me, dragging me down, holding me down.
    I swung my sword with all my force, which, underwater, was nothing. A vine blocked me, then coiled itself around my wrist. The water pressed against my face, against my chest. At the pool at our school I'd never been able to make it all the way across underwater, and the water sang into my ears that I wasn't going to make it now, either.
Stop struggling,
the water whispered.
I'll be gentle,
it whispered.
    The water was icy cold, and suddenly drowning didn't seem as bad as it was cracked up to be. Except somebody had hold of my hair—and
that
hurt—and whoever it was dragged me to my feet and held me upright. All I wanted was to sit down in peace, but by the way I was being jostled I could tell—even with my eyes closed and my ears still blocked with water—that whoever was holding me was also fighting the naiad or kelpie, or whatever the green monstrosity was that had lured me into the stream. It certainly didn't seem fair on my part to make my rescuer work at two things at once, so I concentrated on keeping my balance, opened my eyes, and said, "Mom?"
    My mother was fighting the water creature with her bare hands—Mom, who calls me or Dad, then leaves the room if a spider needs squashing; who lets the Home-School Association walk all over her; who won't stand up for her rights with her co-workers. She was biting, scratching, kicking, punching.
    And the creature was backing up, trying to get away.
    I was aware of people behind us and Marian commanding: "Harek, Felice—duck!"
    I ducked, Mom ducked, and Marian's sword swept through the air, taking the water creature's head off as neatly as a Weed-Eater decapitating a daisy.
    It wasn't as yucky as it could have been, the creature being a plant and all. The head plopped into the water, then the body tipped over. The vine around my wrist slipped off. All the vines twitched for almost a half-minute more, as if they couldn't tell they were done for and were wondering what they should do next. Then the water got all white and cloudy and started to bubble.
    Nocona pulled me in the direction of the shore, while Robin and Marian helped Mom, whose face had suddenly gone all white and scared now that the danger was gone.
    Back on dry ground, we whooped and hugged and congratulated each other on a fine first adventure.
    I turned to thank my mother. "You done good," I told her.
    She stood there, dripping wet, looking at me, and the only sign that something was wrong was that her bottom lip quivered. Then she sank to her knees and began to cry.

6. GLITCH

    Marian knelt down and put