The Water Witch

by Juliet Dark

  I stretched my arms out and felt them sway in the breeze with the branches. I wiggled my toes and felt the stir of roots. I could be a tree if I wanted to … or perhaps something more mobile. I concentrated on the doe. Her nose twitched and I sniffed the air. The night was awash with rich scent. Mingled with honeysuckle was the musk of the herd, the tang of pine in the branches, the sap moving through the trees, the bitter taste of bark that we would eat in winter … but not now when it was summer and there were fields of fresh grass and tender leaves …

  My mouth watered. I lifted my nose to the air … and felt my neck lengthen. I heard the deer stir and my ears pointed and twitched at the sound. My skin itched to be gone and I felt fur bristle down my legs … felt my legs and arms grow long and strong, my fingers and toes hardening into hoofs. I stamped the ground and looked back to Duncan, but where he had stood was another buck, as large and golden as Cernunnos, his antlers branching against the sky. The two bucks huffed at each other, and I felt the air crackle with tension and saw the tawny skin of Aelvesgold stretched taut between them. They both lowered their heads, but before they could charge, the beautiful doe pawed the ground and tossed her graceful head. As if that had been the signal they were waiting for, the herd turned as one, like a flock of birds wheeling in the sky, and sprang away. I felt the tug of their movement and followed without thinking.

  A fire leapt up my legs, a delicious spark that traveled from my hooves to the tips of my pointed ears. The other deer had melted into the woods, but I felt them ahead of me and Duncan at my side. We ran together, our hoofbeats keeping time with each other, moving deeper and deeper into the woods until we exploded into a moonlit field. I felt the openness like a dangerous tingling all over my body, but when I lifted my head I saw Cernunnos and the beautiful doe grazing on the hilltop, so I knew it was all right. I looked to Duncan and saw that he was also grazing. I lowered my head and nibbled the silvery moonlit grass. It tasted like summer, like life: delicious, but fleeting. I didn’t even bother chewing it. It slid down my long throat into my second stomach where I would store it until I had more time. Now I sampled one tuft of tender green shoots and then another, drifting across the field with the others. A young fawn kicked its hind legs and butted its head into its mother; a group of young bucks rubbed their antlers against the back of a fallen log. I rubbed my face against a clump of clover and lifted my nose to sniff the fragrant air. Beside me, Duncan lifted his head and rubbed his neck against mine, spreading clover and musk into my fur. A delicious tingle spread in my legs, and before I even knew I had decided to move, we were running. Just Duncan and me now, across a wide meadow and then back into the woods. I felt Duncan’s breath hot on my neck as we ran side by side. Out of the corner of my eye I saw him, his strong neck stretched forward into the run, his fur tipped with gold, his antlers glistening with moonlight. A wild desire spurred me on while at the same time I wanted to knock myself against him, twine my neck with his, feel his rough fur against mine … but for now running together was enough. We were linked by the Aelvesgold, bound as surely as if we had been yoked.

  I don’t know how far or long we ran. The nearly full moon hung low in the western sky when we came to a stop at last beside a rushing stream that reflected the first blush of dawn in its rippled water. Duncan dipped his head to the water first and then, when he lifted his head, water dripping in moonlit pearls from his velvety antlers, I lowered my head and drank. The water was icy and tasted like winter. Of bitter bark and deep snows and hunger. It seemed to fill my veins with an icy sadness, but I would have drunk longer if Duncan hadn’t huffed and stamped the ground. I looked up, but whatever danger he sensed was invisible to me. I was losing a bit of my deerness as I grew tired, but I was still deer enough that when Duncan leapt across the stream I leapt after him.

  Something in the water reached up to stop me, something cold and wet that snagged my hoof and pulled me down to my knees in the fast-moving water. I cried out in a voice that was neither fully deer nor fully human. A face rose out of the water level with my own. I was looking into wide moss-green eyes as cold and dispassionate as river stones … and then long cold arms wrapped around my neck and pulled me under the water.

  Lorelei. She had followed me through the door and had lain in wait to drown me. I kicked out against her, but my hooves only scrabbled along the creek bottom. Lorelei rode my back, forcing my face under the water. My limbs, so graceful on land, were now clumsy. And I was tired. I had run for miles. Still, I bucked and struggled. As I did, I felt myself changing. I was turning back into my human form.

  If only I could change into a fish, I thought. As quick as the thought flitted through my brain I felt myself contracting. My legs and arms hewed to my sides, my skin flaked into scales. I took a breath and drew in oxygen rich water. I was slipping free of Lorelei’s grasp …

  But I’d forgotten what undines lived on. Before I could get away, sharp claws pierced my gills. She’d skewered me like a shrimp on a spit and now she was lifting me into her gaping, needle-toothed mouth. I thrashed to get out of her grip, but her claws only sank deeper into my skin. Her eyes glowed with malice and delight as she squeezed … but then they widened with surprise. Something jarred her. I felt the reverberation in my gut. I looked up and saw the shadows of branches spreading over her head—then another jolt. Lorelei screamed and turned to face her attacker, flinging me aside in panic. I hit something hard and dry. I was on land, gasping to breathe like a fish out of water … No, that wasn’t the image I needed. Like a drowning person dragged ashore. I pictured myself—my own human body—and then I was retching up water, my limbs bruised and battered but once more my own. I was on a large flat rock that hung over the stream. Duncan, still in his deer form, stood a few feet from me, his head lowered to ward off Lorelei with his antlers. Her hair was wild and matted, her green eyes flashing, her lips curled over her sharp teeth in an angry snarl. Blood ran down her pearl-slick skin, pooling in crimson swirls around her slim legs. When I sat up, her eyes snapped from Duncan to me.

  “I see you didn’t waste time finding another male to protect you, Doorkeeper. Is that why you don’t want the undines free to come to this world—because you want all the men to yourself?”

  “I’m trying to keep the door open!” I cried.

  Lorelei laughed. “By running naked in the woods?”

  I looked down at myself and saw with horror that she was right: I was naked.

  “And copulating with that handsome buck?” She gave Duncan an appreciative look.

  “I was not …” But before I could finish she raised her arms and summoned a thunderclap that drowned out what I was going to say. The boom was followed by a torrent of rain that came down like a curtain on the last act of a bloody and tragic opera. Lorelei dove into the water and disappeared in the current. Duncan lifted his head and turned, becoming a man again. A rather nicely built man, I noticed as he waded through the water toward me. That linen suit had been hiding a muscular chest and strong arms.

  “You’re hurt,” he said, laying his hands on my ribcage. “Lie back and I’ll work a binding spell to heal your skin.”

  “What if she comes back?” I asked as I lay down on the rock, mortified that we were both naked. I hadn’t minded running through the fields with Duncan Laird or nuzzling him in deer form, but I was now all too aware that we’d met only hours ago.

  “She won’t come back,” he said. “She’s hurt, too. I speared her with my antlers.” His lips twitched into a smile at his prowess, but his eyes stayed on the wounds on my ribcage as he moved his hands over them. He was making a motion with his right hand that resembled sewing. Great, I thought. My spine had been knitted and now my ribs were being sewn up with invisible thread. I’d be a Raggedy Ann doll before long. I felt a tug on my skin and looked away, back to his face.

  “She was going to kill me,” I said, trying to focus on Duncan’s face instead of what his hands were doing. It was a nice face. Without the distraction of his messy ha
ir—plastered now to his skull—I could admire his high forehead and the angular line of his cheekbones. “Even though I told her that I was trying to keep the door open.”

  “You can’t expect rational thinking from an undine, especially one in heat—and believe me, that one was. You said you wouldn’t let her come through the door when you met her in Faerie. That was enough for her to decide you’re trying to keep her from breeding. No matter how much you may actually be trying to help the undines, she sees you as an obstacle to her breeding … Hold on, this is going to pinch a little …” Duncan made one last tug that hurt like hell, then he laid both his hands on top of the wounds, closed his eyes, and uttered a few words in a language I didn’t recognize. I felt a warming sensation and my skin went agreeably numb. Opening his eyes, Duncan looked straight into mine. Against the backdrop of gray rain clouds, they were a fiery gold that smoldered with the same warmth I felt in his hands. Which still lay on my bare skin.

  “Are you … um … still healing me?” I asked awkwardly.

  He shook his head. “I’m trying to feel if your power has been unblocked. It feels different, but still tangled. Perhaps another transformation would work better. Another shape might be more liberating. We have to try something else. Now it’s more important than ever that you gain control of your power.”

  “Why?” I asked.

  “To protect yourself. As long as Lorelei believes that you’re in the way of her breeding cycle, she’ll try to kill you.”

  Duncan walked me back to my house, supporting me with his arm around my waist. He’d conjured clothes for both of us, but they were soon so wet they didn’t do much good keeping us warm.

  “There’s one thing I don’t understand,” I said, after we’d been walking through the rain in silence for several minutes.

  “Hm … just one thing?” he asked.

  I laughed. “No, actually there are many things, but one uppermost. Aelvesgold comes from Faerie, right?”

  “Yes. Creatures from Faerie bring it with them when they come into this world.”

  “Right, and witches use it to make magic …”

  “Yes,” he said, holding back a sodden branch for me.

  The path was narrow here. I was conscious of my wet clothes brushing against him as I passed and glad it was too dark for him to see clearly how my clothes clung to me. Which was pretty ridiculous considering that he’d seen me naked not half an hour ago. “But Liz said the circle had a limited amount of it, and yet tonight I saw it all around me,” I said, trying to keep my mind on the Aelvesgold.

  “Yes, that’s because after you handled the Aelvestone you were filled with the stuff and drew even more of it to you. Think of the Aelvesgold as having a magnetic charge—the more you have inside you, the more you draw it to you.”

  “Huh. Okay, so couldn’t there conceivably be enough Aelvesgold in this world to supply all the witches and fairies even if the door closes?”

  Duncan shook his head. “Without replenishment from Faerie, it would run out rather soon. Unless …”

  “Unless what?”

  “Unless there was a creature who produced its own Aelvesgold even outside Faerie.”

  “You mean the way the undines lay an egg of Aelvesgold to protect their young?”

  He made a face, either from pain or from squeamishness at talking about female reproductive cycles. “Not exactly. Undines only make enough Aelvesgold to protect their eggs. Once they lay their eggs they’re entirely depleted of Aelvesgold. If they don’t go back to Faerie, they’ll wither and die. No, I’m talking about a creature that makes its own Aelvesgold in this world and never needs to return to Faerie. If there was a race of creatures like that, they would rule the whole world and we wouldn’t have to worry about the door closing. I could do some research into it today and return this evening.”

  We’d reached my back door. “What about Lorelei?” I asked. “We have to tell Liz and the others that she’s here in Fairwick.”

  “I’ll alert your dean to the situation. You should try to get some rest. Transformations take a lot out of you.”

  Before he left, he lowered his head and touched his cheek to mine, less a kiss than a nuzzle, a brief reminder of how we’d touched last night when we were deer. But instead of leaning into it, as I had when we were deer, I flinched. He stepped back and stared at me.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m …”

  “Exhausted,” he finished for me. “Get some sleep.” Then he was gone.

  I opened the back door, chiding myself for reacting to Duncan’s touch like a … well, like a startled deer. Duncan was a nice man. He was trying to help. If I acted like that with every man who touched me, I was going to be alone for a long time in this big silent house.

  Silent.

  I listened for a moment until I had confirmed my first impression. The rain pounded on the roof, but there was no ping or patter of falling water within the house. Glorious silence. Bill had managed to seal the leaks—at least temporarily—with his tarps. What a prince! I might end up alone in this big old house, but at least I’d found someone to take care of it.

  FOURTEEN

  I slept soundly and dreamlessly. In the morning I awoke to sunshine and the sound of hammering. I dressed, noticing that the wounds on my ribcage were almost entirely healed. Duncan Laird was quite a powerful wizard. I shivered a little recalling his hands on me—on my naked body. How would I ever face him again? The transformation I’d undergone last night hadn’t unlocked my power and now we had another problem—a crazed undine on the loose who had the mistaken impression that I was keeping her from breeding.

  I wasn’t going to figure out what to do without coffee, though. In fact, I was so foggy that I could swear that I smelled coffee. I went downstairs and found Bill, in navy sweatshirt and baseball cap, in the kitchen pouring coffee into my favorite mug.

  “I hope you don’t mind that I let myself in,” he said, handing it to me. “I wanted to get an early start so I used the key under your gnome.”

  “Oh,” I said, taking the mug, “how did you know the key was under the gnome?”

  He grinned. “Everyone in this town keeps their key under their gnome. Anyway, I just wanted to check that the tarps kept the water out last night.”

  “Oh yes,” I said taking a sip of the coffee. It was delicious, a perfect combination of the two blends I kept in my freezer. “I didn’t hear any leaks at all. You did a great job.”

  He pulled his cap over his eyes and looked embarrassed at the praise. “It’s just a temporary solution,” he mumbled. “I’d better get to work on the roof. I think the rain’s letting up.”

  I looked out the window above the sink and saw a line of clearing sky through the woods in back. Lorelei must have gotten tired of making it rain … or her wounds had worn her out. Ha! I thought. She probably didn’t have a talented wizard like Duncan to heal her wounds.

  “… so if you just okay this estimate …” Bill was holding the clipboard out to me, head ducked, feet shuffling.

  “Oh, of course. You’ll need a down payment. How much …?” I looked down at the statement and was pleasantly surprised by the total. “That seems fair,” I said. “Can I write you a check for half now and half when you’re done?”

  Bill grunted assent and I went to get my checkbook out of my desk drawer. When I came down he was in the foyer on his hands and knees. At first I thought he’d slipped on the wet floor and I wondered if the house was deliberately sabotaging anyone who tried to fix it, but then he looked up and I saw he was holding an old rag in his hands.

  “Just mopping up a little spill,” he said, getting to his feet and tugging his cap over his eyes. “I didn’t want you to slip.”

  “Thank you,” I said, handing him the check. “That was very considerate of you.”

  He folded the check and stuck it into the pocket of his sweatshirt. Then he stuck the rag—a scrap of plaid flannel—into his back pocket where it hung out like a flag on the back o
f an oversized load on a truck. Bill wasn’t a spiffy dresser, but if he fixed my roof the way he’d fixed my hot water heater I was going to nominate him for Man of the Year.

  “Should I give you a key?” I asked.

  “I can just use the one under the gnome,” he said, shifting awkwardly from foot to foot, “if that’s all right?”

  I hesitated, wondering how these things were usually done. I’d gotten used to Brock coming and going as he pleased. Was Bill worried I’d accuse him of stealing something later? Or maybe he thought I was naïve for trusting a total stranger with the key to my house. Maybe he was right. But every instinct in my body told me to trust Bill Carey. Then I remembered what Liz and Diana had said, that no one wishing me harm could get to the key under the gnome. If Bill could use it, that proved he was as trustworthy as I thought he was.

  “It’s perfectly all right,” I said. “I trust you.”

  He lifted his head. For the first time I got a good look at his eyes—warm, golden brown eyes the color of good whiskey. They were shining, almost as if filled with tears. “I promise you I won’t give you any reason for ever regretting that,” he said in a rush, then he turned abruptly and fled.

  “I’ll see you later, then,” I called as he headed for his pickup truck—a shiny new red Ford. He grunted and waved. What had happened in Bill’s life, I wondered as I closed the door, that made a simple expression of trust so moving?

  I was heading upstairs to get dressed when my cell phone rang. I almost didn’t pick it up, but then I thought it might be Duncan Laird. I answered it without checking the number.

  “Callie McFay?” a woman with a gravelly Australian accent asked. “It’s Jen Davies. Sorry I took so long getting back to you.”

  “Not at all, Jen,” I said sitting down on the bottom step. “I know you’re busy. I saw the piece you did on Sarah Palin’s wardrobe stylist. Nice one!”