I could see Jagger’s breath floating up in tiny clouds. He trudged on, determined, his face so pretty and unmarred by what we had seen. Whatever he was thinking, he looked as though he had forgotten the village, while for me those dead, frozen faces kept coming back in flashes.
The questions and the silence and his relative calm were getting to be too much.
“You need to explain everything to me. Like how those people froze back there and how we’re getting Bale back,” I insisted, walking in front of him to halt his forward march.
“The key to finding Bale is to find the Enforcer. I will tell you everything,” he said. “I promise, but I’m afraid I can’t right now. You need to trust me.”
“Well, why the hell would I do that?”
“Because right now we have to run.”
Suddenly I heard a growl, low and guttural, behind us. The sound came from deep within the icy banks around where we stood. And then the ground started to take form, rising up on its own. Standing behind me was a wolf made completely of snow. Its legs and back muscles were hard-packed chunks of ice. The creature bared teeth made of sharp, pointy icicles.
Another Snow Wolf rose beside it, and then more beside them. Their glassy eyes tracked me as I took several steps backward.
“What are you standing there for? Run, Snow!” Jagger yanked me along behind him until I was finally running, too.
For the second time since leaving Whittaker, I was running, weaving in between the trees and following Jagger’s graceful form. I was anything but graceful. My arms flailed, and I occasionally tripped over fallen branches, but I kept moving. I looked back, which was a mistake. The pack of Snow Wolves was gaining on me—and the time I took to glance behind me had allowed them to get that much closer.
Up ahead the trees thinned out, and I shot like a dart into the clearing, skidding to an abrupt stop at the edge of a high cliff. I’d run out of land. I looked down and saw a river flowing below. It was a ridiculously long drop. Looking back, I saw the lead Snow Wolf bearing down on me.
What should I do? Jump and risk drowning in the freezing water—that was assuming I didn’t die on impact? Or be eaten by Snow Wolves? And where the hell did Jagger go?
They’re not real. They’re not real, I told myself. But my feet had other ideas, and I jumped. The free fall seemed to take forever.
My mind went back to Bale. I was doing this for him.
I took the deepest of breaths. I closed my eyes when my body hit the water. And then remembered I couldn’t swim.
I think I heard Jagger splash into the water nearby but not near enough.
The water was ice-cold, and my body turned instantly numb. I tried to move my arms the way I’d seen people do on television, but they didn’t cooperate. I was sinking amid the rushing water. The current dragged me down, and I could feel the pressure of the air I was holding in my nose and behind my eyes. I needed to get to the surface. I needed air. I felt myself give up.
As I sank farther down, I thought of Bale’s face. I would never see it again. I would never see him again. Had I really come this far to die?
I exhaled air and inhaled water. A new kind of pressure filled my nose and lungs. I was suffocating. This was going to be the end of me.
Just when I had given up all hope, a light hovered above my head, followed by a shadow. I expected Jagger, but it looked like a woman. Her hair fanned out and swirled in the water. Long arms ending in tentacles reached for me.
The woman’s face was wide, with big glowing green eyes. Slits that looked like gills lined each cheek. They gaped open and closed in the blue-green water.
I tried to push her away, but my body wasn’t moving under its own power. Undeterred, she wrapped her tentacles around my waist and pulled me toward the surface. She was saving me.
This was my dream, my nightmare come to life. Only in this version, I was being rescued, not killed.
A few seconds later I was shaking like a leaf on the shore of the River, and the woman from the water was kneeling over me.
“We need to get you inside.”
If liquid could be solid, that was what the woman looked like. She was completely made of water in the same way that the Snow Wolves had been made from icy flakes. Her skin wept water. Rivulets formed each individual strand of her hair.
“Snow.” Her voice was sweet and even.
How did she know my name? All the impossible things that had happened to me since Whittaker piled up on top of one another. But the sound of my own name anchored me to the riverbed.
“Who are you? What are you?” I demanded.
“I am the River Witch,” she said simply. “Nepenthe.”
“What?” Despite what I’d seen in the village and woods, I wasn’t ready to believe in witches. And I felt myself fading. Everything ached: my head, my limbs, my chest. I had been running and running since I’d left Whittaker, and now, in this moment lying on the shore, all my strength left me.
“The River Witch,” she repeated out loud, just as the world went black.
The next few hours were a blur as I slipped in and out of consciousness. Blankets were heaped on top of me. A fire was set somewhere, and the witch forced a gross seaweedy porridge down my throat.
At one point I managed to ask, “Jagger? Did you find Jagger?”
A deep crease of confusion diverted the flow of water down her forehead.
“There was a boy with me. Did you find him?” I prompted.
“Do you mean the boy who was running in the other direction when I dragged you out and saved your life?” she said with a judgmental tone.
“I … guess?”
“Well, he’s gone. He left you behind.”
“Are you sure?” This made no sense. He was hell-bent on bringing me to this world. Why would he ditch me?
“I know the River, and the River said he left,” she said gently.
The turn of phrase was odd. How does anyone know a river? I thought of that for a while as I faded back into oblivion. But not before I heard another voice, sweet and songlike.
“She’s so cold … We have to warm her up.”
When I woke again, my naked body was covered in what looked like thick leaves, though they felt like leeches. Where were my clothes? What the hell was going on?
I tried to sit up and pull at one of the leaves, but my body didn’t comply. It was as if the weight of the water were still over me, holding me down.
Then I noticed a short girl standing next to me.
“Be still.” The girl’s voice was a song. It had more notes in it than mine. Than anyone I’d ever heard, really. It trilled with concern.
“What the hell?” I tried to say. But when I opened my mouth it was full of water.
This was a dream, I assumed. A really, really vivid, eyes-wide-open dream.
“They’re scales,” the girl explained, touching the leaflike things attached to me. “They draw off all the bad.”
Great. I had been saved only to be tortured by wannabe witch people.
There’s no way to draw off all the bad, I thought.
The girl picked up one of the scales and lit it on a nearby candle.
I tried to speak again, to scream, anything. Only now there was even more water in my mouth.
Then she touched the flame to the scales on my body. I would have jumped up, but I couldn’t move. Something that looked like seaweed was wrapped tightly around my legs and arms.
I braced myself for the pain, but it didn’t come. The flames raced over the scales on top of my skin, but I felt only a tickle. One by one, the tiny scales peeled off and floated to the ceiling.
As the fire receded, the seaweed retracted from my wrists and ankles. I ran my hands over my unburned skin, which was now warm to the touch.
The girl covered me with a rough, burlapy sheet and walked away as I tried to yell obscenities at her. But I didn’t have the energy. I went back to sleep.
When I awoke, a boy was in the doorway, standing rod str
aight. I hoped for a second that it was someone I’d know. But when he moved, I realized he was wiry and tall, not as graceful as Jagger. Not as solid as my Bale. He made me think of the toy soldier that Magpie had under her bed, but I couldn’t focus long enough to find out who he was.
“The fever isn’t breaking. There’s something wrong,” I heard the girl say, minutes or hours later.
Her hand hovered over my chest. “There’s something not right in there,” she assessed. “It’s like something is stopping the magic from working.”
“She’s part witch and part snow. That’s what’s wrong,” the boy countered, speaking for the first time.
Perhaps it was the fever, but his voice sounded distant and matter-of-fact, as if he thought the girl were overreacting. Or perhaps he didn’t care whether my fever broke or soared.
“River Witch … Nepenthe … come quick,” the girl called.
“Too hot or too cold. Make up your mind, dearie,” the River Witch said, beside me again. There was concern in her voice.
She peered down at me, one of her scaly fingers pulling at the skin beneath my eye. “She’s filled to the brim,” she said. “We need to get the water out of her.”
I felt panic grip me harder than that seaweed had. If fire was used to warm me, what exactly was the water removal method?
“You’re going to feel this,” the River Witch warned.
She put her hand over my heart. I felt my chest lift up toward it like a magnet. Water rushed out of every part of me, every pore. Even my eye sockets. And from my mouth a geyser spouted up toward the ceiling.
When the water stopped pouring out onto the floor, the girl approached me again. She touched my forehead and nodded to the witch. My fever had subsided. “You are going to be okay. You need to heal, and no one knows how long that is supposed to take. A normal person couldn’t have survived that,” the slip of a girl whispered.
I would have protested. Normal had been the unattainable goal for so very long at Whittaker. How was it possible that not being normal had saved me?
The next time I opened my eyes, the boy with the impossibly straight posture was staring at me. He was handsome. Not Bale handsome or Jagger-the-orderly-who-brought-me-to-the-Tree handsome. This boy was more innocent looking despite the deeply serious scowl on his face. The girl with the singsong voice was next to him. They were watching me as intently as Vern and I watched The End of Almost.
“I’m Gerde, and this is Kai,” the girl explained.
I couldn’t tell anything more about them. Were they brother and sister? Boyfriend and girlfriend? Husband and wife? They looked to be about the same age as me. She was obviously a witch, but was he a witch, too? So far, all he’d done was stand and stare while the River Witch and the girl worked their strange medicine on me.
“You were dead. It might take you a while to be completely alive again,” Gerde explained.
What do you say to the girl who covered you in leaves and set you on fire and the boy who probably saw you naked?
“Hi,” I managed to eke out. If this had been Whittaker, I would have done or said something to mark my territory, to tell them not to mess with me. But we weren’t there, and they had just saved my life.
The girl perked up, happy to see me awake.
“Who’s Bale? You said the name like a million times. Also, Jagger. How many suitors do you have, Princess?” Gerde asked, her lilting voice filled with curiosity.
I couldn’t explain who Bale was to me. We had never made a name for what we were, and we had never gotten past the first kiss. But he was more than her word “suitor” and more than a friend and more than any other person in my world or this strange one. And Jagger, this boy I had known for less than a heartbeat, was the boy of my dreams. Only my dreams were nightmares. I needed one boy to find the other, and now both were gone.
“Gerde …,” Kai warned.
I didn’t understand why he stopped her. What harm were a few questions? He didn’t know enough about me to want to respect my privacy.
“Right, you should rest,” she singsonged again. She started to hum. I wasn’t sure if it was coincidence or not, but the humming made me want to sleep. It pulled me like the tide under again into the blackness.
“Maybe the witch should have left her in the water,” a voice said, chasing after me.
It sounded like the boy’s.
11
“Welcome back to the living, Snow,” the River Witch said. She was standing in front of a large oval window when I awoke again. There were scales on her back that seemed to be part of a shiny, metallic cloak. I wondered what else besides her tentacles was underneath it.
Her long, thin feet were bare against the whitewashed wooden planks of the floor.
All the walls of the room were made of the same white wood, and thousands of drops of water dripped from every crevice of the structure. The result was cacophonous. The sound of water on wood hit my eardrums over and over. It was the constant kind of sound that could drive a person crazy. Other than the bed I was lying on, there was no other furniture in the place. Glancing around nervously, I could not see a way out. There was a rustling in one of the corners. Or rather a slithering. It was too dark to see what it was. But whatever it was, it was moving.
My bed lurched. It felt like we were on a boat, and I suddenly feared I was even more trapped. I looked around for Kai and Gerde. They were nowhere to be found.
I half remembered the boy saying that I should have been left in the River. But I wasn’t sure if he’d said it or I’d dreamed it.
The River Witch turned and looked at me.
“What is wrong with you? How could you take a drowned girl on a boat?” I demanded.
She laughed. “It’s the only way, my dear. Unless you prefer another swim in the River.”
“What are you?”
“Oh, my dear, there are things above and below that no one has imagined or known about. I am one of those things for many people.”
I sat up too quickly. My head screamed. I rested back on the rough pillow.
“You have more spunk than she did. That will serve you well,” the River Witch said and laughed. “You will be on your way. All in due time. But not before I tell you a story.”
“I don’t need a story. I need to find my friend and go home,” I said, feeling desperately close to whining.
“But that’s the thing. You already are home. I have to say, you look so much like Ora. It’s uncanny.”
“You know my mother?”
“Know her? We are sisters.”
I squinted hard at the River Witch.
Sisters? I had never met any other family outside my mom and dad. And the entity standing in front of me had more in common with the water puddling on the floor around her than my very perfect, very human mother. “You think… You’re my aunt?”
The River Witch laughed. “No, Snow. Ora and I belonged to the same coven.”
Coven? The word thumped in my head. I’d recently discovered a lot about my mother. First and foremost, she was a liar. And now she was a person from another land. But somehow the idea of her being magical, of being the same as this mermaid-witch thing from the River, seemed inconceivable.
“You’re saying my mother was … is a witch. Like you?”
“There are all kinds of witches, my dear.”
“And what kind of witch is she?” I asked reflexively.
“Not the same kind,” the River Witch answered cryptically. “But there is so much that you do not know. Shame on Ora.”
I didn’t like her insulting my mother even though I was mad at her myself. But I didn’t have the energy to defend her. I could barely sit up.
The witch’s cheek gills opened and closed with a sigh of annoyance. “Ora has not protected you and has kept you ignorant. If she really believes that is the best way to keep you safe, then she learned nothing from her time in Algid. You have missed years of preparing, years of training…”
“Preparing and
training for what?” I asked, more confused by the moment.
The River Witch sighed, and a few drops of water splattered onto the floor as a result.
“Oh, dear. The first thing you should know is whoever you believe is your father is not.”
“You’re lying …,” I said. But some part of me stopped short. Some part of me wanted to hear her out. I barely knew my father. His visits were sporadic and always at the urging of my mother. I would have been sad about it if I hadn’t been drugged up all the time.
“You don’t believe me, but in time you will. Let’s start from the beginning, then … with your real father, King Lazar.”
As she spoke, I wanted to resist, but I leaned into her words like a five-year-old listening to a bedtime story.
“Algid wasn’t always covered in snow,” the River Witch said. “It used to have seasons. And then Prince Lazar was born, which would change the course of our world. Lazar was the first of the royal line to carry strong magic within him. Magic is usually reserved only for witches, so it created quite the stir. Some say his mother had an affair with a god. Others say she dabbled in dark magic herself. No one knows the truth, and we never will because when Lazar was born, he came into the world and froze his own mother to death. Not an auspicious start.
“Lazar’s father feared for his own life and came to the coven for help. My sisters cast a protective spell on the boy, restraining his magic and putting a forgetting spell on all who knew of what he had done. And everything was fine for a time.
“But when the young prince came of age, he found an object that amplified his own powers so much that it broke the spell.”
“An object?” I asked.
“A mirror. Even our coven believed that it was just a legend. But Lazar found it. Larger than life and more powerful than anything in Algid. Than anything everywhere. And in an instant Lazar’s power was back with a vengeance.”
A magical mirror sounded ridiculous. But then the memory of Bale going into the mirror that appeared in his room came flooding back to me.
“The King sought the coven’s help once again. But instead of restraining his son’s powers this time, the King could see only his own greed. He demanded that the coven teach Lazar how to wield his great power so that the King could use it for his own benefit.”