Page 140 of Dark Water Daughter

My boots crunched over the rim of ice and melt at the edge of the Wold. The temperature immediately rose and mist eddied about us, doubling the eeriness of the place. The crewfolk murmured among themselves, shoving back hats and tugging down scarves with wide eyes.

I pushed a branch out of the way and stood aside for Fisher to precede me into the trees. “No, but there’s a great deal of muttering about it. I wouldn’t be surprised if the pirates set out first thing tomorrow.”

Fisher looked at the canopy over our heads and turned in place, taking the forest in with one, long sweep. She raised her brows in something between admiration and pleasure.

“Thisis…uncanny,”she decided. “As to the pirates, good. We’ll go with them. Now, brief me on as much as you can, Mr. Rosser, and then I want to see James Demery.”

***

The following morning, when the sun slipped from behind the Stormwall and the gloom lightened a fraction, James Demery and Anne Firth led a small party through the Wold.

Our boots sank into ankle-deep moss and skirted freshwater springs. A few ghistings watched us pass, lingering about their trees and taking the forms of forests beasts, or imitating various members of theparty—Olsa,Widderow, myself, Benedict. Some even followed us as far as the reach of their roots wouldallow—aphantom wolf, a running little boy. Then they faded, and others took their place.

To my ears they were silent, but I saw Mary acknowledge them. She strode with her mother, clad in a man’s shirt and women’s petticoats. Tane was nowhere to be seen, hidden beneath her skin, but if I touched the Other, I saw her telltale grey haze about her skin.

Only once throughout the journey, throughhappenstance—orcunningly contrivedcircumstances—didwe end up striding next to one another.

“Does Tane know how much farther the hoard is?” I asked her.

Mary’s expression became more distant. I wondered if that was how I looked when I slipped into the Other.

“Another half hour or so,” Mary replied.

I looked at her askance. “Is it difficult for you?”

“Having Tane?” Startled by the question, she glanced around to make sure no one was listening. Anne and the pirates were ahead while Fisher and Benedict trailed behind.

I nodded.

“I’m growing used to her,” Mary admitted. “It’s not as though she suddenly came to me, not like it is for Charles and the rest. She has always been part of me, even if her consciousness slept. There is no me without her.”

Something in Mary’s tone made me consider her more directly. I met her eyes, prompting her to go on.

“I…Ican see why you’d find it perturbing, though,” she admitted. She looked away again, but not before I saw a deeper truth behind her words. “Knowing what I am.”

“I do not find it perturbing,” I said honestly. “Does it bother you that I am a broken Sooth who summons monsters from the Other?”

A smile tugged at the corner of her lips. “Did you really intend to do that?”

I almost grinned in return, but this was the closest conversation Mary and I had had since our reunion, and my palms had begun to sweat. I cleared my throat. “Yes. We needed a distraction.”

“We did.” Mary frowned at the path ahead, then shrugged the memory away. “Well, it’s odd, but nothing to be ashamed of. Olsa says it’s a rare side effect for amplified Sooths. The Mereish are aware of it and the Usti suspect, but theAeadine…”

“The Aeadine disregard much that the Mereish or even the Usti say about spiritual matters. You have been discussing Sooths with Olsa?” The last surprisedme—andmore than a little intrigued me. Had I been the topic of conversation?

Suddenly, Mary put a great deal more attention into where she placed her feet on the forest floor. “Magic and creatures have been a popular topic aboardHarpy.”

“Ah.” I nodded.“Mary…”

At the sound of her name, she looked back up at me, and my thoughts scattered like chaff. The Other leapt into the breach and for the space of a few heartbeats, that world wrapped aroundus—itsforest with roots in the sky, Mary wreathed in blue and grey, and I in soft green, dark water about our ankles. Then it was gone.

“Your bond with Tane does not bother me,” I reiterated, hoping she heard the sincerity in my words. “You are the same woman who scolded me in an alleyway in Tithe and brought winter down onWhallum…andhas been in my dreams ever since.”

I spoke the last before I thought it through, and only realized what I had said when Mary’s cheeks reddened.

I waited, desperately hoping she would make a joke and discard the comment, but she did not.

“I’ve thought about you a great deal too,” she admitted. She lifted her eyes and glanced behind us at Benedict. “But yourbrother…Hesaid a great deal about your past, Samuel.”