Page 36 of Twisting Twilight (Homesteader Hearth Witch #9)

Seductive water nymphs, mermen, murderous water horses, and given the etymology of “drake,” some kind of dragon.

Though I hadn’t seen it on the scroll depicting Ardgal’s History of Draig, I also hadn’t had the opportunity to pore over it as I would have in one of the Hawthorne libraries.

Kian hadn’t mentioned mallaithe, so I wondered if that was just a Court of Beasts and/or Ossian/Redbud thing.

“Well, just scream if you see something, I guess.” I was only half joking.

Daphne held her oar like it was her blackthorn shillelagh, the expression on her face just daring some nefarious creature to get within range of her new club.

Hoping for the best, I relaxed into my sparkle vision and threw my perception wide so as to gain a bird’s-eye view.

The threads connecting me to my friends, along with their scents, faded away the more I extended my vision.

Backtracking from the tributary, I charted a course through the watery labyrinth that avoided all Marsh Court settlements.

A gentle trickle of primal magic summoned a current along with a steady tailwind.

I would’ve much rather enjoyed all the hidden secrets of the marsh with a bottle of Riesling and my physical sight, but I had to content myself with making headway.

I could still hear the katydids and the warbling of yellow-headed blackbirds—which had more in common with the creak of a rusty gate than a songbird’s melody.

Distantly, the sunlight warmed my face and eased the goose bumps brought on by the chill off the water.

Hours passed, draining my magic and my energy.

Yet I still spared some to leave Flora a breadcrumb with every lagoon we passed, just in case she followed us this way.

The marsh was chock full of water lilies, all pure white with those delicate pink centers.

I chose a prominent one to stain yellow and darken its center to brown until it resembled a sunflower.

Just like the sunlions she grew at home, her favorite flower.

She was smart enough to notice the difference, and maybe it was subtle enough to slip the attention of any solders or Erusians attempting to follow us.

I eked by on whatever dregs I could muster to get us through this current watery switchback and reach a large lagoon before my body succumbed to exhaustion.

After mumbling some instructions to Daphne, I surrendered the tiller to her and curled up at the bottom of the boat with my pack as a pillow.

Kian put that broad back and those large muscles to use and rowed, the steady slap-swish of water instantly lulling me off into another nightmare.

Mallaithe!

The fae hunting tree was large—an adult with fully formed features and vicious, venomous tentacle roots.

A spear-like point jabbed for my eye. Pitching to the side, my paws slipped on the rocky hillside. Claws gouged into the earth, halting my slide. Then a heave of strong haunches and I snapped down on a striking root with powerful jaws. The taste was foul on my tongue. Rot and something bitter.

With a growl, I wrenched to the side and ripped that offending root clean off the mallaithe’s trunk.

Spat it into the leaves as the tree shrieked in pain.

Its roots bundled in close under its body, writhing their loss and caressing the oozing stump over and over like they could coax it into regrowing.

With its roots tucked up and mouth keening, it seemed vulnerable. But it wasn’t. Not yet. Not— NO!

A grizzly bear charged from the left, his gray muzzle open wide for a bite aimed at the mallaithe’s throat.

The fae hunting tree screamed, shrill as a train whistle.

My ears flattened against the skull-splitting assault and the grizzly bear faltered with a pained grunt.

Roots shot out from under the mallaithe’s trunk, each one arrowing for the old bear.

He ducked, swerved, smashed with his paws, but he was too close and they too numerous.

A crack of breaking bones, a howl, a thunderous tremble as the bear crashed onto his side with a venomous root sticking out his ribs. The grizzly roared, the mallaithe hissed in vengeful delight, and my teeth clamped down on the back of the hunting tree’s head with a chorus of splintering wood.

Digging my claws into the mallaithe’s trunk, I gave a vicious twist of my jaws. The monstrous tree collapsed to the ground, the roots twisting and coiling like beheaded snakes. With a disgusted flick, and I tossed the mallaithe’s head down the hill.

A mournful groan rumbled up from my chest as I lumbered over to the fallen grizzly and sniffed the hole in his side. Blood and something black and darker smeared his fur. Venom.

“Misty, wake up.” A wiry hand shook my shoulder urgently. Pain stung my cheeks from a few persistent slap-slap- slaps. “You’re growling.”

“Ow.” I shoved upright on one elbow, waving off the assault with my other hand as I blinked away the heavy dregs of sleep. “I’m up!”

“Sorry.” There was nothing apologetic in Shari’s whisper. “Mare needs more instruction.” Even after hours within the glittering marsh, Shari was still under its spell and refused to speak louder than the frogs’ song.

With a weary yawn, I sat up and smeared the sleep from my eyes. Kian’s rowing tempo was the same as before, so steady you could set a metronome to it. If he was sweating, the cool morning air whisked it away.

Morning .

I lurched upright. “Did I sleep all night?”

“Like the dead,” Shari answered, this time a note of apology in her voice. “We couldn’t rouse you. I tried again just now because you were making such racket, growling like that.”

My gaze swung from Kian’s slumped shoulders to Daphne’s face just as the woman smothered a yawn. “You rowed and steered all night?”

“I had your instructions and without that current and tailwind you were providing, our progress was slow. No offense, Kian.”

“None. Taken,” he grunted.

Flora. I hadn’t been able to leave her yellow waterlily breadcrumbs all night! I immediately arrowed in on the closest waterlily and turned it sunflower yellow.

“Sorry, dear,” Daphne apologized, though nothing had been her fault. She offered me a steady hand back to the tiller.

My body, which had already betrayed me with that overlong sleep, yawned. “I miss anything?”

“Nothing,” she replied with a mixture of relief and trepidation. We rarely went so long with “nothing” happening to us. It was nice but nerve-wracking. “You?”

“Another nightmare.” I scrubbed at my cheeks. “I think I was a bear this time, fighting mallaithe in the forest. Another bear was with me.” A shudder rattled my bones as an echo of his pained roar trembled through me. “He got stabbed.”

“Snack?” Shari asked, using the old codename for Arthur.

I appreciated her discretion and shook my head, releasing a veil of brown wisps into my eyes I had to smear away. “No. Not him.” Thank the Green Mother for that. So… who was it? And was it anyone of note or just the profane spawn of stress and my imagination?

Scooting over to the side of the boat, I risked a few splashes of water onto my face. The cold chased away the vestiges of the nightmare, but their meaning remained: Come home. Quickly.

“Before I take over, do we have anything to eat?” I still had all the cookware in my pack, but my rations were long gone.

Shari made a meticulous inspection of our packs, declaring, “Not much. I mean, we have the chocolate and the bottle of cider…”

“We’re saving those,” I said firmly. I was with Emmett on this one; we needed some small thing to look forward to when this was all done and behind us.

She handed me a pouch of dried fruit and nuts. “This is the last of it.”

“Oh, well, let’s share it then.”

“You eat it, dear.” Daphne patted my hand. “It’ll be your magic and strength that gets us out of here. No offense, Kian.”

“None taken.”

Embarrassed but starving, I selected a few choice nuts and plump fruits for Fiachna then tried not to make a scene as I basically shoveled the rest into my mouth. Kian smiled at my generosity towards his Raven, and the opossum carefully ate so not a crumb was wasted.

“Can you manage a few more minutes?” I asked Kian. “I’ll make and set some fishing lines.”

Shari huffed, annoyed at herself. “I could’ve done that if I hadn’t given away my last crochet hook.” Her fingers started worrying at her sleeves for something to do.

“I’ll make you another one and you can crochet us a net,” I said.

She brightened at that, adjusting the seat of her wing-tip glasses in anticipation.

Daphne and Shari shifted their weight to port as I leaned over the starboard side to gather some bullrushes and other fibrous stems. The Crafting Circle ladies immediately got to cracking open the stalks to release the fibers inside.

Primal magic wove three strong fishing lines at a speed Shari envied.

I grew fish- and crochet hooks from the last of the larch seeds, except one, because a green witch never knew when she was going to need a seed.

After trying my hand at baiting the hooks with illusionary worms ( practice, practice, practice ), I tossed the lines out the back to troll.

Daphne knew a thing or two about fishing—a thing or two about everything —and remained on the other side of the tiller as I took over for Kian. The high fae had maintained a facade of quiet strength in front of us ladies while he rowed, but now he puddled off his bench.

“I’m going to be sore for the rest of the year,” he groaned. “These muscles are made for carrying books, not rowing.” In seconds he fell asleep just as I had, lulled by the coursing water and the fwip-shhh of marsh-fiber thread through a crochet hook.

After a sharp reprimand to my growling stomach, I slipped back into my sparkle vision and summoned another current.

We left this lagoon and navigated a twisting snake of a stream, reeds slapping against the hull.

Insects buzzed, disturbed from the grasses and lifting into the air to pester all of us except Daphne.

She reeled in the lines so they wouldn’t snag against the bottom and break, crying out with delight as one hook yielded a small baitfish.

Shari risked capsizing us more than once as she flung her growing net hither and tither, but she caught some alarmingly large flies that might tempt more fish into biting.

As we navigated around a wet meadow full of pink milkweed and entered deeper water, Daphne reset the lines and cast them out with a skilled throw. The baitfish and flies did much better than my illusionary worms—no surprise there—and soon Daphne was reeling in all three lines.

“I’ve got some big ones,” she whooped.

“So long as none of them are green-scaled, we can eat them,” Kian said groggily, startled from his nap.

“Is that an eel?” Shari asked.

“Ugh, I hate eel,” Kian grumbled.

“Hungry bellies overrule picky tastebuds,” Daphne said. “Keep it steady, Misty.”

“I am ,” I replied, a little insulted. I had some admirable control over my magic now, thank you very much.

“Okay here we go. Kian, I might need your help landing this one.”

There was some shuffling, then Shari said in a flat voice, “If he pees on my lap, I’m throwing him overboard.”

“Fiachna is a Raven , Quills. Refined. He would do no such thing.”

The boat wobbled as the high fae crowded the stern.

The bench groaned as he braced a foot against it in preparation to heave.

I summoned another air current to steady the boat, which was really putting a tax on my concentration.

Maybe I should just forgo the sparkle vision until we’d caught our supper.

“Oh, that’s a beast of a pike,” Kian said. “Alright, one, two?—”

The junior scholar screamed and fell backwards into the boat. Something wet and strong walloped the side of my head, and that was it. Sparkle vision gone.

I blinked away the sunspots and smeared the wet hair out of my eyes, every nerve shredding as Kian screamed again. Thistle thorns, the pipes on this male. He lay flat on his back, sputtering, no pike flopping beside him at the bottom of the boat.

“What in the name of all that’s good and green are you?—”

“ Faelene! ” the junior scholar screeched, pointing.

There, perched on the top of the figurehead with the speckled pike in its claws, was a large black cat. Its lantern-like green eyes fixated on me as it folded its feathered wings against its lithe body. The fish still struggled in its claws, but a decisive flex of its paws put a sharp stop to that.

“Abandon ship,” Kian cried. “It’ll kill us all!”