Their cries were of anger and hopelessness, ever-burning fire.
I glanced over my shoulder, the lake a stretch of darkness and nothing behind me. If there were rocks or chunks of ice, I couldn’t see them. Drowning would be a better end than burning in sylph fire for weeks or months.
“You won’t have me.” I spun and leaped off the cliff. Death would be fast and cold; I wouldn’t feel a thing.
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Chapter 2
Water
A SCREAM ECHOED. Mine.
I inhaled and slapped my hands over my mouth and nose. Water slammed into my boots and up my sides, covering my face. Pressure swept the air from my chest and throat in a flurry of bubbles. Cold soaked my coat, dragging me deep.
Mittens didn’t work like fins, and my boots were too heavy to let me kick. With the numbing cold, I barely felt the chunks of ice that thumped against my flailing limbs as I scrambled to the surface. Gravity felt the same in all directions underwater, but even as I thought I’d gotten turned around, icy wind stung my face.
I spit water and gasped. I tried to push myself to the nearest shore, but my arms were too heavy to lift with my clothes all waterlogged. The weight drew me under again, leaving only seconds for me to fill my lungs.
No matter how I struggled, I couldn’t find my way back to the surface. I grabbed on to a lump of ice and tried to haul myself up, but it sent me spinning instead. A glow drew my gaze: the flashlight, drifting to the bottom I couldn’t see.
I kept my mouth sealed shut, but my chest spasmed as my lungs yearned for fresh air where there was none. If the freezing temperature didn’t kill me first, the water would. I couldn’t move.
My thoughts grew icy and splintered. My heartbeat echoed in my ears, slowing under cold and depth and lack of oxygen. No matter how I tried to reach up, I couldn’t find up, and I couldn’t convince my arms to move. The water became darker as I followed my flashlight to the bottom of Rangedge Lake.
All the air I’d trapped in my lungs escaped, bubble after bubble.
Water gurgled next to me, swirling where it should have been still. As my toes tapped the bottom, light drifted beyond my eyelids and something wrapped around my middle. I shot upward. The grip on my waist tightened and dragged me through black water.
The slow thud of my heart grew ever more distant. My chest jumped, as if that would trick me into inhaling. I couldn’t keep holding my breath. My lungs would explode if I didn’t let something in to ease the pressure.
I couldn’t stop myself. I breathed water and gave in to the cold.
Time drifted in an icy haze. Water moved around me, inside me, and everything grew obsidian-smooth and dark.
I was on my back.
Something pounded on my chest. A rock. A fist. Anger. Chill and wet pressed on my mouth, and heat blew in. The beating on my chest resumed and a bubble formed inside me, grew and forced its way up.
A dark and dripping face floated in my vision a heartbeat before I choked up lake water. It seared my throat like fire, but I coughed and spit until my mouth was dry. I fell to my back again as the shivers came, rattling through me like the cottage windowpanes in a storm.
I was alive. The freezing wind was colder than the lake, but I could breathe. Someone else’s air filled me. I forced my eyes open, hardly able to believe anyone would bother to rescue me.
The ice and encroaching blackness must have damaged my vision, because I saw a boy’s concerned expression shift to relief. Maybe it was my fading consciousness that made him appear to smile. At me.
Then I was gone, lost in dreams.
Wool blankets brushed my face. My bulky coat and boots were gone, and I was dry, lying on my side. My toes and fingers tingled as the numbness retreated. Already I was sore from my impact with the water, but the only thing that really hurt was the graze on my cheek. Blankets trapped me in a pocket of warm air. Foggy thoughts trapped me in this dream of safety.
Something solid pressed against my back. A body breathed in time with me, steady in and out, until I broke the unity by thinking about it. An arm was slung over my ribs, and a palm rested on my heart as if to make sure it continued beating, or to ensure that it didn’t fall out. Breath warmed the back of my neck, rustling hairs across my skin.
Just as I began to drowse further into my dream, a deep voice behind me said, “Hi.”
I held my breath, waiting for the dream to change.
“It’s been, what, four thousand years since anyone thought midwinter swimming was a good idea? It’s an awful way to go. Did you just want to see if that had changed?”