Back in a Spell (The Witches of Thistle Grove, #3)(15)

But I remembered now.

Without thinking twice, I took one step, followed by another—leaving searing footprints in my wake, as if my soles had gone red-hot, turned closer to flame—and then I broke into a headlong run toward the lake. Once I reached the edge, I pushed off my toes and simply jumped, sparing just the slightest panicky thought for the hypothermic rush that awaited me on the other end.

And by the triple goddess, it was fucking cold.

Freezing water fractured around me like shards, bitter blades of cold pressed against every inch of my skin, flooding down my throat when I gasped at it. For a moment, I thought with sheer, terrified conviction that I was going to drown and die, frigid water stopping up my lungs. My limbs turning numb and leaden as that all-consuming cold leached all the warm life from my blood.

And then, it was over. The cold abruptly fled, rushing off as if it had been sucked away, a pleasant flush of heat stealing in to cover me in its place. I had a niggling sense that something like this had always been a part of it; a painful test that I had to pass, to be granted access to whatever came next.

For a moment, I floated without any effort, the water holding me suspended like a buoy. My hair writhed around my head like a pale corona, those plunging stars still falling all around me in a shimmering underwater cascade. I could still feel that invading water inside my mouth, the press of it against my open eyes and cheeks—but I could also breathe without any trouble. As if I’d spent my whole life with secret gills, waiting to be deployed at a moment like this.

Then I began a slow, tugged descent toward the bottom of the lake.

It was a drifting plunge that felt a little bit like flying, as if something deep down in those fathoms were magnetized, and I was just a tiny iron filing. I could feel the pressure of the water building, pressing down on my head as I sank deeper and farther, the dazzle of that star shower lighting my way through the liquid dark. Some of the weirder fauna that lived in the lake nosed curiously up to me, drawn by the light; vast translucent jellyfish filled with silvery squiggles like coiled springs, deep purple squid that watched me with glittering black eyes. But none of them ventured too close to me.

I should have been afraid. Though Thistle Grove witches (and the few bolder normies of Morty’s persuasion) swam freely in Lady’s Lake—and had probably dived in it, too, over the years—no one knew how deep it was. How far it tunneled down into the mountaintop.

How far I had to go, until I reached whatever it was that waited for me at the bottom.

But I wasn’t afraid, or in any rush. The descent felt timeless, as in, lifted entirely out of time; like something I’d been doing forever, or possibly just the last ten seconds, without any distinction between the two possibilities. When the bottom began looming into sight, I was faintly surprised, like I’d been ready for a much longer trip.

The lake bed held nothing of what you’d expect to find, not tumbled rocks or kelp or tattered shipwrecks, nor the odd sea monster curled up in its den. Instead, there were coins; whole legions of them, heaped on top of one another like the glitter of a dragon’s treasure chest. And as I watched those infinite stars fall around me, I saw each bounce as it hit the bottom, turning into the shimmer of a spun coin in slow motion before it settled into the sediment.

I shouldn’t have been able to see their legends; I was still too high up for that. But still, I could tell that each one was inscribed with an eight-pointed star, drawn around a woman’s face. And I knew, without understanding how I knew it, that this was her. The Lady, the one who called to me so insistently.

The Lady who presided over this lake.

Then I drifted even farther down, borne like a tiny barge on my own private current, and the statue finally hovered into view.

She was carved from some glowing alabaster stone, bright and pale as a star’s own heart. A tall and lovely woman lying naked on a plinth, long coils of her hair ribboning all around her, the oval face they framed such a painful perfection it made you want to cry.

A rush of pure adoration filled me, a love above and beyond any other love. I sank to the lake bed by her feet, disturbed silt drifting around my knees. I knew this Lady with my whole heart; I’d always known her. She’d been calling to me in my dreams since I was a little girl, and I’d been swimming down to meet her for all these years, to pay my respects and simply see her, spend some time.

And then forgetting each visit with her, as soon as the night was done.

Head bowed, I reached up to the plinth and pressed my palms to the pale stone. It glowed with heat like a forge, as if it existed somewhere far from even the concept of winter. As soon as I touched it, a pulse of deep approval shimmered through me, and O HOW I’VE MISSED YOU, MY NINA, WELCOME BACK TO ME clamored through my bones.

“I’ve missed you, too,” I whispered back, my voice distorted with those resonant harmonics even underwater. And apparently, even this far below the water’s surface, Dream Nina could still cry. Grateful tears sprang to my eyes as I pressed my forehead to the Lady’s plinth, feeling a warm current rush through my veins like electricity, like a slew of sunshine buried fathoms deep.

My Lady was not only a lady of the water, but also one of fire and light.

Now that I remembered her, and all the other times I’d come here in my sleep, I knew—this time was different. There’d never been all these stars before, or the coins that they’d become. There’d been only light and water and solace; the loving silence of me and her in our private communion.