The Water Witch Read Free Page A

the water was just running fast, as these mountain streams ran during the spring thaw or after a heavy rain. But it was the end of June and it hadn’t rained in a week.Nor could the water pressure explain the way the stream leapt over its banks, spraying bright arcs into the air, or the way the stream sounded. Beneath the rushing water was the sound of laughter—the raucous, wild twitter and screech of excited teenaged girls.
    “Are all the undines female?” I asked, watching a slender shape break from the frothing rapids and pirouette in the air before gracefully diving back into the stream.
    Soheila paused and looked back at me. She seemed unsure if she should answer, glancing nervously ahead on the path toward Diana, but then she said in a low voice, “There used to be male undines, but during the last spawning there were only a few. We fear there might not be any this season. We’ve noticed that many of the indigenous species of Faerie seem to only produce female offspring—and a few only produce males, and others simply can’t reproduce anymore. It’s a source of great concern in the fey community because it means, of course, that many species will die out unless …”
    “Unless what, Soheila?”
    “Unless they are allowed into this world to find a mate. Every hundred years, when the juvenile undines run downstream into Faerie, there are mature undines on the other side waiting to come through the door to find a human mate. It’s their only chance to reproduce.”
    “So these undines …” I pointed to the roiling mass of bodies in the stream.… “are the offspring of an undine and a human?”
    Soheila tilted her head and gave me a curious look. Instantly I was ashamed of the surprise—and the little bit of horror—in my voice. Soheila, after all, was an otherworldly being who had fallen in love with a human, the folklorist Angus Fraser. Perhaps she had hoped for children from the union. I myself had made love to an incubus many—
many—
times.Could I have gotten pregnant with Liam’s child? I felt myself go hot with the thought. A splash of cold water brought me back to the moment—and my body temperature back down to normal.
    Soheila finally answered: “We believe they’re the children of an undine who came through the door in the summer of 1910 and a fisherman by the name of Sullivan Trask. Sul, as he was known. In fact, the pool we’re heading for is known as Sul’s Eddy.” Soheila had resumed the cool, dispassionate tone of a lecturer. If I’d offended her, she wasn’t letting on. “The spot is famous in local angling lore. Come, I’ll show you the sign.”
    She turned to go, but I stopped her by laying my hand on her arm. I was startled by how cold her skin felt. While I knew that Soheila was always cold in the winter, since she had forsworn feeding off the life force of humans, it was shocking to discover that she was still frigid to the touch on a broiling summer day. “Soheila, was there something else you were going to tell me?”
    Soheila sighed—a sound like wind rippling through the pines, reminding me that in the centuries before she became flesh Soheila had been a wind spirit. “Hmm. Well, we were going to tell you later, after we saved the undines. There’s a meeting on Monday, the day of the summer solstice, of IMP and the Grove.”
    IMP was the Institute of Magical Professionals and a much more liberal organization than the Grove, a conservative witch’s club that my grandmother belonged to. I had joined the Grove myself a few months before in exchange for learning how to lift a curse from one of my favorite students—a fact of which my friends at Fairwick were unaware.
    “I’m surprised that the Grove would meet with an organizationthat includes fairies and demons.” I was also surprised—and not a little put out—that my grandmother hadn’t told me about it.
    “So were we. They said they want to improve relations with the witches of Fairwick. The governing